Seminar series
Date
Fri, 06 Mar 2015
16:30
Location
L1
Speaker
Prof. Yuri Manin
Organisation
Max Planck Institute and Northwestern University

Based upon our joint work with M. Marcolli, I will introduce some algebraic geometric models in cosmology related to the "boundaries" of space-time: Big Bang, Mixmaster Universe, and Roger Penrose's crossovers between aeons. We suggest to model the kinematics of Big Bang using the algebraic geometric (or analytic) blow up of a point $x$. This creates a boundary  which consists of the projective space of tangent directions to $x$ and possibly of the light cone of $x$. We argue that time on the boundary undergoes the Wick rotation and becomes purely imaginary. The Mixmaster (Bianchi IX) model of the early history of the universe is neatly explained in this picture by postulating that the reverse Wick rotation follows a hyperbolic geodesic connecting imaginary time axis to the real one. Roger Penrose's idea to see the Big Bang as a sign of crossover from "the end of the previous aeon" of the expanding and cooling Universe to the "beginning of the next aeon" is interpreted as an identification of a natural boundary of Minkowski space at infinity with the Bing Bang boundary.

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