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This appeared on my talk page, in defence of the claim that Guth is an atheist. It seems more appropriate here:
Hello. My first Wikipedia comment. I enjoyed reading this entry on Alan Guth, but feel I should point out that there are quite a few grammatical errors, missing words, and questionable word choices which a careful reading will reveal. I won't wield the hammer and nails myself because it's past my bedtime, and I'm not sure I know how to go about it anyway. I leave it in your capable hands. All the best. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.116.131.81 ( talk) 07:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Seems to me like the article is written very colloquially and is far from satisfying the NPOV guidelines. Throughout, there is pretty much a judgement and/or and opinion interjected with every fact.
Example 1: "MIT was easier for him than high school because all his courses were science and math. One reason he did this was because he was worried about the draft. He certainly was not a big fan of the Vietnam War, because in 1970 he participated in some speeches at political activities"
--> What does this undocumented speculation have anything to do with anything?
Example 2: "Ironically, much of that theory had been developed by graduate students at Princeton, but Guth had been too wrapped up in his own ideas to notice what was going on around him. When Guth discovered this he felt embarrassed that he was paying no attention to what his colleagues were doing. Since his time at Princeton had been wasted, he had to find another postdoc job in any way that was available to him, such as reading notices on bulletin boards and called acquaintances who worked in physics departments."
--> This is downright meant to degrade Alan Guth. What is its relevance and significance in this article?
In agreement with the comment above, it is in need of serious work. Evilmathninja ( talk) 18:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
As others have noted, this article needs serious work. One thing that really stuck out to me was all the phrases like "Alan Guth believes..." and "Alan Guth's main beliefs about the universe are..." This makes him sound like a guru rather than a scientist. The whole thing is written like some kind of junior high school fanboy paper. 75.83.69.196 ( talk) 14:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I have made a start - for instance by removing all the material about confirming inflation, which was/is/will be the work of a much wide community.
Further work is still required. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 13:51, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
The discussion of his early career fails to mention that when he graduated in 1971 it was during the Ph.d. Glut that hit in 1970 in Physics and other sciences. So the inability to get a tenure track job and the repeated postdoc positions was the most likely fate of the Physics graduate in that era. The key thing is that things switched from boom to bust very quickly, whereas today things have been pretty tough for Physics grads for 40 years (with some interludes of improvement). It also would help to contrast Guth's achievements as a postdoc with all those who got tenure track jobs before him, because it would illustrate the repeated pattern the failure to recognize scientific talent. Einstein being the most know example given that he could only get a job as a Swiss patent clerk, a job he continued to be employeed at even after the publication of his famous 1905 papers. 205.189.194.208 ( talk) 17:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
My first kick didn't yield any sufficient list.
Any suggestions?
(The current "one item" list is way incomplete.)
Josh, linguist (
talk)
07:44, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi all. I added a subsection on the latest interview by Linde to FT, where Linde is cited as saying Guth has recanted inflation. This is newsworthy as it indicates a dispute over the Nobel prize.
"According to Linde in his interview to the Financial Times, Guth has recanted inflation theory altogether, in a paper "more than 100 pages long". [1]"
Holybeef ( talk) 16:45, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Guth's recanting of "old inflation" theory
According to Linde in his audio interview (04/11/2014) (about 14-16/43:06 minute total), Guth has recanted his "old inflation" theory, in a paper "more than 100 pages long".< ref> Andrei Linde on the Big Bang and the biggest discovery of all time, interview with Clive Cookson. The Financial Times, 11 April 2014.</ref>
Just wondering - what exactly are the "100 pages"? - a publication somewhere? - a draft? - maybe find out from Linde himself (or even Guth himself) if possible? - seems there may be more to the story than what we may know (or think we know) at the moment - including perhaps what Guth really meant by his "inflation scenario" wording of course - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 13:18, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Having read this article for the first time today, it seems to me that the Andrei Linde interview provides an intriguing link, but I feel strongly opposed to creating a whole section titled “Guth’s recanting of inflation theory." As I understand it, almost nobody--including Guth--subscribes to the original “false vacuum” theory of inflation, but “slow roll inflation” is alive and well, and the deeper intuition behind both inflation theories remains intact in Guth’s original ideas. Indeed, it was Guth who originally coined the term. Thus, the statement “Guth has recanted his inflation theory," while perhaps technically correct, is misleading. Also, Guth hasn’t by any stretch of the imagination recanted all theories of inflation. See, for example, his most recent paper on the ArXiv ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7619) where he writes: "We conclude that cosmic inflation is on a stronger footing than ever before." I’m going to take a stab at rewriting the article to keep these views in perspective. A practicing cosmologist ought to take a look, though. My expertise is in condensed matter.
For general reference, here is my transcription of the section of the Andrei Linde interview in question:
“But then he found—and this was in 1980—but then he found that it does not quite work. Because later you need to get rid of this false vacuum, you need to get normal matter. And this false vacuum, when it starts decaying, it becomes nonuniform, ugly, and as a result we do not get the universe the way we see it. So this was a scenario which no is called ‘old inflation.’ And he had written in his paper that ‘sorry, it does not quite work. We should all try, maybe we will make it work.’ And then, he had written a long, long paper—100 pages—proving it was impossible to improve this scenario. But there was little communication between Russia and the U.S., so all communications from the U.S. were coming to Russia during several months. So I received this preprint after … already improved his scenario. And that is something which I called ’new inflationary scenario.’ This version of this theory did not quite work either, and a year later it was discarded. And then in '83 I proposed something which is called chaotic inflation, and it was very very simple. It was really simple. There was no vacuum-like space … you need some special kind of field of the type Higgs field, which was already discovered at LHC, and under certain conditions, even in very simple theories of that kind, you will have exponentially fast expansion of the universe, and then you solve all problems which you would not solve otherwise, and this is exactly the version of the theory which predicted gravitational waves with an amplitude which was discovered by Bicep2. That’s why for me personally, this was a day of celebration. That is assuming that the interpretation of the experimental data is right.
