return to homepage WHY EXPONENTIAL INFLATION IS IMPOSSIBLE
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by Miles Mathis
omne ignotum pro magnifico
One of the current pillars of Big Bang theory is inflation. Wikipedia tells us that “Inflation is an accelerated expansion at the end of the grand unification epoch, 10-36 seconds after the Big Bang, caused by negative-pressure vacuum energy density.”
Every word there is poor storytelling and nothing more. Compared to this, the angels-dancing-on-a-pinhead theories start to look relatively rigorous. Grand unification epoch? We have no grand unification, so how can there be an epoch ushering it in? And why 10-36 seconds? Why not 10-3600? Do we have any evidence on that one way or the other? Can there be any possible data? No, all this is but the pathetic attempt at myth by particle physicists, and particle physicists have never been promising novelists or poets or even screenwriters. I look at this entire theory and just shake my head in disbelief at the sheer homeliness of it, the crushing ineptitude, the ludicrous barbarity of it all. Before we explode the idea of “exponential” inflation into tiny pieces, let us look at more of what Wiki has to say about it:
The more you read, the worse it gets. This paragraph admits that physicists are looking to string theory to solve problems they haven't solved and cannot solve. But if the problems are not solved, why are they telling us the problems are solved. If inflation has reverted to pure speculation, why not admit that? They can't admit it, because so much is riding on this speculation. People have won prizes for this speculation, and they cannot admit it is and always was blowing in the wind—a very ill wind indeed.
In case you are lucky enough not to know, the “inflaton” is a name given to a hypothetical ghost particle in a field of undefined ghost particles that are supposed to have set up the conditions leading to inflation. The field here is that “vacuum energy” field from the first paragraph. As I have shown elsewhere2, a vacuum energy field is just a physical and mathematical cheat, since it is the ham-handed attempt to get something from nothing. The vacuum was originally defined as nothing, as you probably know (and as we can tell right from the name), but that was not good enough for 20th century physicists. They couldn't get their particles to give them the energies they needed to explain things, so they began pulling energy out of the vacuum whenever they needed to. They did this more and more as the century wore on, and they never once bothered to justify it. They assured us it didn't break the second law of thermodynamics, but they couldn't say the same about the first law of logic: ex nihilo nihil fit: you can't get something from nothing.
Historically, the necromancers didn't feel the need to confirm or deny it was magic, they just put on the pointy hat and refused to answer questions. The Dirac field was the first famous field of this sort, a field that could supply a theorist with any energy he needed at any time, with no questions asked. Wave the magic wand and virtual particles appeared from nothing, like pairs of tiny sorcerer's apprentices, ready to fill any hole or fudge any equation. The Higgs field took over where that left off, as you see from the quote from Wiki. The inflaton field filled in the holes in Big Bang theory, and at first it was thought to be the Higgs field. Somehow they now know it is not the Higgs field: I won't bother to ask how they know one ghost from another, or how they decide that something they made up out of nothing can no longer exist. It existed only because they wanted it to, so why did they decide to stop wanting it to? Who knows. We will assume that they couldn't make it work with their other ghosts.
Interesting that Wiki admits that all the unification theories have failed. That leaves this inflation model hanging, as is clear from this quote, but of course Wiki won't go that far. There is always some less mechanical and less logical theory waiting in the wings. Those lost in space now have “brane inflation” to look forward to, and it is considered so promising that Wiki doesn't even have a page for it. String theory has gotten so embarrassing that most scientists find it is best to not talk about it. Just wave the pompoms and cheer.
Also interesting that Wikipedia, the paid propagandist for all the centralized powers, can't write better copy than this. These pages are ghost-written by the universities and institutions themselves, so how is it that the sales patter is so poor here? One must conclude that even the insiders are losing faith. There is doubt on the inside, and it shows. It shows in place like this, on the inflation page:
At present, however, whilst inflation is understood principally by its detailed predictions of the initial conditions for the hot early universe, the particle physics is largely ad hoc modelling. As such, despite the stringent [weasel words] observational tests inflation has passed, there are many open questions about the theory.
