Testable New Theory about Origins of Cosmic Structure: Computational Challenges

Erik VanMarcke

School of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University

The talk will summarize the main findings, testable predictions and research opportunities, with a focus on computational challenges, stemming from a new probabilistic model of how complex patterns of extreme energy-density fluctuations can arise during the inflation phase of the Big Bang. Based on first (quantum-physical) principles and requiring a minimum number of (observationally-accessible) parameters, the "embryonic inflation model" yields a coherent set of testable (hence falsifiable) hypotheses about the formation, evolution, composition, internal structure and cosmic environment of galaxies, stars and planets. Implying a robust alternative (a direct consequence of the initial density fluctuations) to the dual paradigm of spatially uniform light-element primordial nucleosynthesis and stellar "recycling" of matter as the sole mechanism of heavy-element production, the theory holds the promise of integrating astrophysical and planetary sciences with cosmology and galaxy formation in a coherent evolutionary framework.

Observations indicating overall cosmic flatness and implying the existence of an accelerating component, dark matter and dark energy all appear to fit, in quantifiable and testable ways, into the framework of the theory.  (The speaker’s book Quantum Origins of Cosmic Structure, the subject of the talk, was published, unheralded, in Nov. 1997, prior to the announcements of the discovery of the accelerating universe.)