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82-401: Inflation was found to be inevitably eternal , creating an infinity of different universes with typically different properties, suggesting that the properties of the observable universe are a matter of chance. An alternative concept that included a Big Bounce was conceived as a predictive and falsifiable possible solution to the horizon problem. Investigation continued as of 2022. The concept of

164-502: A Bachelor of Science in nursing, and post-baccalaureate certificates in geographic information systems and applied behavior analysis. Penn State is a state-related university and a member of Pennsylvania's Commonwealth System of Higher Education . While it receives funding from the Commonwealth and is connected to the state through its board of trustees, however, it is otherwise independent and not subject to any direct control by

246-683: A U.S. Congressman from Bellefonte , donated 200 acres (0.8 km ) of land in Centre County to the newly-established Farmers High School of Pennsylvania , representing the first of 10,101 acres (41 km ) the school eventually acquired. The same year, on February 22, the Pennsylvania General Assembly designated the school a degree-granting institution. Initially sponsored by the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society,

328-440: A given inflaton value; now there are nine mini-universes that have a slightly larger inflaton value. (Of course, there are also eleven mini-universes where the inflaton value is slightly lower than it originally was.) Each mini-universe with the larger inflaton field value restarts a similar round of approximate self-reproduction within itself. (The mini-universes with lower inflaton values may also reproduce, unless its inflaton value

410-496: A higher rate of inflation expand faster and dominate the universe, despite the natural tendency of inflation to end in other regions. This allows inflation to continue forever, to produce future-eternal inflation. As a simplified example, suppose that during inflation, the natural decay rate of the inflaton field is slow compared to the effect of quantum fluctuation. When a mini-universe inflates and "self-reproduces" into, say, twenty causally-disconnected mini-universes of equal size to

492-436: A hot expanding universe. The basic idea was to have a continuous "slow-roll" or slow evolution from false vacuum to true without making any bubbles. The improved model was called "new inflation." In 1983, Paul Steinhardt was the first to show that this "new inflation" does not have to end everywhere. Instead, it might only end in a finite patch or a hot bubble full of matter and radiation, and that inflation continues in most of

574-483: A large scale). The basic idea was that the universe underwent a period of rapidly accelerating expansion a few instants after the Big Bang. He offered a mechanism for causing the inflation to begin: false vacuum energy. Guth coined the term "inflation," and was the first to discuss the theory with other scientists worldwide. Guth's original formulation was problematic, as there was no consistent way to bring an end to

656-480: A location other than University Park. Each of the 19 commonwealth campuses offer a unique set of degree programs based on the student demographics. Any student in good academic standing is guaranteed a spot at University Park to finish his or her degree if required or desired, known as "change of campus" or, more accurately, "the 2+2 program"; where a Penn State student may start at any Penn State campus, including University Park, for two years and finish at any Penn State

738-666: A long history of student governance. Elected student leaders remain directly involved in the decision-making of the university administration, as provided for in the board of trustees' standing orders. There are four student governments recognized by the university administration: the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA), the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG), and

820-532: A misdemeanor count of recklessly endangering another person. The largest of the university's 24 campuses, Penn State University Park is located in State College and College Township in Centre County , in central Pennsylvania . Its dedicated ZIP Code is 16802. With an undergraduate acceptance rate of 49 percent, it is the most selective campus in the Penn State system. The university ranks among

902-406: A multiverse, but it's difficult. Every experiment that brings better credence to inflationary theory brings us much closer to hints that the multiverse is real." In 2018 the late Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog published a paper in which the need for an infinite multiverse vanishes as Hawking says their theory gives universes which are "reasonably smooth and globally finite". The theory uses

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984-510: A pledge of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity located off-campus in State College , died while undergoing hazing activities at the fraternity. Eighteen members of Penn State's Beta Theta Pi fraternity were initially charged in connection with Piazza's death, and the fraternity was closed and banned indefinitely. In July 2024, the fraternity President and Vice President & Pledge Master each pleaded guilty to 14 misdemeanor counts of hazing and

