Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

(PhysOrg.com) -- Inflation, the brief period that occurred less than a second after the Big Bang, is nearly as difficult to fathom as the Big Bang itself. Physicists calculate that inflation lasted for just a tiny fraction of a second, yet during this time the Universe grew in size by a factor of 1078. Also during this time, a very important thing occurred: fluctuations in the quantum vacuum appeared, which later resulted in the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that in turn produced large-scale structures such as galaxies.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Inflation, the brief period that occurred less than a second after the Big Bang, is nearly as difficult to fathom as the Big Bang itself. Physicists calculate that inflation lasted for just a tiny fraction of a second, yet during this time the Universe grew in size by a factor of 1078. Also during this time, a very important thing occurred: fluctuations in the quantum vacuum appeared, which later resulted in the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that in turn produced large-scale structures such as galaxies

Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum physics are expected to merge at the Planck-scale of extremely high energies and on very short distances. At this scale, new phenomena could arise. However, the Planck-scale is so remote from current experimental capabilities that tests of quantum gravity are widely believed to be nearly impossible.

Conventional wisdom has it that putting the words quantum gravity and experiment in the same sentence is like bringing matter into contact with antimatter. All you get is a big explosion; the two just don t go together. The distinctively quantum features of gravity only show up in extreme settings such as the belly of a black hole or the nascent universe, over distances too small and energies too large to reproduce in any laboratory.

Conventional wisdom has it that putting the words quantum gravity and experiment in the same sentence is like bringing matter into contact with antimatter. All you get is a big explosion; the two just don t go together. The distinctively quantum features of gravity only show up in extreme settings such as the belly of a black hole or the nascent universe, over distances too small and energies too large to reproduce in any laboratory.

What is the hottest problem in fundamental physics today? Physics aficionados most probably would answer: quantum gravity