[Note: "Weasel words" was in the original. I did not add it.] Our English editor admits that without any of the hoped-for unification theories (and with the point problems of QED and QCD), the physics here is just ad hoc modeling. Which means it is just wild conjecture. And whoever is editing this editor from inside Wiki is even harsher than that, calling this Englishman for his “weasel words.” To understand why this is worth reporting on, one has to understand how Wikipedia works. A normal “editor” like you and me cannot go in and add “weasel words” to a completed page. These science pages are heavily policed, and the Big Bang page is either locked or as good as locked. Which means that “weasel words” was added from the inside, by one of the Wiki police themselves. These Wiki police are usually university people who have been hired to protect the page from vandals and from opponents of the given topic. So it is rather surprising to find them undercutting the propagandists themselves. It must be clear even to the gatekeepers in the universities and at Wiki that the observational tests that inflation has passed are not at all “stringent.” How could they be? How could we observe anything about the first split seconds of the Bang? Beyond that, new data is actually contradicting the assumptions that led to inflation. Inflation was invented to explain cosmic homogeneity, but on the page titled “cosmological principle” we find this:
researchers studying fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background caused by the scattering of its microwave photons by hot X-ray-emitting gas inside clusters of galaxies found that the 700 clusters reaching out up to 6 billion light-years are all moving nearly 3.2 million km/h toward a 20-degree region in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela. This flow is difficult to explain by gravitation and may be indicative of a tilt exerted across the visible universe by far-away pre-inflationary inhomogeneities.1
This page has either been temporarily invaded by non-Bangers, or these editors don't know what they are saying. This data cannot be indicative of “pre-inflationary inhomogeneities.” The theory of inflation was created to do away with inhomogeneities. Inflation swamps the inhomogeneities, which is why we aren't supposed to see them. If we see them, inflation either doesn't exist or it doesn't work. Either way, the theory of inflation is washed up. If inflation is washed up, then Big Bang theory is in serious trouble, since inflation is the solution to several major problems (see below).
Yes, this cosmic model looks more and more threadbare each year, as the data for it unwinds, but inflation has remained as a pillar even as the bricks around it have all crumbled and washed away. Every gloss of the Big Bang includes the exponential inflation of the earliest moments. It is hard to believe it remains as a pillar, since it was made of styrofoam from the beginning.
I will now hit this styrofoam pillar of inflation with a hammer heavier than any data from any possible experiment. I hit it with the hammer of logic. I will hit it with its own definitions. Decades of top theorists proposed and defended this exponential inflation without ever asking themselves if exponential inflation was even physically possible, given the motions they were modeling. I will now prove that it was and is not possible. Space cannot expand exponentially, due to the fundamental and immutable definitions of space and of motion.
Without time, space is most commonly a three-dimensional manifold, but even if we give it more dimensions, everything I am about to say holds true. All the length or distance or directional dimensions, no matter how many there are, are all equivalent to one another. That is, x is equal to y is equal to z. If space expands at any rate, x will not outstrip y, or the reverse. This is true by definition or axiom, since we cannot imagine why x would expand faster than y. To change this definition would require a revolutionary hypothesis, and this is one revolutionary hypothesis Big Bang theory has not made. To see why they haven't made it, we may make the problem even simpler. If the Bang was spherical, as we imagine, then we don't really have even three dimensions. We have one, defined by R. The size of the early universe can be defined by the radius R and nothing else.
Now we add time to the problem. We cannot have motion or events without time, so time begins with the Bang. We have simplified our problem down to R and t, so if theorists propose an exponential inflation, they mean an exponential relationship between R and t. Over some tiny “epoch”, the relationship of R and t is exponential. Sounds feasible at a glance, but is it? To find out, all we have to do is study the definition of motion. In physics, motion is always either a velocity or an acceleration. It can be a very high rate of acceleration, but these are the only two possibilities. The acceleration doesn't have to be a squared or a cubed acceleration, and it doesn't have to be constant, but it has to be an acceleration, since there is no third choice. The acceleration can be to any power we like, and it can be variable to any degree we like, but beyond that, the choice is over.
