Big Bang

Quantum Equation Suggests The Big Bang Never Occurred – The Universe Has No Beginning.

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 bigbang

There’s no shortage of theories when it comes to determining the true nature of our reality. We are like a race with amnesia, searching for an answer that most probably exists, but has yet to be discovered. How did the universe begin?

Well, according to new research, it may not have begun through a Big Bang. Instead, the universe may simply have always existed. Derived from the mathematics of general relativity, the theory compliments Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. As the study’s co-author Ahmed Farag Ali of Benha University explains, “The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there.”

The Big Bang Theory postulates that everything in existence resulted from a single event that launched the creation of the entire universe and that everything in existence today was once part of a single, infinitely dense point, also known as the “singularity.”

Below is a model for this theory.

bang

With this diagram in mind, the most pressing question then becomes, who or what is the thing blowing the balloon that is our universe? Who is the guy?

There’s no shortage of theories when it comes to determining the true nature of our reality. We are like a race with amnesia, searching for an answer that most probably exists, but has yet to be discovered. How did the universe begin?

According to Nassim Haramein, the Director of Research for the Resonance Project: ” ‘For every action there is an equal opposite reaction.’ is one of the most foundational and proven concepts in all of physics. Therefore, if the universe is expanding then ‘the guy’ (or whatever ‘he’ is), who is blowing up that balloon, has to have some huge lungs that are contracting to be able to blow it up” (source).

This marks just one out of many criticisms of the Big Bang Theory, but there is so much more to consider. Can something come from nothing? What about quantum mechanics and the possibility that there is no moment of time in which the universe did not exist?

The theory also suggests that there are no singularities or dark matter, and that the universe is filled with a “quantum fluid,” which is filled with gravitons. According to Phys.org:

The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity.

In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs. (source)

As you can see, when quantum mechanics are thrown into the equation, everything changes. This new theory suggests that the universe could have always existed and there is no “beginning” as we understand it. Perhaps it was just an event that did occur that we perceive as the beginning, or perhaps the event occurred not from nothing, but from something. Again, who is that guy blowing on the balloon in the picture? There is something there that has yet to be discovered.

“As far as we can see, since different points in the universe never actually converged in the past, it did not have a beginning. It lasted forever. It will also not have an end…In other words, there is no singularity. The universe could have lasted forever. It could have gone through cycles of being small and big. Or it could have been created much earlier.”

–  Study co-author Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada (source)

What We Know Is Often Just Theory

It’s clear that we do not yet have a solid explanation for what happened during the Big Bang, or proof that it even happened at all. This new theory combines general relativity with quantum mechanics to make a new and interesting case for our universe’s history, but at the end of the day, it remains a theory.

Theories about multiple dimensions, multiple universes, and more have to be considered as well. When looking for the starting point of creation, our own universe might not even be the place to start — a difficult idea to consider given that we cannot yet perceive other factors that have played a part in the makeup of what we call reality. Harder to grasp still is the fact that quantum physics is showing that the true nature and makeup of the universe is not a physical, material thing!

There is still simply too much we don’t understand, and there are new findings in modern day physics that delve into non-materialistic science that many mainstream materialistic scientists have yet to grasp and acknowledge.

I’ll leave you with a quote that might give you something to think about:

“A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a ‘mental’ construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: ‘The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.’ ”

– (R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005)

“Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and even anger.”

– (T. Folger, “Quantum Shmantum”; Discover 22:37-43, 2001)

Stephen Hawking warns against seeking out aliens in new film

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Beware responding to signals from far off stars, physicist tells viewers in Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places – a virtual journey across the cosmos

Stephen Hawking takes viewers to five significant locations across the cosmos in the online film.
Stephen Hawking takes viewers to five significant locations across the cosmos in the online film. Photograph: Stephen Hawkin favorite places“We come in peace” might be the traditional opening gambit for aliens in science fiction, but we should be wary about beaming back a response to any advanced life-forms in real life, Stephen Hawking has warned.

Our first contact from an advanced civilisation could be equivalent to when Native Americans first encountered Christopher Columbus and things “didn’t turn out so well”, he cautioned.

The comments are made in an online film, Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, in which the theoretical physicist takes viewers on his own CGI spacecraft (the SS Hawking) to five significant locations across the cosmos.