...and here is a link to what I think is likely to be the "100-page" paper Guth wrote in 1980 discarding the false-vacuum theory of inflation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0550321383903073# The title is: Could the universe have recovered from a slow first-order phase transition? Csmallw ( talk) 00:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
As a reminder: Wikipedia includes newsworthy information from reputable sources and you can't imagine a more reputable source than the Financial Times and Andrei Linde as a world leading cosmologist, correct? So burden of proof in this case is on those who want to dispute Linde but that's going to be virtually impossible as he gave audio interview. But feel free to provide for example another reputable source that counters what he said. His interview is valid, so it stays in either case as newsworthy info. Besides, I see no point in soliciting opinion of "another cosmologist". Not only that Linde is a cosmologist but that's also not what Wikipedia does. It only reports from third-party reliable sources. Don't forget also: no POV please. Holybeef ( talk) 15:17, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments - I have no problem whatsoever with Linde's comments, esp those supported by WP:RS of course, remaining in the article - but balancing (ie, WP:BALANCE) such comments with alternative viewpoints and/or interpretations, such as those that may have been presented by Csmallw above (and in this recently reverted => article version), may be worthy as well, esp, again, if supported by WP:RS - this may provide a better sense, including WP:NPOV, to the article - incidently, WP:OWN may refer to any article content, including sections - or sentences - or even a word (see a very recent example => Talk:Voyager 1#Manmade vs. Humanmade), and not only to entire articles - in any case - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 20:47, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments - I generally agree with your comments re the Linde reference - and the need to WP:BALANCE the related section with an alternative interpretation - some of the text (worthy imo) added by Csmallw may be useful and merged into the article - you may like to try and merge the text added by Csmallw into the wording of the section - or conversely - you may try and merge your own material into the text that Csmallw has presented earlier - either way - you may solve your own problem with the material - and that of others - in any regards - please understand that =>
Hope this all helps in some way - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 12:15, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
- The first realistic version of the inflationary theory came in 1979 from Alexei A. Starobinsky of the L. D. Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics in Moscow. The Starobinsky model created a sensation among Russian astrophysicists, and for two years it remained the main topic of discussion at all conferences on cosmology in the Soviet Union. His model, however, was rather complicated (it was based on the theory of anomalies in quantum gravity) and did not say much about how inflation could actually start.
- In 1981 Alan H. Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggested that the hot universe at some intermediate stage could expand exponentially. His model derived from a theory that interpreted the development of the early universe as a series of phase transitions. This theory was proposed in 1972 by David A. Kirzhnits and me at the P. N. Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow. According to this idea, as the universe expanded and cooled, it condensed into different forms. Water vapor undergoes such phase transitions. As it becomes cooler, the vapor condenses into water, which, if cooling continues, becomes ice.
- Guth’s idea called for inflation to occur when the universe was in an unstable, super cooled state. Super cooling is common during phase transitions; for example, water under the right circumstances remains liquid below zero degrees Celsius. Of course, supercooled water eventually freezes. That event would correspond to the end of the inflationary period. The idea to use super cooling for solving many problems of the big bang theory was very attractive. Unfortunately, as Guth himself pointed out, the postinflation universe of his scenario becomes extremely inhomogeneous. After investigating his model for a year, he finally renounced it in a paper he co-authored with Erick J. Weinberg of Columbia University.
@ Holybeef - Several notes =>
Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 20:28, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
@ Holybeef - You're *very* welcome of course - agreed - your latest text/ref may help support your position afaik atm - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 18:22, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
For the record, reading the above it seems to me that Holybeef has been pushing his particular reading of a particular sources as being critical to a particular wording (notably "recanted") in this section. It seems that there is no consensus in this section that his wording is anything like an accurate representation, but that he has persistently replied even as others gave up. I removed the section, which I believe is neither important to the overall article or well-supported as written; he reverted me, and I think mischaracterized the issue as having been settled here on the talk page. I give a fuller account of the edits here for those interested: User_talk:Holybeef#Misrepresentation_of_my_edit_to_Alan_Guth. However, I think the point is that this article needs more eyes on it, and I will request these shortly unless Holybeef changes his tune in response to my comment. -- SCZenz ( talk) 12:42, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Also worth noting: someone on Twitter is using this section of the article to emphasize their mysteriously empatic point of view about Linde, Guth, and scientific priority [1]. That's what brought me here in the first place. -- SCZenz ( talk) 12:52, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to emphasize, as a way of considering how to edit and discuss this going forward, that Guth did withdraw an early technical implementation of inflation, which is what Linde may have been referring to in the interview. However, the section as written clearly constitutes an undue emphasis on this which is not appropriate for the article. Maybe we can discuss how to include that piece of history in context in the article. To be clear, I do absolutely oppose the dramatic writeup about him "recanting" it, which is unacceptably slanted wording. -- SCZenz ( talk) 13:58, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
@ SCZenz - Yes, for my part at the moment, I agree with SCZenz - that there may be a need for "more eyes on it" [a notion I had made to no avail earlier - 00:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)] - to try and sort the matter out - and better settle the issue - everyone, I would think, might benefit as a result - in any case - Thank you for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 16:26, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
It's clear the situation remains disputed, and has been the whole time. The timestamps for the last comments are irrelevant, no consensus was ever reached. I recommend the section be omitted until discussion makes progress. If it's put back, I'll slap it with an NPOV tag at minimum. In the meantime, I'll go see if I can't find us some more eyes. I also note that Holybeef persists in labeling others' edits as vandalism. -- SCZenz ( talk) 17:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
User SCZenz who joined the above talk discussion rather late, has just tagged the discussed section, disputing that section's neutrality. This is strange given that only quotes by top cosmologists from reliable secondary sources including the Kavli Prize committee's were used in that section. And although the nominator does seem upset while taking it personal due to his background which makes him paddle his Wikipedia:POV hard, feel free to discuss his tag/remarks here. Thanks. Holybeef ( talk) 17:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
I suggestion you both take a time out on editing this particular page. Holybeef is already in violation of WP:3RR and SCZenz is coming close. WP:DEADLINE. I would suggest you look into the dispute resolution mechanisms and try to achieve consensus before taking any further action, and that neither of you make any more reversions to this page. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 20:09, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
That is your interpretation of some general, unstated policy, which is directly contradicted by WP:BOLD. Not to mention, all this time we haven't even been addressing the content of what you're talking about. I think many of us would deny that you had ever achieved any kind of consensus on the inclusion of this "section" in the first place (though if you ever did have it, you don't have it now, so there's no point in continuing that argument), and you see below there are some WP:OR issues with what you had added anyway, and as you're so fond of pointing out, local consensus can't override the global policy against original research. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 17:01, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Using Linde's comments to support a subsection proclaiming that Guth recanted his inflation theory gives this POV undue weight. I realize I'm entering this discussion without a full appreciation for the argumentative nuances presented, but the basic issues seem clear, so I'll try an edit.- Dilaton ( talk) 16:51, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
OK, so regardless of the edit warring going on, which I think we can agree is a separate issue (and is hopefully going to be resolved with via the WP:AN/3RR thread), can we start trying to build a consensus on the content, so that, behavioral issues aside, we can end up with the best page? I think this diff contains the options presented by stakeholders here. SCZenz's original proposal was Holybeef's version, but with the entire "recantation" section removed, but he/she has indicated previously that Primefac's version is acceptable. I don't see anything obviously objectionable about it. If something like Holybeef's version is to be used, I think we need to start by removing the inline link to the podcast episode, which should be a citation.
