[ExI] How the James Webb telescope is reshaping cosmology

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
...
> _______________________________________________


>...Oh, you should just have asked!  :)

>...To convince yourself you will need to do a bit of reading, but the
summary is -

>...The quantum fluctuations that occur during inflation get stretched
across the Universe and when inflation ends, they become density
fluctuations... BillK


Ja so I hear.  But by my erroneous understanding, the universe at the first
nanosecond would be perfectly uniform, hyperspherical.  Bur if any asymmetry
appears later, it would need to exist somehow in that first nanosecond, and
if so the symmetry woulda had to be broken at half a nanosecond and a
quarter of a ns and so on, all the way back to the start, but that leads to
just more mind-boggling questions.

So... with that quantum fluctuation notion, we are forced to imagine
something analogous to a particle-antiparticle pair which forms from the
kind of quantum notion we still see today, but with a critical difference:
the particle-antiparticle pair didn't recombine for some reason, or... they
did something back then that they cannot do now: they somehow created a
lasting visible impact on the universe in the very short time they existed.

I get where some kind of quantum fluctuation could cause anisotropy, but it
requires something we think doesn't happen now: particle-antiparticle pair
formation where they somehow stay in existence. 
 
But...  How did they do that?  How did the first symmetry-breaking event,
whatever it was, how did that happen?  Our current theory doesn't really
explain it, but rather just kinda describes what must have happened with
that blanket look-the-other-way phrase "...quantum fluctuations that
occur..."  They occur?  Can we be a bit more specific on what that?  Answer:
not yet, we still don't know.  Clearly something did somehow.  But what and
how?

spike