Where do particles come from? - Sixty Symbols

Professor Ed Copeland discusses the origin of particles - including talk about inflation, re-heating, the Big Bang, and oscillons. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
New paper by Ed and collaborators...
Formation and decay of oscillons after inflation in the presence of an external coupling, Part-I: Lattice simulations: arxiv.org/abs/...
More Ed on Sixty Symbols: • Ed Copeland - Sixty Sy...
Ed's trilogy on the sofa: • Ed Copeland Longer Int...
Ed discusses his career on the Numberphile Podcast: • An A-Class Reject (wit...
Reheating after Inflation by Kofman, Linde and Starobinsky: arxiv.org/abs/...
Oscillons: Resonant Configurations During Bubble Collapse: arxiv.org/abs/...
Patreon: / sixtysymbols
The University of Nottingham physics: bit.ly/NottsPhy...
Sixty Symbols videos by Brady Haran
Animation by Pete McPartlan
www.bradyharanb...
Email list: eepurl.com/YdjL9

[@sixtysymbols]

More Ed on Sixty Symbols: kzbin.info/aero/PLcUY9vudNKBNtF1y-sneLuyCTE-Mda561

[@conanobrien1]

Can you ask professor to explain the "flat" universe bit? I didn't understand most of what he was saying, but that part wasn't logical at all to me.

[@jormam69]

@@conanobrien1 curvature of space can be measured by measuring angles. Say you have laser beam and direct it with mirrors in such a way that the beam makes a complete triangle. In a flat space the sum of angles in such triangle would be 180 degrees, same what is used in Euclidean geometry. If the space has a negative or positive curvature, the sum of the angles in such triangle could be larger or smaller than 180 degrees

[@watchmobiletvnow]

Have you changed microphones for recording or changed compressor, audio sound to polished and weird. Ed´s voice sounds different.

[@conanobrien1]

@@jormam69 Would that be the same (similar) as when they say big objects (black holes or galaxies) curve space-time?

[@tupublicoful]

We need more Prof Copeland on the whiteboard.

[@nitinjaglan]

Professor copeland is the professor we never had in uni/school but one we always wanted. Great to see him again on 60 symbols

[@iridium8341]

Inflation their is stupidest coping mechanism invented. It's funny his name is Copeland too.

[@jajssblue]

This is the best condensed explanation of the inflation model I've heard. Great science communication.

[@kendemajoros4617]

Yeah, most understandable of all I heard too. Incidentally, the only one also.

[@philanderson5138]

Love hearing Brady's questions - it's like having a representative for physics interested amateurs like me - but asking the right key questions. amazing video as ever...

[@biopsiesbeanieboos55]

It’s the opposite of political interviews, when the journalists always seem to be half asleep and never ask the most obvious questions.

[@joetec6674]

My favourite Sixty Symbols professor :)

[@michaelsheffield6852]

I do like his delivery

[@xlimonade]

Ye, mine too.

[@SarmonOflynn]

His disposition is just so different from the image I have in my mind when someone says "physics professor," and it is wonderful.

[@jaybertulus]

yes

[@garyhuntress6871]

All the presenters are excellent, but i must say he is my favorite too (Tied with Sir Martyn I suppose)

[@NeonsStyleHD]

WOW!!! That was by far THE Single BEST video this channel has produced in the last 13 years! It was deep, didn't dumb it down, explained it beautifully and filled a bloody big hole in my understanding of cosmology! I can't thank you enough! I can't wait to see what happens to the expansion rate of 1/H as Dark Energy becomes better understood; assuming I'm still here! BIG *_Thankyou!_*

[@SpriteGuard]

"you need a better term for the start of inflation" I feel like this is a good point to incorporate the term Horrendous Space Kablooie, introduced by the Watterson-Calvin-Hobbes paper.