@ Holybeef: - regarding the content, what are the essential elements that you think Primefac's version is missing, and do you have a proposed compromise wording that can integrate these elements into the article? 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 16:29, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
FWIW - Thank You *very much* for the help with this - for my part at the moment, the present version of the article, with Primefac updates, seems *Excellent* - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 17:45, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
It seems increasingly clear to me that Holybeef will be blocked for his/her edit warring here. I think pretty much everyone else is in agreement on Primefac's version, which is clearly the consensus version. If Holybeef has substantive objections, he/she should probably bring them up either before the WP:AN/3RR is resolved or after any punishment has run out its duration. Given Holybeef's clear decision to revert any edits we make, I think we should wait for administrative action to resolve the ongoing issue, then restore the Primefac version of the text. If Holybeef comes up with a substantive critique (which is seeming less and less likely to me), we can incorporate that into the final version. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 18:41, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
So the 3RR report has resulted in a 31 hour block for Holybeef. I've taken a more careful look at both versions and I am personally strongly in favor of Primefac's version, which seems to be the consensus of anyone who has looked at this, except Holybeef. I think it is reasonable to ask that, after the period of the block ends, Holybeef not continue to make reversions to this page, and rather discuss changes to this particular section here on the talk page. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 23:18, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
As a side note, but an important one, the word "recant" really is not a good choice. It's typically not used in modern science. It has a connotation of something that is repudiated because it's inappropriate or fundamentally incorrect, from which the person doing the recanting now disassociates himself. That's not an accurate description of what really happened, given that Guth in fact continues to promote a different technical implementation of inflation. The Kavli Institute Citation provides an example of a more moderated wording: "However, Guth’s simple and elegant model was flawed: as he himself recognized, [it created disagreements with experimental observations]." I think it is very important here to understand the difference between the general concept of inflation and a particular mathematical model that includes inflation; it was the particular version of inflation that was inconsistent with reality, and Guth acknowledged that, a situation that is totally inconsistent with the connotations of the word "recant." -- SCZenz ( talk) 19:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
An interesting context to this section, especially in light of the tweet that brought me here, is that the idea of Guth "recanting" inflation entirely can be interpreted as influencing the question of whether Linde or Guth is the "real" inventor of inflation. I am not sure who that's an important question to exactly, but it certainly does get discussed in the context of the nobel prize:
Under the strict rules of the Nobel Prize, a maximum of three people can be honored for a discovery. At least half a dozen people — including Guth and the Russian American theorist Andrei Linde — contributed significantly to inflation theory. Linde, now a professor at Stanford, acknowledges that Guth has scientific priority for the basic idea of inflation. But in the early 1980s, Linde came up with the first mathematically complete, “working” version that has been the basis of many inflation theories in the years since. “It’s not one thing,” Linde said. “It’s a class of theories. Inflation is a principle.” [2]
This, like the Kavli Institute citation, highlights that Guth invented an idea and Linde came up with the particular theory/model implementing the idea that worked. Given that this is an article about Guth, and given that context, the language and information used here on Wikipedia should (a) reflect a balanced overview of sources/discussion on the subject, (b) not overemphasize something Linde said once in one interview. Guth, Linde, and other experts have all discussed the issue in different ways over time, after all. -- SCZenz ( talk) 19:39, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
According to some sources, Guth is the originator of the inflationary universe theory; [1] [2] however, according to other sources, the originator was Alexei Starobinsky. [3] [4]
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OK, since SCZenz's good faith edits have now been reverted twice, once as vandalism and once because of some notion of consensus, let's try and establish then what the consensus is on changing the opening paragraph. In the opening paragraph, we have two sources purportedly claiming that Guth is the "originator" of the inflationary model. The PBS Mysteries page is a secondary source, possibly reliable (haven't looked into this), and actually uses the exact term "originator". The New York Times, a reliable secondary source, credits Guth as the "inventor" of the "inflationary theory". Neither of these makes any reference to claims of priority or sole invention, they are simply silent on the issue.
From the other two sources, the scientific american paper (a reliable, secondary source) does not say that Starobinksi was the originator of the inflationary theory, just mentions that he provided the first realistic model of an inflationary universe. It does specifically credit Linde as "one of the originators" of the inflationary model. The second citation is a primary source that doesn't talk about claims of priority. None of the sources mention any contention about scientific priority.
It seems to me that the way it is now it's original research and WP:OR and WP:UNDUE to put these into the lede of the biographical article on Alan Guth. Maybe the claims of scientific priority are relevant in the article on inflationary theory (probably still WP:UNDUE, honestly), but explicitly pointing out that we can find two sources that say different, seemingly contradictory things in the lede of the biographical article here seems clearly inappropriate.
In SCZenz's version, the entire issue is sidestepped because the Kavli prize citation explicitly calls all three men - Linde, Starobinski and Guth - originators of the theory. You'll note that this is not actually inconsistent with the other sources, which each called at least one of them an originator of the theory. It is only a problem if we try and assign priority, and since we have no reliable source explicitly saying who had priority over whom (or that anyone even cares about this), it seems best to de-emphasize the whole thing, as SCZenz explained above, and executed in his edit. As such, I think it is clear that we should use SCZenz's edit as at least a starting point, and that the article should, in general, shy away from getting into these priority claims, which are not explicitly reflected by the sources. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 01:33, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi all, the page is now locked - as it happens, in the version without this change. (Please see m:The Wrong Version for a humorous essay on how this makes me feel.) So I would like to briefly summarize the edit and see if we can discuss any issues with it and build a consensus around it. Here is a link to the original change. What it essentially does (in addition to moving some reference names around) is makes the following sentence replacement:
The purpose of this change is not to use fewer references or avoid particular references; most of them are used elsewhere in the article. Rather the purpose is to remove our explicit discussion of conflicting priority claims and replace it with a highly-regarded tertiary synthesis that credits all three people as being involved in "pioneering" the theory. My hope was (and is) that everyone could get behind this because we all, for various reasons, seem to consider the Kavli Prize citation to be a relevant source. Moreover it avoids claims of Guth being the originator of anything, which have been controversial on this talk page. At the same time, it avoids placing undue weight on any priority conflict in this article, which is about Guth rather than inflation in general. I welcome comments about the wording or explanations for why the original wording is better. -- SCZenz ( talk) 12:04, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
OK, as expected, it seems like
SCZenz's version of the lede is the consensus version, so I've restored it.
