In a message dated 2/11/01 2:28:22 AM Eastern Standard Time, palmer@SFU.CA
writes:
<<
There is a crazy belief in something called "inflation". Particle
physicists often believe in it, but they change their religions
more often than the Vicar of Bray.
>>
Hi Leigh Well just a wild guess but your not a big fan of the inflationary
theory. I believe it would be correct to say that this idea has become fairly
mainstream in Cosmology as well as particle physics. However there remains
quite a few skeptics. Of course if you don't "believe" our Universe has an
inflationary epoch than you must deal with some additional questions.
Accepting as a given that our Universe never underwent an inflationary
period than what mechanism could account for the fact that our Universe is
isotropic and homogenous over distances too large for information to have
traversed since the big bang. Also, under the same assumption, then omega,
the ratio of the actual mass in our Universe to the critical mass needed to
produce a closed Universe, would have to fine tuned to within 1E-15 of 1 to
allow our current omega to be between .1 to 2.
Such fine tuning seems problematic to me.