Essay talk:A Random Proposal by an Amateur for the Mechanism for Inflation

So yeah... the mechanical engineer in me completely read the title the wrong way. I was all like "Proposal... mechanism... inflation? Yeah, it's called a pump dumbass!" *le click* "Oh that inflation". Carry on --Inquisitor (talk) 01:26, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I went through the same process, but I was all prepared to say "It's caused by rapid increases in the money supply, dumbass!" Guess we both got tripped up. -- 02:01, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Haha...I thought of cosmic inflation when I saw this. Am I the only cosmologist here? (As a disclaimer, I'm only a physics student, and what I know about the subject is from self-study.) --Andy Franklinson (talk) 20:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I thought it was the economics one... perhaps because I work in a shop? Funny how we all interpreted it according to our spheres of knowledge. Sophie  Wilder  21:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

A Random Proposal by an Amateur for the Mechanism for Inflation
If antiparticles were repulsed by gravity, then particles that are their own antiparticles (like the photon) wouldn't feel gravity. So...yeah...it wouldn't work. --Andy Franklinson (talk) 20:43, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I just read a similar proposal to mine in Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing. Also, could you elaborate a bit.  Sam   Tally-ho!  21:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've had a chance to think over your proposal a little bit and found a couple more problems. For one thing, particles and antiparticles are always produced in pairs so the positive and negative energies would sort of cancel each other out. (Though I suppose that they could act as a sort-of dipole.) Also, you say that the graceful exist (that's what people call the end of inflation, btw) would be caused be the expansion of the universe. But virtual pairs would still be produced, all the time. So...what causes the end of inflation? Shouldn't it still be occurring now? --Andy Franklinson (talk) 00:49, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Regarding the graceful exit, virtual particles would still occur, but the universe would have expanded enough so that their effects are negligible. The first pair or two cause the inflation with their anti-gravity properties and expands the universe to a big enough size where the pairs that subsequently occur aren't powerful enough to contribute to the inflation (since their size is now so small compared to the now-inflated universe). The graceful exit is just when the universe inflates to a size where the virtual particles' anti-gravity is no longer big enough in comparison to make a difference. Hopefully that made sense. As for the positive and negative energies cancelling out, I'm not too sure how to respond — perhaps their anti-gravity causes the inflation before they annihilate each other (which is presumably how they cancel each other out)?  Sam   Tally-ho!  01:55, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * When the universe is "big" (i.e., after inflation), wouldn't virtual particles be produced with the same density? And no, they cancel each other out because, while in existence, the particle has positive energy E, and the anti-particle has negative energy -E, so they would cancel each other out. --Andy Franklinson (talk) 09:58, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's probably true about the whole same density thing. Darn. And I suppose you're right about the energies cancelling out before they could have an inflationary effect. Good calls.  Sam   Tally-ho!  04:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
 * No problem! --Andynot Schlafly 14:20, 23 August 2012 (UTC)