0x0077BE [
talk/
contrib]
13:14, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
It seems like we have a very strong consensus about what to do here and on Laura Mersini-Houghton, but unfortunately I believe that dealing with Holybeef's disruptive comments and edits has created a false impression that there is a legitimate content dispute on this page. I have brought this to AN/I here in an attempt to resolve the issue, as I think we've exhausted the other standard dispute resolution mechanisms here. Hopefully, when this is resolved we can have the temporary full-protection downgraded to temporary semi-protection and make the appropriate changes to the article. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 16:10, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
The result of this incident report was an indefinite block for Holybeef. Since Holybeef was the only source of the "content dispute", Ged UK has dropped the page protection from full to semi. I've implemented the consensus change to the lede as discussed above. I think we may want to wrap the discussions with Holybeef in a collapsible hat template above to make this page a bit easier to navigate, also. It seems Holybeef is appealing his block, so maybe we should wait a week or so first so that the "evidence" is still readily available for a reviewing admin. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 13:14, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
In his Cosmology (advanced graduate textbook/treatise) Weinberg summarizes the origin of inflation as follows:
The possibility of an early exponential expansion had been noted by several authors,1 but at first it attracted little attention. It was Alan Guth2 who incited interest in the possibility of inflation by noting what it was good for.
Footnote 1 is to papers by Starobinsky (1979), Kazanas (1980), Sato (1981). Footnote 2 is to Guth (1981). Weinberg goes on to mention Guth found it solved several puzzles in cosmology, but he and others soon realized it had a fatal flaw:
Guth's "old inflation" was soon replaced with a "new inflation" model, due to Andrei Linde3 and Andreas Albrecht and Paul Steinhardt.4
Footnotes 3 and 4 are to various 1982 papers. Choor monster ( talk) 22:26, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Alan Guth suggests partial inflations on the vastness of space. When inflation at a region reaches lightspeeds (read wiktionary - lightspeeds means close or faster than the speed of light, because space itself can expand faster than the speed of light), then we have a pocket "big bang". If space itself expands faster than light, not relativistically [not if we compare afar galaxies] but absolutely [each single point of a space patch expanding faster than light], all that energy is transformed into matter. So "Alan's Rip" is an updated rip. We must include Alans predictions on the subject, through time he has evolved many thoughts. We shall include all his views but mostly his nowadays opinions and short formulas... The main article is not complete! Even if I said something you consider a mistake - simply find Alan's view on the subject and add it. That is the point. To make that article thorough! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.84.220.197 ( talk) 07:12, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Guth focuses on smaller and smaller frames of reference. That is a mistake due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The previous universe did expand faster than the speed of light and provided the energy of the Big Bang. So the old Guth's minuscule focus is out of date. Wikipedia is not a science magazine, thus we should add only Guth's response to that claim. By the way Alan is not so negative about that, ask him. We should add newer stuff but we have to ask him personally to depict his original views. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.72.172.8 ( talk) 21:27, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
Alan Guth claims that the universe was vastly smaller, Planck sized, thus we have a homogeneous universe nowadays. Some of his students claim that quantum fluctuations if enlarged wouldn't produce the homogeneous universe we observe! If the pro big-bang universe was behaving like a degenerate quark-gluon plasma, the more degenerate, more dense state is to have a single particle. The guts of a single particle due to chromodynamics, are way more random than asymptotic quark freedom. So the universal homogeneity has been proposed to be instead the result of a dying universe, where the rate of expansion shrinked from relativistic light-speed distancing of afar galaxies, to all points light-speed expansion, and due to the characteristics of the void itself, homogeneity was a result of the "default initial space", and that makes more sense than distorting the actual asymptotic chromodynamic visceral chaos inside a particle (the smaller the scale, the more jitters we have on the chromodynamic medium, and more extreme turbulence can never be the reason of homogeneity). By the way Alan Guth is open to that alternative. We should ask him to add more data. It is an extremely crucial issue that the main article doesn't mention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4104:3D00:781B:6484:AF81:A967 ( talk) 23:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
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(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 20:47, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
No way am I going to read all of the trash like I just remedied in one small nbrhood of the accompanying article. I am only a BA/cum-laude math/physics major from the '60s, but the smells of bullshit and other forms of incompetence have been changing, since then, at rates incomparably lower than the speed of light! Perhaps professional physicists who deserve the respect of their peers will bring to bear their expertise here, lest the flaneurs who have fouled the nest with the few usages I replaced in my edits today continue to edit unchecked on matters where they lack any insight nor perspective. I can't claim professional competence, but the professionals would not be wasting their time by acting as the Man with Muckrake, or rather driving out the fan-boys and self-anointed dabblers from our modern physics articles.
precisely — Preceding unsigned comment added by JerzyA ( talk • contribs) 16:25, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I propose that the location of the Guth's discovery of inflation be changed to SLAC from Cornell.
From Guth's book "The Inflationary Universe", Guth and Henry Tye were working on ways to suppress magnetic monopole production in the early universe. That work began at Cornell and continued when Guth moved to take another postdoc at SLAC in the fall of 1979. This is covered in Chapter 9, "Combatting the Magnetic Monopole Menace". Guth and Tye believed that a delayed phase transition would "ward off the glut of magnetic monopole production" in the early time of the Big Bang universe (page 167). Guth sat down on the evening of December 6, 1979, to check that "the expansion rate of the universe would be unaffected by the supercooling" (page 165). Then, "after a few of the most productive hours I had ever spent at my desk, I had learned something remarkable. Would the supercooled phase transition affect the expansion rate of the universe? By 1:00 am I knew the answer: Yes, more than I could have ever imagined." (page 176). Guth realized that inflation "would not only wipe out magnetic monopoles, but it would also solve the flatness problem that I had learned from Dicke's lecture the year before." (page 176). A few weeks later, the "horizon problem" was explained to Guth by Marvin Weinstein during lunch at SLAC. "Having learned about the horizon problem at lunch, I went home and thought about it. Eureka! The exponential expansion of inflation would obliterate this problem, too." (page 184). Then, ... "I view the official debut of inflation as the seminar that I gave at SLAC on January 23, 1980.... There was also the fear that I would reveal my status as a greenhorn cosmologist. To shore up my general background in cosmology, I had crammed from Steven Weinberg's excellent popular-level book, The First Three Minutes."
It seems clear that Guth believes he discovered his version of cosmological inflation while he was at SLAC, not Cornell. Strangely, or perhaps not, this same statement about Cornell is made in the wikipedia page on Cosmological Inflation. Guth and Tye were working on a particle physics problem, magnetic monopole overproduction, and as a happy byproduct Guth ended up "solving" two major cosmological problems while at SLAC. AFAIK Tye did not share in the major awards Guth has received for this work. Guth essentially changed his field of study from particle physics to cosmology on the night of December 6, 1979.
