What happened in the very first moments of the universe, around 13 billion years ago? Many researchers believe that, at the beginning, the cosmos went through a phase of extremely rapid expansion: the cosmic inflation. This can explain why the universe is remarkably uniform while at the same time exhibiting a rich variety of structures.
At this Café & Kosmos evening, Dr. Sebastian Zell (Max Planck Institute for Physics & Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) will talk about what we know about the earliest moments of the universe - and where the limits of our knowledge lie. He will explain why inflation can be regarded as the trigger of the Big Bang and how observations suggest that the entire structure of the universe - from galaxies to the Earth - emerged from tiny quantum fluctuations.