caravelair

i'm just wondering what people think of steinhardt's cyclic universe model. in case you don't know what i mean, the original journal article can be found here.

and if you don't know your 4d differential geometry, you can read about it here.

one of the main reasons this theory looks promising to me is that it gets rid of the need for an inflationary period. i'm curious to hear what others think.

GunnerJ

Science and Skepticism would be a better forum for this.

eh

How do we test a model like this?

And extra dimensions seem more ad hoc than inflation ever can hope to be.

caravelair

but the standard cosmological model requires a GUT to explain the first 10^-43 seconds anyways, right? and all of the GUT's presented so far have many extra dimensions.

eh

I think a quantum theory of spacetime is required for that, and not all require extra dimensions. Loop Quantum Gravity one such example. Even all attempts did require extra dimensions, it doesn't mean one is necessarily correct.

Elvithriel

Didn't the most recent map of the cosmic background radiation reveal that space-time is flat?

Elvithriel

Yeah, the mission was called WMAP.

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/mr_content.html

Keep in mind I haven't read that journal article yet.

caravelair

the model i posted does have a flat space-time.