Therefore I propose that the location of the discovery be changed to SLAC from Cornell. -- Bluepost22 ( talk) 16:21, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
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This appeared on my talk page, in defence of the claim that Guth is an atheist. It seems more appropriate here:
Hello. My first Wikipedia comment. I enjoyed reading this entry on Alan Guth, but feel I should point out that there are quite a few grammatical errors, missing words, and questionable word choices which a careful reading will reveal. I won't wield the hammer and nails myself because it's past my bedtime, and I'm not sure I know how to go about it anyway. I leave it in your capable hands. All the best. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.116.131.81 ( talk) 07:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Seems to me like the article is written very colloquially and is far from satisfying the NPOV guidelines. Throughout, there is pretty much a judgement and/or and opinion interjected with every fact.
Example 1: "MIT was easier for him than high school because all his courses were science and math. One reason he did this was because he was worried about the draft. He certainly was not a big fan of the Vietnam War, because in 1970 he participated in some speeches at political activities"
--> What does this undocumented speculation have anything to do with anything?
Example 2: "Ironically, much of that theory had been developed by graduate students at Princeton, but Guth had been too wrapped up in his own ideas to notice what was going on around him. When Guth discovered this he felt embarrassed that he was paying no attention to what his colleagues were doing. Since his time at Princeton had been wasted, he had to find another postdoc job in any way that was available to him, such as reading notices on bulletin boards and called acquaintances who worked in physics departments."
--> This is downright meant to degrade Alan Guth. What is its relevance and significance in this article?
In agreement with the comment above, it is in need of serious work. Evilmathninja ( talk) 18:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
As others have noted, this article needs serious work. One thing that really stuck out to me was all the phrases like "Alan Guth believes..." and "Alan Guth's main beliefs about the universe are..." This makes him sound like a guru rather than a scientist. The whole thing is written like some kind of junior high school fanboy paper. 75.83.69.196 ( talk) 14:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I have made a start - for instance by removing all the material about confirming inflation, which was/is/will be the work of a much wide community.
Further work is still required. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 13:51, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
The discussion of his early career fails to mention that when he graduated in 1971 it was during the Ph.d. Glut that hit in 1970 in Physics and other sciences. So the inability to get a tenure track job and the repeated postdoc positions was the most likely fate of the Physics graduate in that era. The key thing is that things switched from boom to bust very quickly, whereas today things have been pretty tough for Physics grads for 40 years (with some interludes of improvement). It also would help to contrast Guth's achievements as a postdoc with all those who got tenure track jobs before him, because it would illustrate the repeated pattern the failure to recognize scientific talent. Einstein being the most know example given that he could only get a job as a Swiss patent clerk, a job he continued to be employeed at even after the publication of his famous 1905 papers. 205.189.194.208 ( talk) 17:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
My first kick didn't yield any sufficient list.
Any suggestions?
(The current "one item" list is way incomplete.)
Josh, linguist (
talk)
07:44, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi all. I added a subsection on the latest interview by Linde to FT, where Linde is cited as saying Guth has recanted inflation. This is newsworthy as it indicates a dispute over the Nobel prize.
"According to Linde in his interview to the Financial Times, Guth has recanted inflation theory altogether, in a paper "more than 100 pages long". [1]"
Holybeef ( talk) 16:45, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Guth's recanting of "old inflation" theory
According to Linde in his audio interview (04/11/2014) (about 14-16/43:06 minute total), Guth has recanted his "old inflation" theory, in a paper "more than 100 pages long".< ref> Andrei Linde on the Big Bang and the biggest discovery of all time, interview with Clive Cookson. The Financial Times, 11 April 2014.</ref>
Just wondering - what exactly are the "100 pages"? - a publication somewhere? - a draft? - maybe find out from Linde himself (or even Guth himself) if possible? - seems there may be more to the story than what we may know (or think we know) at the moment - including perhaps what Guth really meant by his "inflation scenario" wording of course - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 13:18, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Having read this article for the first time today, it seems to me that the Andrei Linde interview provides an intriguing link, but I feel strongly opposed to creating a whole section titled “Guth’s recanting of inflation theory." As I understand it, almost nobody--including Guth--subscribes to the original “false vacuum” theory of inflation, but “slow roll inflation” is alive and well, and the deeper intuition behind both inflation theories remains intact in Guth’s original ideas. Indeed, it was Guth who originally coined the term. Thus, the statement “Guth has recanted his inflation theory," while perhaps technically correct, is misleading. Also, Guth hasn’t by any stretch of the imagination recanted all theories of inflation. See, for example, his most recent paper on the ArXiv ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7619) where he writes: "We conclude that cosmic inflation is on a stronger footing than ever before." I’m going to take a stab at rewriting the article to keep these views in perspective. A practicing cosmologist ought to take a look, though. My expertise is in condensed matter.
For general reference, here is my transcription of the section of the Andrei Linde interview in question:
“But then he found—and this was in 1980—but then he found that it does not quite work. Because later you need to get rid of this false vacuum, you need to get normal matter. And this false vacuum, when it starts decaying, it becomes nonuniform, ugly, and as a result we do not get the universe the way we see it. So this was a scenario which no is called ‘old inflation.’ And he had written in his paper that ‘sorry, it does not quite work. We should all try, maybe we will make it work.’ And then, he had written a long, long paper—100 pages—proving it was impossible to improve this scenario. But there was little communication between Russia and the U.S., so all communications from the U.S. were coming to Russia during several months. So I received this preprint after … already improved his scenario. And that is something which I called ’new inflationary scenario.’ This version of this theory did not quite work either, and a year later it was discarded. And then in '83 I proposed something which is called chaotic inflation, and it was very very simple. It was really simple. There was no vacuum-like space … you need some special kind of field of the type Higgs field, which was already discovered at LHC, and under certain conditions, even in very simple theories of that kind, you will have exponentially fast expansion of the universe, and then you solve all problems which you would not solve otherwise, and this is exactly the version of the theory which predicted gravitational waves with an amplitude which was discovered by Bicep2. That’s why for me personally, this was a day of celebration. That is assuming that the interpretation of the experimental data is right.
