I hadn’t see this posted and thought people might be interested:
If a new theory turns out to be true, the universe may not have started with a bang.
In the new formulation, the universe was never a singularity, or an infinitely small and infinitely dense point of matter. In fact, the universe may have no beginning at all.
“Our theory suggests that the age of the universe could be infinite,” said study co-author Saurya Das, a theoretical physicist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.
Das and his colleagues wanted a way to resolve at least some of these problems. To do so, they looked at an older way of visualizing quantum mechanics, called Bohmian mechanics. In it, a hidden variable governs the bizarre behavior of subatomic particles. Unlike other formulations of quantum mechanics, it provides a way to calculate the trajectory of a particle.
Using this old-fashioned form of quantum theory, the researchers calculated a small correction term that could be included in Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Then, they figured out what would happen in deep time.
I believe I’ve seen a thread or two about this somewhere around here, but I don’t know where.
yeah, maybe i should of done a search first. i just hadn’t seen anything in the past few days…
DataX
February 27, 2015, 11:09pm
4
I thought this new thing was questioning “cosmic inflation” - something that was/is believed to have happen way less than a second after t0.
I thought the Big Bang theories came about after discoveries about red/blue shifting and that we sort of extrapolated back in time. After reading - there’s obviously more too it that I don’t understand. I get the whole light shifting thing. I’m not sure what the next thing I need to understand is to get the next step (in understanding) for a layperson.
leahcim
February 27, 2015, 11:18pm
5
DataX:
I thought this new thing was questioning “cosmic inflation” - something that was/is believed to have happen way less than a second after t0.
I thought the Big Bang theories came about after discoveries about red/blue shifting and that we sort of extrapolated back in time. After reading - there’s obviously more too it that I don’t understand. I get the whole light shifting thing. I’m not sure what the next thing I need to understand is to get the next step (in understanding) for a layperson.
i dont understand it either
should a mod close this thread before it gets too long?