New Evidence Points to Events Before the Big Bang

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New Evidence Points to Events Before the Big Bang

Image shows echoes from before big bang

By Stuart Gary for ABC Science Online

Updated 3 hours 6 minutes ago

Image of the cosmic background radiation

Could these concentric rings be the result of a collision that occurred before the big bang? (Gurzadyan and Penrose)

Concentric circles on an image of the early universe are an imprint of violent events before the big bang, according to a new study.

If correct, the discovery points to a universe that did not start 13.7 billion years ago, but one that eternally cycles through aeons dominated by big bangs and supermassive black hole collisions.

Published on the pre-press website arXiv.org, Professor Roger Penrose from Oxford University and Professor Vahe Gurzadyan from Yerevan State University, Armenia, claim the evidence is in data collected by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (W-MAP) spacecraft.

W-MAP's seven-year mission studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, the afterglow of the big bang.

The CMB dates back to 300,000 years after the big bang and has now cooled to around -270 degrees C.

Slight variations in the temperature represent differences in density, which were the seeds from which galaxies and superclusters grew.

Big bang theories

According the presently accepted 'inflation theory', these variations are thought to be random because of the inflation period that occurred nanoseconds after the big bang, which made the universe expand from the size of a pea.

Despite this initial randomness, scientists say the early universe was in a low state of entropy, or high level of order, which was needed for complex matter to be possible.

But Penrose says inflationary theory doesn't explain why there was such low entropy in the first place.

His idea of 'conformal cyclic cosmology' predicts that eventually black holes will consume all the matter in the universe.

Finally the black holes evaporate leaving a universe with nothing but energy, and a state of low entropy, bringing this aeon to an end and triggering the next aeon with another big bang.

Circles predating the universe

Penrose and Gurzadyan believe they have detected concentric circles in the CMB which are older than the big bang and support their theory.

They believe it Is an imprint of very violent gravitational radiation waves generated by supermassive black hole collisions in a previous aeon before the last big bang.

They say supporting data collected by the BOOMERanG-98 balloon mission over the Antarctic rules out instrument anomalies.

The director of the Australian Astronomical Observatory, Dr Matthew Colliss says the work is highly speculative, both in terms of theory and the evidence it is based on.

"It would certainly be a remarkable result if it proves to be true, but a lot of caution is required at this stage," says Colliss.

He says it is important to be sure when going through such a huge mass of data that you don't end up simply seeing the patterns you want to see.

"It's fascinating speculation, but I'm going to take leave to doubt it until much more solid evidence is in place."

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/29/3079213.htm

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


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I understand the reluctance

I understand the reluctance to get excited just yet.  But if it pans out, that would be a cause to celebrate.

 

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Those are the Glorious

Those are the Glorious Concentric Rings of Gawd, demonstrating His Divine Perfection and Eternal Nature in the perfect circles. Now we have proof that God made the universe. Note that their are only 2 rings, as the third ring, the Holy Ghost, permeates all of His Divine Creation and expands to the edge of the universe. Glory be His name.

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They look very suspicious to

They look very suspicious to me, like pareidolia combined with photoshop. I'd be interested in seeing them make a prediction about what they'll find and then later finding it.

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 Well, in a sense, this is

 

Well, in a sense, this is new evidence that was predicted quite a while ago. Penrose has been talking about this for about 30 or so years. What is new is that the data set that he is using was just released several months ago. Well, if the data is there, then it is there.

 

That being said, the paper is not hard to find. Just search arXiv for his name. It is only eight pages long and not that hard to read. The one thing that stands out to me as possibly not quite right is that most of his citations are to his own previous work. Then too, there are not many people doing this work, so the field is kind of small. The other big name in the area of cyclical cosmology is Hawking and I can see how Penrose might not want to use some of that work, as several of Hawking's papers from the 80's have been partially discredited due to an error in his assumptions that was only discovered a couple of years ago.

 

Honestly, while it is always good to be skeptical, especially with new works such as this, Penrose has a track record going back to the 60's. He tends to be all over the place with his conjectures. At any given moment, he is on about something that nobody else knows that much about but later on, he tends to turn out having been right even though proving that is not a trivial exercise until later on.

 

In many ways, he reminds me of the noted astronomer and cosmologist Fritz Zwicky. Zwicky made a number of predictions, some of which were not confirmed until decades later. Neutron stars? Zwicky had the idea 31 years before the first one was found. Gravitational lensing? Zwicky in 1937. Dark Matter? Zwicky again, this time in 1933.

