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Essay Abstract
The future differs from the past: it has more entropy. No theoretical framework including inflation has yet provided a dynamical origin for this elementary fact, the thermodynamic arrow of time. I argue that by weakening the strength or range of gravity at early times, one can find a natural way to obtain the smooth conditions present in the early universe.
Author Bio
Maulik Parikh is a theoretical high-energy physicist. He did his bachelor's at the University of California at Berkeley followed by a PhD in physics from Princeton University. After post-doctoral stints at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and at Columbia University, he is now faculty at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in India. In 2004 he won the Gravity Research Foundation essay competition for a paper he wrote on black holes.