On arriving at Gliese 832c, a planet 16 light years away, Hawking reflects: “As I grow older I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone. After a lifetime of wondering, I am helping to lead a new global effort to find out. The Breakthrough Listen project will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life, but I know just the place to start looking. One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back.”

It is not the first time Hawking has warned about the prospect of hostile aliens. Launching the Breakthrough Listen project, which will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life, last year he suggested that any civilisation reading our messages could be billions of years ahead of humans. “If so they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria,” he said.

Stephen Hawking’s CGI spacecraft, the SS Hawking.
Stephen Hawking’s CGI spacecraft, the SS Hawking. 

The 25-minute film, which appears on the platform CuriosityStream, starts at the Big Bang, which has been the focus of much of Hawking’s career. Viewers are also taken deep into a super-massive black hole, Sagittarius A*, where Hawking explains his theory of matter, and to Saturn, which Hawking calls “the most spectacular destination in the Solar System.”

Finally, Hawking returns to Earth to Santa Barbara where he talks nostalgically of his early career at Cal Tech and times spent on the sunny California coast with his young family.

“My goal is simple: complete understanding of the universe,” Hawking said. “It’s always been a dream of mine to explore the universe.”

World’s Smartest Physicist Thinks Science Can’t Crack Consciousnes.

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String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”.

Physicist Edward Witten: “I think consciousness will remain a mystery… I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness.” 

I’ve been writing a lot lately about consciousness, the ultimate enigma. I used to think why there is something rather than nothing is the ultimate enigma. But without mind, there might as well be nothing.

Some mind-ponderers, notably philosopher Colin McGinn, argue that consciousness is unsolvable. Philosopher Owen Flanagan calls these pessimists “mysterians,” after the 60’s-era rock group “Question Mark and the Mysterians.”

Recently, physicist Edward Witten came out as a mysterian. Witten is regarded with awe by his fellow physicists, some of whom have compared him to Einstein and Newton. He is largely responsible for the popularity of string theory over the past several decades. String theory holds that all of nature’s forces stem from infinitesimal particles wriggling in a hyperspace consisting of many extra dimensions.

Witten is optimistic about science’s power to solve mysteries, such as why there is something rather than nothing. In a 2014 Q&A with me he said: “The modern scientific endeavor has been going on for hundreds of years by now, and we’ve gotten way farther than our predecessors probably imagined.” He also reaffirmed his belief that string theory will turn out to be “right.”

But in a fascinating video interview with journalist Wim Kayzer, Witten is pessimistic about the prospects for a scientific explanation of consciousness. The chemist Ash Jogalekar, who blogs as “The Curious Wavefunction,” wrote about Witten’s speech and transcribed the relevant section. (Thanks, Ash.) Here is an excerpt:

I think consciousness will remain a mystery. Yes, that’s what I tend to believe. I tend to think that the workings of the conscious brain will be elucidated to a large extent. Biologists and perhaps physicists will understand much better how the brain works. But why something that we call consciousness goes with those workings, I think that will remain mysterious. I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness… 

Just because Witten is a genius does not mean he is infallible. He is wrong, I believe, that string theory will eventually be validated, and he could be wrong that consciousness will never be explained. I nonetheless find it newsworthy—and refreshing–that a scientist of his caliber is talking so candidly about the limits of science. For reasons that are perhaps too obvious, I like Ash Jogalekar’s take on Witten’s comments. An excerpt:

It’s interesting to contrast Witten’s thoughts with John Horgan’s End of Science thesis… The end of science really is the end of the search for final causation. In that sense not just consciousness but many aspects of the world may always remain a mystery. Whether that is emotionally pleasing or disconcerting is an individual choice that each one of us has to make.

Quantum Equation Suggests The Big Bang Never Occurred – The Universe Has No Beginning.

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bigbang

When it comes to the science regarding the true nature of our reality, you won’t find a shortage of theories, or a shortage of criticisms of each theory. We are like a race with amnesia, trying to discover and search for an answer that most probably exists, but has yet to be discovered. How did the universe begin?

