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Before The Big Bang
Laura Mersini-Houghton 2022
523.1 MER Beaverton Library
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mersini-Houghton
Cosmology can be strange, Communist Albania was stranger. This book takes a strange path through both, but arrives at worthwhile insights. The book mixmasters time sequences like many modern books, I will try to unmix it here.
Biography
- xi Albania 3M people, before 1991 the "North Korea" of Europe
- xii mother's workplace had English books
- xiii economist father Nexhat Mersini (no citations or biography found) new algorithm for inverting very big sparse matrices
- 03-4 math or physics? did both
17 1991 Feb university student hunger strike, 100s of miners walked 50 miles to Tirana, overthrow government
- 19 170K-300K left via foreign embassies, almost all students
- 01 1991 Oct US Embassy opened, Cultural Center
- 35 Professor Bardulla, different solution to exam
- 01 1994 bachelor's degree physics, grad school elsewhere
- 01 1994 Jan, Tirana's Mother Teresa Airport to Fulbright Scholarship U Maryland, arrival paralyzing blizzard
- 05 200 physics grad students, 3 women
07 large bookstore in Bethesda ( Second Story Books?)
21 Masters degree at UMD, 1997-2000 UW-Milwaukee for PhD, Leonard Parker
- 50 1992 Met economist Jeff Houghton in Albania
- 51 1993 Dec meets LM at Zurich, flies to US with her
- 38 1994 Jan, UNC Chapel Hill
- 61 2000 Doctorate UW-Milwaukee, focus on cosmology
- 81 father exiled, attempted divorce to protect family, denied
- 95 Albania required subjects, history of Marxism, and PE, LM failed exam on former, physics professors forced a pass
- 114 30% of PhD graduates get academic jobs, fewer get tenure, conventional subjects recommended by mentors
- 116 walked to and from campus, 118 coffee shops
- 120 went outside for a cigarette (started during Tirana student embassy escape, quit quite recently)
- 156 Father was best student, earned gold medal and U Moscow scholarship but given to another student
- 157 might have returned from Moscow with Russian wife, but Russian wives and children deported in 1967
- 195 Father translates (translated-from-English) Russian books to Albanian, introduces L. to evolution of scientific thought ]]
- 195 translator mother sent two "dreamers" to [[ National Library of Albania | National Library
- 195-203 history of philosophy and science thoughts
203 two week summer vacations in coastal Vlorë
- 204 2013 with 3yo daughter, more philosophizing, end of epilogue
Philosophy of Science
- xix childlike curiosity endures, neoteny
- xx benefits/justification, Faraday's "you will tax it someday"
Cosmology
- xvii we are part of a multiverse, with cross-talk to other universise due to quantum entanglement, predicting observables
06 Penrose: universe likelihood less than 10(-101e123)
07 Hawking and Penrose singularity theorem 8-14 argument from entropy, big bang VERY ordered?
- 15 foreshadow wrong question, different explanation
25 1922 Alexander Friedmann expanding universe
26 Gamow hot big bang / 27 Helium-sized initial universe too big for uniformity
- 29 Universe not closed or open, geometrically flat
- 33 author believes cosmic inflation theory incomplete
62 standard model, universe expands to blueberry size, particle wavelength increases, energy decays into light and other particles, reheating (misnomer)
63 Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, helium and other elements, 4 minutes
63 380KY, photons decouple into Cosmic microwave background CMB
- 65 goal, derive unique model of cosmic inflation,
- 66 without exquisite balancing (10 ppm density variations)
- 67 entropy state nearly zero, ominously small
- 68 LM-H instead believed cosmic inflation model correct but incomplete
69 Dark energy
- 75 calculated high entropy "big crunch" rather than low entropy singularity, didn't work
- 77 single universe assumption to blame, why not discard it?