[@MichaelPiz]

Well then. I've been following physics with a rather close layman's interest for about 45 years and this is the first time I've heard that the "hot big bang" came _after_ inflation. Quite a revelation for me and it makes me want to see an episode of Sixty Symbols or Numberphile where someone with the level of knowledge of Dr Copeland is in the middle of this sort of explanation and suddenly stops, gets a blank, mildly puzzled look on his face, says, "I've just thought of something I hadn't before," and goes into some furious computation which results in the solution to a heretofore unsolved physics/mathematics problem, yielding a massive breakthrough in the field. So let's get crackin' guys!

[@crappymeal]

You're got roughly a one hour in 60 years chance of that happening 😅

[@schawo2]

HBB is not equal to BB. BB was BEFORE inflation, HBB is just a new fancy term for saying "after inflation".

[@MichaelPiz]

@@schawo2 Hm. I must have misinterpreted what the video was saying. I'll give it another look. Thanks.

[@dan.j.boydzkreationz]

It's because the whole thing is still conjecture and we really don't know whether there even was a beginning

[@walesbkb]

@@dan.j.boydzkreationz a "beginning" makes no sense for the universe.

[@swagatsauravmishra]

Excellent video! 🎉 Many thanks for the kind reference to our work (and our new paper at the end). Ed and Brady rock !! Will think of a new term for the start of inflation in our next paper :-)

[@robertelessar]

I'm just going to give a second plug for my suggestion "The Cold Open", like the pre-credit scene in movies or shows. ^_^

[@TheGeoffable]

If something hasn't yet inflated it must be a period of flacidity? ;)

[@tsuchan]

Without a doubt. Ed is just one big cuddly hug of physics.

[@DonDueed]

I'll nominate "The Big Breath", such as one would take before inflating a balloon. It would make the creationists happy and maybe they'd shut up for awhile.

[@funkbungus137]

is there a name for the sound you make right before you blow up a balloon? like ya know, the gulp of air you take as you lean back slightly and tilt your head up in preparation for blowing it up. Insufflation is the only word that comes to mind. though that's an imperfect fit.

[@iLLadelph267]

i always love Professor Copeland and his giddy excitement explaining the fine details in the maths leading to the speculative conclusions and especially his recognition of their benefits and flaws. he's always ready to answer Brady's harder questions and can point immediately to the maths for any given wonderment. its stuff like this that inspires me to further pursue astrophysics as a career

[@MegaOoga]

I love your drive to name things, scientists are spending all their energy on doing science and leaving none left for the creativity of naming things.

[@AdamKlingenberger]

When we let physicists name things, we get “quarks” which have “flavors” like “charm” and “strange”

[@therealpbristow]

@@AdamKlingenberger They need a branding manager, stat. =:o}

[@creatorsremose]

"...where we think these particles come from." Such an important and wise phrasing... and then there're articles and documentaries stating these hypotheses as fact. I wish more educators were like Prof. Copeland.

[@robdevries2621]

We need way more Ed Copeland on this channel!

[@aL3891_]

cannot go wrong with an Professor Copeland video :)

[@tiagotiagot]

The curvature of space thing is better illustrated by talking about the principles of Euclidean geometry. There are a few ways to approach it, but for me what comes to mind first is stuff about infinite parallel lines. In a flat space, parallel lines remain parallel forever; in a positively curved space, parallel lines will converge, and in a negatively curved space, parallel lines will diverge. This works the same if you're talking about a 2d surface (the ball and saddle visuals there) as well as 3d space. Gravity introduces positive curvature, and Dark Energy introduces negative curvature, and it turns out it all seems to balance out at larger scales making the Universe as a whole "flat" in all ways that have been attempted to measure it (IIRC, in general the margin of error is so small in most circumstances the curvature is treated as just being perfectly zero).

[@scottwatrous]

Any day with a new video from Ed is literally the best day of the year.

[@NomenNescio99]

Professor Copeland, it's always very nice to listen to this gentleman. There ought to be more content with him on youtube.

[@droppedpasta]

I had been wondering what Dr. Copeland was up to. I don’t understand it, but it’s good to hear from him anyway

[@Rubrickety]

I eagerly await the Ed Copeland workout video.

[@XXusernameunknownXX]

Great video. He always makes these complex concepts understandable.

[@mpmpm]

This is complicated.

