a funny thing about most TEDx talks is
that they’re always about the future
improving this predicting that everybody
is trying to sell you a better future
and I’m thinking what’s wrong with the
past doesn’t that have a value too and
I’m not even a historian I’m a professor
in theoretical physics still I like to
look back and be amazed and I don’t mean
just yesterday or last week now I mean
the real deal the entire history of our
universe I will show you that the
universe is all about history just look
out of your window and you peer into the
past everything we see out there can be
traced back all the way to the Big Bang
and started life as a quantum
fluctuation on a cosmic dating show let
me try and sell you a better past now to
get there we have to start in the
present what is the universe currently
up to looking around us we see lots of
nearby galaxies and in a static universe
these will be at some fixed distance
away from us what we see is that they’re
all moving and moreover they’re all
moving away from us the scientific
explanation for this is that we live in
an expanding universe a universe that
grows in time and in such a universe all
distances increase including those two
nearby galaxies so what does that mean
for the past well the universe that
grows in time would have been smaller in
its earlier days and if you go back
sufficiently far you get to a moment
where everything you see in the universe
comes together in a single point
how long ago is this some 14 billion
years this is when the Big Bang happened
and the universe started expanding
taking all the galaxies along with it so
the universe is a bit like an ancient
Blowfish
one of these beautiful sea creatures
that have a bad temper
something pissed off our Blowfish some
14 billion years ago and it’s been
puffing up ever since now you might be
wondering what pissed off our Blowfish
well that’s exactly what my research is
about what happened during the Big Bang
okay so we live in an expanding universe
so how big is it
well that’s funny we don’t know and in
fact it’s fundamentally impossible to
know we can only observe one part of the
universe it’s like a bubble that we live
in and the reason for this is the speed
of light
everything you see in the universe has
had to send light toward you and this
takes a bit of time now for the Sun this
is around eight minutes but for a
faraway star this can be billions of
years so literally everything you see in
the universe is history and it’s
actually hard enough to predict the
present now if you look out sufficiently
far you come to light that’s been
traveling ever since the Big Bang
basically forever this light is like an
echo of the Big Bang and it forms the
edge of our universe and in fact this
echo is very important because it
teaches us what the universe was like
during the Big Bang and what else is out
there further beyond this echo we have
no way of telling light from those
places hasn’t yet had time to
reach us it’s like somebody could have
sent us a message billions of years ago
and it still hasn’t arrived we have no
idea what’s in the message who sent it
or even what the universe is like out
there some theories predict that there
could be different laws of physics and
perhaps even different dimensions now on
to the central question in my research
given this funny universe what created
all the structures inside a well we
found that everything you see can be
traced back all the way to the Big Bang
and started life as a quantum
fluctuation on a cosmic dating show you
can think of it as follows nature it’s
full of particles and antiparticles and
these always want to get together you
know matter loves antimatter electrons
are looking for positrons particles want
to get together with anti particles and
most of the time they’re incredibly
successful at this they get together and
vanish in no time and that’s why we
don’t notice that there’s so many
particles and antiparticles around us
right here right now in this very
theater there’s a lot of this dating
going on even empty space is full of
particles and antiparticles looking for
each other these are quantum
fluctuations and they always come into
the world in pairs they’re looking for
their partner and they find it and
they’re vanish never to be heard of
again ever
now there’s one massive exception to
this story during the Big Bang the
universe was expanding at this
incredible rate
so all these quantum fluctuations
electrons and positrons particles and
antiparticles they came into the world
in Paris but they were torn apart
because of the expansion of the universe
and they were still looking for their
partner but they couldn’t find it
because it was on the other side of the
universe so the universe is also a
tragic love story it’s about quantum
fluctuations that couldn’t find their
partner and at some point ran out of
likes on this cosmic version of tinder
now what does that have to do with
structures in the universe well after
the Big Bang the universe was born and
it was perfectly smooth
apart from these tiny tiny quantum
fluctuations these were looking for
their partner but couldn’t find it and
instead they started accumulating other
and other particles and in this way
they’ve grown into all the structures
that we see in the universe galaxies
clusters of galaxies even larger
structures all of those arose out of
those quantum fluctuations during the
Big Bang so this tragic love story was
actually great news it was these lonely
quantum bachelors that have built the
universe since the Big Bang pretty
mind-boggling isn’t it now what’s
perhaps the most amazing about this
story is that we can actually test it
nowadays we’ve sent satellites up into
space and we’ve measured this echo of
the Big Bang
that we talked about at the edge of our
universe and this gives us an idea of
what the universe was like during the
Big Bang and can we explain what we see
oh yes we can
in my research we’ve built a model for
the Big Bang that predicts
exactly the quantum fluctuations that we
observe so we seem to be on track
towards understanding the Big Bang and
the origin of all structures in the
universe we’re all descendants from
lonely quantum fluctuations looking for
a partner on this cosmic dating show
thank you very much
[Applause]