According to new research, there might not have been a big bang. Instead, the universe might have existed forever. The theory was derived from the mathematics of general relativity, and compliment Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

“The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there.”  – Ahmed Farag Ali, Benha University, Co-Author of the study.

The big bang theory postulates that everything in existence resulted from a single event that launched the creation of the entire universe and that everything in existence today was once part of a single infinitely dense point, also known as the “singularity.”

Here is a good picture representing what the big bang theory is referring to.

bang

So the big bang, again, postulates that the universe started out as an infinitely small point in space called a singularity, then exploded and created space where there was no space before, and that it is continually expanding. One big question regarding that expansion is; how did it happen? As you can see in the picture, “who is that guy?!”

According to Nassim Haramein, the Director of Research for the Resonance Project

“For every action there is an equal opposite reaction.” is one of the most foundational and proven concepts in all of physics. Therefore, if the universe is expanding then “the guy” (or whatever “he” is), who is blowing up that balloon, has to have some huge lungs that are contracting to be able to blow it up. This a concept that Nassim Haramein began exploring when creating an alternative unified field theory to explain the universe.” (source)

This is one out of many criticisms regarding the big bang theory. There are many considerations to be pondered. Can something come from nothing? What about quantum mechanics and the possibility that there is no moment of time at which the universe did not exist?

Again, so many considerations to be pondered.

According to Phys.org:

“The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity.In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.” (source)

The theory also suggests (obviously) that there are no singularities or dark matter, and that the universe is filled with a “quantum fluid.” These scientists are suggesting that this quantum fluid is filled with gravitons.

According to Phys.org:

“In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.”

As you can see, when quantum mechanics is thrown into the equation things appear to be far different. Again, this new theory is suggesting that the universe could have always existed, that it never was what we perceive to be as “the  beginning.” Perhaps it was just an event that did occur that we perceive as the beginning, perhaps the event occurred not from nothing, but something. Again, who is that guy blowing on the balloon in the picture? There is something there that has yet to be discovered.

“As far as we can see, since different points in the universe never actually converged in the past, it did not have a beginning. It lasted forever. It will also not have an end, in other words, there is no singularity. The universe could have lasted forever. It could have gone through cycles of being small and big. or it could have been created much earlier.” –  Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, Co-Author of the study. (source)

What We Know Is Often Just Theory

To conclude, it’s clear that we do not yet have a solid explanation regarding what happened during the Big Bang, or if it even happened at all. This new theory is combining general relativity with quantum mechanics, and at the end of the day these are all just theories.

Not to mention the fact that theories regarding multiple dimensions, multiple universes and more have to be considered. When looking for the starting point of creation, our own universe might not even be the place to start. It might be hard given the fact that we cannot yet perceive other factors that have played a part in the make up of what we call reality. What is even harder is the fact that quantum physics is showing that the true nature and make up of the universe is not a physical material thing!

We just don’t know yet, and there are still new findings in modern day physics that delve into non-materialistic science that many mainstream materialistic scientists have yet to grasp and acknowledge.

I’ll leave you with a quote that might give you something to think about:

“A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” (R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005)

“Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and even anger. (T. Folger, “Quantum Shmantum”; Discover 22:37-43, 2001)

Quantum Equation Suggests The Big Bang Never Occurred – The Universe Has No Beginning

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quantum-equation-suggests-the-big-bang-never-occurred-the-universe-has-no-beginning

When it comes to the science regarding the true nature of our reality, you won’t find a shortage of theories, or a shortage of criticisms of each theory. We are like a race with amnesia, trying to discover and search for an answer that most probably exists, but has yet to be discovered. How did the universe begin?

According to new research, there might not have been a big bang. Instead, the universe might have existed forever. The theory was derived from the mathematics of general relativity, and compliment Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

“The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there.”  – Ahmed Farag Ali, Benha University, Co-Author of the study.

LHC creates liquid from Big Bang

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Wow, this is amazing, maybe we will be closer from understanding the universe than ever.

Scientists using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have produced tiny droplets of a state of matter thought to have existed right at the birth of the universe.

An international team at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have produced quark-gluon plasma — a state of matter thought to have existed right at the birth of the universe — with fewer particles than previously thought possible. The results were published in the journal APS Physics on June 29, 2015.

