*
Sal and the lead of Stanford’s Kavli Institute experiment, the elusive Lisa Wu, had been persuaded to lecture on their teams’ respective effort to determine the origins of the universe. Cooper had only seen Lisa on one other occasion—at Pavano’s lecture a month earlier, watching silently with her research techs. She was a tall, plain-looking woman with completely horizontal dark eyebrows. Her wan bearing was relieved only by the aquamarine rhinestone stud she wore in her left nostril.
Once the crowd settled down, and someone had found Lisa a can of mineral water, she began outlining the basic tenets of the inflationary theory: that the universe grew at unimaginably fast rates during the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang, that the expansion has slowed down, but not stopped, and that the theory, as endorsed by Linde, Guth, and Hawking, along with most mainstream physicists, had achieved five of the six “milestones” that would settle the question once and for all. Cooper had zoned out during the exquisitely detailed explanation of these milestones, but she perked up when she heard Lisa acknowledge that the rate of expansion initially exceeded the speed of light.
At this, a meteorologist raised his hand. “I thought the whole point of the speed of light was that nothing can exceed it.”
Cooper noticed Lisa glance at Sal, who was sitting in the front row awaiting his turn. She replied that the meteorologist was correct—technically—but that “in physics, we’ve learned to expect the unexpected.”
“That sounds like a slogan for a beer,” Pearl whispered to Cooper.
As she started to wrap up, Lisa glanced over at Sal once again. “Before I turn the stage over to Sal, I feel compelled to say something else: Sal’s father, Professor John Brennan, is the reason I’m standing here. He’s the reason my whole team is here, really. He believed in each and every one of us, and we consider it the biggest privilege of our lives to be part of this experiment that he designed more than twenty-five years ago. It was only recently that the technology advanced to a point where his theory could be tested.” Her eyes darted back toward Sal. “Some thought, perhaps continue to think, that this theory was impossible to test and therefore not scientific. Professor Brennan showed that it is, in fact, testable. And it was Professor Brennan who first understood that the matter and heat in our universe are regularly distributed, that this is not chance, but a cosmological principle.”
Sal shifted in his seat. “But that might not mean a lot to those of you who don’t live and breathe the Cosmic Microwave Background. Inflation created a uniform and stable cosmos; it can happen again,” Lisa continued. “Perhaps it already has. This theory offers a view of the universe in which we are not alone, suggests that there are other universes in pockets of space and time. That’s the inflationary theory in a nutshell, and though it’s a hard nut to crack, I’m confident that by the end of the research season, we’ll have the answer to our most pressing cosmological question.”
Everyone applauded, and as Lisa walked past Sal to her seat, Cooper saw him whisper something to her. She remembered what it had felt like as Sal held her foot in his hand. She pushed the thought away.
Sal wrenched around in his chair. “Do you guys mind if Alek tells a joke first?” No one objected, so Alek stepped forward. “This joke happens near Munich. Heisenberg goes for drive and police stop him. Police says, ‘Sir, do you know how fast you go?’ Heisenberg say: ‘No, but I know where I am.’”
Approximately one-sixth of the audience burst into peals of laughter, while the other five-sixths remained silent. Once Alek had returned to his seat, Sal approached the podium. “The Beakers are laughing because they got the joke, not because it’s funny—trust me. Anyway, I’m not going to get into a rigorous defense of the cyclic theory of the universe or an attack on the Kavli team’s work, but I will indulge myself in delivering one brief roundhouse kick.
“Professor Wu said something that I have to correct, and that is the idea that some of you may have about what she means when she says ‘regular distribution.’ This makes the universe seem like a calm and orderly place. It is not. If the inflationary theory were true, then the majority of space is an uncontrolled, chaotic place undergoing brutally violent inflation, powered by the kind of energy that tells Einstein to fuck off. But they’d also have you believe that hidden in the folds of this cosmic Technicolor Dreamcoat are those ‘pocket universes’ that Lisa mentioned, where ponies run free, the wind whipping through their manes—or, the flip side, an alternate world where you are living the life that would have unfolded had you decided to run that red light in 1998 and killed your family in a car wreck. To make matters worse, the inflationary theory is the Intelligent Design of cosmology—”
“Sal, that’s not fair,” Lisa said.
“Let me finish first, and then see if it’s not fair. The inflationary theory is the Intelligent Design of cosmology because it is heavily reliant on the anthropic principle, which is the idea that the physical laws that govern the universe must be compatible with the fact that life exists.”
Next to Cooper, Pearl raised her hand. “What’s wrong with that? That seems logical.”
“Yes, it does, but in cosmology, and in Intelligent Design, it is being used to explain features of the observable universe that people like Professor Wu, and like my father, cannot explain. This is the sign of a deeply flawed theory.”
“I don’t get it,” Pearl replied.
“Simply put: instead of physical laws explaining the complexity and diversity of life, they are using the very fact of life to explain the complexity of physical laws. That’s not how science works.”
The Kavli team began moving about in their chairs, and one of them seemed about to speak when Pavano rose from his chair in the very back of the room. “Your own mentor has said that just because a prediction is consistent with the evidence does not mean the theory is right,” he said.
“Yes, and he also said that a scientist must show that the theory has correctly identified the root cause of the phenomenon. And the inflationists haven’t.” He hesitated and, for a moment, his eyes met Cooper’s. “As I told someone just the other day, it’s a question every kindergartener asks: What happened before the Big Bang? The greatest minds in inflationary theory cannot answer that.”
“And you can?” Pavano replied.
“Not yet. But I believe my team and I will.”
“Then let me quote Susskind,” Lisa said, standing up now. “‘The field of physics is littered with the corpses of stubborn old men who didn’t know when to give up.’”
“You’re right, Lisa—I don’t give up easily.”