...and here is a link to what I think is likely to be the "100-page" paper Guth wrote in 1980 discarding the false-vacuum theory of inflation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0550321383903073# The title is: Could the universe have recovered from a slow first-order phase transition? Csmallw ( talk) 00:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
As a reminder: Wikipedia includes newsworthy information from reputable sources and you can't imagine a more reputable source than the Financial Times and Andrei Linde as a world leading cosmologist, correct? So burden of proof in this case is on those who want to dispute Linde but that's going to be virtually impossible as he gave audio interview. But feel free to provide for example another reputable source that counters what he said. His interview is valid, so it stays in either case as newsworthy info. Besides, I see no point in soliciting opinion of "another cosmologist". Not only that Linde is a cosmologist but that's also not what Wikipedia does. It only reports from third-party reliable sources. Don't forget also: no POV please. Holybeef ( talk) 15:17, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments - I have no problem whatsoever with Linde's comments, esp those supported by WP:RS of course, remaining in the article - but balancing (ie, WP:BALANCE) such comments with alternative viewpoints and/or interpretations, such as those that may have been presented by Csmallw above (and in this recently reverted => article version), may be worthy as well, esp, again, if supported by WP:RS - this may provide a better sense, including WP:NPOV, to the article - incidently, WP:OWN may refer to any article content, including sections - or sentences - or even a word (see a very recent example => Talk:Voyager 1#Manmade vs. Humanmade), and not only to entire articles - in any case - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 20:47, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments - I generally agree with your comments re the Linde reference - and the need to WP:BALANCE the related section with an alternative interpretation - some of the text (worthy imo) added by Csmallw may be useful and merged into the article - you may like to try and merge the text added by Csmallw into the wording of the section - or conversely - you may try and merge your own material into the text that Csmallw has presented earlier - either way - you may solve your own problem with the material - and that of others - in any regards - please understand that =>
Hope this all helps in some way - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 12:15, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
- The first realistic version of the inflationary theory came in 1979 from Alexei A. Starobinsky of the L. D. Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics in Moscow. The Starobinsky model created a sensation among Russian astrophysicists, and for two years it remained the main topic of discussion at all conferences on cosmology in the Soviet Union. His model, however, was rather complicated (it was based on the theory of anomalies in quantum gravity) and did not say much about how inflation could actually start.
- In 1981 Alan H. Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggested that the hot universe at some intermediate stage could expand exponentially. His model derived from a theory that interpreted the development of the early universe as a series of phase transitions. This theory was proposed in 1972 by David A. Kirzhnits and me at the P. N. Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow. According to this idea, as the universe expanded and cooled, it condensed into different forms. Water vapor undergoes such phase transitions. As it becomes cooler, the vapor condenses into water, which, if cooling continues, becomes ice.
- Guth’s idea called for inflation to occur when the universe was in an unstable, super cooled state. Super cooling is common during phase transitions; for example, water under the right circumstances remains liquid below zero degrees Celsius. Of course, supercooled water eventually freezes. That event would correspond to the end of the inflationary period. The idea to use super cooling for solving many problems of the big bang theory was very attractive. Unfortunately, as Guth himself pointed out, the postinflation universe of his scenario becomes extremely inhomogeneous. After investigating his model for a year, he finally renounced it in a paper he co-authored with Erick J. Weinberg of Columbia University.
@ Holybeef - Several notes =>
Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 20:28, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
@ Holybeef - You're *very* welcome of course - agreed - your latest text/ref may help support your position afaik atm - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 18:22, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
For the record, reading the above it seems to me that Holybeef has been pushing his particular reading of a particular sources as being critical to a particular wording (notably "recanted") in this section. It seems that there is no consensus in this section that his wording is anything like an accurate representation, but that he has persistently replied even as others gave up. I removed the section, which I believe is neither important to the overall article or well-supported as written; he reverted me, and I think mischaracterized the issue as having been settled here on the talk page. I give a fuller account of the edits here for those interested: User_talk:Holybeef#Misrepresentation_of_my_edit_to_Alan_Guth. However, I think the point is that this article needs more eyes on it, and I will request these shortly unless Holybeef changes his tune in response to my comment. -- SCZenz ( talk) 12:42, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Also worth noting: someone on Twitter is using this section of the article to emphasize their mysteriously empatic point of view about Linde, Guth, and scientific priority [1]. That's what brought me here in the first place. -- SCZenz ( talk) 12:52, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to emphasize, as a way of considering how to edit and discuss this going forward, that Guth did withdraw an early technical implementation of inflation, which is what Linde may have been referring to in the interview. However, the section as written clearly constitutes an undue emphasis on this which is not appropriate for the article. Maybe we can discuss how to include that piece of history in context in the article. To be clear, I do absolutely oppose the dramatic writeup about him "recanting" it, which is unacceptably slanted wording. -- SCZenz ( talk) 13:58, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
@ SCZenz - Yes, for my part at the moment, I agree with SCZenz - that there may be a need for "more eyes on it" [a notion I had made to no avail earlier - 00:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)] - to try and sort the matter out - and better settle the issue - everyone, I would think, might benefit as a result - in any case - Thank you for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 16:26, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
It's clear the situation remains disputed, and has been the whole time. The timestamps for the last comments are irrelevant, no consensus was ever reached. I recommend the section be omitted until discussion makes progress. If it's put back, I'll slap it with an NPOV tag at minimum. In the meantime, I'll go see if I can't find us some more eyes. I also note that Holybeef persists in labeling others' edits as vandalism. -- SCZenz ( talk) 17:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
User SCZenz who joined the above talk discussion rather late, has just tagged the discussed section, disputing that section's neutrality. This is strange given that only quotes by top cosmologists from reliable secondary sources including the Kavli Prize committee's were used in that section. And although the nominator does seem upset while taking it personal due to his background which makes him paddle his Wikipedia:POV hard, feel free to discuss his tag/remarks here. Thanks. Holybeef ( talk) 17:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
I suggestion you both take a time out on editing this particular page. Holybeef is already in violation of WP:3RR and SCZenz is coming close. WP:DEADLINE. I would suggest you look into the dispute resolution mechanisms and try to achieve consensus before taking any further action, and that neither of you make any more reversions to this page. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 20:09, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
That is your interpretation of some general, unstated policy, which is directly contradicted by WP:BOLD. Not to mention, all this time we haven't even been addressing the content of what you're talking about. I think many of us would deny that you had ever achieved any kind of consensus on the inclusion of this "section" in the first place (though if you ever did have it, you don't have it now, so there's no point in continuing that argument), and you see below there are some WP:OR issues with what you had added anyway, and as you're so fond of pointing out, local consensus can't override the global policy against original research. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 17:01, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Using Linde's comments to support a subsection proclaiming that Guth recanted his inflation theory gives this POV undue weight. I realize I'm entering this discussion without a full appreciation for the argumentative nuances presented, but the basic issues seem clear, so I'll try an edit.- Dilaton ( talk) 16:51, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
OK, so regardless of the edit warring going on, which I think we can agree is a separate issue (and is hopefully going to be resolved with via the WP:AN/3RR thread), can we start trying to build a consensus on the content, so that, behavioral issues aside, we can end up with the best page? I think this diff contains the options presented by stakeholders here. SCZenz's original proposal was Holybeef's version, but with the entire "recantation" section removed, but he/she has indicated previously that Primefac's version is acceptable. I don't see anything obviously objectionable about it. If something like Holybeef's version is to be used, I think we need to start by removing the inline link to the podcast episode, which should be a citation.
