Thursday, November 30, 2006

Another universe may have preceded ours, study finds

One of the first posts I wrote on this blog was:

There is not one thing in the entire vast universe that remains as it is. Every thing, living or inanimate, changes. Some say even the universe itself will at some point in the incomprehensible infinity contract inside itself, swallowing every atom and molecule up, then will be born again with the next “big bang” and our recycled particles will begin anew.

According to some physicists, I just might be right:

May 14, 2006
Courtesy Penn State University
and World Science staff

Three physicists say they have done calculations suggesting that before the birth of our universe, which is expanding, there was an earlier universe that was shrinking.

The results stem from a theory that claims the fabric of space and time is made up of minuscule, indivisible bits, much as matter is.

Scientists believe our cosmos began in a sort of explosion called the Big Bang, when everything that exists—which just previously had been packed into one infinitely dense point—burst outward.

The universe is still expanding, according to this view, because it was born expanding.

According to some proposals, the Big Bang is a repeating cycle. Universes might expand, then shrink back to a point, then expand again. Thus the “bang” would be really more like a bounce.

The idea is appealing in some ways, but scientists have found it far from easy to test. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, a key basis for the Big Bang theory, is silent on what happened before that event.

“General relativity can be used to describe the universe back to a point at which matter becomes so dense that its equations don’t hold up,” said Abhay Ashtekar, director of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Penn State University in University Park, Penn.

To go further, physicists must use tools Einstein didn’t have, he added. Ashtekar and two post-doctoral researchers developed such tools through a combination of quantum physics—the science of subatomic particles—and general relativity, which describes the large-scale structure of space and time.

They found that before the Big Bang, there was a contracting universe. Other than the fact that it was shrinking, they added, it was similar to ours in terms of the geometry of its space and time, or spacetime, as cosmologists call it since Einstein found the two are interwoven.

“In place of a classical Big Bang there is in fact a quantum bounce,” said Ashtekar. “We were so surprised by the finding,” he added, that the team repeated the calculations for months to include different different possible values of some numbers representing the current universe. But the results kept pointing to a bounce.

The findings appear in the current issue of the research journal Physical Review Letters.

While the general idea of another, pre-Big Bang universe isn’t new, Ashtekar said, this is the first mathematical study that systematically establishes its existence and deduces properties of its spacetime geometry.

The notion that spacetime has a geometry involves the idea that it can be curved or flat. A “flat” spacetime is one in which geometry works as we normally expect; for example, parallel lines never meet. But Einstein found that material objects deform this flatness, introducing curvature.

To arrive at their pre-existing universe finding, Ashtekar’s group used loop quantum gravity, a theory that seeks to reconcile General Relativity with quantum physics. These two seemingly fundamental theories are otherwise contradictory in some ways.

Loop quantum gravity, which was pioneered at Ashtekar’s institute, proposes that spacetime has a discrete “atomic” structure, as opposed to being a continuous sheet, as Einstein, along with most us, assumed.

In loop quantum gravity, space is thought of as woven from one-dimensional “threads.” The continuum picture remains mostly valid as an approximation. But near the Big Bang, this fabric is violently torn so that its discrete, or quantum, nature becomes important. One outcome of this is that gravity becomes repulsive instead of attractive, Ashtekar argued; the result is the Big Bounce.

Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, a cosmologist who has explored some related concepts, wrote in an email that the new research “supports, in a general way, the idea that the Big Bang need not be the beginning of space and time.”

The universe “may have undergone one or more bangs in its past history,” he added.

Steinhardt and colleagues have also proposed a bounce of sorts, but it’s different. It could turn out that the two scenarios are equivalent at some deep level, but that’s not known, he added. Steinhardt’s scenario makes use of string theory, another attempt to reconcile General Relativity with quantum physics.

Some versions of string theory portray our visible universe as a three-dimensional space embedded in an invisible space having more dimensions. Our zone, called a braneworld—the word comes from its similarity to a sort of membrane—could periodically bounce into another, parallel braneworld.

Such an event might look to us, stuck in a few dimensions as we are, as a Big Bang. “I don’t know if [Ashtekar’s] case translates into a bounce between braneworlds like we are describing,” Steinhardt wrote. But by his estimate, this cataclysm won’t take place for another roughly 300 billion years—so there is hopefully plenty of time to answer the question.

9 comments:

beepbeepitsme said...

This is why the human concept of "beginning" is such a mental mine field and why theists have so much fun with speculating on "the beginning."

Stardust said...

beepheep - there are endless possibilities and the looking for answers leads to things we would have never known before. Contemplating where we came from is very fun and interesting and it will probably take longer than the earth is old to figure it out...if humans ever can. Until then, most will probably just cling to their superstitions and mythologies because most humans are in need of some kind of definite answers. If they can't find them, they make them up...which is kind of boring if you ask me.

Krystalline Apostate said...

Whoa, how cool is that?!?!?
I've always said that matter/energy has always existed.
This, however, spawns the query of infinite regression (at least for the theists).

Stardust said...

ka, if you or anyone else who comes by are interested, xian Dan and I are having an interesting discussion here: Bertrand Russell...I would appreciate a bit of historical contribution in this debate.

Anonymous said...

Given man's ego, it's interesting that man is always looking for evidence of some other form of life elsewhere in the universe. Is he not brave enough to face the fact he might be a one-off?

Given his nature it's just as well.

Tommykey said...

Daniel, yes, some men (and women) are interested in finding proof of life elsewhere in the universe, but 99% of the people on this planet go about their daily lives without giving it much thought. Thus, it is an error on your part to equate the six billion people on this planet with the small part of the human population that takes an active interest in finding proof of life elsewhere in the universe.

Anonymous said...

Stardust, you are VERY right. Your assessment agrees with Tolman, Einstein, Steinhardt,Ashtekar, and others.
I'm glad you found the 2006 "big-bounce" research interesting. What's funny about this approach is that physicists are looking at only one bounce.
Consider the semantic differences between "another universe" and "our" universe when we're talking about a physical bounce through which the information of one universe is passed to the other. Are the two universes really distinct? How can we know?
Physically (at least according to A. Ashtekar of Penn State), such a pair of universes (before and after "the" bounce) is intimately linked.
This is all because Ashtekar assumes certain quantum mechanical rules in formulating the bouncing universe (which, fortunately, happens to agree with the most wildly useful revolution of physics: quantum mechanics). His assumption is quite good. It's a very valid way of mapping/extrapolating what happens "here" on earth to what's going on "out there."
The ramification, however, is this: the universal "bounce" should in fact echo in the dynamics all around us. We may be literally looking into "the" bounce whenever we look at anything. How interesting that this phenomenon might always have been right in front of us (and all around us)!
Furthermore, this outcome must be the case for a correct universal theory, because a single discrepancy (somewhere, sometime) would invalidate the theory.
So it seems we both agree this is an important story and I'm glad your post turns up in Google and is continuing to raise awareness!

Stardust said...

rwestafer, thanks for coming by and taking the time to read. This is a post from nearly three years ago, so glad to see it's still in circulation! Yes, it is important and interesting subject.

Stardust said...

And rwestafer, if you find anything else on the subject will you please let me know? Thanks.