Cenobyte 
Skye in front of her class teaching about vacuum fluctuations and the quantum uncertainty principle
C.Does Skye take relativity & cosmology questions from the public?
I have some ...
@cazabon Haha she's happy to!
If you were serious...
In the early universe - probably the earliest part of the inflationary period - all the energy and matter in our observable universe was located within the then-very-small universe.
That sort of energy/matter density would obviously result in a singularity today.
Why didn't it then? Was spacetime "stiffer" prior to expansion, and so could support higher energy density without collapsing?
I've read a bunch of Hawking etc without much clarity [...]
@cazabon In all actuality according to hoom theories there was a singularity! (Us bunnies know better that the description needs a full quantum theory of gravity)
Effectively the inflationary energy density is throught all of space which is both self contained and smooth so no collapse! A field called the inflation field pushes the space outwards faster than it would be able to fall back in anyways-Professor Skye
Effectively the inflationary energy density is throught all of space which is both self contained and smooth so no collapse! A field called the inflation field pushes the space outwards faster than it would be able to fall back in anyways-Professor Skye
@cazabon Ignoring the quantum gravity situation though, the universe can be thought of as a singularity in reverse. Time flows outwards from it into the indefinite future.
I thank you, Skye and your kind hooman assistants, for the attempted #edification.
I'll keep reading physics, but I don't think I'll make much progress on this sort of stuff. "I'm trying to think who the third person could be", indeed.
@cazabon I recommend John Gribben’s “In Search of the Big Bang”
It’s a bit older but gives a really good overview of everything. Might help clear things up.
It’s a bit older but gives a really good overview of everything. Might help clear things up.