@ Holybeef: - regarding the content, what are the essential elements that you think Primefac's version is missing, and do you have a proposed compromise wording that can integrate these elements into the article? 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 16:29, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
FWIW - Thank You *very much* for the help with this - for my part at the moment, the present version of the article, with Primefac updates, seems *Excellent* - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan ( talk) 17:45, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
It seems increasingly clear to me that Holybeef will be blocked for his/her edit warring here. I think pretty much everyone else is in agreement on Primefac's version, which is clearly the consensus version. If Holybeef has substantive objections, he/she should probably bring them up either before the WP:AN/3RR is resolved or after any punishment has run out its duration. Given Holybeef's clear decision to revert any edits we make, I think we should wait for administrative action to resolve the ongoing issue, then restore the Primefac version of the text. If Holybeef comes up with a substantive critique (which is seeming less and less likely to me), we can incorporate that into the final version. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 18:41, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
So the 3RR report has resulted in a 31 hour block for Holybeef. I've taken a more careful look at both versions and I am personally strongly in favor of Primefac's version, which seems to be the consensus of anyone who has looked at this, except Holybeef. I think it is reasonable to ask that, after the period of the block ends, Holybeef not continue to make reversions to this page, and rather discuss changes to this particular section here on the talk page. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 23:18, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
As a side note, but an important one, the word "recant" really is not a good choice. It's typically not used in modern science. It has a connotation of something that is repudiated because it's inappropriate or fundamentally incorrect, from which the person doing the recanting now disassociates himself. That's not an accurate description of what really happened, given that Guth in fact continues to promote a different technical implementation of inflation. The Kavli Institute Citation provides an example of a more moderated wording: "However, Guth’s simple and elegant model was flawed: as he himself recognized, [it created disagreements with experimental observations]." I think it is very important here to understand the difference between the general concept of inflation and a particular mathematical model that includes inflation; it was the particular version of inflation that was inconsistent with reality, and Guth acknowledged that, a situation that is totally inconsistent with the connotations of the word "recant." -- SCZenz ( talk) 19:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
An interesting context to this section, especially in light of the tweet that brought me here, is that the idea of Guth "recanting" inflation entirely can be interpreted as influencing the question of whether Linde or Guth is the "real" inventor of inflation. I am not sure who that's an important question to exactly, but it certainly does get discussed in the context of the nobel prize:
Under the strict rules of the Nobel Prize, a maximum of three people can be honored for a discovery. At least half a dozen people — including Guth and the Russian American theorist Andrei Linde — contributed significantly to inflation theory. Linde, now a professor at Stanford, acknowledges that Guth has scientific priority for the basic idea of inflation. But in the early 1980s, Linde came up with the first mathematically complete, “working” version that has been the basis of many inflation theories in the years since. “It’s not one thing,” Linde said. “It’s a class of theories. Inflation is a principle.” [2]
This, like the Kavli Institute citation, highlights that Guth invented an idea and Linde came up with the particular theory/model implementing the idea that worked. Given that this is an article about Guth, and given that context, the language and information used here on Wikipedia should (a) reflect a balanced overview of sources/discussion on the subject, (b) not overemphasize something Linde said once in one interview. Guth, Linde, and other experts have all discussed the issue in different ways over time, after all. -- SCZenz ( talk) 19:39, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
According to some sources, Guth is the originator of the inflationary universe theory; [1] [2] however, according to other sources, the originator was Alexei Starobinsky. [3] [4]
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OK, since SCZenz's good faith edits have now been reverted twice, once as vandalism and once because of some notion of consensus, let's try and establish then what the consensus is on changing the opening paragraph. In the opening paragraph, we have two sources purportedly claiming that Guth is the "originator" of the inflationary model. The PBS Mysteries page is a secondary source, possibly reliable (haven't looked into this), and actually uses the exact term "originator". The New York Times, a reliable secondary source, credits Guth as the "inventor" of the "inflationary theory". Neither of these makes any reference to claims of priority or sole invention, they are simply silent on the issue.
From the other two sources, the scientific american paper (a reliable, secondary source) does not say that Starobinksi was the originator of the inflationary theory, just mentions that he provided the first realistic model of an inflationary universe. It does specifically credit Linde as "one of the originators" of the inflationary model. The second citation is a primary source that doesn't talk about claims of priority. None of the sources mention any contention about scientific priority.
It seems to me that the way it is now it's original research and WP:OR and WP:UNDUE to put these into the lede of the biographical article on Alan Guth. Maybe the claims of scientific priority are relevant in the article on inflationary theory (probably still WP:UNDUE, honestly), but explicitly pointing out that we can find two sources that say different, seemingly contradictory things in the lede of the biographical article here seems clearly inappropriate.
In SCZenz's version, the entire issue is sidestepped because the Kavli prize citation explicitly calls all three men - Linde, Starobinski and Guth - originators of the theory. You'll note that this is not actually inconsistent with the other sources, which each called at least one of them an originator of the theory. It is only a problem if we try and assign priority, and since we have no reliable source explicitly saying who had priority over whom (or that anyone even cares about this), it seems best to de-emphasize the whole thing, as SCZenz explained above, and executed in his edit. As such, I think it is clear that we should use SCZenz's edit as at least a starting point, and that the article should, in general, shy away from getting into these priority claims, which are not explicitly reflected by the sources. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 01:33, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi all, the page is now locked - as it happens, in the version without this change. (Please see m:The Wrong Version for a humorous essay on how this makes me feel.) So I would like to briefly summarize the edit and see if we can discuss any issues with it and build a consensus around it. Here is a link to the original change. What it essentially does (in addition to moving some reference names around) is makes the following sentence replacement:
The purpose of this change is not to use fewer references or avoid particular references; most of them are used elsewhere in the article. Rather the purpose is to remove our explicit discussion of conflicting priority claims and replace it with a highly-regarded tertiary synthesis that credits all three people as being involved in "pioneering" the theory. My hope was (and is) that everyone could get behind this because we all, for various reasons, seem to consider the Kavli Prize citation to be a relevant source. Moreover it avoids claims of Guth being the originator of anything, which have been controversial on this talk page. At the same time, it avoids placing undue weight on any priority conflict in this article, which is about Guth rather than inflation in general. I welcome comments about the wording or explanations for why the original wording is better. -- SCZenz ( talk) 12:04, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
OK, as expected, it seems like
SCZenz's version of the lede is the consensus version, so I've restored it.
