We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

by Jorge Cham

According to the theory, there is no rhyme or reason to the masses of the matter particles. It’s as if they were randomly selected and they could just as well have had totally different values. Nothing in our theory would break if you changed the masses. The same laws of physics we have now would work just as well. Of course, making some of the particles more or less massive would have big effects on other things, such as the protons, neutrons, and electrons that we count on for making our overpriced seasonal lattes (and chemistry and biology more generally). But according to the current theory, the masses of the matter particles are arbitrary parameters, free to be set to any value.

So the universe is too big and too smooth for it to have come from a Big Bang in which everything simply moved through space starting from a small blob. If we had written this book thirty years ago, this might be one of the great mysteries. Today, there does exist a compelling but totally crazy-sounding explanation. Are you ready? What if, a few moments after the universe was created, there was a period of about 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 seconds in which the fabric of space-time itself expanded by a factor of about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—at a rate faster than the speed of light?102 Bam. Problems solved.

For example, imagine a city in which the Starbucks are spread equally distant from one another. Each coffee drinker will feel the delicious-smelling pull of those cafés closest to her, but since they are equally distant, she will be frozen in indecision forever. If, however, tiny fluctuations in the coffee-brewing process mean that one café had a stronger aroma, then it would attract more customers, leading to more Starbucks being opened across the street, which attracts more customers, leading to more Starbucks being opened, etc. This feedback loop creates a cascade, and pretty soon you have Starbucks stores opening inside of other Starbucks stores and leading to Starbucks singularities. But it can’t get started without that initial hot spot. In the early pre-Starbucks universe, the first deviations from smoothness are absolutely crucial for creating today’s arrangement of stars and galaxies.