[@askani21]

That's why it's fun! Fun is measured by the size of the aneurysm 😂

[@flymypg]

This specific area is worthy of at least a dozen more videos, perhaps with collaborators, such as other channels in the "Bradyverse", and Matt at PBS Space Time. Or perhaps start with a master playlist of the best videos in this area, with new content only to fill gaps and/or generalize the whole. The Hot Big Bang starts with the unification of almost all fields, where at increasing energy levels the electromagnetic and weak fields unify into the electroweak field, and the other fields unify at ever higher energies until all are unified into a single "grand" field. It is thought the Higgs is the second field to separate, preceded only by the inflaton, with the others following in short order. The "Cold" Big Bang creates (or is created with) the unified field (that also includes the inflaton), and it is the separation of the inflaton field that drives the HBB. Or at least that's what I gather to be the case. I've not kept up well with research in this area. As the temperature of the universe continues to drop, each combined field separates in turn, excitations in that field create both the specific force-carrying particles and the particles upon which they act, such as the photon being the force carrier between charged particles for the electromagnetic field, and gluons being the force particles between quarks in the strong field. With other fields for the quark colors and flavors. However, the photons in the plasma presumed to be present in the electromagnetic field when it separates is NOT what we see as the CMB! The CMB was generated much later, by a different mechanism. What determines the temperature at which each field will separate (with cooling) or will unify (with heating)? What determines what happens within each field as it separates? (The Higgs in an especially delicious example.) Professor Copeland shows that even superficial exposure to the math can yield fascinating diagrams that in turn can motivate high-level discussion in a generally comprehensible manner. I had not previously heard of "oscillons", yet quickly comprehended how they fit into the overall picture. More please!

[@GeoffryGifari]

Did the inflaton field vanish completely (from the Lagrangian?) or is it like the top quark field whose particle can still be accessed at the right conditions? Does it contribute to the universe's vacuum energy density?

[@thecaribbeanbookworm5066]

I’ve been watching this channel for a long time since I was in high school. I love that I keep learning new things now that I am finishing my bachelor’s degree and starting my master’s soon. I absolutely loved this episode as early universe cosmology is an area I really fell in love with. My thesis work was on multi-field inflation, and I got to explore the many interesting effects of perturbations during these inflationary scenarios as well as how inflation ends in these cases. Additionally, I met Dr. Fernando Quevedo earlier this year, who told me a great deal about oscillons from his work of string phenomenology. So I absolutely loved this episode and I am eager to learn more about this line of research.

[@dlamont2636]

I love this channel so much, and Professor Copeland has a true gift for explaining what I'm sure are immensely difficult topics. Thank you from California for all the great work!

[@GeoffryGifari]

Would be cool if there were a 3D simulation of curved space and objects in it, so we can experience it more vividly

[@Altorin]

Flatness is best described with triangles. Triangles made in flat space are 3 angles that add up to 180 degrees. Very very large triangles measured across the observable universe likewise would have 3 angles adding up to 180 degrees.

[@DwainDwight]

Ed is a top presenter. great guy.

[@polares8187]

Brady coming in hot with the banger questions again. Always a pleasure to watch

[@Ian.Murray]

Is there some sort of effect or compression on Ed's voice in this particular video? It almost sounds like his audio is clipping or he's been autotuned.

[@benoitb.3679]

Yeah! I was looking for this. Sounds like it been pitched down or he's got a cold or something

[@benoitb.3679]

I'm not complaining or trying to be rude!

[@viceyyy]

Glad I wasn't alone in this thought. Feels like there may be distortion from any audio level normalization is my guess, since Ed isn't wearing a microphone and his distance from the mic probably isn't constant

[@pmcpartlan]

Mic broke, so we had to fix up the camera audio the best we could

[@theograice8080]

Mr Copeland seems like the kind of guy who I could find at a pub and still learn from after I've had a few drinks

[@vinzent1992]

Love Ed he's one of the best, you can always feel his enthusiasm and it's contagious.

