Marjorie Schillo (NYU) defended her PhD today. She showed that eternal inflation implies a non-zero spatial curvature for the Universe. More specifically, it links the CMB low-ell amplitudes to the spatial curvature. Since all string-based inflation models are eternally inflating, she can construct hard tests of string theory by measurement of the spatial curvature. Right now there are just upper limits, but there is some chance her tests will be executed. She gave a great talk and handled some heavy interrogation from the floor. Congratulations, Dr Schillo.
Very late in this low-research day, I did some work on the 2014 Kentucky Derby. As of writing, I like Dance With Fate, Wicked Strong, and Medal Count. But that's not investment advice!
Is there a paper summarizing the results of the thesis? Or is the thesis itself available? Looks to be an interesting result.
ReplyDeletehttp://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5037
ReplyDeleteAnd other papers on arxiv by Schillo