Cosmologists claim Universe has been forming and reforming for eternity

Nature Magazine ^ | 26 April 2002 | Tom Clarke

[PatrickHenry]

The Universe was not born in one Big Bang, it has been going through cycles of creation and annihilation for eternity, according to a controversial new mathematical model¹.

It's a compelling claim. The new cyclic model removes a major stumbling block common to existing theories of the Universe - namely, that physics can't explain what came before the Big Bang.

Because the model relies on new mathematics, it is having some teething problems, admit its proposers. Indeed, most cosmologists are treating the hypothesis with interested scepticism. Some are vociferously critical.

Criticism is to be expected, concedes Neil Turok of Cambridge University, UK, who developed the cyclic model with cosmologist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University in New Jersey. "We're taking on some very fundamental issues here," says Turok.

Strings attached

Steinhardt and Turok draw on the emerging science of string theory. This mathematical idea uses up to ten dimensions - instead of the usual four - to explain the weird behaviour of tiny things in physics called fundamental particles.

When applied to big things like cosmology, string theory invokes weird mathematical entities called membranes - branes for short. In the cyclic model there are two branes at any one time, one containing our Universe, the other a parallel Universe that is the mirror image of our own.

The researchers suggest that these branes regularly collide, as they did 15 billion years ago, resulting in the massive release of energy previously ascribed to the Big Bang. And just like the Big Bang, "this collision made all the radiation and matter that fills the Universe," says Turok.

The branes are then flung apart. The Universes on each brane expand outwards over billions of years, as ours is doing today.

According to the model, a fifth dimension that we can't see or travel through bridges the branes. As each Universe expands, its matter and energy spreads ever thinner and is diluted. When the spring-like fifth dimension overcomes this expansion energy it heaves the branes back together, they collide, and the whole process repeats. "It's just like reproduction in biology," says Turok.

As well as solving the problem of what came before the Big Bang, the cyclic model could explain numerous other cosmological conundrums, such as dark energy. Our Universe should contain more energy than can be measured, and there are no good theories to explain why. Turok and Steinhardt's model suggests that this is because energy, in the form of gravity, leaks across the fifth dimension between our Universe and its complementary braneworld.

No braner?

Steinhardt and Turok's idea sounds appealing, but fellow astrophysicists are not greeting it with open arms. "The community is very, very sceptical," says David Lyth, a cosmologist at the University of Lancaster, UK.

Others are more scathing. "It's a very bad idea popular only among journalists," says one of the chief critics of the cyclic model, Andrei Linde of Stanford University, California. "It's an extremely complicated theory and simply does not work," adds Linde, the originator of a rival model of the Universe.

String theory is still in its infancy, and applying it to cosmology stretches it to its limits, explains Cambridge University cosmologist George Efstathiou. "Its connection to fundamental physics is really rather weak," he says, so until string theory matures, models that use it will be flawed and misunderstood. But on the whole, he says, "the cyclic model is a cute idea and some elements of it may survive."

Steinhardt and Turok agree that problems with the mathematics could be their undoing. "There may be disasters waiting for us at higher levels of calculation," says Turok. But, if it does add up, their theory overturns many ideas about the Universe, they say - like time and space being created in a Big Bang.

Footnote 1: Steinhardt, P. J. & Turok, N. A. Cyclic model of the Universe.Science, published online April 25 (2002). |Link to Science online.|

[PatrickHenry]

This is 2 years old, but I can't find a prior thread on it.

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and occasionally other science topics like cosmology. Long-time list members get all pings, but can be changed to evo-only status. New additions will be evo-only, but can request all pings. FReepmail me to be added or dropped. Specify all pings or you'll get evo-pings only.]

[syriacus]

What about entropy?

The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe   to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.

[NYpeanut]

What the heck do hairdressers know about astrophysics anyway?

[baltodog]

That sounds like where our country is heading...

[samtheman]

Good news for Hindus.

[sirchtruth]

When are you evolutionist, delusionist EVER gonna get your stories straight?

[billorites]

"It's just like reproduction in biology," says Turok.