1066-574: A previously existing universe collapses not to a singularity, but to a point where the quantum effects of gravity become so strongly repulsive that the universe rebounds back out, forming a new branch. Throughout this collapse and bounce, the evolution is unitary. Bojowald also claimed that some properties of the universe that collapsed to form ours can be determined; however, other properties are not determinable due to some uncertainty principle . This result has been disputed by different groups, which show that due to restrictions on fluctuations stemming from

1148-567: A report by former U.S. Senator and athletics integrity monitor George J. Mitchell citing progress by Penn State in implementing reforms, the NCAA repealed the sanctions. On January 16, 2015, all previous Penn State football records were restored. An investigation led by former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh , who the Paterno family retained to review the Freeh report, concluded that

1230-487: A revised English-language translation of a Russian-language book (by a different title), and in a 1991 English-language article by Priester and Blome in Astronomy and Astrophysics . The phrase originated as the title of a novel by Elmore Leonard in 1969, shortly after increased public awareness of the Big Bang model with of the discovery of the cosmic microwave background by Penzias and Wilson in 1965. The idea of

1312-458: A school of international affairs, with the first classes admitted in the fall 2008 semester. The school is part of Penn State Law. Formerly the school of nursing, on September 25, 2013, the board of trustees granted the nursing program college status. The 32-member board of trustees governs the university. Its members include the university's president, the Governor of the Commonwealth , and

1394-411: A strong and vocal opponent of the theory. He argued that the multiverse represented a breakdown of the inflationary theory, because, in a multiverse, any outcome is equally possible, so inflation makes no predictions and, hence, is untestable. Consequently, he argued, inflation fails a key condition for a scientific theory . Both Linde and Guth, however, continued to support the inflationary theory and

1476-450: A viable theory, and the resulting existence of a multiverse is "still very much an open question that will require much deeper investigation". In 1983, it was shown that inflation could be eternal, leading to a multiverse in which space is broken up into bubbles or patches whose properties differ from patch to patch spanning all physical possibilities. Paul Steinhardt, who produced the first example of eternal inflation, eventually became

1558-430: A yield rate of 14%. The university started test-optional admissions with the fall 2021 incoming class. Of the 33% of incoming students in 2023 who submitted SAT scores, the interquartile range was 1230–1390; of the 6% of incoming students in 2023 who submitted ACT scores, the interquartile range was 27–32. Of all matriculating students, the average high school GPA was 3.67. Penn State's freshman retention rate

1640-708: Is 92%, with 85% going on to graduate within six years. Pennsylvania State University Park is a college-sponsor of the National Merit Scholarship Program and sponsored five Merit Scholarship awards in 2020. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 16 incoming freshman students were National Merit Scholars . Penn State is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education . The Smeal College of Business , The Sam and Irene Black School of Business , Penn State Harrisburg , and Penn State Great Valley are accredited by

1722-729: Is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU). The university has two law schools : Penn State Law on the school's University Park campus and Penn State Dickinson Law in Carlisle . The College of Medicine is in Hershey . The university maintains 19 commonwealth campuses and five special mission campuses located across Pennsylvania. The university competes in the Big Ten Conference in Division I of

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1804-408: Is delegated by the president to other administrative departments, the faculty, and the student body. Neeli Bendapudi became the university's 19th and current president on May 9, 2022, upon the departure of Eric J. Barron . The executive vice president and provost is the chief academic officer of the university. The current provost, Nicholas P. Jones, assumed office on July 1, 2013. Penn State has

1886-659: Is due south of Interstate 80 . Before the arrival of the Interstates, University Park was a short distance from the Lock Haven – Altoona branch line of the Pennsylvania Railroad . The last run of long-distance trains from Buffalo or Harrisburg through Lock Haven was in 1971. Today, the nearest Amtrak passenger rail access is in Tyrone , 25 miles to the southwest. Intercity bus service to University Park

1968-416: Is generic. Alan Guth 's 2007 paper, "Eternal inflation and its implications", states that under reasonable assumptions "Although inflation is generically eternal into the future, it is not eternal into the past." Guth detailed what was known about the subject at the time, and demonstrated that eternal inflation was still considered the likely outcome of inflation, more than 20 years after eternal inflation

