Looking beyond the observable

A workshop organised by ICTP’s High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics section (HECAP) will provide a guide to understanding universes that we can never observe. The ‘Eternal Inflation’ workshop that will run from 8 June to 12 June 2009 will look at "understanding the phenomena of continually expanding universes that lie beyond our own observable universe", says Dr. Paolo Creminelli, one of the workshop organisers from the HECAP section.

While our local observable universe also underwent inflation—a violent and rapid acceleration that occurred right after the Big Bang—the process has now stopped. However, the multiverse theory suggests that there exist several other universes, beyond the local observable universe, that are currently inflating. As a universe expands rapidly, it creates ‘bubbles’, and these ‘bubbles’ are the nuclei for new universes, which again will expand and create more of these ‘nuclei bubbles’. "In that sense, the process of inflation is eternal," says Dr. Marcello Musso, also a workshop organiser from HECAP.

This workshop will bring together experts, including Dr. Raphael Bousso (University of California, Berkeley) and Dr. Alexei Starobinsky (Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow), and non-experts who hope the interaction will increase their understating of this highly theoretical and intriguing topic. The organisers said this is a great opportunity for all participants, especially those from the developing countries, to be introduced to frontline work and views of leaders from the field.