So what is an acceleration? An acceleration is defined as two or more velocities over the same differential. Currently, this differential is called an instant, since the current calculus believes in an instantaneous acceleration. But I won't get into that here. Regardless of whether we believe in instants or not, an acceleration is two or more velocities happening at the same time.
OK, so what is a velocity? A velocity is a change in distance over a change in time. A velocity always has one time period in the denominator. Can a velocity be exponential? Clearly not. A velocity is always a simple ratio.
This being so, and it being so that an acceleration is always composed of velocities, it must be true that an acceleration is represented by a certain number of time periods in the denominator, this number being greater than 1 but less than infinity. To say it another way, an acceleration must have time to some power in the denominator.
But why is this? Why is acceleration always written this way, and why must it be written this way? It is written that way because all motion is a relationship between time and distance. Or, to put it another way, all motion is a ratio between time and distance. In a velocity, it is a simple ratio, and in an acceleration it is a complex ratio. In an acceleration it is more complex simply because we are stacking velocities. If we have 15 velocities over one differential, we will have t to the 15th power in the denominator. If we have 1500 velocities over one differential, we will have t to the 1500th power in the denominator.
But no matter how many velocities or changes we have during the same differential, we will never have an exponential relationship between time and distance. An exponent is not a ratio, and you cannot create an exponent by stacking any amount of numbers. An exponent is not a complex ratio of numbers, by definition.
Therefore, there can be no such thing as an exponential relationship between time and distance. The relationship is always a ratio, and a ratio is not an exponent. The entire problem can be solved simply by studying definitions.
These physicists who have proposed exponential expansion simply don't know what an exponent or an acceleration is. They have spent all their time learning fancy maths like the tensor calculus and gauge math and so on, and filling blackboards with Hamiltonians, and they didn't bother to learn what an exponent was or what an acceleration was. They can juggle equations all day long, but they don't know the definition of motion from a hole in the ground.
We can dig even deeper into fundamentals, if we like. There is a reason that time and distance are always some ratio to one another, simple or complex, and that reason is that time and distance are fundamentally and operationally the same thing. By this I do not mean that they can be juggled with similar variables in a four-vector field. I mean something even more fundamental than that. I mean that when we measure time3, we always do so by measuring length. As I showed in my paper on time, the operation of measuring time requires a measurement of length. You cannot measure time by measuring time alone. No clock in history has been able to measure time directly. Every clock in history, including the latest atomic clocks, measure time by measuring distance. The old pendulum clocks measure the distance of a swing, and the newest cesium clocks measure the distance of a wobble. You will say that they measure the time of a swing and the time of a wobble, but operationally that isn't true. Operationally, they measure the distance of the wobble relative to some other distance, and call that relationship time.
Time is just a second measurement of length in the same field, to create a standard. We then call that standard “time” to suit us. We could just as easily call it “standard length of motion” or something, but we don't. We call it time. For this reason, time and length are operationally the same thing. Time and length can achieve power relationships only because we stack one or the other in fractions. We could choose to write accelerations by stacking distances in the numerator: it would achieve the same thing. Instead, we have chosen to write accelerations by stacking times in the denominator. But in either case, the relationship of time and distance is and must be a power relationship. It can never be an exponential relationship. A thing can never have an exponential relationship to itself, and time and distance are fundamentally the same thing.
