Psience Quest

Big Bounce Simulations Challenge the Big Bang

Charlie Wood

Quote:Steinhardt and company imagine a universe that expands for perhaps a trillion years, driven by the energy of an omnipresent (and hypothetical) field, whose behavior we currently attribute to dark energy. When this energy field eventually grows sparse, the cosmos starts to gently deflate. Over billions of years a contracting scale factor brings everything a bit closer, but not all the way down to a point. The dramatic change comes from the Hubble radius, which rushes in and eventually becomes microscopic. The universe’s contraction recharges the energy field, which heats up the cosmos and vaporizes its atoms. A bounce ensues, and the cycle starts anew.

In the bounce model, the microscopic Hubble radius ensures smoothness and flatness. And whereas inflation blows up many initial imperfections into giant plots of multiverse real estate, slow contraction squeezes them essentially out of existence. We are left with a cosmos that has no beginning, no end, no singularity at the Big Bang, and no multiverse.

Bit of a necro post, but just happened across this the other day and lo and behold someone posted it on here ages ago. I think this research is real interesting, it's truly rare to see something bring inflation into question.

Another thing I found especially interesting was the fact that when the scientific american article was posted about this a few years ago it was responded to with a full page rebuttal written by 4 people and cosigned by 29. I do wonder how much of it is an appeal to the familiar and decrying of things that rise up to challenge it. Paradgims definitely exist in things other than what we deal with.