- 82 multiple infant universes? p83 Niels Bohr adamant that a single universe had to be identified
- 85 Bohr model double standard, treated observer as classical object, mixed determinism with quantum indeterminism
92 Everett could not reconcile with Bohr, argument refereed by Charles W. Misner who later taught Mersinni at UMD
93 Everett finally published as many worlds interpretation by UNC Bryce DeWitt The many worlds of Hugh Everett III Peter Byrne
The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics : a fundamental exposition
98 All forces unify at 1e-4 || of big bang energy
Huh? Theory of everything says 1e28 eV, about a GJ
102 Edward Witten 11 dimensions 1995
106 Compactification
- 108 1e600 possibilities
109 Multiverse
- 117 the space of initial states for the universe 119 quantum mechanics on the landscape of string theory
- 121 it would allow me to derive the probability of the origin of our universe (and evade the Penrose problem)
- 130 incorrect analogy/model of electrons flowing in wire, suggests pure perfect crystal metal is lossless
- 132 six month crash course in condensed matter physics, similar structures in string landscape
133 Random matrix theory, nonuiform landscape
133 Collaborator Archil Kobakhidze
- 134 beam of tiny quantum universes get trapped in energy valleys
- 136 high energy universe like ours, lowest probability
137 Quantum decoherence, most probable universes started at very high energy.1
- 139 Unlike Everett many worlds, unequal chances for existence of universes
145 Rich Holman Carnegie Mellon emeritus
- 146 branches of the wave function decohere, take energy from the landscape vacua, then undergo big bang inflation, decoupled from others.
147 early entanglement -> "crosstalk" among branches, perhaps imprinted on our sky today
- 148 high energy infant universes most likely
- 149 Everett assumed multiple equal energy universes, high energy more probable and "fit"
- 150 the gravitational field of energy (unlike matter) has negative heat capacity, repulsive gravity (how so?)
- 150 high energy inflation have the highest chance of growth into macroscopic universes (how so?)
- 151 terminal universes removed
- 152 nothing special, nothing tuned, evolutionary selection
- presumably what is special is that we are in a universe that survived long enough for us to happen, others did not
- rechecked, published
perhaps this: Why did the universe start from a low entropy state?
154 Fine Tuning
- 156 Cognito ergo sum, scientists decided on the answer they wanted
- 160 habitable universe requires "at least 1e15 particles" uhhh 200 picomoles of quarks plus electrons? missing digit!
- our visible universe is 1e78 to 1e82 atoms, much more than that probable
- 160 our universe is borderline habitable, others might be more likely to allow life to arise
- 161 hence anthropic principle "throwing in the towel"
- 162 how can theory be tested?
- 163 look for evidence of entanglement, infantile "dents", minor shape changes due to interactions, birthmarks
- 165 somewhere in sky, local violations or deviations from uniformity predicted by cosmic inflation
166 help from postdoc Tomo Takahashi
167 Primordial gravitational waves preserved in cosmic microwave background
- 169 predict possible locations in the sky
171 primordial Giant Void in the southern hemisphere, ten degrees across, ten billion light years away
- 172 half year later, observed by U.Minn. radio astronomers REFERENCE?
173 ESA Planck spacecraft CMB map
- 175 CMB wave monopole, dipole, quadropole, etc. Entanglement depletes lowest harmonics
- 175 Hemispheric assymmetry confirmed by Planck in 2013 and 2015
assymetry is white line:
, cold spot lower right - 178 supersymmetry breaking responsible for high energy vacua, a billion times higher energy than LHC
178 7th prediction dark flow observations incomplete
- 178 Cold spot 5 sigma
- 179 only one universe to observe, inherently large statistical error
- 180 "electrons flying around your head" ... er no, fields flow, electrons jiggle less than millimeters
- 183 multiverse from fringe theory to many theories
184 Roger Penrose, far future universe big uniform empty
dinner at Talulla's in Chapel Hill
- rescale with conformal transformation, smooth space with lots of energy, new bang and inflation
uhhh ... does Planck constant rescale properly???
p187 Linde / Guth eternal inflation, bubble universes will collide, fractures visible in sky (as concentric ripples), but majority of collisions catastrophic
p188 2013 with Malcolm Perry found that space-time becomes choppy, no perpetual multiverse
190 Max Tegmark
Elsewhere
2017 Classical Collapse to Black Holes and Quantum Bounces: A Review Daniele Malafarina