Some may answer me that by “exponential”, these theorists only mean “very quickly changing.” An acceleration to a high power acts like an exponential acceleration in the first few differentials: it may accelerate even faster than an exponential acceleration at first. True, but in that case we still don't have an exponential inflation. A power acceleration is written like this: R = tn. An exponential acceleration would be written like this: R = at. R and t cannot have an exponential relationship, for strictly physical and definitional reasons. So the question is, do you want to get your cosmic theory from people who don't know the difference between a power equation and an exponential equation? This is the equation we are given by Wiki for the “exponential” expansion:
ds2 = -(1 – Λr2)dt2 + [1/(1 - Λr2)]dr2 + r2dΩ
And we are told, “To say that space expands exponentially means that two inertial observers are moving farther apart with accelerating velocity.” Again, we see that these people don't know what acceleration is or what an exponent is. An “accelerating velocity” doesn't make any sense, since you either have an acceleration or you have a velocity. They appear to think that any acceleration is exponential, since that is what that sentence says. But look at the equation: do you see any exponential relationship between time and distance there? No, the relationships between s, r, and t, are power relationships. For an exponential relationship to exist, t would have to be in the exponent.
But I will be told, “You are just creating problems. It is common usage to call a power increase an exponential increase, since a power is an exponent.” That may be true, but it doesn't apply here, since a normal power inflation cannot hope to solve any of the homogeneity problems exponential inflation was meant to solve. By proposing inflation, these theorists were trying to explain why we don't see large-scale heterogeneities in the universe. Since these heterogeneities, being large-scale, would have had to be created in the early part of the Bang, the theorists thought they needed a mechanism to smooth out any early lumps. That is what inflation is. But a normal power inflation can't do that. They needed something extraordinary, so they are probably quite happy for us to think that time and distance really are exponential here. But the truth is, we have a normal power “inflation” every time we have a gravitational field. A gravitational field as we know it is a power inflation, since it creates a power curve in the field, given the current math. If we accept what my critic is saying here—that it is common usage to call any acceleration an exponential increase—then every gravity field is an exponential increase. It is an increase to the exponent of 2, so it is exponential. By that argument, we are experiencing exponential inflation right now, here on Earth, as we eat lunch and make cookies. Are we smoothing out lumps in the universe as we go?
But I will be told that the exponential inflation in the first split seconds was a higher exponent. OK, what exponent? In the equation above, I don't see any exponents above 2. Are they trying to pass off a normal gravity field as “exponential inflation”? But even if we suppose the theorists intended a higher exponent, say 4 or 8, the question is begged, “How, precisely, does this smooth out lumps? If a power of 2 does not smooth out lumps, why does a power of 3 smooth out lumps, or a power of 8 or of 1000?” Wouldn't the lumps just be spread wider? That doesn't make the universe smoother, it just puts the lumps on a larger-scale. Larger-scale lumps would be even easier to spot, no? I am almost afraid to give them the hint here, lest they rush out and begin claiming tomorrow that the lumps are so large they are beyond our light cone.
Ironically, these theorists applied the opposite solution they needed. Supposing there were lumps in the very beginning (which I don't accept, either, but just suppose it was true), what they needed was to hide these lumps at smaller scales, where we could pass them off as gravitational clumping. Yes, they needed to put the lumps at smaller scales, not at larger scales. Which means they needed some giant exponential deflation at some point in the Bang. They needed to let the Bang bang for a while, to create a lot of space, then deflate to de-scale the lumps, then let it expand again. Unfortunately, even that wouldn't work, since every billion years or so you would have to insert another period of deflation, to get the lumps back down to the local scale again. Otherwise the lumps would start to become large-scale again, and would be obvious.
I will finish off this paper by ridiculing Wikipedia and the standard model a bit more. On the “non-standard cosmologies page” (which was written not by supporters of non-standard cosmologies but by Bangers), we find this:
there have been two periods in which interest in non-standard cosmology has increased due to observational data which posed difficulties for the Big Bang. The first occurred was the late 1970's when there were a number of unsolved problems such as the horizon problem, the flatness problem, and the lack of magnetic monopoles challenged the Big Bang model. These issues were eventually resolved by cosmic inflation in the 1980s.
Well, since I just showed that exponential inflation is physically impossible, and that high power inflation, even if possible, would not solve the problem, we may assume that all those questions are back on the table, may we not?