[@WhoLocke]

While this was a higher level video, I truly enjoyed watching this one. Really opened my mind about the nature of what we think of as the start of everything. Thank you Brady and Mr. Copeland!

[@AndrewBlucher]

Great collaboration between Brady and Ed. Very educational.

[@onbored9627]

I'd love more videos of the good Dr. Copeland explaining the mathematical side.

[@Luke-mr4ew]

This is profound - one of the first bit of theoretical physics that seems both grounded and groundbreaking. There are so many ideas here I've never heard of - is this an established area of research, or is Prof Copeland giving the pre-amble to a massive publication from his team?

[@tonywells6990]

The idea of inflation (slow roll and eternal) has been around since the 1980's.

[@screamengine]

The real mystery is how does that last bit of toothpaste seem to last longer than the rest of the tube did?

[@jipangoo]

I was thinking the same thing

[@sorlag110]

There's something real strange going on with the sound, like robotic, sounds like adobe enhanced audio??

[@sorlag110]

14:53 sounds especially like adobe enhanced speech, the way his voice drops down very artificially

[@edward_dantonio]

I really like to learn from Prof. Ed Copeland.

[@mastershooter64]

Okay, we're having this conversation. So...when a mommy particle and a daddy particle love each other very much....

[@beebhaz]

Cant daddy particle love another daddy particle?

[@WilliamLeeSims]

Too funny! I came down to suggest the name "Conception".

[@johndeaux8815]

​@beebhaz as long as they they're both positive (or both negative) they should get along quite well

[@NicholasEllis-rs3nx]

This is like an early Christmas present i adore Sixty Symbols (10 years goes by Fast!)

[@MoneyChanger02]

…a stork particle brings them a baby particle, and that’s how you create a family…i mean, hadron.

[@jasonhildebrand1574]

Excellent video ! And this did remind me of my 9th grade research paper and oral presentation in 1994 on this topic. I think that I only had less than 5 minutes, and the chalk was flying all over the place as I tried to demonstrate the various epochs. I do believe that the rough draft of this must be stored in a box somewhere, but alas I have not found it yet. On a side note, something is off with Ed's audio signal there is a strange modulation and/or reverb that is occurring. Please take a look at this in post production, as it was slightly distracting.

[@CliffSedge-nu5fv]

Sometimes i fantasize about the idea of science communicators saying explicitly what the units of measure are of all the different quantities they talk about, so we could do the dimensional analysis necessary to figure out the relationships between those quantities and better relate them to other physical processes we understand better. But the simple beauty of such an idea leads to such ecstatic bliss that i pass out from excessive joy.

[@nikitaelizarov7444]

When professor Copeland retires, he has an ASMR-artist career waiting for him.

[@aosteklov]

Great video. Please make more advanced videos like that!

[@j8zero2]

The best explanation of Inflation. Period.

[@davidetartaglia8160]

This was soo interesting! Ed should DEFINITELY write a book about this stuff!!!

[@evanm6739]

Hey David quick question do whales become more communist if we leave them in an elliptical low earth orbit?

[@davidetartaglia8160]

@@evanm6739 yes

[@sdal4926]

Please more with Professor Copeland.

[@dexterrity]

Always love Professor Copelands videos! Especially the one on cosmic superstrings.

[@MrSottobanco]

Fascinating! Nice delivery from Professor Copeland.

[@ernestoyepez5103]

Its always a great day when the new video its with professor Copeland

[@mxlexrd]

The idea of the universe being flat must be one of the most misunderstood concepts in physics. I can't count the number of times I've talked to laypeople who have heard this and think it means the universe is a flat plane. Unfortunately I don't think the professor's answer to your question innthis video helped that cause. Maybe this warrants a special video in the style of your old "does light slow down in glass" video, to set the record straight.

[@1104Tea]

in all fairness its not a very intuitive concept and it can be difficult to explain to people that you might call a layperson. I get the ideas needed and its still sometimes hard to wrap my mind around the idea of it.

[@mxlexrd]

@@1104Tea Yeah, I've tried to explain large scale spatial curvature to a few different people with mixed success. The classic analogy people always use is the surface of the earth, but extending to 3 dimensions is tricky. One guy didn't even believe me when I said parallel trajectories on earth come together. Plus there's the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic curvature...

