4 X 10^61 Plancktons?

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bobw

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I was looking around to find out more about Planck density when I stumbled across this paper. The first author is one of the guys working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Well, needless to say, I am flabbergasted.<br /><br />I just want to check with all you people to see if you think it says what I think it says. It sounds to me like Noyes et.al. have published how much virtual stuff got converted to real stuff during the big bang. Don't hold back! Feel free to tell me how confused I really am.<br /><br />http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/slacpubs/9500/slac-pub-9620.pdf<br /><br /><font color="yellow">It has been known for some time that standard general relativistic cosmology can describe current astronomical observations in remarkable detail.[25,26] Retrodicting from these results to earlier times, one finds extremely hot and dense radiation and matter ~ 13 Gyr ago. Conditions were such that no current experimental or astronomical systems are available to test what the "laws of physics" were then, or even whether such laws "existed". As E.D.Jones realized some time ago, one way to make progress in gaining a limited understanding of this "pre-physics" era is to take seriously the limitations that the shortest measurable length and time, and the largest measurable elementary mass and temperature place on physical cosmology. In this paper we review and discuss the remarkable discoveries that he made. We emphasize their fundamental character and independence of special assumptions.<br /><br />E.D.Jones[10] discovered that a <i> neo-operational</i>[19] approach imposes fundamental limits on the measurement of short distances in such a way that we can <i>predict</i> that there must be a <i>positive</i> cosmological constant. Further, his preliminary calculation gave the cosmological constant energy density, relative to the critical density, of Omega<sub>Lambda</sub>= 0.6 +</font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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yevaud

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Quite good.<br /><br />I recollect that Hawking conceptaualized the primordial monobloc as a Singularity, in exactly the same sense. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>
 
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bobw

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I guess my ignorance of that accounts for my surprise at seeing a quantitative statement about pre-stuff. I thought Hawking proposed that the inflationary epoch consisted of an expanding false vacuum in which virtual particles became real at a rate which maintained vacuum pressure. That implied, to me, that the amount of pre-stuff was kind of insignificant because real stuff got made along the way, whereas this article seems to say that the pre-stuff "phase-changed" into real stuff and was there from the start.<br /><br />Maybe that false vacuum idea was from someone else. You can tell I'm confused when I ask if I have understood what I thought I read <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> This paper didn't seem to have a lot of discussion about vacuum energy. I will read it again and try to brush up on my Hawling while I'm at it.<br /><br />Thanks. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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yevaud

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I think what Hawking meant was the initial conditions: something with infinite density and zero volume. I'm not certain he really dealt with the conditions of the Inflation phase in this theorem.<br /><br />Vacuum Energy is an interesting thought. Certainly the metric was intensely stressed during the initial Inflation phase, what with the huge expansion in the blink of an eye. Maybe there's something to that. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>
 
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