The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC, located in a tunnel between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range on the Franco-Swiss border, is the largest machine in the world. The supercollider was restarted this spring (April 2015) following two years of intense maintenance and upgrade. Take a virtual tour of the LHC here.

The new material was discovered by colliding protons with lead nuclei at high energy inside the supercollider’s Compact Muon Solenoid detector. Physicists have dubbed the resulting plasma the “littlest liquid.”

So, the Big bang was not solid, but liquid??? Did i get ir right, this is a very interesting stuff.


Quan Wang is a University of Kansas researcher working with the team at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Wang described quark-gluon plasma as a very hot and dense state of matter of unbound quarks and gluons — that is, not contained within individual nucleons. He said:

It’s believed to correspond to the state of the universe shortly after the Big Bang.

While high-energy particle physics often focuses on detection of subatomic particles, such as the recently discovered Higgs Boson, the new quark-gluon-plasma research instead examines behavior of a volume of such particles.

Wang said such experiments might help scientists to better understand cosmic conditions in the instant following the Big Bang.

Quantum Equation Suggests The Big Bang Never Occurred – The Universe Has No Beginning

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bigbang
When it comes to the science regarding the true nature of our reality, you won’t find a shortage of theories, or a shortage of criticisms of each theory. We are like a race with amnesia, trying to discover and search for an answer that most probably exists, but has yet to be discovered. How did the universe begin?

According to new research, there might not have been a big bang. Instead, the universe might have existed forever. The theory was derived from the mathematics of general relativity, and compliment Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

“The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there.”  – Ahmed Farag Ali, Benha University, Co-Author of the study.

The big bang theory postulates that everything in existence resulted from a single event that launched the creation of the entire universe and that everything in existence today was once part of a single infinitely dense point, also known as the “singularity.”

Here is a good picture representing what the big bang theory is referring to.

bang

So the big bang, again, postulates that the universe started out as an infinitely small point in space called a singularity, then exploded and created space where there was no space before, and that it is continually expanding. One big question regarding that expansion is; how did it happen? As you can see in the picture, “who is that guy?!”

According to Nassim Haramein, the Director of Research for the Resonance Project

“For every action there is an equal opposite reaction.” is one of the most foundational and proven concepts in all of physics. Therefore, if the universe is expanding then “the guy” (or whatever “he” is), who is blowing up that balloon, has to have some huge lungs that are contracting to be able to blow it up. This a concept that Nassim Haramein began exploring when creating an alternative unified field theory to explain the universe.” 

This is one out of many criticisms regarding the big bang theory. There are many considerations to be pondered. Can something come from nothing? What about quantum mechanics and the possibility that there is no moment of time at which the universe did not exist?

Again, so many considerations to be pondered.

According to Phys.org:

“The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity.In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.” (source)

The theory also suggests (obviously) that there are no singularities or dark matter, and that the universe is filled with a “quantum fluid.” These scientists are suggesting that this quantum fluid is filled with gravitons.

According to Phys.org:

“In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.”

As you can see, when quantum mechanics is thrown into the equation things appear to be far different. Again, this new theory is suggesting that the universe could have always existed, that it never was what we perceive to be as “the  beginning.” Perhaps it was just an event that did occur that we perceive as the beginning, perhaps the event occurred not from nothing, but something. Again, who is that guy blowing on the balloon in the picture? There is something there that has yet to be discovered.

“As far as we can see, since different points in the universe never actually converged in the past, it did not have a beginning. It lasted forever. It will also not have an end, in other words, there is no singularity. The universe could have lasted forever. It could have gone through cycles of being small and big. or it could have been created much earlier.” –  Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, Co-Author of the study.

What We Know Is Often Just Theory

To conclude, it’s clear that we do not yet have a solid explanation regarding what happened during the Big Bang, or if it even happened at all. This new theory is combining general relativity with quantum mechanics, and at the end of the day these are all just theories.

Not to mention the fact that theories regarding multiple dimensions, multiple universes and more have to be considered. When looking for the starting point of creation, our own universe might not even be the place to start. It might be hard given the fact that we cannot yet perceive other factors that have played a part in the make up of what we call reality. What is even harder is the fact that quantum physics is showing that the true nature and make up of the universe is not a physical material thing!

