Dr. Paul Steinhardt
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 - 7:30pm
Kane Hall 130
Did space and time spring into existence 13.8 billion years ago in a sudden violent event known as the big bang?
Although that has been the prevailing view for the last 50 years, there are good reasons to consider an alternative in which the big bang is replaced by a bounce that smoothly takes the universe from an earlier period of contraction to the current period of expansion.
Perhaps there were many bounces in our past and there will be more in our future. This talk will discuss these two competing scenarios and the very different pictures they present of the evolution and structure of the universe.