The Big Bang theory is humanity’s best understanding of the origin of the universe, and it says that 13.8 billion years ago, everything was condensed in a tiny, hot, dense ball of energy. It could be said that this singularity exploded, and that set the stage for everything in existence today. This theory has been evolving over the decades, and today, there are many interesting ideas about it worth exploring.
The Big Bang and Inflation
The universe after the Big Bang was supposed to expand slowly and chaotically, and scientists wondered how it came to be so uniform on large scales today. The introduction of inflation explained that, saying that there was a period of rapid expansion in the early moments of the universe when it suddenly expanded billions upon billions of times in a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. This way, it remained somewhat uniform.
Scientists like Ghazal Geshnizjani, Eric Ling, and Jerome Quintin are also interested in what happened before inflation. They analyzed it using Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and their work suggests that inflation may have been preceded by other significant events.
Singularities at the Big Bang
At first, everything was in a singularity, which is also a point where mathematical descriptions lose meaning. Their research focuses on whether the singularities at the Big Bang were similar to black hole centers and event horizons. They use a parameter called the scale factor and classify different scenarios before inflation to understand the singularities.
The study uses the work of Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, who proved that inflation had a beginning marked by a singularity. According to the latest paper, there is a possibility that singularities are one of two types.
Two Types of Singularities
One is influenced by dark energy called coordinate types and classified as erasable, and one has more matter than energy – irreversible curvature singularities, like those in black holes, where traditional physics breaks down.
Scientists have long known that general relativity alone can’t fully describe our universe, so they seek a more comprehensive understanding of high-energy events in cosmic history. This can help them combine general relativity with quantum mechanics into one unified theory, which is the ultimate goal of many physicists.