Have We Found The Universe That Existed Before The Big Bang?
Saturday, November 20, 2010 ;)
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The current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But a legendary physicist says he's found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos.
The Big Bang model holds that everything that now comprises the universe was once concentrated in a single point of near-infinite density. Before this singularity exploded and the universe began, there was absolutely nothing - indeed, it's not clear whether one can even use the term "before" in reference to a pre-Big-Bang cosmos, as time itself may not have existed yet. In the current model, the universe began with the Big Bang, underwent cosmic inflation for a fraction of a second, then settled into the much more gradual expansion that is still going on, and likely will end with the universe as an infinitely expanded, featureless cosmos.
Sir Roger Penrose, one of the most renowned physicists of the last fifty years, takes issue with this view. He points out that the universe was apparently born in a very low state of entropy, meaning a very high degree of order initially existed, and this is what made the complex matter we see all around us (and are composed of) possible in the first place. His objection is that the Big Bang model can't explain why such a low entropy state existed, and he believes he has a solution - that the universe is just one of many in a cyclical chain, with each Big Bang starting up a new universe in place of the one before.
How does this help? Well, Penrose posits the end of each universe will involve a return to low entropy. This is because black holes suck in all the matter, energy, and information they encounter, which works to remove entropy from our universe. (Where that entropy might go is another question entirely.) The universe's continued expansion into eventual nothingness causes the black holes themselves to evaporate, which ultimately leaves the universe in a highly ordered state once again, ready to contract into another singularity and set off the next Big Bang.
As alternative theories go, it's not without its merits, but there's no evidence to support it...until now. He says he's found evidence for his ideas in the cosmic microwave background, the microwave radiation that permeates the universe and was thought to have formed 300,000 years after the Big Bang, providing a record of the universe at that far distant time. Penrose and his colleague Vahe Gurzadyan have discovered clear concentric circles within the data, which suggests regions of the radiation have much smaller temperature ranges than elsewhere.
So what does that mean? Penrose believes these circles are windows into the previous universe, spherical ripples left behind by the gravitational effects of colliding black holes in the previous universe. He also says these circles don't work well at all in the current inflationary model, which holds all temperature variations in the CMB should be truly random.
Here's where the fun begins. If the circles are really there and are really doing what Penrose says they're doing, then he's managed to overthrow the standard inflationary model. But there's a long way to go between where we are now and that point, assuming it ever happens.
The inflationary model has become the consensus for a good reason - it's the best explanation we've got for the universe we have now - and so cosmologists will examine any results that appear to disprove it very critically. There are also a couple key assumptions in Penrose's theory, particularly that all particles will lose their mass towards the end of the universe. Right now, we don't know whether that will actually happen - in particular, there's no proof that electrons ever decay.
Shutterstock image by Kim D. French
Reader Comments (95)
The inflationary theory just fits the evidence. That does not mean it is the correct one. A lot of cosmological science is based on physical theories that that are assumed to be correct due to being correct in observations close at hand, on Earth and in near space. You can hypotize all you want, but lacking any evidence, i.e. a way to test the hypothesis, it's all a bunch of academic hogwash. The scientific method has uncovered the quarks, but we need a simpler explanation, like the string theories, but until it's proven it's nothing but hypotheses. String theory isn't a theory in the scientific sense, like the theory of evolution, it's just a bunch of mathematics that with right parameters gives us something like our universe.
where is my cat ?
Your cat is with me ; )
P.s. she is fine: )
With love
Friend of Jim
I've had the same thought that our universe is cyclical; exploding, dissipating and then exploding and expanding once again. It’s like an amusement park ride for consciousness.
@friend of jim
i am much relieved vis a vis cat.i had feared that she had been abducted by one of them shroedinger,dead cat in a box,types.i'd like your re assurance that you have NOT been putting her in a sealed box.she hates not knowing whether she is alive or not.any how,portal her back ,i have a reassembler.
