PRIMORDIAL PARADOX-QUANTUM FLUCTUATIONS IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE

In the end, the most impossible and hence most puzzling aspect of space is its very existence. The simple fact we live in an apparently smooth and regular three dimensional world represents one of the greatest challenges to the developing quantum theory of gravity. If you look around at the world seeking mystery, you may reflect that one of the biggest mysteries is that we live in a world in which it is possible to look around and see as far as we like. The great triumph of the quantum theory of gravity may be that it will explain to us why this is done. Two major mysteries about the large-scale structure of the universe may be explained by tiny fluctuations in the early universe. The primordial fluctuations occur at the incredibly small Planck scale. A Planck length is about twenty orders of magnitude smaller than the radius of a proton. But corrections to inflation at this unimaginably small scale explain two of the anomalies at the largest scale in the universe, in a cosmic tango of the very small and the very large. Quantum fluctuations can pre-exist, that is precede physical law. So in the Big Bang, the establishment of "law" came after the event itself, but of course even the concept of time and causality may not have been quite the same back then as they are now.