"Was the Universe Created By A Big Bang?" -Several of the World's Leading Cosmologists Say "No"

 

"What banged?" Sean Carroll, CalTech -Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology & Physics

Several of the worlds leading astrophysicists believe there was no Big Bang that brought the universe and time into existence. Before the Big Bang, the standard theory assumes, there was no space, just nothing. Einstein merged the universe into a single entity: not space, not time, but spacetime.

Proponents of branes propose that we are trapped in a thin membrane of space-time embedded in a much larger cosmos from which neither light nor energy -except gravity- can escape or enter and that  that "dark matter" is just the rest of the universe that we can't see because light can't escape from or enter into our membrane from the great bulk of the universe. And our membrane may be only one of many, all of which may warp, connect, and collide with one another in as many as 10 dimensions -a new frontier physicists call the "brane world." Stephen Hawking, among others, envisions brane worlds perculating up out of the void, giving rise to whole new universes.

One of the most important space probes of the century is the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) launched in 2001 to measure the temperature differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiatiion -the 14-billion year old Big Bang's remnant radiant heat . The anisotropies then in turn are used to measure the universe's geometry, content, and evolution; and, perhaps most importantly, to test the Big Bang model, and the cosmic inflation theory. WMAP data seem to support a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no supportative data to date for Big Bang theory, although the results aren't sensitive enough to rule out the pervasive Big Bang/inflation model. 

The influence of gravitaional waves on polarization is different from that of overall energy distribution, so it should be possible to tell from polarization in the WMAP scans whether the variation is coming from contrasting energy density (heat) or gravitational waves that a Big Bang should have produced.

The world's leading astrophysicists are confidemt that with a sensitive enough probe such as that by the new Planck telescope with its more detailed CMB plots, that they can reduce the level of uncertainty low enough so that they can say definitively whether the gravitational waves that should have been created by the Big Bang as present.

If this next generation Planck Telescope shows that there is no onvious distortions caused by gravity waves, it will rule out the Big Bang plus inflation theory -an add-on theory that explains the phenomenal sudden expansion of space from a tiny point. In it's place will be new models that support what many leading cosmologists see as our universe to be proved to be one of just many in an eternal cycle of birth and rebirth.

Models of the universe that involve a bouncing brane or a Big Crunch rather than a start from scratch Big Bang predict much smaller gravity waves being produced than would come from a Big Bang. If the universe actually went through cycles of expansion and contraction, it is possible that the uneven distributions in the early post-Big Bang universe that resulted in the formation of galaxies were leftovers from the universe before.

Only gravity can't exist soley in a specific brane, but wanders where it will, leaking off our brane into what physicists call "the bulk" -- the rest of space-time. Brane theory offer an fascinating and plausable explanation for why gravity is such a weakling: Maybe it's not any weaker than the other forces, but just concentrated somewhere else in the bulk, or on another brane, providing the key to understanding the dark matter that makes up 90 % of our universe.

If our brane is but a small slice of a much larger cosmos, however, the "dark matter" might be nothing but ordinary matter trapped on another brane. Dark matter is no longer some mysterious unknown, but the force at the heart of the brane-brane interaction. With the brane model the universe goes through an eternal cosmic cycle over a vast timescale of attraction, bounce with a spread out bang, springing apart, and expansion until attraction (gravity) takes over again.Such a shadow world, Hawking speculated, might contain "shadow human beings wondering about the mass that seems to be missing from their world."

Are branes the key to understanding the origin of our universe? "Who knows?" says Sean Carroll. "they will have taught us a useful lesson that we should have known all along, which is that we don't have a clue to what's going on."

Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, creator of the currently accepted model of the Big Bang, said recently "he felt a little like Rip Van Winkle -- picking up his head from a long sleep only to notice that the landscape of physics he thought he knew had suddenly, drastically, changed."

Casey Kazan.

Source Credits:

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/17/science/sci-branes

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327226.000-review-before-the-big-bang-by-brian-clegg.html

Image Credit: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/stringtheory01.htm

Comments

[alex a]

It sounds like science fiction.
Also if somehow they could prove there wasn't no Big Bang then why is our universe expanding?

[steven]

Science fiction? Sure, this is just all hypothesis. I admit, I read the home page teaser and thought "What are they smoking and where can I get some?" Fun stuff to have a think on though!

Regarding "our universe expanding", "expanding" does not imply a central point from which all matter in the universe is expanding. Irregardless of where you stand in the universe, it will appear as though all other galaxies are moving aways from you. Leads one to think, "doesn't that imply everything is getting Bigger?" Well no, if you consider that the expansion is in spacetime dimensions and not our beloved three.