We just don’t know yet, and there are still new findings in modern day physics that delve into non-materialistic science that many mainstream materialistic scientists have yet to grasp and acknowledge.

I’ll leave you with a quote that might give you something to think about:

“A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” (R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005)

“Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and even anger. (T. Folger, “Quantum Shmantum”; Discover 22:37-43, 2001)

Sources:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.3093v3

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

New theory suggests that two parallel universes were produced by the Big Bang – ScienceAlert

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New research suggests our Universe could be moving forwards in time, while a parallel one moves backwards on the “other side” of the Big Bang.

Physicists have performed an experiment that suggests time in our Universe may be directed by gravity, not thermodynamics, and that the Big Bang could have created two parallel universes – our own, in which time runs forwards, and a mirror one where time runs backwards.

Although the idea sounds pretty out there, the new theory could help physicists solve some of their biggest issues with time – mainly the fact that they still can’t work out why it runs in only one direction.

In fact, this single “arrow of time” is one of the biggest conceptual problems of modern physics and has puzzled physicists for more than a century.

In models of physical systems, which physicists use to mimic our Universe, a preferred direction of time does sometimes arise, but this typically only happens when researchers tinker with the system and set specific starting conditions.

So why then does our Universe only move forwards in time? Why are stars emitting light rather than sucking it up and why do we remember the past and not the future?

Currently, the leading theory is that the direction of time’s arrow is controlled by the laws of thermodynamics – more specifically, entropy.

Entropy is a measure of disorder within a thermodynamic system – a system with low entropy is extremely organised and predictable, whereas a high entropy system is more random. Thermodynamic law states that the entropy of an isolated system, such as our Universe, will only ever move from a state of low entropy to a state of high entropy.

Most physicists generally accept that this is why time moves forward – because at the birth of our Universe everything was extremely ordered, and so the direction of time is the same as the direction of increasing entropy.

As Lee Billings explains for Scientific American, this is “a product of the universal tendency for all things to settle toward equilibrium with one another”.

But this theory relies on those highly organised, low entropy conditions being present at the start of the Universe in order to give time a direction. Which is something we simply can’t prove, much to the frustration of many physicists.

Now new theories are emerging that suggest this idea of time being governed by entropy isn’t the only possibility.

And the new work, led by Julian Barbour from the University of Oxford in the UK, suggests it may in fact be gravity, not thermodynamics, that controls the direction of time’s arrow.

The research, which also involved Tim Koslowski from the University of New Brunswick and Flavio Mercati of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, both in Canada, and was published in October in Physical Review Letters.

Their model suggests that the Universe doesn’t need a special, low-entropy initial state in order for it to define an arrow of time – instead, the flow of time is just the inevitable result of gravity.

They came to this conclusion after studying a very simple model of our Universe comprised of just 1,000 particles. Using computer simulations, they tested how these particles interacted under nothing but the influence of the laws of Newtonian gravity.

What they found was that, no matter how the system was originally arranged, the particles would all eventually end up in these tightly packed, low-complexity states without any tinkering, simply through the sheer force of gravity.

This means that in order to set the direction of time’s arrow, we don’t need any perfect low-entropy conditions, we just need gravity.

But perhaps most interesting is what happened next in their model. From that highly condensed place, the system expanded outwards – but in two separate directions, each with their own time arrow travelling in a different direction.

Along both time pathways the particles were pulled by gravity into larger, more ordered and complex structures. As Billings writes for Scientific American, these are our equivalent of the Universe forming galaxies, stars and planetary systems.

Of course, we are a long way from knowing if this is what occurred in our own Universe – the system that Barbour and his team tested was extremely simple, and didn’t factor in general relativity or the effects of quantum mechanics.

But if it’s true, it means that what we perceive as the future would really be the distant past for any life that exists in the parallel universe.

“This two-futures situation would exhibit a single, chaotic past in both directions, meaning that there would be essentially two universes, one on either side of this central state,” Barbour told Billings for Scientific American.

“If they were complicated enough, both sides could sustain observers who would perceive time going in opposite directions. Any intelligent beings there would define their arrow of time as moving away from this central state. They would think we now live in their deepest past.”

