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arxiv: 1001.4590 · v1 · submitted 2010-01-26 · 🌀 gr-qc · astro-ph.CO

A Note on Infinities in Eternal Inflation

classification 🌀 gr-qc astro-ph.CO
keywords nucleationpointuniverseinfiniteproper-timeboundaryeternalinflation
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In some well-known scenarios of open-universe eternal inflation, developed by Vilenkin and co-workers, a large number of universes nucleate and thermalize within the eternally inflating mega-universe. According to the proposal, each universe nucleates at a point, and therefore the boundary of the nucleated universe is a space-like surface nearly coincident with the future light cone emanating from the point of nucleation, all points of which have the same proper-time. This leads the authors to conclude that at the proper-time t = t_{nuc} at which any such nucleation occurs, an infinite open universe comes into existence. We point out that this is due entirely to the supposition of the nucleation occurring at a single point, which in light of quantum cosmology seems difficult to support. Even an infinitesimal space-like length at the moment of nucleation gives a rather different result -- the boundary of the nucleating universe evolves in proper-time and becomes infinite only in an infinite time. The alleged infinity is never attained at any finite time.

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