No Big Bang? Quantum Equation Predicts Universe Has No Beginning

The cosmos may have existed always with no beginning, according to a new quantum model that relates quantum correction terms to match Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This theory may also cover for dark matter and dark energy, solving numerous problems at once.

The generally acknowledged age of the cosmos, as projected by general relativity, is almost 13.8 billion years. In the start, everything in existence is considered to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or known as singularity.

Only after this phase it started to inflate in a “Big Bang”, which is considered as official beginning of the universe. Even though the Big Bang singularity ascends directly and inevitably from the mathematics of general relativity, some researchers see it as problematical since the math can describe only what occurred directly after—not at or before—the singularity.

“The Big Bang singularity is one of the biggest problem of general relativity as the laws of physics seem to break down there,” Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, told Phys.org.

Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have presented in a research paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be solved by their unique model in which the cosmos has no beginning and no end.

According to Ali and Das, their research is based on theories presented by theoretical physicist David Bohm. David Bohm introduced quantum trajectories replacing classical geodesics (the shortest path between two points on a curved surface).

In their research paper, Ali and Das used these Bohmian trajectories to an equation put forward in the 1950s by physicist Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri at Presidency University in Kolkata, India.

With the help of the quantum-corrected Raychaudhuri equation, Ali and Das concluded quantum-corrected Friedmann equations, which define the expansion and development of universe (including the Big Bang) agreeing with general relativity. As general relativity doesn’t get along with quantum gravity. Ali and Das also believe their results to hold even if and when a full theory of quantum gravity is articulated.

Their research also make dark matter and dark energy unnecessary. The concept Dark Matter and Dark Energy was introduced to account for unexplainable matter and energy.

In physical terms, their research defines the cosmos as being filled with a quantum fluid. The researchers suggest that this fluid might be made of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are believed to play a crucial role in a theory of quantum gravity.

“It is satisfying to note that such straightforward corrections can potentially resolve so many issues at once,” Das said.