2050-590: Is hard to explain so soon after the Big Bang, such as ULAS J1342+0928 , may be evidence for a Big Bounce, with these supermassive black holes being formed before the Big Bounce. According to a study published in Physical Review Letters in May 2023, the Big Bounce should have left marks in the primordial light, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), but comparing observations conducted by

2132-480: Is provided by Fullington Trailways , Greyhound Lines , Megabus , and OurBus . The State College Regional Airport , serving two regional airlines adn t, is near University Park. In addition to the University Park campus, 19 campus locations throughout the commonwealth of Pennsylvania offer enrollment for undergraduate students. Over 60 percent of Penn State first-year students begin their education at

2214-437: Is small enough that the region drops out of inflation and ceases self-reproduction.) This process continues indefinitely; nine high-inflaton mini-universes might become 81, then 729... Thus, there is eternal inflation. In 1980, quantum fluctuations were suggested by Viatcheslav Mukhanov and Gennady Chibisov in the context of a model of modified gravity by Alexei Starobinsky to be possible seeds for forming galaxies. In

2296-510: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). The university offers an accelerated Premedical - Medical Program in cooperation with Sidney Kimmel Medical College . Students in the program spend two or three years at the university before attending medical school at Jefferson. The Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked Penn State between 101 and 150th among universities globally and between 42nd and 56th nationally for 2020. U.S. News & World Report ranked

2378-459: The BKL instability is unstable to the growth of anisotropic stress, which is resolved in this theory. Moreover, curvature perturbations seeded in matter contraction can form a nearly scale-invariant primordial power spectrum and thus provide a consistent mechanism to explain the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations. A few sources argue that distant supermassive black holes whose large size

2460-558: The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not require the undergraduate students be allowed to participate in the selection of trustees. As of 2013 , the chair of the board of trustees is Keith E. Masser, a graduate of Penn State and the chairman and chief executive officer of Sterman Masser, Inc. The board's main responsibilities are to select the president of Penn State, determine

2542-543: The NCAA for most of its athletic teams, known collectively as the Penn State Nittany Lions . Since its founding, Penn State has won 82 national collegiate team championships, including 54 NCAA titles across all sports, and Penn State students, alumni, faculty, and coaches have won a total of 74 Olympic medals , including 20 gold medals. Pennsylvania State University was founded in 1855 when James Irvin ,

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2624-598: The Planck satellite with the simulated CMB in the case the Universe bounced on itself only once, that particular bounce signature was not found. Eternal inflation Eternal inflation is a hypothetical inflationary universe model, which is itself an outgrowth or extension of the Big Bang theory. According to eternal inflation, the inflationary phase of the universe's expansion lasts forever throughout most of

2706-494: The holographic principle to define an 'exit plane' from the timeless state of eternal inflation. The universes which are generated on the plane are described using a redefinition of the no-boundary wavefunction - in fact the theory requires a boundary at the beginning of time. Stated simply Hawking says that their findings "imply a significant reduction of the multiverse" which as the University of Cambridge points out, makes

2788-492: The horizon problem , which questioned how distant regions of the universe could have identical properties without ever being in light-like communication. A solution was proposed to be a period of exponential expansion of space in the early universe, which formed the basis of what became known as inflation theory . Following the brief inflationary period, the universe continues to expand at a slower rate. Various formulations of inflation theory and their detailed implications became

2870-417: The torsion tensor , as a dynamical variable. The minimal coupling between torsion and Dirac spinors generates a spin-spin interaction which is significant in fermionic matter at extremely high densities. Such an interaction avoids the unphysical Big Bang singularity, replacing it with a cusp-like bounce at a finite minimum scale factor, before which the universe was contracting. This scenario also explains why

2952-403: The Big Bounce envisions the Big Bang as the beginning of a period of expansion that followed a period of contraction. In this view, one could talk of a " Big Crunch " followed by a "Big Bang" or, more simply, a "Big Bounce". This concept suggests that we could exist at any point in an infinite sequence of universes, or conversely, the current universe could be the very first iteration. However, if

