Book contents
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- 11 Cold and Tepid Big Bangs
- 12 Models with unresolved sources
- 13 Thermalization by grains, the first wave
- 14 Primordial chaos
- 15 Early intergalactic medium, massive Population III objects, and the large-numbers hypothesis
- 16 Late thermalization of starlight
- 17 “An excess in moderation”
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
14 - Primordial chaos
from Part IV - Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2024
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- 11 Cold and Tepid Big Bangs
- 12 Models with unresolved sources
- 13 Thermalization by grains, the first wave
- 14 Primordial chaos
- 15 Early intergalactic medium, massive Population III objects, and the large-numbers hypothesis
- 16 Late thermalization of starlight
- 17 “An excess in moderation”
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The notion of the chaos in the early “chaotic cosmology” indicated that the same outcome of Big Bang would occur even under variations in the initial conditions, thereby avoiding the arbitrary and ad hoc nature of the initial conditions. In early 1970s, Reese argued the early universe may have not been much smoother than today, and inhomogeneity should follow from theory, not simply added as an ad hoc assumption. He also anticipated a related problem, later dubbed the “horizon problem,” where unconnected parts of the expanding universe somehow end up with the same curvature and entropy. Starting with these same problems, Zel’dovich independently developed a similar solution of corresponding initial fluctuations of baryon density on the one hand, and fluctuations in metrics on the other. These explanations, along with a variation by Zel’dovich and Sunyaev, prompted by the 1979 measured blackbody discrepancy of the CMB spectral shape, pushed the origin of the CMB to a time earlier than the orthodox model. The inflationary paradigm addressed these worries within the orthodoxy a few decades later.
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- The Cosmic Microwave BackgroundHistorical and Philosophical Lessons, pp. 86 - 90Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024