The universe truly is mysterious. I think what they need to concentrate on is how to increase or natural resources again or finding a new planet because our resources are depleting rapidly.
The big crunch theory: another lazy way to interpret the universe's origin. Certainly even if the universe is cyclical, it would need a point of origin, to me it seems like people who have accepted the inflation theory have also accepted it as an excuse for not looking for the universe's origin (arguing indefinite cyclicalness?) I am not a math guy but I have heard this concept that time, along with everything else was a part of this singularity and didn't exist until the big bang. Time didn't exist before the big bang? Mathematically, I'm sure that makes a lot of sense, but logically it doesn't. I think we put too much into the mathematical aspect of figuring out the universe. So what if we find that unified theory and connect the quantum and macro world? Will we be any closer to finding out answers to questions such as this? Maybe when we have mastered time travel...
Lets not forget friends, the numbers that you reject as being speculation are the same number that support your "empirical" evidence as well. I don't think any of us would agree that our senses are perfect enough to grasp the physical concepts that numbers allow us to comprehend. Laws are simply grounded on our predictions that reality won't change one moment to the next. Any conception, scientific or not, made about the objective reality comes from the subjective and therefore is just as much speculation as you might assume that alternate realities and parallel universes might be. The idea of empiricism as the sole method scientific thought is the hogwash. The universe purely as sense experience is unfalsifiable and unscientific by definition, but we somehow hold on to this idea that the universe can only physically exist. It is an exclusive form of thought that refuses any idea that is beyond our current capacity to understand and has made our exploration into the mysteries of the universe stale.
THAT'S A GOD DAMN LIE! THAT GUY ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT HAVE YOUR CAT!
@ghosst there is nothing illogical in time not existing before the big bang. Just because you don't grok it doesn't make it illogical, just hard to grasp.
Hell, I'm not *really* sure, but I think there can even be *multiple* times if you go high enough on the dimension-o-meter. It's all math up there, and we're not evolved to grasp it easily.
i believe that evrything follows the same laws. if stars collapse to black holes sometimes. then the universe will collapse eventually too. if the universe is expanding and cooling at the same time what happens when it finally cools. then maybe it will collapse and become a mega black hole or whatever the big bang was. it kind of makes sense. i agree math is making things complicated some logic has to be involved. look around you. scenrios on earth are found outside our solar system. look at stuff at a mocule level and stuff starts looking like our solar system and galaxy. i do kind of like the multi verse theory but thats hard to imagine. i also think that more research with vaccums need to be done.
he has my cat and he also does not have my cat..
that may work in science but not in a court of law.
as for keeping the cat in a box whilst travelling at light speed,
cavalier and negligent.
please return cat and none of this will have happenned.
@Chris
What you said is right on the money. Sounds like you have either taken a philosophy class or you're just smart! We're bound to our senses (without technology that is), but we seem to forget that. There's much more in play then what we can sense. The universe is full of mystery.
i hate how scientist claim they found shit when they have no solid proof to support it.
they're just as bad as christfags in that respect
so either everything poofed into existence from a magical infinate speck of nothing, that was floating in nothing, before time.
or
a magical sky wizard poofed everything up because he was bored
people just need to face the fact that we WILL NEVER trully know what created the universe, because we simply cannot look back with 100% certainty. all we can do is guess and compare notes.
thats why im agnostic- "I dont pretend to know what so many ignorant men are sure of"
Do the Big-bang that we know must be the begin?
i say No
What we see at the second before the Big-bang?
I say, it's a Star!
:)
I'm sick of you guys using me! I'm done.
You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a muzzle for a cat...
@XD
in the 7th. dimension you can get one online.but not made to measure.same old measure/position impasse.
is dark matter/energy , by intervening,creating the red shift.? the further the object is the more intervening .
thus higher shift number.an illusion ?
What the hell is all this!? Why do we even exist?! Why is there something even asking a question?! AHHHHHHH!!!! I want to die because the mystery is too overwhelming! It doesn't even make sense that we're here in the first place.