3034-490: The Chaotic Inflation theory or eternal inflation. New inflation does not produce a perfectly symmetric universe due to quantum fluctuations during inflation. The fluctuations cause the energy and matter density to be different at different points in space. Quantum fluctuations in the hypothetical inflaton field produce changes in the rate of expansion that are responsible for eternal inflation. Those regions with

3116-574: The Nuffield Workshop only focused on the average fluctuations, whose magnitude is too small to affect inflation. However, beginning with the examples presented by Steinhardt and Vilenkin, the same quantum physics was later shown to produce occasional large fluctuations that increase the rate of inflation and keep inflation going eternally. In analyzing the Planck Satellite data from 2013, Anna Ijjas and Paul Steinhardt showed that

3198-525: The World Campus Student Government Association (WCSGA). The University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) is the representative student government of the undergraduate students at Penn State's University Park campus, which was established in 2006 after the former student government, Undergraduate Student Government (USG), lost its recognition by way of a student referendum. Graduate and professional students at

3280-569: The behavior of quantum foam changes. All the so-called fundamental physical constants , including the speed of light in vacuum, need not remain constant during a Big Crunch, especially in the time interval smaller than that in which measurement may never be possible (one unit of Planck time , roughly 10 seconds) spanning or bracketing the point of inflection. Big Bounce models were endorsed on largely aesthetic grounds by cosmologists including Willem de Sitter , Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker , George McVittie, and George Gamow (who stressed that "from

3362-534: The case of spatial curvature, cosmological constant, anisotropies, and Fock quantized inhomogeneities. Martin Bojowald , an assistant professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University, published a study in July 2007 detailing work related to loop quantum gravity that claimed to mathematically solve the time before the Big Bang, which would give new weight to the oscillatory universe and Big Bounce theories. One of

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3444-420: The condition of the interval phase "between bounces"—considered the "hypothesis of the primeval atom"—is taken into full contingency, such enumeration may be meaningless because that condition could represent a singularity in time at each instance if such perpetual repeats (cycles) were absolute and undifferentiated. The main idea behind the quantum theory of a Big Bounce is that, as density approaches infinity,

3526-520: The context of inflation, quantum fluctuations were first analyzed at the three-week 1982 Nuffield Workshop on the Very Early Universe at Cambridge University. The average strength of the fluctuations was first calculated by four groups working separately over the course of the workshop: Stephen Hawking ; Starobinsky; Guth and So-Young Pi ; and James M. Bardeen , Paul Steinhardt and Michael Turner . The early calculations derived at

3608-524: The existence of a big bounce in the very early universe has found diverse support in works based on loop quantum gravity . In loop quantum cosmology , a branch of loop quantum gravity, the big bounce was first discovered in February 2006 for isotropic and homogeneous models by Abhay Ashtekar , Tomasz Pawlowski , and Parampreet Singh at Pennsylvania State University . This result has been generalized to various other models by different groups, and includes

3690-445: The final two years. In 1998, the university launched Penn State World Campus , or Penn State Online, which offers more than 60 online education programs, degrees, and certificates. Distance education has a long history at Penn State, one of the first universities in the country to offer a correspondence course for remote farmers in 1892. Examples of online programs include an MBA , a master of professional studies in homeland security,

3772-465: The goals and strategic direction of the university, and approve the annual budget. Regular meetings of the board are held bi-monthly and take place primarily on the University Park campus, although on occasion meetings are held at other locations within the Commonwealth. The university president is selected by the board and is given the authority for actual control of the university, including day-to-day management. In practice, part of this responsibility

3854-526: The incidents. Freeh released his findings in July 2012, concluding that Paterno, Spanier, Curley, and Schultz "conceal[ed] Sandusky's activities from the board of trustees, the university community and authorities" and "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade". On July 23, 2012, the National Collegiate Athletic Association levied sanctions against Penn State for its role in

