Alan Guth developed one of the first models of inflationary cosmology, wherein our early universe was trapped in a so-called “false vacuum.” It could tunnel to a lower energy state by a process known as bubble nucleation, where bubbles of true vacuum could spontaneously be created and expand at the speed of light. Guth recognized that his model was somewhat problematic for several reasons; for instance, his model did not reheat properly because the necessary bubble collisions were exceedingly rare. In this video demonstration, you can look at a visual representation of what Guth’s first model predicted.

Click the demonstration to start.