Traditional approach of Physics says everything, including space, matter, time, and energy started with Big Bang. For quite a time now scientists have been developing complex theories to look over back in time to have an idea on what could have happened fractions of seconds after Big Bang.
In a resent research Martin Bojowald of Pennsylvania State University stretches even further, trying to reach beyond Big Bang, and have an idea about the time of an ostensible previous Universe that contacted and bounced to form ours.
The new study appeared online this week in the journal nature Physics.
The theory of everything indicates to an expanding nature of our Universe. The Universe is expanding outwards in every direction, which strengthens the theory of explosion from a single point 14 billion years ago. If we go further back in time, the Universe becomes smaller and hotter, and at the beginning of time, the Universe would be infinitely hot and had no size at all. But detailed discussion over this matter is not available till now. As everything is based on speculations and sheer mathematics, there are various theories contradicting each other. Thus the entire picture becomes muddled.
The unavailability of a single concrete theory has triggered the scientists to combine two main branches of Physics. The gravity and quantum mechanics. Gravity works in cosmic scale, and quantum mechanics deals with the behavior of tiny particles like electron and quarks. Uniting these two radically contradicting theories can put light on exactly what big bang was. But creating this kind of complex theory is very puzzling and has stumped every physicist who has attempted it, including Albert Einstein.
Bojowald uses a new concept known as loop quantum gravity to explain the incidents before big bang. In his theory, space and time are divided into chunks and are not at all smooth and continuous. Nothing can occupy a space smaller than the smallest chunk of space and nothing can happen faster than the shortest moment of time. If this is the basis of the theory, then the Universe could not have been shrinked to a point after certain limit. When it was in its most condensed form, where did the energy and matter come from?
It could have come from the universe before our own. Bojowald argues. Unlike our expanding universe, the earlier universe was shrinking. When it reached its most compact amount, it hit the barrier dictated by loop quantum gravity, and then it bounced back outward, forming a new, expanding universe.
But we will never be able to know he perfect picture. The universe suffers from cosmic forgetfulness. So we will never be able to know precisely what happened before big bang. In words of Bojowald,
The eternal recurrence of absolutely identical universes would seem to be prevented by the ... cosmic forgetfulness
Source: National Geographic
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