3936-563: The inflationary epoch and end up with the hot, isotropic , homogeneous universe observed today. Although the false vacuum could decay into empty "bubbles" of "true vacuum" that expanded at the speed of light, the empty bubbles could not coalesce to reheat the universe, because they could not keep up with the remaining inflating universe. In 1982, this " graceful exit problem " was solved independently by Andrei Linde and by Andreas Albrecht and Paul J. Steinhardt who showed how to end inflation without making empty bubbles and, instead, end up with

4018-425: The jurisdiction to pass down the original sanctions. Subsequent emails, brought forward under subpoena, quoted an NCAA vice president, who wrote, "I characterized our approach to PSU as a bluff when talking to Mark [Emmert, NCAA president]...He basically agreed [because] I think he understands that if we made this an enforcement issue, we may win the immediate battle but lose the war." On September 8, 2014, following

4100-711: The limited growth in state appropriations to Penn State, the university has concentrated its efforts on philanthropy (2003 marked the end of the Grand Destiny campaign—a seven-year effort that raised over $ 1.3 billion). In 2011, the university and its football program garnered international media attention and criticism in a sex abuse scandal in which university officials were alleged to have covered up incidents of child sexual abuse by former football team defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky . Athletic director Timothy Curley and Gary Schultz, senior vice president for finance and business, were indicted for perjury. In

4182-631: The lyrics in the Penn State Alma Mater were revised to be gender-neutral in honor of International Women's Year ; the revised lyrics were taken from the posthumously published autobiography of the writer of the original lyrics, Fred Lewis Pattee. Professor Patricia Farrell acted as a spokesperson for those who wanted the change. In 1989, the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport became affiliated with

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4264-418: The main problems with the Big Bang theory is that there is a singularity of zero volume and infinite energy at the moment of the Big Bang. This is normally interpreted as a breakdown of physics as we know it; in this case, of the theory of general relativity . This is why one expects quantum effects to become important and avoid a singularity. However, research in loop quantum cosmology purported to show that

4346-482: The most selective schools in Pennsylvania , according to various publications. During the fall 2018 semester, 40,363 undergraduate students and 5,907 graduate students were enrolled at University Park. Of those, 46.5 percent were female and 42.4 percent were non-Pennsylvania residents. The University Park campus is centrally located at the junction of Interstate 99 / U.S. Route 220 and U.S. Route 322 , and

4428-440: The multiverse. Guth declared: It's hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse. It's not impossible, so I think there's still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking the idea of a multiverse seriously. According to Linde, "It's possible to invent models of inflation that do not allow

4510-534: The nation's ten largest engineering schools . A major road in State College was later named in Atherton's honor. Penn State's Atherton Hall, a well-furnished and centrally located residence hall, was named after George Atherton's wife, Frances Washburn Atherton. In the 20th century, Penn State grew significantly, becoming the largest grantor of baccalaureate degrees in Pennsylvania . In 1936, its enrollment reached 5,000. Around this time, Ralph D. Hetzel ,

4592-406: The original mini-universe, perhaps nine of the new mini-universes will have a larger, rather than smaller, average inflaton field value than the original mini-universe, because they inflated from regions of the original mini-universe where quantum fluctuation pushed the inflaton value up more than the slow inflation decay rate brought the inflaton value down. Originally there was one mini-universe with

4674-438: The physical point of view we must forget entirely about the precollapse period"). By the early 1980s, the advancing precision and scope of observational cosmology had revealed that the large-scale structure of the universe is flat , homogeneous , and isotropic , a finding later accepted as the cosmological principle to apply at scales beyond roughly 300 million light-years . This led cosmologists to seek an explanation to

4756-422: The present Universe at the largest scales appears spatially flat, homogeneous, and isotropic, providing a physical alternative to cosmic inflation. In 2012, a new theory of a nonsingular Big Bounce was constructed within the frame of standard Einstein gravity. This theory combines the benefits of matter bounce and ekpyrotic cosmology . Particularly, in the homogeneous and isotropic background cosmological solution,

4838-504: The quantum fluctuations are modeled as Gaussian white noise. They showed that in this popular scenario, eternal inflation in fact cannot be eternal, and the random noise leads to spacetime being filled with singularities. This was demonstrated by showing that solutions to the Einstein field equations diverge in a finite time. Their paper therefore concluded that the theory of eternal inflation based on random quantum fluctuations would not be

