Is there a connection, perhaps?

It seems getting inflation from string theory might be more difficult then string thoeriists would like:

“We analyze three explicit string models from the recent literature, each containing an infinite number of “vacuum” solutions. Our numerical investigation of some natural candidate inflatons, the so-called “moduli fields”, fails to find inflation…even having an infinite number of vacua does not guarantee having inflating ones. This may be an artifact of the simplicity of the models that we study. Instead, more complicated string theory models appear to be required, suggesting that explicitly identifying the inflating subset of the string landscape will be challenging.”

I don’t think there is any hysteria, but the interest is based on the idea that it’s a plausible scenario that is consistent with the data.

Note that everyone seems to be buying into some sort of Big Rip cosmology.

Sean,

I thought that the current best estimate for w (ratio of pressure to density), is something like -1.00 +/- 0.01.

Is the Big Rip hysteria based on the possibility that w is -1.01?

When I first encountered the big bang (in a conceptual sense), for some reason I had a professor who would treat is-Brooklyn-expanding questions with great distain, and I think the occasional folly of my trying to invent increasingly tricky versions of the problem is a reaction to this.

Actually, one thing I find becomes an issue is that I find integrals easier to understand than simple operations like division. Does anyone else have this problem? I think integrating a function is easier to imagine than dividing a function’s value at point x by its value at point y.

Absolutely – seems to smack of there being one kind of gravity for the cosmos and another for “bound systems”. We had a punt of this as well in;

Expanding Space: the Root of all Evil?
Authors: Matthew J. Francis, Luke A. Barnes, J. Berian James, Geraint F. Lewis
(Submitted on 3 Jul 2007)

Abstract: While it remains the staple of virtually all cosmological teaching, the concept of expanding space in explaining the increasing separation of galaxies has recently come under fire as a dangerous idea whose application leads to the development of confusion and the establishment of misconceptions. In this paper, we develop a notion of expanding space that is completely valid as a framework for the description of the evolution of the universe and whose application allows an intuitive understanding of the influence of universal expansion. We also demonstrate how arguments against the concept in general have failed thus far, as they imbue expanding space with physical properties not consistent with the expectations of general relativity.

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0707.0380

Although I think Woody Allen is one of the un-funniest people on the planet.

It’s a natural for an intro cosmology talk; I was neither the first nor the last, but I can say I worked it in before Sean did. See (.pdf):

http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/WWW/publish/stankus/Intro_Cosmology/Lecture%202/Addendum_Brooklyn.pdf

or (.ppt):

http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/WWW/publish/stankus/Intro_Cosmology/Lecture%202/Addendum_Brooklyn.ppt

It’s easy to deflect the Brooklyn question for a locally gravitationally bound system. But the subtler question is how a smooth cosmic expansion would affect a system bound purely by non-gravitational forces; this question is not typically addressed at the intro level, but I’ve given it a shot in my lectures.