Big Bang, Deflated! Universe May Have Had No Beginning At All

A new theory
claims that the universe may not have started with a bang. According to this
new study, the universe was not ever a singularity or an infinitely minor and
infinitely dense point of matter at all. Goosebumps, Right!

In actual fact, the universe may have
no start at all. Study co-author Saurya Das, a theoretical physicist at the
University of Lethbridge, Canada, said "Our theory suggests that the age
of the universe could be infinite," 

This new notion could also clarify
what dark matter is actually made of, Das added. According to the Big Bang
theory, the universe was born nearly 13.8 billion years ago. All the matter
that occurs today was once squeezed into an infinitely dense, infinitely small,
ultra-hot dot called a singularity. This little fireball then blasted and
growth to the early universe started. 

This singularity comes from the math of
Einstein's theory of general relativity, which defines how mass warps
space-time, and from an additional equation (called Raychaudhuri's equation)
that foretells whether the route of something will merge or diverge with time.
Going backward in time, as claimed by these equations, all matter in the cosmos
was once in a tiny single point — which is also known as the Big Bang
singularity.

But that's
not quite accurate. In Einstein's formulation, the laws of physics essentially
break before the singularity is touched. But researchers generalize backward as
if the physics equations still hold, states Robert Brandenberger, a theoretical
cosmologist at McGill University, who was not the part of this study.

Brandenberger
also told Live Science, "So when we say that the universe begins with a big
bang, we really have no right to say that," There are other difficulties
developing in physics — specifically, that the two most leading theories,
quantum mechanics and general relativity, can't be merged to come up with
single concept. Quantum mechanics states that the actions of tiny subatomic
particles are basically uncertain. This against the Einstein's general
relativity, which is deterministic, implying that once all the regular laws are
identified, the future is entirely preset by the past, Das said. 

And neither
theory clarifies what dark matter, an unseen form of matter that applies a
gravitational pull on regular matter but cannot be identified by most
telescopes, is actually made of.

Quantum
modification:

Das and his
coworkers wanted a way to solve at least some of these problems. To do so, they
considered an older method of picturing quantum mechanics, called Bohmian
mechanics. In Bohmian mechanics, an unseen variable rules the strange actions
of subatomic particles. Unlike other formulations of quantum mechanics, it
offers a way to compute the path of a particle. By utilizing this old-fashioned
method of quantum theory, the scientists calculated a small rectification term
that may well be comprised in Einstein's theory of general relativity. Then,
they figured out what would occur in deep time. So what’s the outcome? In this
new formulation, there is no singularity at all, and the universe as we know it
is infinitely old.

How to test
this theory?

Das said
that one way of understanding the quantum correction term in their equation is
that it is connected to the density of dark matter, if so, the cosmos could be
packed with a superfluid made of theoretical particles, for instance the
gravity-carrying particles known as gravitons, or ultra-cold, ghostly particles
known as axions. Das also said that One method to test the theory is to look at
how dark matter is dispersed in the cosmos and comprehend if it matches the
properties of the suggested superfluid

Nevertheless,
the new equations are just one way to settle quantum mechanics and general
relativity. For example, a portion of string theory acknowledged as string gas
cosmology forecasts that the universe once had a long-lasting static period,
while other theories forecast there was once a cosmic "recoil," where
the universe first contracted till it touched a very small size, then initiated
expanding, Brandenberg said.

This new
theory was described in a paper published in the journal Physical Letters B, and in an additional paper that is presently under peer review,
which was issued in the preprint journal arXiv.