4920-612: The report that placed so much blame on Penn State and Paterno was a "rush to injustice" that could not be relied upon. He found that not only did the evidence "fall far short" of showing Paterno attempted to conceal the Sandusky scandal, but rather that "the contrary is true". In November 2014, Pennsylvania State Senator Jake Corman released further emails that showed "regular and substantive" contact between NCAA officials and Freeh's investigators, suggesting that Freeh's conclusions were orchestrated. On February 2, 2017, Timothy Piazza,

5002-454: The scandal, penalizing the Penn State football program with a $ 60 million fine, a ban from bowl games and post-season play for four years, reducing its scholarships from 25 to 15 annually for four years, vacating of all Penn State football wins from 1998 to 2011, and placing the program on a five-year probationary period. Following imposition of the NCAA sanctions, emails surfaced indicating that high-level NCAA officials did not believe they had

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5084-529: The school's name was changed to the Pennsylvania State College . By 1875, enrollment fell to 64 undergraduates, and the school attempted to balance its primary focus on agricultural studies with classic education . In 1882, George W. Atherton was named the school's president; Atherton set about broadening the curriculum beyond its agricultural focus. The school developed an engineering studies program that immediately became one of

5166-476: The school's president, established a commonwealth of colleges to provide an alternative for Depression -era students who were economically unable to leave home to attend college. In 1953, President Milton S. Eisenhower , the brother of then- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower , sought and won permission to elevate the school to university status, and it assumed its current name, The Pennsylvania State University . Under Eisenhower's successor, Eric A. Walker ,

5248-425: The simplest textbook inflationary models were eliminated and that the remaining models require exponentially more tuned starting conditions, more parameters to be adjusted, and less inflation. Later Planck observations reported in 2015 confirmed these conclusions. A 2014 paper by Kohli and Haslam called into question the viability of the eternal inflation theory, by analyzing Linde's chaotic inflation theory in which

5330-483: The state Secretaries of Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources, and Education. The other members include six trustees appointed by the Governor, nine elected by alumni, and six elected by Pennsylvania agricultural societies. Six additional trustees are elected by a board representing business and industry enterprises. Undergraduate students do not elect any trustees; the court case Benner v. Oswald ruled that

5412-594: The state. For the 2006–2007 fiscal year, the university received 9.7 percent of its budget from state appropriations, the lowest of the four state-related institutions in Pennsylvania. Penn State has eighteen colleges, including three at special-mission campuses. The University Park campus is organized into fourteen distinct colleges, plus the graduate school and the division of undergraduate studies: The university's board of trustees voted in January 2007 to create

5494-580: The subject of intense theoretical study. Without a compelling alternative, inflation became the leading solution to the horizon problem. The phrase "Big Bounce" appeared in scientific literature in 1987, when it was first used in the title of a pair of articles (in German) in Stern und Weltraum by Wolfgang Priester and Hans-Joachim Blome. It reappeared in 1988 in Iosif Rozental's Big Bang, Big Bounce ,

5576-436: The theory "predictive and testable" using gravitational wave astronomy . Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (commonly referred to as Penn State and sometimes by the acronym PSU ) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania , United States. Founded in 1855 as Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania , Penn State

5658-412: The uncertainty principle, there are strong constraints on the change in relative fluctuations across the bounce. While the existence of the Big Bounce has still to be demonstrated from loop quantum gravity, the robustness of its main features has been confirmed using exact results and several studies involving numerical simulations using high performance computing in loop quantum cosmology. In 2006, it

5740-495: The universe becomes identical with the Big Bang, resulting in a type of Big Crunch that becomes the next Big Bang, thus perpetuating the next cycle. In 2011, Nikodem Popławski showed that a nonsingular Big Bounce appears naturally in the Einstein–Cartan –Sciama–Kibble theory of gravity. This theory extends general relativity by removing a constraint of the symmetry of the affine connection and regarding its antisymmetric part,

