Physics in Canada / La Physique au Canada - 2010 (66.2)

Getting a Big Bang from String Theory

Author(s)
Cliff Burgess
Institution
McMaster University / Perimeter Institute

An early inflationary epoch of accelerated universal expansion could provide a simple explanation for the initial conditions required by observations for a Hot Big Bang cosmology. String theory provides our best understood candidate for the physics relevant to the very short distances required. Might the very early universe provide our first observational window onto a stringy universe?