Science teaches us that our Universe began to exist roughly 13.7 billion years ago, and the event that triggered its birth is the so-called ‘Big Bang’. A singularity of matter, time, and space smaller than an atom first appeared, apparently out of nowhere, and began to expand faster than the speed of light without any apparent reason.
While astrophysicists and other scientists would surely like to know more about that primordial event, the Futurism.com publication speaks about an intriguing new study. While nobody’s in to deny the ‘Big Bang’ theory, as it doesn’t necessarily claim that nothing existed before the ‘bang’ and it has plenty of shortcomings, a new theory says something completely unexpected.
The Universe could have existed eternally in some form or another
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who is a physicist from University of New Hampshire, exposed for New Scientist an intriguing new perspective about the early Universe. In fact, there was no “early” in this case, as the scientist claims that the Universe always existed in some form or another. Our Cosmos could have been expanding since always, for all of eternity, says Prescod-Weinstein, without disproving the Big Bang Theory.
As the University of New Hampshire scientist declared for New Scientist:
There have been two changes to the way physicists think about this cosmological timeline,
The first is that research on inflationary models, which study the exponential expansion of space-time, indicate that inflation may be an eternal process.
The scientist continued:
As in, the Universe may not have had a beginning moment, and we may live in what is called an eternally inflating universe, one that was expanding exponentially even before what we call the big bang. Mathematically, this seems the most likely scenario — assuming inflation is correct.
Common sense tells us that everything has to have a beginning, even the Universe itself. But at the same time, common sense tells us that it’s impossible a scenario where absolutely nothing exists, not even space and time. The last idea is truly frightening and absurd, but it’s still supported by some upholders of the Big Bang Theory, including Stephen Hawking.