[@volbla]

I think i got a better appreciation of "the metric of spacetime" by playing around with simpler metrics. With chess distance one diagonal step has the same length as one axis-aligned step, meaning that a circle (i.e. constant distance from the center) has the shape of a square. With manhattan/taxicab distance one diagonal step is two axis-aligned steps, meaning a circle has the shape of a rhombus. Understanding that the very notion of "distance" depends on how/what we measure felt like a revelation. But curvature is about direction rather than distance (i think). I still don't really understand what the heck intrinsic curvature means. Maybe the best analogy is still the Asteroids video game. It takes place on a flat surface but the edges are connected making it topologically a torus 🤷‍♂️

[@nickdumas2495]

@@mxlexrd Try going with "Stand on the equator; we'll all walk due north on parallel paths. And it then gets crowded by the time you reach Canada." ;)

[@tonywells6990]

It's a really simple concept. Just tell them that 'flat' means all lines on a 3D grid are parallel and straight!

[@itsnothardev]

Yesssss this is right up my alley, can't wait to hear Prof Ed speak on this

[@witr]

so glad to see this channel still going 👍👍👍

[@migfed]

Any recommended book about this reheating phase of universe?

[@nicksamek12]

The animation with the sled reminds me of Line Rider :)

[@christiananderson6761]

I love Prof. Ed so much 😂

[@11pupona]

This Copeland guy is fantastic! cheers from Spain!

[@GeoffryGifari]

So oscillons to the inflaton field are _not_ like particles/excitations to other fields?

[@lastchance8142]

This is the first time I've heard of ocsilons. Would like to know more about this concept. Even so, if the inflaton field was the "first" thing after the singularity, is there an inflaton field inside every black hole?

[@t.c.bramblett617]

This was mind blowing and enlightening to me! Well explained and intuitively taught

[@bg954]

Whaaaaaaat?!?! After all the videos watched, articles read, etc ... only now do I finally understand the order of events AND the fact the Universe was "empty" before HBB?? Wow ...

[@NeonsStyleHD]

Question: I hope someone in the know can answer this. So after the HBB when these fields start producing particles. From what I understand, when they are created, they are virtual particles and created in pairs of matter and antimatter. Since matter prevailed, does this mean the early Universe during this HBB phase was full of black holes that consumed the antimatter particles leaving the matter as real particles?

[@ErlendBarkbu]

Professor Copeland. My favourite. Thanks for a very nice video

[@martinmckee5333]

This video makes me wish I had gone into cossmology (I very nearly did). Great video all around!

[@bierrollerful]

This channel remains a true gem.💙

[@SanderBessels]

The universe is believed to be flat, but it also has a finite volume and it’s “borderless”. If you move in one direction, you eventually end up where you started. The way I like to think about it, is like in these old space games where you have to shoot other ships and avoid asteroids. Your space ship is always displayed in the middle, but the space and everything in it moves in the opposite direction that you are moving in. And in the corner of the screen there is a map of the whole universe where you see your space ship moving, but if you leave the map on one side, you come out on the other side. This game is 2D, but you can easily imagine it in 3D. It’s basically a cube with the opposite sides identified.

[@yanntal954]

17:20 Ah yes, I've heard of these before! These are the cats in the jungle biomes I believe.

[@PeterFellin]

Penrose's conformal rescaling-involving cyclic universe view (of what is ultimately going on) seems to fit in fairly well with the fringe of the 'idea' presented in this video-somewhere near where it gets philosophically and mathematically feeble and fall flat and empty of all particles.

[@firstplacelast2]

Fantastic video! This is what I'm here for!

[@dustypartition]

Would this not give credence to the Big Bounce hypothesis?