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Interesting

 I take this with a table spoon of salt to offset the taste of crushed wishful thinking.  The universe model that I favour is the dark energy driven Big Rip.  It's a much cooler way to go then just about any other save the Big Crunch which is unfortunately not supported by empirical data.  I have one loaded comment, if the universe is indeed cyclical, and it needs to arrive at an extremely low state of entropy, this would be followed by a big bang.  Perhaps I'm not understanding this correctly but in order for everything to cool enough to justify a singularity, a long period of time is necessary, and that would show up when mapping out the background radiation temperature.  Also wouldn't a new big bang eliminate all other previous "background radiation" information since space-time would be born anew?

I'm not denying that a cyclical universe is possible, I just don't think it is practical to speculate because for all we know the Jesus man himself may come and collect all the radiation into a neat little ball all ready for a new Big Bang... ok that's not possible or practical either Smiling.  As far as a cyclical universe is concerned I favour the Ekpyrotic model of two colliding branes.  Point is, the way I understand the current Big Bang theory, there shouldn't be any empirical evidence of previous universes.  

All that said I'm waiting on the peer review comments on this one.  Myself being just an amateur.

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I don't enjoy discussing the

I don't enjoy discussing the big bang, big crunch, expansion/contraction theory, or any of the like. It all lacks reinforcing empirical data. All the empirical data we DO have only hint and point to possibilities. You know?

Until more irrefutable empirical evidence is found, I would suggest we all hold our opinions.


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Naw

 

WasitacatisaW wrote:

I don't enjoy discussing the big bang, big crunch, expansion/contraction theory, or any of the like. It all lacks reinforcing empirical data. All the empirical data we DO have only hint and point to possibilities. You know?

Until more irrefutable empirical evidence is found, I would suggest we all hold our opinions.

 

Speculation is fine, as long as it's recognized as such. If we held our opinions awaiting irrefutable evidence there'd be no scientific modeling and hypothesis. I understand your discomfort with this edge of reality stuff but what's nice is the thought there may be a way to uncover empirical evidence that we haven't recognised before. It's a long shot, no doubt but worth a lash. Look at Hadron. Essentially that billions of dollars of spend is devoted to the confirmation of speculation and we still haven't seen a quark yet.

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


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Atheistextremist

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

WasitacatisaW wrote:

I don't enjoy discussing the big bang, big crunch, expansion/contraction theory, or any of the like. It all lacks reinforcing empirical data. All the empirical data we DO have only hint and point to possibilities. You know?

Until more irrefutable empirical evidence is found, I would suggest we all hold our opinions.

 

Speculation is fine, as long as it's recognized as such. If we held our opinions awaiting irrefutable evidence there'd be no scientific modeling and hypothesis. I understand your discomfort with this edge of reality stuff but what's nice is the thought there may be a way to uncover empirical evidence that we haven't recognised before. It's a long shot, no doubt but worth a lash. Look at Hadron. Essentially that billions of dollars of spend is devoted to the confirmation of speculation and we still haven't seen a quark yet.

 

That's a great point. I am a big fan of the Particle Accelerators myself, and you're right, we gotta make that leap (leap being the constant research and discussion of otherwise unnatainable conclusions, like that of the big-bang) in order to find virtually anything.


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 Well, you may not like to

 

Well, you may not like to discuss this sort of thing but that is for you. However, there are people who do like to discuss such topics. Also, if not for people like that, we would all still be mucking pig stalls in medieval Europe TYVM.

 

In any case, the circles have been confirmed by two other groups of researchers. They are quite real. Now we have three groups arguing over what they mean.

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 Actually, we have seen

 

Actually, we have seen quarks, sort of. Practically in my back yard even.

 

OK that is a bit of an exaggeration but the RHIC is only thirty five miles from me and that is where it first happened. Basically, when temperatures break 4,000,000,000,000 kelvin, baryons are no longer stable and they break down to what is called a quark-gluon plasma. When that happens, the individual particles will shoot through the detectors briefly and leave a real trace that can be measured.

 

Of course, that work needs to be confirmed by the LHC, which was scheduled to do the work back in December. We are waiting for the results to be published. But in all probability, yah.

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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

 

Actually, we have seen quarks, sort of. Practically in my back yard even.

 Basically, when temperatures break 4,000,000,000,000 kelvin, baryons are no longer stable and they break down to what is called a quark-gluon plasma. When that happens, the individual particles will shoot through the detectors briefly and leave a real trace that can be measured.

 

Oh man, I was completely unaware of that. Is there a link you could possibly provide to the individual, or journal that contains this unconfirmed information?


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Well, a quick search got me

Well, a quick search got me this link:

 

http://www.aip.org/pnu/2005/split/728-1.html

 

OK not an actual paper but still, headed in the right direction.

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