Now add in up to nine other branes and, whoa doggie!, now your talking about looking at the universe through a kaleidoscope of universal forces pulling and tugging on each other. I can barely help my fourth grader son with his math, let alone make sense of all of this. But like I said, fun stuff!

[Jon]

Incredibly mind-bending. I love the part about the never ending cycle of rebirth.... very Zen.

One request.... whomever writes these articles.... proofread. As an ex-academe sloppy grammar and sentence structure is like scratching a blackboard!

[Frank W]

It seems to me that this article serves the purpose to bring into question the common view of how our universe was created by bringing up a more complex and speculative theory. If in fact the "big bang" didn't happen and "a never ending cycle of rebirth" is to be considered then the mechanisms that work for this universe creating machine would be even more complex. It seems that behind both these theories something incredible lies. With either theory, we never get any closer to understanding how they came to happen in the first place.

If someone found a watch on the planet Mars, I'm sure that person would take little time to figure out how the watch was built and how it, and its components, work. However, wouldn't it be far more helpful to figure out why and how the watch got there in the first place??

[dla]

"Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no supportative data to date for Big Bang theory"

really? What about galactic red shift, and COBE?

[ShadowDs]

@ Frank W.

I agree, because scientist are at a loss to explain the shere size of our universe so they must come up with ever increasing complex ideas to explain it. (Not to say they are wrong but certainly reaching in some cases imho)

Persoally I think that our universe being created by a singlular Big Bang is borderline obsurd at best. As we learn more, it seems more likely that multiple events occured in the past around the same time (call it the multi bang theory) and though higher dimesions of space time are likely to influence the development of our universe, no instrument we have can actually observe the universe on these plains.

Sometime the simpliest solutions tend to be the [best] ones.
condiser what we can prove:
1) The universe is bigger (by FAR) than it should be.

2) Appears to have more mass than it should be (Dark Matter)

3) Appears to be increasing in size faster than could be explained.

These three paradoxes for lack of better terms are the achilles heel of the big bang namely 1 and 3.

if you where to think of space time as a pond, steady and undisturbed, the big bang itself would be a single ripple event caused by a single falling rock into that pond whose ripples will propogate out at a certain speed potentially decreasing but defenately not increasing. Replace that single rock with multiple rocks falling in random places of the same pond many at the same time or within the same time period and the resuling ripples would appear to expand faster than the sole riple from the first rock especially if they all happened at the same time.

In essessence, if multiple big bangs occured at about 14 billion years ago, in different points of space then it would explain the inconsistencies we observe in the universe and would definately explain why some areas are void of anything whats so ever and why other areas are appearing to accerate to something "beyond the horizon of the universe."

But until we can view the universe as a whole (probably never), what created the universe as we know it will continue to be a unsolved mystery.

[Torre C]

Wow very good read.. finally something to shut the newbie crowd following scientists up.. LET'S MAKE SOME REAL DISCOVERIES!!

[john harrison]

"parallel" universes: another perspective, a relative one, is that our universe is curled up tiny in theirs. My personal view is a manifold picture: every other universe is everywhere tangent to ours with the points of contact being on the Planck scale; this also leads to a quantized picture of time.

[Joe Bloe77]

Spell check is your friend...always.

[Frank W]

ShadowD's:

The concept of a multi-big bang theory is interesting. It would essentially account for the increasing rate of expansion of the universe. However, with the traditional big bang model, everything that makes up our universe at one point was in a single entity or "singulaity". This is a concept widely accepted in the scientific community. Therefore, it is to say that everything, time, space, space time, and all matter at one point existed in a state of "infinite density and heat". Then it went BANG!

The multi-big bang theory suggest that there was more than one of these single points. But to say that defies logic because if there were more than one, it would not be "single". Everything that made up our universe was collected as that single point, how then could more than one of these points exist. I think it is more likely to conclude that there was a single big bang, and that the forces causing the cosmos to expand at an accelerating rate are the similar to the higher workings of the universe; and that we simply have no instrument, or enough understand of these forces, to measure them or even know where to look.

[Frank W]

Also, it seems justified to conclude a single bang because of the widely accepted and common scientific principle that "one should not multiply causes beyond necessity".

[Cal]

"Before the Big Bang, the standard theory assumes, there was no space, just nothing"

M.. this sounds like creationist crap: an eternal universe sounds more likely to have a god than a non-eternal one. BUT the standard theory, in fact, doesn't says anything about what happened before the Planck time. It says "we don't know".

