Painfully Slow Inflation
Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 21:42
in Astronomy & Space
The last time, I discussed that cosmic inflation loses its glamor if one considers that volume doubles only about 260 times. Still, if this happens during an amazingly short time Δt, it would be justified to speak of an amazingly fast process. The time Δt is constrained by what we know about particle physics. Reheating, which is the end of inflation, the “Big Bang”, must happen before the so called electro-weak symmetry breaks at around 10-12 seconds in cosmic time. read more