that they’re always about the future
improving this predicting that everybody
is trying to sell you a better future
and I’m thinking what’s wrong with the
past doesn’t that have a value too and
I’m not even a historian I’m a professor
in theoretical physics still I like to
look back and be amazed and I don’t mean
just yesterday or last week now I mean
the real deal the entire history of our
universe I will show you that the
universe is all about history just look
out of your window and you peer into the
past everything we see out there can be
traced back all the way to the Big Bang
and started life as a quantum
fluctuation on a cosmic dating show let
me try and sell you a better past now to
get there we have to start in the
present what is the universe currently
up to looking around us we see lots of
nearby galaxies and in a static universe
these will be at some fixed distance
away from us what we see is that they’re
all moving and moreover they’re all
moving away from us the scientific
explanation for this is that we live in
an expanding universe a universe that
grows in time and in such a universe all
distances increase including those two
nearby galaxies so what does that mean
for the past well the universe that
grows in time would have been smaller in
its earlier days and if you go back
sufficiently far you get to a moment
where everything you see in the universe
comes together in a single point
how long ago is this some 14 billion
years this is when the Big Bang happened
and the universe started expanding
taking all the galaxies along with it so
the universe is a bit like an ancient
Blowfish
one of these beautiful sea creatures
that have a bad temper
something pissed off our Blowfish some
14 billion years ago and it’s been
puffing up ever since now you might be
wondering what pissed off our Blowfish
well that’s exactly what my research is
about what happened during the Big Bang
okay so we live in an expanding universe
so how big is it
well that’s funny we don’t know and in
fact it’s fundamentally impossible to
know we can only observe one part of the
universe it’s like a bubble that we live
in and the reason for this is the speed
of light
everything you see in the universe has
had to send light toward you and this
takes a bit of time now for the Sun this
is around eight minutes but for a
faraway star this can be billions of
years so literally everything you see in
the universe is history and it’s
actually hard enough to predict the
present now if you look out sufficiently
far you come to light that’s been
traveling ever since the Big Bang
basically forever this light is like an
echo of the Big Bang and it forms the
edge of our universe and in fact this
echo is very important because it
teaches us what the universe was like
during the Big Bang and what else is out
there further beyond this echo we have
no way of telling light from those
places hasn’t yet had time to
reach us it’s like somebody could have
sent us a message billions of years ago
and it still hasn’t arrived we have no
idea what’s in the message who sent it
or even what the universe is like out
there some theories predict that there
could be different laws of physics and
perhaps even different dimensions now on
to the central question in my research
given this funny universe what created
all the structures inside a well we
found that everything you see can be
traced back all the way to the Big Bang
and started life as a quantum
fluctuation on a cosmic dating show you
can think of it as follows nature it’s
full of particles and antiparticles and
these always want to get together you
know matter loves antimatter electrons
are looking for positrons particles want
to get together with anti particles and
most of the time they’re incredibly
successful at this they get together and
vanish in no time and that’s why we
don’t notice that there’s so many
particles and antiparticles around us
right here right now in this very
theater there’s a lot of this dating
going on even empty space is full of
particles and antiparticles looking for
each other these are quantum
fluctuations and they always come into
the world in pairs they’re looking for
their partner and they find it and
they’re vanish never to be heard of
again ever
now there’s one massive exception to
this story during the Big Bang the
universe was expanding at this
incredible rate
so all these quantum fluctuations
electrons and positrons particles and
antiparticles they came into the world
in Paris but they were torn apart
because of the expansion of the universe
and they were still looking for their
partner but they couldn’t find it
because it was on the other side of the
universe so the universe is also a
tragic love story it’s about quantum
fluctuations that couldn’t find their
partner and at some point ran out of
likes on this cosmic version of tinder
now what does that have to do with
structures in the universe well after
the Big Bang the universe was born and
it was perfectly smooth
apart from these tiny tiny quantum
fluctuations these were looking for
their partner but couldn’t find it and
instead they started accumulating other
and other particles and in this way
they’ve grown into all the structures
that we see in the universe galaxies
clusters of galaxies even larger
structures all of those arose out of
those quantum fluctuations during the
Big Bang so this tragic love story was
actually great news it was these lonely
quantum bachelors that have built the
universe since the Big Bang pretty
mind-boggling isn’t it now what’s
perhaps the most amazing about this
story is that we can actually test it
nowadays we’ve sent satellites up into
space and we’ve measured this echo of
the Big Bang
that we talked about at the edge of our
universe and this gives us an idea of
what the universe was like during the
Big Bang and can we explain what we see
oh yes we can
in my research we’ve built a model for
the Big Bang that predicts
exactly the quantum fluctuations that we
observe so we seem to be on track
towards understanding the Big Bang and
the origin of all structures in the
universe we’re all descendants from
lonely quantum fluctuations looking for
a partner on this cosmic dating show
thank you very much
[Applause]
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