Image Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi This post is actually an extension of a previous post from a few days ago. In that post I talked about the inflationary model of the universe, if you wish to refer back to that post to better understand this post then feel free to do that. Sometime after Alan Guth had proposed the inflationary model, another scientist, named Andrei Linde, proposed an extension of the inflationary model. Called eternal inflation, this idea states that some regions of the universe continue to inflate today, and that this process of inflation actually continues forever at least in some regions. This idea actually gave rise to one of the most remarkable multiverse theories. The inflationary multiverse. To understand how this multiverse works, we must first understand a very fundamental concept in science: fields. I'm sure most of us our familiar with this concept but I'll describe it anyway just in case. Here's a pretty simple example of a field that most of us encounter: a magnetic field. A magnet generates a magnetic field. You can think of this field as a kind of 'mist' that exists in the space around the magnet. Some objects are attracted to the magnetic field and thus stick to the magnet. And magnetic fields aren't the only fields. There's electric fields, and even particles create their own fields. Quark fields for example or the Higgs field. This idea, when applied to inflation, gives rise to what scientists call the inflaton field. Eternal inflation states that there exists an eternally expanding space, and that this space is filled with the inflaton field. This inflaton field harbours large amounts of potential energy. To get a better idea of how this works, imagine a ball on top of a very large and pointy mountain. Because of the balls position, a scientist would say that the ball contains potential energy. Now let's assume that there's an earthquake which knocks the ball off of the mountain, sending it rolling down. Now a scientist would say that the ball contains kinetic energy. The potential energy of the ball has been converted to kinetic energy due to its motion down the mountain. (Second comment below 👇👇👇) - December 27, 2015 at 12:55AM Source: https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xpf1/t51.2885-15/e35/10467957_817298998397009_383411055_n.jpg

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