Speed of Inflation

[NeutrinoWave]

Was this ever quantifiable?

If (and I say that with a big IF) inflation from early cosmology did ever exceed speed of light, does anyone know what would have been the numerical value of this expansion?

[JulianO]

Inflation was huge - it puts the Greek problem in the shade.

The universe expanded about 10^30 times in about 10^-35 of a second.

So 1 meter would become 10^14 light years in a minuscule amount of time.

Inflation is quite a staggering expansion.

[DarkStar7]

Inflation implies that space time is separate to light. If this is the case which I do not agree with how can light be bent around a gravitation field. If instead we tie inflation to the speed of light then inflation during the big bang would have meant the speed of light would not be constant.The standard model requires Inflation to have the speed of light to be slower than stretching space time I believe. I can not except that even though I can except the universe is expanding.

Note if inflation is tied with the speed of light and the speed of light was not constant during the initial phase of the big bang then I assume that the black body radiation spectrum of the universe would be different.

[JulianO]

The equations say you can't transfer information faster than the speed of light.

You can expand space at any speed you like. We see this now - the most distant galaxies are receding from us at more than the speed of light. We know that because the light we see from them comes from billions of years ago, and was moving away nearly at that speed then, so by now 10 billion years later, they must be going faster.

If you take the expanding balloon model of the universe, as you blow up the balloon all things move apart. If there is a speed limit on the balloons surface, so an ant can only travel at a maximum of 1cm/s. If you inflate the balloon fast then there are places it will never be able to visit. There are some places too that it could see in the distance, but in a short time will be beyond visibility.

[George Jones]

Actually, the speed of light is greater than the speed of light!

In flat spacetime, and using a particular definition of distance, the speed of light is

c = 300,000 kilometres per second.

Now consider the expanding universe. Suppose someone in galaxy A fires a laser pulse in a direction directly way from our galaxy. According to us, and using the standard definition of cosmological speed, the speed of the laser pulse is

c + galaxy A's recession speed.

So, in my first sentence, the first "speed of light" refers to the cosmological speed of light, while the second "speed of light" refers to c = 300,000 kilometres per second. Even during inflation, the speed of expansion is always strictly less than the cosmological speed of light.

The speed c + galaxy A's recession speed seems intuitive, but sometimes human intuition is remarkably unreliable, but this expression can also be derived by the running through the maths of cosmological models.

[DarkStar7]

When the Big Bang model was first proposed because of the weight of observational data on it's side it was only natural to assume the inflation hypothesis would fit the observed data. Alan Guth done a great job of doing a sleight of hand with General Relativity.

Einstein was a true genius. He described what the force of gravity actually was. From his theory of General Relativity he made it clear that the force discovered by Sir Isacc Newton could be explained by bending space-time in 4D space. It is such a shame that nobody has been able to convince the mainstream Scientists that the force of Electromagnetism could also be explained by shaping space-time in a particular way.

Myron W Evans proposed an incomplete theory;

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein–Cartan–Evans_theory

In which electromagnetism can be explained as space-time being twisted in 5D space-time. Unfortunately the mathematics involved were extremely complicated.Because of this and because particle physics became to dominate physics the gauge theory of EM was sidelined and ignored. The Gauge theory could not prove 100% that Electromagnetism was a rotating 5D vortex. As you know that faster than light is not possible in Special relativity.However because Charge and Magnetism could not easily be expressed as a rotating vortex of space-time it laid the way for a cheating of Einsteins ideas. Now light was no longer to be confined to the space-time it inhabited. Particle physics could treat light as a separate entity within General Relativity. Now because expanding space-time is explained using GR it was easy to use the particle model of light, seperate space-time and fudge inflation to fit observation evidence.

If light was allowed to remain an intrinsic property of space-time it would show that any expansion of space by inflation would also require a change in the rate of time. If time changed it's rate,then the blackbody spectrum of the universe would most probably change too, invalidating Allan Guths inflation hypothesis. Don't get me wrong it is only the inflation hypothesis of the big bang theory I whole heartily disagree with.

It simply there to support the big bang theory because no one can see a better way. But there is absolutely no scientific or observational evidence for faster than light inflation.

It is widely excepted that this along with faster than light frame dragging is possible. But as I say it is a mathematical sleight of hand. Surely it does not feel right to you Juliano

There is another way...