Big Bang May Not Have Been the Beginning of Everything, New Theory Suggests

The Big Bang is often described as the explosive moment that gave rise to the Universe – a singular point where space, time, and matter came into existence.

But what if that wasn’t truly the beginning? What if our Universe originated from something that came before – something both familiar and revolutionary?

A Bold Alternative to the Big Bang

In a recent study published in Physical Review D, my colleagues and I present a bold alternative. Our calculations suggest that the Big Bang may not have marked the start of everything, but was instead the result of a gravitational collapse – similar to what creates a black hole – followed by a kind of bounce within it.

This hypothesis, which we call the “black hole universe,” presents a new perspective on the cosmos’s origin, yet it is entirely grounded in established physics and observations.

The standard cosmological model, which combines the Big Bang with the theory of cosmic inflation (a rapid expansion in the Universe’s earliest moments), has been remarkably effective in explaining the structure and evolution of the cosmos. Still, it leaves some foundational questions unanswered.

For instance, the model begins with a singularity – a point of infinite density where the laws of physics break down. This isn’t merely a technical issue; it reveals a fundamental gap in our understanding of the Universe’s beginning.

To explain certain features of the cosmos, scientists introduced inflation – driven by an unknown and exotic field – and, later, dark energy to account for the Universe’s current accelerated expansion. In essence, the model works but relies on unverified elements.

And yet, the most basic questions linger: where did everything come from? Why did it start this way? Why is the Universe so smooth, vast, and flat?

A new model

Our new model approaches these questions from a different angle – by looking inward rather than just outward. Instead of starting with an expanding Universe and trying to rewind the clock, we analyze what happens when an extremely dense concentration of matter collapses under gravity.

This process is familiar: it leads to the formation of black holes – objects that are already well-understood in physics. But what lies inside a black hole, beyond the event horizon, remains unknown.

In 1965, British physicist Roger Penrose showed that, under very general conditions, gravitational collapse inevitably results in a singularity. This idea, later expanded by Stephen Hawking and others, supports the notion that such singularities are unavoidable. Penrose’s work earned him the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics and inspired Hawking’s bestseller A Brief History of Time.

However, there’s an important caveat. These theorems rely on classical physics, which describes large-scale phenomena. When we include the effects of quantum mechanics – essential under extreme densities – the picture may shift.

In our study, we demonstrate that gravitational collapse does not necessarily end in a singularity. We provide an exact mathematical solution, with no approximations, showing how, as the collapse approaches the supposed singularity, the size of the Universe changes as a hyperbolic function of cosmic time.

This solution reveals how a collapsing cloud of matter can reach a high-density state and then bounce, reversing into a new phase of expansion.

But how can this be, if Penrose’s theorems don’t allow it? The key lies in the quantum exclusion principle, which says that no two identical fermions (a type of particle) can occupy the same quantum state.

We show that this principle prevents matter from being compressed indefinitely. As a result, the collapse halts and reverses. The bounce is not only possible – it becomes inevitable under the right conditions.

Crucially, this reversal happens entirely within the framework of general relativity, which governs large-scale structures like stars and galaxies, combined with basic quantum principles – without the need for speculative physics, exotic fields, or extra dimensions.

What emerges on the other side of the bounce is a universe strikingly similar to our own. Even more intriguingly, this bounce naturally gives rise to two distinct phases of accelerated expansion – the early inflation and the current expansion driven by dark energy – not through hypothetical fields, but from the bounce’s own dynamics.

Testable predictions

One of the strengths of this model is that it makes testable predictions. It forecasts a small but positive spatial curvature – meaning the Universe isn’t perfectly flat but slightly curved, like the Earth’s surface.

This curvature would be a leftover trace from the initial over-density that caused the collapse. If future observations, such as those from the Euclid mission, detect this slight curvature, it would strongly support the idea that our Universe emerged from a gravitational bounce.

The model also predicts the current rate of cosmic expansion – which observations have already confirmed – and may help scientists gain insights into other unresolved questions in cosmology, such as how supermassive black holes form, the nature of dark matter, and how galaxies develop hierarchically.

Future missions like Arrakhis are expected to further explore these issues by studying faint structures such as stellar halos and satellite galaxies – components that are difficult to detect from Earth but crucial for understanding dark matter and galaxy evolution.

These phenomena may also be linked to compact relics – like black holes – that formed during the collapsing phase and survived the bounce.

A new cosmic perspective

The “black hole universe” model also offers a new way to view our place in the cosmos.In this framework, a larger “parent” universe forms a black hole whose interior contains our entire observable Universe.

This implies that we’re not in a special or central position – much like the Earth wasn’t the center of the Universe in the geocentric model that Galileo famously challenged in the 17th century.

Rather than witnessing the birth of everything from nothing, we might be observing the continuation of a cosmic cycle – one shaped by gravity, quantum mechanics, and their deep interconnection.

Read the original article on: Science Alert

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