Which is extremely trippy to think about. Even more mind-blowing is how Tim de Chant from PBS NOVA puts it:

“From that perspective, maybe George Lucas’s Star Wars didn’t take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but in the far future – our deepest past – of our mirror universe.”

However, devotees to the idea that entropy controls the direction of time, such as cosmologist Sean Caroll from California Institute of technology, will need much more proof before they subscribe to the theory.

“This paper by Barbour, Koslowski and Mercati is good because they roll up their sleeves and do the calculations for their specific model of particles interacting via gravity, but I don’t think it’s the model that is interesting—it’s the model’s behaviour being analysed carefully,” Caroll, who wasn’t involved in the research, told Scientific American.

“I think basically any time you have a finite collection of particles in a really big space you’ll get this kind of generic behaviour they describe. The real question is, is our Universe like that? That’s the hard part.”

If we could answer that question, then not only would it change our entire perspective on the Universe, but, importantly, it could help us properly explain the expansion and growth of the Universe that we observe – which is something we still struggle with.

If you’re as fascinated by all of this as we are, read the amazing account of how this theory emerged and other theories that are out there in Billings’ piece for Scientific American.

Gravitational waves: have US scientists heard echoes of the big bang?

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Discovery of gravitational waves by Bicep telescope at south pole could give scientists insights into how universe was born

 

Big bang

Primordial gravitational waves would provide evidence of inflation in the moments after the big bang. Photograph: Alamy

There is intense speculation among cosmologists that a US team is on the verge of confirming they have detected “primordial gravitational waves” – an echo of the big bang in which the universe came into existence 14bn years ago.

Rumours have been rife in the physics community about an announcement due on Monday from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. If there is evidence for gravitational waves, it would be a landmark discovery that would change the face of cosmology and particle physics.

Gravitational waves are the last untested prediction of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. They are minuscule ripples in the fabric of the universe that carry energy across space, somewhat similar to waves crossing an ocean. Convincing evidence of their discovery would almost certainly lead to a Nobel prize.

“If they do announce primordial gravitational waves on Monday, I will take a huge amount of convincing,” said Hiranya Peiris, a cosmologist from University College London. “But if they do have a robust detection … Jesus, wow! I’ll be taking next week off.”

The discovery of gravitational waves from the big bang would offer scientists their first glimpse of how the universe was born.

The signal is rumoured to have been found by a specialised telescope called Bicep (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) at the south pole. It scans the sky at microwave frequencies, where it picks up the fossil energy from the big bang.

For decades, cosmologists have thought that the signature of primordial gravitational waves could be imprinted on this radiation. “It’s been called the Holy Grail of cosmology,” says Peiris, “It would be a real major, major, major discovery.”

Martin Hendry at the University of Glasgow works on several projects designed to directly detect gravitational waves. “If Bicep have made a detection,” he says, “it’s clear that this new window on the universe is really opening up.”

According to theory, the primordial gravitational waves will tell us about the first, infinitessimal moment of the universe’s history. Cosmologists believe that 10-34 seconds after the big bang (a decimal point followed by 33 zeros and a one) the universe was driven to expand hugely.

Known as inflation, the theory was dreamed up to explain why the universe is so remarkably uniform from place to place. But it has always lacked some credibility because no one can find a convincing physical explanation for why it happened.

Now researchers may be forced to redouble their efforts. “The primordial gravitational waves have long been thought to be the smoking gun of inflation. It’s as close to a proof of that theory as you are going to get,” says Peiris. This is because cosmologists believe only inflation can amplify the primordial gravitational waves into a detectable signal.

“If a detection has been made, it is extraordinarily exciting. This is the real big tick-box that we have been waiting for. It will tell us something incredibly fundamental about what was happening when the universe was 10-34 seconds old,” said Prof Andrew Jaffe, a cosmologist from Imperial College, London, who works on another telescope involved in the search called Polarbear.

But extracting that signal is fearsomely tricky. The microwaves that carry it must cross the whole universe before arriving at Earth. During the journey, they are distorted by intervening clusters of galaxies.

“It’s like looking at the universe through bubbled glass,” said Duncan Hanson of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who works on the South Pole Telescope, a rival that sits next to Bicep.