5822-404: The universe while producing hot bubble after hot bubble along the way. Alexander Vilenkin showed that when quantum effects are properly included, this is actually generic to all new inflation models. Using ideas introduced by Steinhardt and Vilenkin, Andrei Linde published an alternative model of inflation in 1986 which used these ideas to provide a detailed description of what has become known as

5904-453: The universe. Because the regions expand exponentially rapidly, most of the volume of the universe at any given time is inflating. Eternal inflation, therefore, produces a hypothetically infinite multiverse , in which only an insignificant fractal volume ends inflation. Paul Steinhardt , one of the original researchers of the inflationary model, introduced the first example of eternal inflation in 1983, and Alexander Vilenkin showed that it

5986-644: The university acquired hundreds of acres of surrounding land, and enrollment nearly tripled. In 1967, the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center , a college of medicine and hospital, was established in Hershey with a $ 50 million gift from the Hershey Trust Company . In 1970s, the university became a state-related institution, leading to its membership in the Commonwealth System of Higher Education . In 1975,

6068-439: The university are represented by the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA), the oldest continuously existing student governance organization at Penn State. The 19 commonwealth campuses of the university are governed by the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG), formerly known as the Council of Branch Campus Student Governments (CBCSG). In 2019, the World Campus Student Government Association (WCSGA)

6150-557: The university tied for 63rd among national universities and tied for 23rd among public schools in the United States for 2021. In 2022, the university was ranked 96th in the QS World University Rankings . The 2021 "World University Rankings" by Times Higher Education ranked the university as the 114th best university in the world. The 2021 Global University Ranking by CWTS Leiden Ranking ranked

6232-419: The university. In 2000, Dickinson School of Law joined the Pennsylvania College of Technology in affiliating with the university. The university is now the largest in Pennsylvania, and in 2003, it was credited with having the second-largest impact on the state economy of any organization, generating an economic effect of over $ 17 billion on a budget of $ 2.5 billion. To offset the lack of funding due to

6314-605: The use of "college" or "university" was avoided in the school's naming since local Pennsylvanians perceived that such institutions were impractical in their curricula. In 1862, the school's name was changed to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania . The following year, in 1863, the Morrill Land-Grant Acts was passed by the U.S. Congress , and Pennsylvania selected the school to be the state's sole land-grant college. Two years later, in 1874,

6396-474: The wake of the scandal, Coach Joe Paterno was fired and school president Graham B. Spanier was forced to resign by the board of trustees . Sandusky, who maintained his innocence, was indicted and subsequently convicted in June 2012 on 45 counts for the abuse. A subcommittee of the board of trustees engaged former FBI director Louis Freeh to head an independent investigation on the university's handling of

6478-438: Was first introduced by Steinhardt. Inflation, or the inflationary universe theory, was originally developed as a way to overcome the few remaining problems with what was otherwise considered a successful theory of cosmology, the Big Bang model. In 1979, Alan Guth introduced the inflationary model of the universe to explain why the universe is flat and homogeneous (which refers to the smooth distribution of matter and radiation on

6560-705: Was formed to advocate for the interests and concerns of the more than 20,000 Penn State World Campus students. Admission to Penn State University Park is classified as "selective" by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education . The Princeton Review gives Penn State University Park an "Admissions Selectivity Rating" of 90 out of 99. In 2023, the university received 85,957 applications. It extended offers of admission to 46,605 applicants, or 54%, after holistic review that includes examination of academic rigor, performance and admissions test scores. 9,040 accepted students chose to enroll,

6642-418: Was named the state's first land-grant university eight years later, in 1863. Its primary campus, known as Penn State University Park , is located in State College and College Township . In addition to its land-grant designation, the university is a sea-grant , space-grant , and one of only six sun-grant universities. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and

6724-451: Was proposed that the application of loop quantum gravity techniques to Big Bang cosmology can lead to a bounce that need not be cyclic. In 2010, Roger Penrose advanced a general relativity-based theory which he called the " conformal cyclic cosmology ". The theory explains that the universe will expand until all matter decays and ultimately turns to light. Since nothing in the universe would have any time or distance scale associated with it,

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