It’s near impossible to comprehend the size of our universe without busting a mental cog or spraining your sense of awe. However, the origins of our universe has exactly the opposite problem: it was once mind-bogglingly small — tinier than a single particle. Physicist Lawrence Krauss explains the principle of inflation, and how within the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang, our universe increased in size by a factor of 10 to the 30th—for comparison, that’s the size of a single atom, to the size of a basketball. How did it do this? It involves a ‘frozen’ Higgs field, some cooling, and then an enormous explosion. Krauss uses an analogy we’ve all been at the mercy of: putting a beer in the freezer and forgetting it for a few too many hours. Lawrence Krauss’ most recent book is The Greatest Story Ever Told — So Far: Why Are We Here?
Transcript:
Lawrence Krauss: Our picture of the earliest moments of the universe has been evolving, and I’m happy to say, in some sense has more empirical support than it did before. The discovery of the Higgs field implies that you can get fields that freeze in empty space. And that’s a central part of what we think happened in the very early universe.
And if we can detect gravitational waves from the Big Bang we’d have a window on the universe back to a time when it was a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second old, answering questions about the origin of the universe as we know it—i
deas that I speculated upon in my last book, for example—for which we have new evidence that I’ve described in my new book.
Video and book below
Internationally renowned, award-winning theoretical physicist, New York Times bestselling author of A Universe from Nothing, and passionate advocate for reason, Lawrence Krauss tells the dramatic story of the discovery of the hidden world of reality—a grand poetic vision of nature—and how we find our place within it.
In the beginning there was light.
But more than this, there was gravity.
After that, all hell broke loose…
In A Universe from Nothing, Krauss revealed how our entire universe could arise from nothing. Now, he reveals what that something—reality—is. And, reality is not what we think or sense—it’s weird, wild, and counterintuitive; it’s hidden beneath everyday experience; and its inner workings seem even stranger than the idea that something can come from nothing.
In a landmark, unprecedented work of scientific history, Krauss leads us to the furthest reaches of space and time, to scales so small they are invisible to microscopes, to the birth and rebirth of light, and into the natural forces that govern our existence. His unique blend of rigorous research and engaging storytelling invites us into the lives and minds of the remarkable, creative scientists who have helped to unravel the unexpected fabric of reality—with reason rather than superstition and dogma. Krauss has himself been an active participant in this effort, and he knows many of them well. The Greatest Story challenges us to re-envision ourselves and our place within the universe, as it appears that “God” does play dice with the universe. In the incisive style of his scintillating essays for The New Yorker, Krauss celebrates the greatest intellectual adventure ever undertaken—to understand why we are here in a universe where fact is stranger than fiction.