He said the distortion must be removed in a convincing way before anyone can claim to have made the detection. The prize for doing that, however, would be the pinnacle of a scientific career. “The Nobel Prize would be for the detection of the primordial gravitational waves.”

“Yeah, I would give them a prize,” said Jaffe.

Remains of an ancient universe

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WMAP map of a region of space that is cooler than its surroundings.

Wikimedia CommonsWMAP map of a region of space that is cooler than its surroundings.

Two precision studies of the remnants of the Big Bang are almost in agreement about what they have found… almost.

In the 2000s, two space probes set out to study the relics of an ancient chaos in exacting detail. Their subject was a tremendous smattering of matter and radiation across trillions of light-years, possibly all the way across the universe. Scientists believe these relics hold the complicated clues to our universe’s origins, why the laws of nature are what they are, even why the hundreds of billions of galaxies are where they are now.

The chaos itself, whose residue interests us, was caused by an event popularly called the Big Bang, and its immediate aftermath. In 2001, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe(WMAP) was launched by NASA; in 2009, the European Space Agency launched thePlanck space-probe. While both probes studied the relic entity and produced agreeing results of the bigger picture, they do have smaller inconsistencies between them – inconsistencies physicists think need resolving because of the very-high sensitivities the instruments boast of.

Even if one of them is proved right and other wrong, our knowledge of the universe’s origins, pieced together since a monumental discovery in the 1960s, would change.

The story began in 1964 at the Bell Telephone Laboratory in New Jersey, where a radio antenna was being readied for a specific task: to listen to radio-waves being emanated by the Milky Way galaxy. The two astronomers who were going to make the observations, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, decided to start with a short wavelength of 7.35 cm. This was being done so they could check for static noise being generated by the antenna itself, before moving on to more precise readings. However, they were in for a pleasant surprise.

Cooking up heavier elements

They were able to discern a faint excessive signal of microwave radiation at 7.35 cm. No matter which way they turned the antenna, the signal persisted, meaning that it was coming in from all parts of the sky, not just specific areas. Because they’d known that pigeons had roosted in the past around the antenna’s receivers, they cleaned out those areas… but the eerie signal kept on. Penzias and Wilson used the signals strength to calculate the temperature of the objects that could be producing it – it was found to be about 3.5 K (–269.65 degrees Celsius).

They didn’t know what to make of it.

Around the same time, in March 1965, an astrophysicist named P.J.E. Peebles from Princeton University was trying to understand a strange anomaly. In the few minutes succeeding the Big Bang, the universe should have resembled a massive cauldron, with its ingredients being quickly cooked into bigger and bigger lumps of heavier elements. Today, however, fully three-quarters of matter in the universe is hydrogen. Where are the heavier elements?

Peebles surmised that there also must have been a lot of short-wavelength radiation that blasted heavier atoms apart as soon as they formed, preventing the mass-cooking of hydrogen into heavier nuclei of the metals. Further, his calculations showed that the radiation should have survived to this day, leaving the universe with a low but prevailing temperature of around 10 K. To see if he was right, Peebles and his colleagues, Robert Dicke, P.G. Roll and D.T. Wilkinson, started to set up an antenna to look for the signal from this radiation…

… when Dicke received a called from Penzias. Together, the five of them published a pair of papers in the Astrophysical Journal speculating on the implications of their finding. It was July 1965, and the start of a fascinating quest.

Relic radiation

In the decades since, physicists have been able to piece together the story of how this radiation could have originated, what it has to do with the Big Bang, and how a rapidly expanding universe’s signatures could have impinged on it. One of the first probes launched to study this relic radiation – called thecosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation – was the Cosmic Background Explorer, in 1989. This also marked the rise of cosmology, the study of the universe’s life.

In the moments immediately succeeding the Big Bang, the universe was seething hot and dense – protons, neutrons, electrons and photons were scattered about, their energy making them restless enough to resist entrapment into atoms. After 10-32 seconds, the volume of space started to expand rapidly – a period called the inflationary epoch which lasted for one microsecond but left the universe at least (hold your breath) 1 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more voluminous.

After around 380,000 years, the temperature had dropped to about 3,000 K, and the first atoms formed. Because the electrons and radiation had existed in an equilibrium until then, the formation of atoms meant electrons were being used up, leaving the radiation to ‘move around’ and expand freely.