[DoctorMichael]

Thanks. I was going to note that this particlular model is more closely aligned to the Hindu religion's view of a Universe cycling over and over.

As you may know......
I wonder how many of the ultra-religious, anti-Science Creationists here at FR realize that there was another theory that was accepted years back called the Steady STATE Model that posited a Universe that continually comes into existence ie. there is NO beginning; which, of course goes against the Biblical (and most other religion's) story(s).

In fact, the current Big Bang Theory should be a distinctly more acceptable theory to most since there is an EXACT MOMENT of Creation.

(Hey, its Sunday morning, right? Why not throw religion into the mix on this Thread.)

[tom paine 2]

bump for later

[LogicWings]

This is, in truth, the only way it can be.

I've never met a person who understood the implications of infinity.

It is why I absolutely despise Stephen Hawkings, with his, "we can't speculate about anything before the big bang because nothing existed before then." Yeah, right. Then by what natural laws did anything go Bang?

It is all the same question. What I call, "What went Bang, or, What created God?" The two un-answerable questions.

Entropy, shmentropy, in the course of eternity, infinity, who knows what can happen? Eventually, everything. To someone who has seen eternity these questions are stupid.

CSNY - We have all been here before, We have all been here before . . .

[Aquinasfan]

ccording to a controversial new mathematical mode1.

Infinite series exist in mathematics and in the imagination, but they don't exist in actuality. An actual series must be finite. It cannot be infinite.

[Heatseeker]

According to the model, a fifth dimension that we can't see or travel through bridges the branes.

Well that much is provable - The Fifth Dimension hasn't toured together in years.

[Salman]

I heard of the 'oscillating universe' theory at least as far back as the 1970s. This "new" theory is just an old one dusted off. But then so was 'continental drift', so who can say?

[Wilhelm Tell]

I've always had a suspicion that the first words ever spoken were were the ancient Sanskrit equivalent of "Oh no! Not again!"

[DoctorMichael]

LOL

[samtheman]

I haven't read much about this theory you posted here, but Alan Guth has a concept (not a full-blown theory) of how the Big Bang can fit into a sort of a steady-state picture, something along the lines of big-bangs popping up independently of each other at random "times" and "places" (have to use those words loosely, just to convey the image) and that there is a distinction between the word "universe" which is what is contained in a single big-bang (everything we can currently see with our eyes and radio-ears) and the "cosmos", a some sort of pre-space-time fabric in which the bigbangs bubble up out of once in a while. Like I said, it's just a concept he has, not a full-blown theory, but one I'm sort of partial to myself.

It breaks down like this: all the laws of physics we know and love were created at the moment of our particular bigbang and apply only within it. "Elsewhere" there are different bigbangs with different physics-laws and different probabilities of coalescing galaxies and evolution of heavier molecules (and all that heavier molecules imply).

The thing I like about Guths concept is that it eliminates the coefficient problem: why are certain coefficients just the right value for star-formation and star-longevity, when other coefficients are just as "likely"? The multi-bigbang concept (a form of weak anthropomorphism) says that all the other values happen, in other bigbangs. We got a good combo here, so we're here to talk about it. In other bigbang universes, maybe stars only burn for a thousand years or so before burning out... or maybe never form at all. So those coefficients "never" get measured. (Have to use time references loosely, just to illustrate the concept.)

Anyway, I'm a sysadmin, not an astrophyscist and I feel free to pick and choose these concepts as I see fit.

[AlbionGirl]

Do ten dimensions exist? And if so, how were they discovered, and how is their existence proved? If these are dumb questions, you'll have to forgive me, as I'm not very educated in this subject.

[truthchaser]

Doesn't this just "string out" the real mystery... what was before matter, time, the frame of reference wherein we can even ponder infinity? Whether it is a big bang, an eternity of big bangs and big crunches, an observer being observed, a cycle of eternally colliding strings...

It's turtles all the way down!

[mrsmith]

Dear cosmologists,

In a million years what may man decide to do with the universe? Will he have a better idea for a universe and create it- again?

God only knows