Alexander Vilenkin, a Soviet Jewish scientist who later fled to the United States at Tufts University, proposed the theory of eternal inflation. While studying physics at the University of Kharkiv, Vilenkin refused an offer of employment from the KGB, ultimately being barred from pursuing a master’s degree. He was subsequently drafted into a construction brigade and later worked at the state zoo as a night watchman, conducting physics research in his spare time. In 1976, Vilenkin emigrated to the United States as a Jewish refugee, earning his PhD from SUNY Buffalo. His work has been featured in numerous newspaper and magazine articles in the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan, as well as in several best-selling books. In 1982, Paul Steinhardt presented the first model of eternal inflation; Vilenkin demonstrated that eternal inflation is generic. Furthermore, working with Arvind Borde and Alan Guth, he developed the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, proving that a period of inflation must have a beginning and that a period of time must precede it. Vilenkin discovered that nothing can transform into a microscopic De Sitter space, which Guth’s inflation then vastly expands. Nothing, filled with vacuum energy, is potentially capable of creating a universe as vast and complex as ours, and perhaps even a multiverse. Nothing creates the universe. The secret is a perfect cancellation between the positive contribution of vacuum energy and the negative contribution of gravitational energy. Despite appearances, in the universe all conserved physical quantities, including energy, add up to zero. Perhaps nothing is the explanation for everything.