The magnetic monopole problem is back on the table, but not in the shape it was before. I have shown4 that magnetic monopoles are just a myth based on a false definition of the E/M field. Since the E/M field is not really a dipole, it cannot possibly be split. This would appear to weigh in favor of Big Bang theory, since it doesn't want to have to deal with magnetic monopoles. But it weighs heavily against the theory, since the theory is connected to the standard model, and the standard model was confused enough to predict the production of monopoles in the first place. From Wiki: “The magnetic monopole objection was raised in the late 1970s. Grand unification theories predicted topological defects in space that would manifest as magnetic monopoles.” Since these GUT's predicted monopoles, the models that produced the GUT's must be seriously flawed at the fundamental level. The standard model is the model that predicted monopoles, therefore the standard model must be seriously flawed. The standard model tried to cover up this terrible monopole prediction with inflation, but that turned out to be the covering of a blood blister with another blood blister. Inflation is logically impossible, since it conflicts with the definition of acceleration, and the magnetic monopole is also impossible, since it relies on a dipole configuration that is just a false heuristic abstraction. This means that the standard model is just moving from one impossibility to the next. It deflects the last mistake with a new mistake.
We can say the same of “baryon asymmetry.” The model assumes that there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, but it has zero evidence for that. Since the standard model doesn't even understand what anti-matter is, it is doubtful they could recognize it when they see it. The standard model still thinks matter and anti-matter differ in charge, but they forget that the plus and minus signs were created as place fillers, and have never been mechanically assigned. I have shown5 that the plus and minus signs are not charge signs, since they stand for a spin difference, not an emission difference. Even the standard model should know this, since it is not thought that the anti-proton and electron have the same charge. Anti-matter is simply upside down relative to matter, and this is not true of protons and electrons. Electrons are not upside down relative to protons, they are just smaller. Our detectors have no way of knowing whether distant quanta are upside down relative to our own, so this whole “baryon asymmetry” is just a manufactured problem. Beyond that, I have already predicted6 that we don't have to look great distances for large amounts of anti-matter. The ability of Venus to exclude the Solar Wind without a magnetosphere means that Venus is matter-antimatter neutral, unlike the Earth. Venus is about half antimatter, and we haven't figured that out yet.
Another problem for the Big Bang is globular clusters, and this one was never solved by inflation. This is what Wiki has to say about it:
Computer simulations [in the mid-90's] that matched the observations of the stellar populations of globular clusters suggested that they were about 15 billion years old, which conflicted with the 13.7 billion year age of the Universe. This issue was generally resolved in the late 1990s when new computer simulations, which included the effects of mass loss due to stellar winds, indicated a much younger age for globular clusters.
Remember, these are the facts spun positive. Wiki is stridently pro-Bang. But even with a positive spin, this looks bad. The problem was solved with a new computer model. You can solve anything with a new computer model. That is not a solution, it is a push. I mention this problem because it ties into my conclusion.
Although I am against inflationary models and all other forms of illogic, I am neither for nor against the Big Bang. My opinion is that in such matters, we have gotten way ahead of our data and our abilities as physicists. In this way, I think that all speculation at this point in history is wasted time. Our physical knowledge is entirely too limited to be speculating about the first second of creation. Because our knowledge is so full of holes, we cannot begin to speak sensibly about steady-state models versus expansion models. All models are equally speculative. All models are equally ridiculous. A 21st century human talking with authority about cosmology is like a parakeet giving advice on the stock market or like a perch discoursing on Proust.
Quite recently, mainstream headlines broke the news that we were 15% wrong in measuring distances to distant objects. That admission should have been put in letters ten feet tall and carved into Mt. Rushmore and shouted from the rooftop of every physics department and every observatory and every other ivory tower. If we are so mistaken about such fundamental and simple things, how can we hope to be correct about very esoteric and complex and difficult things as the first second of the universe and the homogeneity of the universe and so on? Physics has long since gone past presumption; it has left impudence far behind; it has even climbed out above hubris. It is now firmly entrenched in sacrilege. It is offending its own gods and muses, trampling upon logic, and besmirching and besmearing every possible altar of rationality and decency.