[@kendemajoros4617]

Ah, the gall of trying to explain inflation to the public like this - what a shameless attempt to condescend ... I mean, everyone in the field knows, that no one out there could grasp it, and then you, prof.Copeland have the audacity to come out here, and in 25 mins accomplish the impossible… …but seriously, thank you prof. for taking a swing at it, I never heard anyone communicate about it as you - without getting lost (and losing us) in the detailed analytics of it, etc. You are a powerfully gifted communicator, not “just” your rank-and-file incredibly brilliant mind. :-) Thanks for applying yourself to this for our sakes!

[@adamphilip1623]

Very interesting video, by the end it was very intriguing but about a third of the way in the explanation of the diagram was very all over the place and unclear, "this line is one over the size of the universe, actually it isn't, its sort of a rate but it always goes up despite the graph not showing that at all." Very unnecessarily confusing way to talk about it and then went back to referring to it as showing inflation again later in the video which he earlier said it didn't really.

[@JB_inks]

Agreed. Very sloppy, and he lost me a short while after. Frustrating because I think it's an interesting topic but this one missed the mark for me.

[@NuclearCraftMod]

The most direct way to interpret that y-axis is that it is the inverse of the rate of expansion, since H(t) = a’(t)/a(t). So where it’s higher, the rate of expansion is slower, and vice versa.

[@einthedog]

I love the energy, this is why I love science

[@michaelsheffield6852]

I was just asking myself this question this morning! Timely😊

[@NickKlamerth]

where does the energy come from to push the field into disintegration? and how long is a cycle of these oscilons?

[@bagfleet]

Love seeing some of what’s at the forefront of physics research!

[@ericisawesome476]

I wish Professor Ed had his own podcast or something

[@celo2043]

I love this corner of youtube!

[@niksen1111]

Hope to live long enough to see huge breakthroughs in some of these arreas eg gravity, dark matter etc im sooo curious to get some answers, no more speculations

[@glenliesegang233]

How would the "tired light" (photon interaction with the Planck fields) explanation for what appears to be a doppler effect, red shift affect the current understanding of our universe 's expansion?

[@schmetterling4477]

That's basically steady state. Now you have to explain why the galaxies far away look younger. What made it all start at the same size as it is right now 14 billion years ago?

[@Wargon2013]

What's going on with the audio? Professor Copeland's voice sounds very different and there is an obviously generated piece of audio at 9:39 when he says "period".

[@SashaRancic]

I noticed that too. It sounds to me like they used one of those new noise reduction plugins (probably Adobe Podcast AI) and it overdid it.

[@jacobscrackers98]

Seems like they edited it a little bit.

[@stevenverhaegen8729]

It's resonating and decaying in the phi-quency field 😂

[@MusicLover-bp2cc]

Thorougly enjoyed this! Thank you!

[@MooImABunny]

Norway. The answer is Norway. There's this small village where they make them particles

[@VachisCZ]

I wonder could there be any interaction between the early oscilons if they had relatively long lifetime? If so, what kind and with what results? Sorry for the stupid question. I am just curious 🙂

[@lethargogpeterson4083]

So is the inflaton field actually going away, or is the field still there but sapped of its energy?

[@amoswittenbergsmusings]