Thus formed the CMB radiation.

Because any change in the way it formed, howsoever small, would have altered it in significant proportions as it expanded, it was essential to know how precisely the CMB was distributed throughout the universe. Between 1990 and 1993, the Cosmic Background Explorer’s results presented the first view of the CMB on a vast scale.

Map of the universe

The Explorer’s successor was the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001. It is named for D.T. Wilkinson. In 2003, the WMAP presented its first results, considered to be groundbreaking for their immense detail, laying the foundation for a model of the universe that cosmologists abide by: the Lambda-CDM model. CDM here stands for ‘cold dark matter’, which WMAP found made up about 24 per cent of the universe. Of the remaining, 71 per cent came from dark energy while the rest was ordinary matter. It also measured the Hubble constant – the rate of the universe’s expansion – to be about 67.8 km/s/Mpc (interpreted as an object 1 megaparsec away moving away from the observer at 67.8 km/s).

In 2009, another probe, called simply Planck, was launched to study the CMB, as well as to investigate other cosmological problems. Planck boasted of a resolution thrice as much as WMAP’s, and could make its observations in nine frequency bands – as opposed to the one band that Penzias and Wilson used or the five bands that WMAP used. In fact, in order to achieve the precision that it did, the entire spacecraft was maintained at a temperature of 0.1 K, making it the coldest object in space!

By July 2010, Planck had completed an all-sky survey. On March 21, 2013, the results of its CMB-study were published. They were found mostly to be in agreement with the Lambda-CDM model, and the WMAP results by extension: according to Planck, the universe was 26.8 per cent dark matter, 68.3 per cent dark energy, and 4.9 per cent ordinary matter. The Hubble constant was pegged at a little less than 67.8 km/s/Mpc.

One thing that the Explorer, WMAP and Planck had all found was this: the CMB radiation was not evenly spread throughout the universe, but consisted of fluctuating ripples spreading across vast distances. This observation, called anisotropy, was attributed to minor irregularities in the way the radiation must have been packed together, predating its expansion for almost 14 billion years – the age of the universe. The experimental observation of this anisotropy was hailed as a major breakthrough in 1992.

The ‘Almost’

On the other hand, the Planck results didn’t fall in line with the WMAP results on some counts. Among the nine frequency bands that Planck had made its measurements in, the sixth band (217 GHz) was the source of concern. The data analysis team behind WMAP argued that with the exception of this band, all other bands agreed with the WMAP results.

It was an important problem because even though the inconsistencies were minor, Planck’s high precision meant that they could lead to significant alterations of our knowledge of the universe if they were true. For instance, it could place more weight on why Planck data differs from WMAP’s on the universe’s composition, or why Planck has found the universe to be expanding at a slightly slower rate than the WMAP found it to be. Perhaps, between the sensitivity of the two instruments, there might be unknown physical processes at work.

At the time (2013), the Planck team responded saying they do stand by their observations, and that the inconsistencies could be due to “the improved performance of the Planck data”. However, they did also agree to revisit their observations. Its outcome was released last week in the February 6 issue of Natureas a correspondence.

Jan Tauber, who leads the Planck science team, has concluded that the difference in values between the Planck and WMAP results are within one standard-deviation of each other. More importantly, he wrote that they differed because of “methodological variations between the respective analyses rather than by systematic errors in the Planck data”. Tauber also stated that “the small, time-dependent systematic errors … have little impact on the Planck Collaboration’s cosmological results”.

That Tauber was able to say that the results’ deviation had little impact means the Lambda-CDM model can continue to be the ‘standard model’ of cosmology in its present form. Even though it might have been presumptuous to assume something paradigm-altering could have come out of this debate, cosmology is heavily reliant on precision-measurements of extremely small values. Even a seemingly trivial deviation would imply a relatively more consequential deviation of the value before the inflationary epoch.

For example, going by the Planck and WMAP maps, a tiny unevenness of energy in the pre-inflationary CMB could have snowballed into the gargantuan galactic clusters we see today. Calculating the other way, we could ask: is some region of space colder than the CMB because of an accumulation of dark energy?