In my papers, I have shown that our highschool-level physics books are riddled with basic errors. Velocity and acceleration equations7 are false or incomplete, the calculus is misdefined8 and misused9, orbital equations are wrong10, angular momentum equations11 are false, charge is undefined12 and unmechanical, and so on. I have also shown that Relativity is incomplete: gamma is false13, trajectory is ignored14, and the field equations of General Relativity are off by 4% across the board15, even in our own solar system. QED and QCD are also compromised in multiple places, since the quark and neutrino5 are both misdefined and misunderstood. The photon is also misdefined16 as a point particle, and this jeopardizes the entire superstructure of Quantum Mechanics. Renormalization is a massive fudge, and quantization17 is fundamentally misunderstood as well. All the symmetries are manufactured18, and the symmetry-breaking is illegal2. Physics has been swallowed by modern math19, and no one can get into the belly of the fish to make the corrections.
Physicists have skipped too many steps, and they are attempting to put on the roof before they have built the walls. How can they know about the universe when they know almost nothing about the solar system? They cannot explain Bode's Law20, but they try to explain the Grand Unification Epoch? Sacrilege. They cannot unwind Newton's equation21, but they try to unwind the robe of eternity? Sacrilege. They have not been able to penetrate Coulomb's equation22, but they try to call particles from the void with sloppy incantations. Sacrilege. They do not know how to accelerate a velocity7, but they try to stand in the sacred primordial grove and inflate the cosmic balloon with their own pallid lips? Sacrilege.
The Latin under my title above means “the unknown always seems more grand.” In the same way, those who speak of the unknown also seem more grand. Those currently at the top of physics are not true scientists, they are rhetoricians, sophists skilled at impressing the less clever with big words and sexy topics. But it is always easier to airily expound on the unknown and unknowable than to solve real problems. It is easier by far to make up big empty words and string together groundless theories and hide behind endless equations than it is to answer present questions. The scientific community at all levels must become scientific again: it must lose its gullibility and learn to see through empty speech and empty equations. Just as the modern person must learn to stop being fooled by politicians and salesmen, he must learn to stop being fooled by grandstanding fake scientists, intent only upon their own greater glory. The modern physicists at the top of the field have become nearly indistinguishable from politicians and salesmen, because, like them, they have lost all reverence for the truth, and all ability to speak it. The modern physicists in the middle of the field have become like party hacks, because they have lost all ability to recognize the truth, or tell it from a lie.
For my own part, I don't want to hear any more about the edges of the universe or wormholes or first seconds or backward causality or vacuum energy or any of the rest. When a physicist starts talking about those things, I know he or she is trying to sell me a car or win a prize or publish a bestseller or make the cover of TIME magazine. Those people should go to Hollywood and get an honest job.
1Kashlinsky, A., et al. (2008) "A measurement of large-scale peculiar velocities of clusters of galaxies: results and cosmological implications." Astrophysical Journal Letters (Science Daily, Space.com)
2http://milesmathis.com/weak2.html
3http://milesmathis.com/time.html
4http://milesmathis.com/mono.html
5http://milesmathis.com/quark.html
6http://milesmathis.com/venus.html
7http://milesmathis.com/voat.html
8http://milesmathis.com/are.html
9http://milesmathis.com/varacc.html
10http://milesmathis.com/avr2.html
11http://milesmathis.com/angle.html
12http://milesmathis.com/charge.html
13http://milesmathis.com/adp.html
14http://milesmathis.com/simp.html
15http://milesmathis.com/merc.html
16http://milesmathis.com/photon2.html
17http://milesmathis.com/planck.html
18http://milesmathis.com/gross.html
19http://milesmathis.com/death.html
20http://milesmathis.com/bode.html
21http://milesmathis.com/g.html
22http://milesmathis.com/coul.html
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