0x0077BE [
talk/
contrib]
13:14, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
It seems like we have a very strong consensus about what to do here and on Laura Mersini-Houghton, but unfortunately I believe that dealing with Holybeef's disruptive comments and edits has created a false impression that there is a legitimate content dispute on this page. I have brought this to AN/I here in an attempt to resolve the issue, as I think we've exhausted the other standard dispute resolution mechanisms here. Hopefully, when this is resolved we can have the temporary full-protection downgraded to temporary semi-protection and make the appropriate changes to the article. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 16:10, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
The result of this incident report was an indefinite block for Holybeef. Since Holybeef was the only source of the "content dispute", Ged UK has dropped the page protection from full to semi. I've implemented the consensus change to the lede as discussed above. I think we may want to wrap the discussions with Holybeef in a collapsible hat template above to make this page a bit easier to navigate, also. It seems Holybeef is appealing his block, so maybe we should wait a week or so first so that the "evidence" is still readily available for a reviewing admin. 0x0077BE [ talk/ contrib] 13:14, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
In his Cosmology (advanced graduate textbook/treatise) Weinberg summarizes the origin of inflation as follows:
The possibility of an early exponential expansion had been noted by several authors,1 but at first it attracted little attention. It was Alan Guth2 who incited interest in the possibility of inflation by noting what it was good for.
Footnote 1 is to papers by Starobinsky (1979), Kazanas (1980), Sato (1981). Footnote 2 is to Guth (1981). Weinberg goes on to mention Guth found it solved several puzzles in cosmology, but he and others soon realized it had a fatal flaw:
Guth's "old inflation" was soon replaced with a "new inflation" model, due to Andrei Linde3 and Andreas Albrecht and Paul Steinhardt.4
Footnotes 3 and 4 are to various 1982 papers. Choor monster ( talk) 22:26, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Alan Guth suggests partial inflations on the vastness of space. When inflation at a region reaches lightspeeds (read wiktionary - lightspeeds means close or faster than the speed of light, because space itself can expand faster than the speed of light), then we have a pocket "big bang". If space itself expands faster than light, not relativistically [not if we compare afar galaxies] but absolutely [each single point of a space patch expanding faster than light], all that energy is transformed into matter. So "Alan's Rip" is an updated rip. We must include Alans predictions on the subject, through time he has evolved many thoughts. We shall include all his views but mostly his nowadays opinions and short formulas... The main article is not complete! Even if I said something you consider a mistake - simply find Alan's view on the subject and add it. That is the point. To make that article thorough! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.84.220.197 ( talk) 07:12, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Guth focuses on smaller and smaller frames of reference. That is a mistake due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The previous universe did expand faster than the speed of light and provided the energy of the Big Bang. So the old Guth's minuscule focus is out of date. Wikipedia is not a science magazine, thus we should add only Guth's response to that claim. By the way Alan is not so negative about that, ask him. We should add newer stuff but we have to ask him personally to depict his original views. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.72.172.8 ( talk) 21:27, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
Alan Guth claims that the universe was vastly smaller, Planck sized, thus we have a homogeneous universe nowadays. Some of his students claim that quantum fluctuations if enlarged wouldn't produce the homogeneous universe we observe! If the pro big-bang universe was behaving like a degenerate quark-gluon plasma, the more degenerate, more dense state is to have a single particle. The guts of a single particle due to chromodynamics, are way more random than asymptotic quark freedom. So the universal homogeneity has been proposed to be instead the result of a dying universe, where the rate of expansion shrinked from relativistic light-speed distancing of afar galaxies, to all points light-speed expansion, and due to the characteristics of the void itself, homogeneity was a result of the "default initial space", and that makes more sense than distorting the actual asymptotic chromodynamic visceral chaos inside a particle (the smaller the scale, the more jitters we have on the chromodynamic medium, and more extreme turbulence can never be the reason of homogeneity). By the way Alan Guth is open to that alternative. We should ask him to add more data. It is an extremely crucial issue that the main article doesn't mention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4104:3D00:781B:6484:AF81:A967 ( talk) 23:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
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No way am I going to read all of the trash like I just remedied in one small nbrhood of the accompanying article. I am only a BA/cum-laude math/physics major from the '60s, but the smells of bullshit and other forms of incompetence have been changing, since then, at rates incomparably lower than the speed of light! Perhaps professional physicists who deserve the respect of their peers will bring to bear their expertise here, lest the flaneurs who have fouled the nest with the few usages I replaced in my edits today continue to edit unchecked on matters where they lack any insight nor perspective. I can't claim professional competence, but the professionals would not be wasting their time by acting as the Man with Muckrake, or rather driving out the fan-boys and self-anointed dabblers from our modern physics articles.
precisely — Preceding unsigned comment added by JerzyA ( talk • contribs) 16:25, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I propose that the location of the Guth's discovery of inflation be changed to SLAC from Cornell.
From Guth's book "The Inflationary Universe", Guth and Henry Tye were working on ways to suppress magnetic monopole production in the early universe. That work began at Cornell and continued when Guth moved to take another postdoc at SLAC in the fall of 1979. This is covered in Chapter 9, "Combatting the Magnetic Monopole Menace". Guth and Tye believed that a delayed phase transition would "ward off the glut of magnetic monopole production" in the early time of the Big Bang universe (page 167). Guth sat down on the evening of December 6, 1979, to check that "the expansion rate of the universe would be unaffected by the supercooling" (page 165). Then, "after a few of the most productive hours I had ever spent at my desk, I had learned something remarkable. Would the supercooled phase transition affect the expansion rate of the universe? By 1:00 am I knew the answer: Yes, more than I could have ever imagined." (page 176). Guth realized that inflation "would not only wipe out magnetic monopoles, but it would also solve the flatness problem that I had learned from Dicke's lecture the year before." (page 176). A few weeks later, the "horizon problem" was explained to Guth by Marvin Weinstein during lunch at SLAC. "Having learned about the horizon problem at lunch, I went home and thought about it. Eureka! The exponential expansion of inflation would obliterate this problem, too." (page 184). Then, ... "I view the official debut of inflation as the seminar that I gave at SLAC on January 23, 1980.... There was also the fear that I would reveal my status as a greenhorn cosmologist. To shore up my general background in cosmology, I had crammed from Steven Weinberg's excellent popular-level book, The First Three Minutes."
It seems clear that Guth believes he discovered his version of cosmological inflation while he was at SLAC, not Cornell. Strangely, or perhaps not, this same statement about Cornell is made in the wikipedia page on Cosmological Inflation. Guth and Tye were working on a particle physics problem, magnetic monopole overproduction, and as a happy byproduct Guth ended up "solving" two major cosmological problems while at SLAC. AFAIK Tye did not share in the major awards Guth has received for this work. Guth essentially changed his field of study from particle physics to cosmology on the night of December 6, 1979.
Therefore I propose that the location of the discovery be changed to SLAC from Cornell. -- Bluepost22 ( talk) 16:21, 26 November 2021 (UTC)