A fantastic video! One of the best cosmology videos I have ever seen - an I have seen a lot... "You need a word for the beginning of inflation" - how about "creation"? 😎 I do not read the biblical texts as treatises on physics. Yet, I am struck by the biblical "creation" story. I do not exclude the possibility that understanding of these texts and good scientific research may converge in some ill-understood way. This comment is not apologetics but it *_is_* an argument against some creationist readings that ignore the subtleties of the Hebrew text. Following is a "translation" of the creation story in Genesis chapter 1. I carefully take into account the fact that the Hebrew verb system has two forms of the verrb: the perfect which denotes a statem and the imperfect which describes an ongoing development. These two forms of the verb are not _primarily_ temporal notions although they certainly can. After all, we can speak about the past in two different ways. We can speak about what a situation was like, or we can talk about what happened. The verb also has a nominal form, the participle. It is a characterisation and can be either a noun or an adjective. There are two or three more verb forms: the infinitive (construct or absolute) and the imperative. We do not encounter these in the text we will "translate". Here goes: "When at first God had created the heavens and the earth and the earth had become chaotic but filled with potential, with darkness on top of deep chaos, yet a directional force just above the surface of the waters, then God said "Light should become" and light became." Of course, this "translation" is just my own understanding of the Hebrew text, motivated by my understanding of the words and letters. Real translations are completely impossible and anyone who cares about these texts should take the trouble to learn the fairly simple language of biblical Hebrew. Some notes on the words: - The word I rendered as "at first" is בראשית [b'reshit], from the root ראש [rosh] ("head", "start", "first") in a typical Semitic syntactical form known as the 'construct state'. This is a sort of genitive. In this case the second part of the construct state is the entire following phrase. The word has a prefex ב [b] which can be understood as "in", "by means of", "at the time of", "on", "for the purpose of". I have chosen "at the time of" or simply "when". - "the earth had become" the verbal element here is היתה [haytha] from the root היה [h-y-h]. This verb is routinely translated as "to be" but this is almost always misleading. Hebrew simploy does not know the verb "to be" as we have it in English. "The mountain is high" in Hebrew is simply "The mountain high" or "The mountain, it high", never "The mountain is high". In almost all cases the better rendering of this verb is "to become" or "to happen". The King James Version bible translation has introduced into English the phrase "And it was in the days of". It must be understood as "Then the following happened at the time of". - "chaotic but filled with potential": the phrase is תהו ובהו [thohu vavohu]. These are two words that rhyme, connected by the prefex ו [the letter vav]. This tiny prefix is all over the place in biblical Hebrew. The overwhelming majority of sentences in the Hebrew scriptures start with this prefix. It carries a huge semantic charge. It can mean almost any relation: "and", "but", "although", "because", "for", "when", "after". Here I have rendered it as "but" because of the connotations of the two words it connects. - "chaotic": the root is cognate to words that connotate "error", "wandering", "confused" - "filled with potential": the word בהו [bohu] can be understood as a conbination of "bo" and "hu". The former is "in it", "by it", "through it", and the latter is "it", "he". So, the skeleton semantic content of the word can be understood as "in it, it". This comment is already long enough. I won't go on annotating the rest of my rendering, things like the plurality of the "waters", a word that does not have a singular form. I love physics and I love the Hebrew language, the "holy tongue". Your mileage may vary, on both counts ;-)

[@Ventura60kts]

I don't understand any of this. But I love it. 😊

[@netangler]

Is the decay of the inflaton field the same thing as symmetry breaking?

[@Space30MINUTES]

I'm a little confused about the difference between inflation and the Big Bang. The video says that inflation happened before the Big Bang, but I thought the Big Bang was the beginning of everything. Isn't that right?

[@heniiku]

Can you do a follow up on Cosmic Strings with professor Ed? It was a couple of years ago you talked about that work he did

[@ericisawesome476]

Is the video slightly sped up? Something seems a bit off

[@temperr.haring3508]

Ignition?

[@timburridge3344]

Is it possible the entire process is cyclical? The beginning of our universe was the end of a previous one?

[@EricDMMiller]

The beginning of our universe was the end of a cubic Planck length region of a prior universe.

[@bobwagemakers5055]

search CCC

[@ryan1275]

I’m early enough to say: More Backstage Science please!!!

[@hawknestsreach958]

Is this conformal in 4D or does it require more dimensions to be a renormalizable field theory? The graph of the inflaton field doesn't look quartic.

[@LeeKennedy-cc6il]

The distribution of matter is uniform. However time displays a different distribution of matter indifferent at time.

[@manfredpseudowengorz]

@sixtysymbols - I was hoping for an on early cosmology by prof Copeland's and/or prof. Merrifield. It's like 12 years since their talk about the biggest thingy in the universe.

[@51niekoss]

Great video! Could the inflaton field be reconstructed under extreme conditions, like in black holes?

[@hrig]

If resonance occurred in the inflaton field, why doesn't it happen in other fields? What are the harmonic and coupling properties it has that other fields dont?

[@Matthew.Morycinski]

Hmm... I kept thinking about Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology. Could this be part of a cyclic process?