No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.
Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.
"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 at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.
Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.



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


Very interesting, what do others think?

I feel in no way qualified to comment on the science, but I thought I'd share some interesting comments from the source article:

"This still implies no model would ever suffice for the entire universe, but only that which is within our light horizon, which means that the guy on "Science" and "Big Think" was still correct. Even a "Theory of Everything" can't actually model "Everything"."

"... we can readily demonstrate strings of infinite numbers which nevertheless provably do not contain all possibilities. This is slightly relevant because it still means the universe has one history, or more generally each universe (if there is more than one) has one history.

It means that Entropy is somehow a form of order at the cosmic level even though it appears to be disorder locally."

Pretty mind-bending. I'd just add that the notion that the universe has always been seems to me more intuitive than the big bang, but of course intuition is meaningless when dealing with physics

Ben_Reilly wrote:I feel in no way qualified to comment on the science, but I thought I'd share some interesting comments from the source article:

"This still implies no model would ever suffice for the entire universe, but only that which is within our light horizon, which means that the guy on "Science" and "Big Think" was still correct. Even a "Theory of Everything" can't actually model "Everything"."

"... we can readily demonstrate strings of infinite numbers which nevertheless provably do not contain all possibilities. This is slightly relevant because it still means the universe has one history, or more generally each universe (if there is more than one) has one history.

It means that Entropy is somehow a form of order at the cosmic level even though it appears to be disorder locally."

Pretty mind-bending. I'd just add that the notion that the universe has always been seems to me more intuitive than the big bang, but of course intuition is meaningless when dealing with physics

Even reading that part again Ben leaves me completely


Fascinating stuff really, which to me have argued before that what if there does not have to be any beginning, and that the Universe has always been on continuous cycle

I think that's basically the idea -- perhaps somewhat analogous to how, if you were uneducated in biology and had no experience with either tadpoles or frogs, you might assume they were two different species. I guess this theory implies that what we might have thought of as a beginning (or for that matter, theorize as an end) for the universe might actually just be different stages of "universe organization."

well...now here is a good one....

since ...if the big bang is right then so is this since actually both both imply something similar but from different points of view

before the big bang...there was nothing.....not even...nothing
even time didnt exist (since the existance of time is predicate upon "space time".....the dimension required for almost everything to "work"

now...if time only "started" AT the big bang.... then truely the universe has existed forever, since by implication it has existed since time began


ouch this is making my head ache.........


However IF as in this quantum theory version time has existed since....well ...before time began

ouch ouch ouch..........

we need to answer a question ......IS the universe expanding?

because infinite existance of the universe implies finite size......

either that OR....somewhere, some how, the stuff of the universe is being created on a continuous basis???



I think.....perhaps....ouch



see you 'orrible lot...this is what happens when you make I think..........

Your head hurts Victor.
I feel like I am back in the old days playing Runequest and somebody has cast an Ultimate befuddle spell on me.

I'm with you guys I try to think about this stuff and I feel like a leashed dog that just can't take another step forward no matter how hard I pull.

No explanation really works. Even a creationist theory implies space and time in which the creator had to have existed before creating the universe, let alone what created the creator and its own time and space ... let alone what created the creator's creator ...

Ben_Reilly wrote:I'm with you guys I try to think about this stuff and I feel like a leashed dog that just can't take another step forward no matter how hard I pull.

No explanation really works. Even a creationist theory implies space and time in which the creator had to have existed before creating the universe, let alone what created the creator and its own time and space ... let alone what created the creator's creator ...

It is fascinating Ben and to be honest it is just making me want to learn so much more about this.
To be honest I was hoping others with more knowledge on this topic could help as this is not a field I know that much about.

http://www.universetoday.com/115915/the-world-is-not-enough-a-new-theory-of-parallel-universes-is-proposed/

Dark pretty much explained it

But the Quantum theories all rely on some sort of multi-verse
My preference is the “Many Interacting Worlds” theory (MIW)
https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.4.041013

Hall compares MIW to the classical theory of ideal gases and partial pressures. He says:

Two worlds of many act as if they are two gases A & B within a volume of space. In the words of the theorists, “It would be as if the A gas and B gas were completely oblivious to each other unless every single A molecule were close to its B partner. Such an interaction is quite unlike anything in classical physics, and it is clear that our hypothetical A-composed observer would have no experience of the B world in its everyday observations, but by careful experiment might detect a subtle and nonlocal action on the A molecules of its world. Such action, though involving very many, rather than just two, worlds, is what we propose could lie behind the subtle and nonlocal character of quantum mechanics.”

the core issues is dividing by zero.. if time is zero then most of our formulas are broken. the MIW theory gets around this by having another dimension give our dimension the first time variable. BUT it gets a little bit more complex as they all exist over the top of each other at the same time the gases thing above somewhat explains it

I prefer to think of it as our dimension vibrates between Zero and the speed of light (c)

call our Dimension , vibration speed X
so
0 <= X >= c

therefore dimension (X1) could on 'top' of ours
if
c <= X1 >= 2c or c*2 (squared)
2c <= X2 >= 3c or c*3 (to power of three)
etc to infinity

and 'below' ours
-c <= X(-1) >= 0
-2c <= X(-2) >= -c
or
square root of c <= X(-1) >= 0
again this can continue to infinity

none of the matter would touch each other unless a molecule sped up or slowed down it's vibrations to such a point to be slower than 0 or faster than light If it did it would 'shift' into the other dimension. in theory our dimension time started when this happened.. so the further function of this is that constant universal growth is possible because the molecules keep accelerating/decelerating their vibrating and starting new dimension on top/below of existing dimension when it crosses the thresholds set by light.

Pure theory of course, unless we can work out how to make something slower than stationary or faster than light impossible to test.

Brasidas wrote:The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.
Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.
"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 at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.
Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.



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


Very interesting, what do others think?

Brane theory hypothesizes many universes side-by-side.  When they bump into each other, a big bang happens.


When I was younger a friend believed that when two clouds bumped together, they cried and that produced thunder and rain.  Like that.

One of the top physicists in this area is Lisa Randall of Harvard University. Does anyone mind if she's hot, too?

MIW is better it is newer (2014) than Branes (first version 1957) and builds on those ideas but incorporated what we now know about light and molecular vibration.

I had a huge post but lost it and it even had quotes from Randall
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/07/23/universe-brockman-lisa-randall-branes/
(lucky it was in my web history)


you can see her break part of branes theory (the original is often referred to as '3 branes')

There can be different numbers of dimensions and there might be arbitrary numbers of branes contained within. Branes don’t even all have to be three-plus-one-dimensional; maybe there are other dimensions of branes in addition to those that look like ours and are parallel to ours. This presents an interesting question about the global structure of space, since how space evolves with time would be different in the context of the presence of many branes. It’s possible that there are all sorts of forces and particles we don’t know about that are concentrated on branes and can affect cosmology.

she builds into a partial theory called '10 branes' (2006) but that still has the same issue with the 'next to' thing.

Goddamn it, I was going to post about something along the lines of entropy being kick-started by interaction with an adjacent universe within a multiverse. But then I thought that I had no place commenting on such a thing without the prerequisite education, so I stopped myself. Now y'all look like geniuses and I look like the asshole perennially late to the party ... again ....

It still, however, goes back, back and back again and requires a generative explanation -- one that can't just be turtles all the way ...