From a pre-existing state, inflation predicts that a series of universes will be spawned as inflation continues, with each one being completely disconnected from every other one, separated by more inflating space. One of these “bubbles,” where inflation ended, gave birth to our Universe some 13.8 billion years ago, with a very low entropy density, but without ever violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics. (Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller)
Billions of years ago, the ever-increasing entropy must’ve been much lower: the past hypothesis. Here’s how cosmic inflation solves it.
Right now, at this very moment, the total amount of entropy contained within the observable Universe is greater than it’s ever been before…
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-1331485921-02b57bff86b9419dac92334715eaf189.jpg)
