Did the universe begin with a big bang or a little pop? – Herald Review

The Standard Model of the birth of the Universe is usually referred to as the Big Bang. Essentially, everything in existence expanded out of an infinitesimally small point, called a Singularity, with unfathomable energy. From that beginning the Universe, as we know it, exploded into being following the natural laws of Nature. When and how did scientists come up with that idea?

Based on their imaginations and physical environments, people in myriad cultures and religions and philosophies throughout history invented various creative explanations for how the Universe began. Is the current science based explanation any different and if so how?

That the Universe began from a singularity is a relatively new deduction. Since the time when scientists began to speculate on what the environment beyond Earth really was, they postulated the Universe was in a Steady State or Static State, existing from infinity past to infinity future and not changing in any dramatic way. It was Edwin Hubble in 1929 who was first to notice an odd aspect to distant galaxies. The light from those distant galaxies (there are billions of galaxies each composed of billions of stars which Hubble is also credited with unveiling) was shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This solid science indicates the light source is moving away from us, and the greater the shift, the faster the object is receding and the farther away it is.

Since that initial realization, astrophysicists and astronomers have fine-tuned the measurements of this phenomena until there is no doubt that nearly all galaxies are moving away from each other in ever increasing velocity as if in the aftermath of an explosion. If we run the clock backwards in time, the closer the galaxies are to each other until reaching the time when everything was compressed into a point of infinite energy. (What about solid stuff like atoms? They are bits of compressed energy as Einstein showed and nuclear weapons prove.)

The evidence for the Standard Model is substantial, but it is not perfect. In order for the Universe to begin that way, the equations indicate there had to have been a period of time very early on, which astrophysics call Inflation, when the Universe was expanding faster than the speed of light. Yet this violates the current understanding of the laws of Nature. And the current mathematical equations fail to describe what conditions were like at time zero.

Before Einsteins revolutionary E=MC2, scientists thought that space contained some sort of tangible substance they called ether. Part of their reasoning was that waves like water or sound waves require something to move through. Water waves require water and sound waves require a substance like air. But if there was nothing in space (a vacuum), then they believed light could not traverse it because light also acts like a wave. Without getting too technical, Einsteins breakthrough eliminated the need for a substance in space because light can also act like particles and can pass through a vacuum.

It is important to note that scientists generally accept the Standard Model because, even though it has issues, the evidence for it is substantial. But is there any other possibility? The following is one other, but in order for it to work we have to rejuvenate the ether that was rejected after Einsteins work. But this ether is not a substance as we think of a substance but rather merely an underlying condition of probabilities, which we can call a field for simplicity sake. In this view, the entire Universe did not start from a massive expansion from an infinitely small point, but from a tiny fluctuation in this field of probabilities, something like a seed planted in a field of soil. So from and within this field, then, this tiny fluctuation grew exponentially gaining energy and eventually expanding outward into the Universe, as it exists today. This underlying field is theoretical, but it could explain such oddities as to why the expansion of the Universe is not slowing down but speeding up and why most of the energy and matter in the Universe is unaccounted for by the Standard Model. It could explain virtual particles, strange bits of energy that pop in and out of existence. Where do they come from and where do they go when they are not here? It could explain dark energy and dark matter, which are mysterious substances that are suspected only by their effects on ordinary matter.

So the Big Bang or the Little Pop? Several new scientific initiatives are underway to glean more information from the Cosmos. Scientists will let the evidence speak for itself and like scientific inquiry in most other instances, will likely reveal more questions than it answers.

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Did the universe begin with a big bang or a little pop? - Herald Review