After the great success of 2026-04-25 A visit to Halley Observatory, Aeron was very eager to attend the next lecture there.
That turned out to be this lecture by Anne van Weerden: The Inflationary Universe. This is what the site had to say:
Anne van Weerden is a board member of the astronomy and meteorology society Galaxis and holds a bachelor’s degree in physics. As a biographer of the mathematician and astronomer Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865), she is a guest researcher at the Mathematical Institute of Utrecht University, and now retired, she volunteers to maintain the paper mathematics library.
The Big Bang theory is a strong theory for the origin of the universe. Many pieces of evidence have been found for its validity, such as the cosmic microwave background radiation. But unfortunately, the theory also has a few troublesome problems. In the 1980s, the inflationary model was developed to resolve those problems. The idea was that the universe expanded enormously in a very short period of time, growing from the size of a proton to the size of a grapefruit.
That brief period would have lasted 10^-43 seconds, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001s!
A grapefruit is of course not very large, especially not for a universe. So it might not seem “staggering” at first — until you consider what 10^-43 seconds actually means; it all happened incredibly fast! This theory was called the inflationary model, and the universe it described “the inflationary universe”. This model resolved the key problems of the Big Bang theory, but unfortunately introduced new ones of its own.
In this presentation, only the first, original version of the theory will be discussed.
It seemed pretty clear to me that this would go completely over Aeron’s (and my 🙈) head. But Aeron was adamant: I want to go and I’ll understand it just fine.
Well, at that point you can either pick a fight with the kid, or let him find out for himself. I was of course just as curious about the lecture and whether I’d be able to follow it (enough). So, off we went to Halley Observatory again!
The presentation was fortunately very enjoyable. It contained a lot of (complex) physics and mathematics, but Anne managed to explain the important parts of intricate formulas and equations in broad strokes, so that you continuously had a sense of what was actually being expressed without truly understanding it. That was tremendously pleasant. She presented highly complex material in such a way that you kept feeling like you more or less got it.
When very difficult or challenging questions came from the audience, she held her own remarkably well — that struck me. She knew everything about everything, could explain things brilliantly, and always went more than deep enough into the subject to give concrete answers to curious audience members.
What was particularly lovely was how she narrated the journey towards knowledge and understanding in this field. How the great scientists made their contributions — their questions, their assumptions, their mistakes and breakthroughs. That narrative made the entire presentation more than just engaging, continually complemented with facts, analogies, and explanations that made you suddenly grasp just how vast, complex, or sometimes surprisingly straightforward certain steps and assumptions really are.
For everything she covered, she was also remarkably good at naming the associated problems and challenges in science. She showed where current gaps — or potential gaps — exist, where additions or perhaps even entirely different theories might be needed. This made the field feel far more open to me than I had previously assumed.
As a layperson, it often feels as though everything is more or less understood and there are just a few loose ends to tie up. But it became clear that while we know and understand a great deal, there is still so much more to learn and understand.
This was also immediately an invitation for Aeron to realize that there is still a lot of work to be done here, and this is not a subject where we already know everything.
As you can see, we both enjoyed it thoroughly. The hall was quite full too. It was clear that there was more than enough interest in this topic.
A few photos from the presentation (shared with the presenter’s permission):