[Simon Salosny]

"There was nothing.." or "The Big Bang..." are both un real concepts that should not be used; unless those who use them should explain what "nothing" means, or what caused the Bang within the nothing and where the immensity of matter that banged came from. All the Galaxies and other matter must have existed before the bang, anyway...
Anyway, before mankind begins to understand the mysteries mentioned, it would be better to work on the "understanding machine" that is our BRAIN; this, in order to find out its capabilities and eventual limits. It seems to be a universe in itself, so one should think twice before deciding that it has limits. After all, "Cogito, ergo sum" was the realization expressed by an apparently small field of energy.

[Art]

"M.. this sounds like creationist crap"

Yeah, "Brane Theory" and the "multiverse" is so much more "rational" and satisfying. And as long as you avoid the word "God", you can avoid calling it faith.

[Chicago Bob]

Casey, you need to pay some serious attention to your spell check and grammar check. Lots of people see this stuff and it doesn't reflect well on you. Interesting article though.

[Milkman]

I thought the crayon drawing by a 5 year old added a lot of validity to this theory. I take it very serious

[Gern Blanston]

Well clearly, this means that a cosmic Jewish zombie who is his own father decided to simply make the universe.

[Derrick]

The concept of multiple universes is not a God Squad plot to take over physics. For all of you not familiar with String Theory and M Theory, these ideas are rooted in physics (albeit highly theoretical physics) and math, not religion. Any resemblance to any religion, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Quick editorial question - has the scientific community replaced the term "M Theory" with the term "brane theory", or is Casey just avoiding the term "M Theory" because of all the flak it's received due to the possibility that it may be fundamentally untestable?

[August]

Chicago Bob, I'm not 5 years old, but I did use crayons.

[Cratzworthy]

Rather than a big bang think of it as a series of bangs that have been going on for a very long time. Much like a smoker blowing out a sucession of smoke rings except ever-so-often some of that smoke recondenses to a small dense state and we end up with a new bang. The space-time-energy-matter from the earlier bangs either continues to inflate or perhaps some of it has recondensed for its own separate and very distant bang. In any case, the space-time-energy-matter from the earlier bangs is so distant that it is no longer observable to observers living today.

[Tim]

I think this explanation is too complex to have occurred naturally. The explanation has to be more simple but not necessarily the big bang.

[Phil E. Drifter]

It's impossible to take this seriously with so many typos, I haven't even finished reading it and have already spotted two:

"The influence of gravitaional waves..."

"The world's leading astrophysicists are confidemt..."

Well I did finish reading the article and didn't see any other typos. But really, whatever you publish online is a reflection of yourself and to publish an article like this with obvious typos doesn't say much about you.

[Phil E. Drifter]

It's impossible to take this seriously with so many typos, I haven't even finished reading it and have already spotted two:

"The influence of gravitaional waves..."

"The world's leading astrophysicists are confidemt..."

Well I did finish reading the article and didn't see any other typos. But really, whatever you publish online is a reflection of yourself and to publish an article like this with obvious typos doesn't say much about you.

[Elsa]

The only thing that makes any sense is that the universe was created by an infinite power,call it what you will. Intelligence cannot come from nothing, Inanimate objects cannot bring forth life.

[Rob M]

Wow! Interesting progression of M Theory, and I actually enjoyed reading many of the thoughtful comments here, as well.

I have to agree with @dla: A theory that could explain dark matter, dark energy, perceived inflation, non-uniformity, the weakness of gravity, and the "what came before the Big Bang" question; all in one package... Were I a betting man, I'd bet on Occam's Razor, and this theory is relatively simple (as far as cosmologies go).

Digression RE Zen: There is certainly an aesthetic appeal to a cyclical theory of the Universe's lifecycle, without even the ability to talk about beginnings or endings (the beginning of the Multiverse?! I can't even imagine how we, as a civilization, could form the first hypothesis!). Someone used the word Zen, and I suppose if they were referring to this beautiful continuous cyclic nature of the Multiverse, then I grok. If they're referring to some form of reincarnation, then it's a misuse of the word. Zen Buddhists (generally) don't buy in to the whole reincarnation thing. Reincarnation is seen as another natural attempt for the human mind to assure itself that it will continue (like Heaven!), rather than having to identify what, exactly, it thinks will continue, or than facing its own end. (I can recommend either reading _I am a Strange Loop_ cover-to-cover, or sitting zazen for 20 years. Both are similarly difficult. ;-)