Cosmic inflation and the past hypothesis

Synthese ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 162 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-165
Author(s):  
Peter Mark Ainsworth
2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (18) ◽  
pp. 1483-1489
Author(s):  
CHUNG-HSIEN CHOU ◽  
HOI-LAI YU

Assuming our physical universe processes and registers information to determine its dynamical evolution, one can put serious constraints on the cosmology that our universe can bear, in particular, the origin of cosmic inflation. The universe evolves to gain her computation capacity which is linear in time t. On the other hand, the growth in content of degrees of freedom (i.e. by integrating in more galaxies) is as t3/2 through expansion. When the in flux of degrees of freedom of the universe grows beyond some value, the computation capacity of the universe becomes insufficient to determine its evolution, the universe fixes its Hubble radius and inflates away its degrees of freedom within its horizon to regain dynamical evolution. The length of inflation is determined by the communication time required by the universe to become aware of the dropping in the degrees of freedom below some critical value by inflation and is proportional to its Hubble radius. We predict that there can be multiple cosmic inflations. The next inflation era will stop after inflating for a period of 1019 sec if the past inflation period of our universe was 10-33 sec.


2005 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 739-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Frisch
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athamos Stradis

AbstractWhy do we have records of the past and not the future? Entropic explanations for this ‘record asymmetry’ have been popular ever since Boltzmann. Foremost amongst these is Albert and Loewer’s account, which explains the record asymmetry using a low-entropy initial macrostate (the ‘Past Hypothesis’) plus an initial probability distribution. However, the details of how this initial state underpins the record asymmetry are not fully specified. In this paper I attempt to plug this explanatory gap in two steps. First, I suggest the record asymmetry is more immediately explained by the ‘fork asymmetry’, which their picture omits. Second, by relating the fork asymmetry to an initial state that’s metaphysically similar to theirs, I clarify how this ultimately underpins the record asymmetry.


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