General News No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

Interesting! Also, I am a fan of Bohm's work (even if some of his ideas are a bit out there, they never cease to be thought-inducing), so I'm biased towards a theory that includes it

As in all physics topics: I do hope there is some sort of testable hypothesis coming from all of this!

 

Don't bet on it. However it is a really cool link and is a testament to science's advance.

What's funny is that back when the Big Bang was still very suspect, its opposing theory called the "Steady State" was also proven wrong it seems. There is a lesson in humility there.

 

Hmm... It's interesting, but the way I understand it, it doesn't get rid of what's colloquially understood as "Big Bang" the way Hoyle's steady state model tried to do. It gets rid of singularities and throws (yet another) possible candidate for nature of dark energy into the mix.

Something big and bangy still did happen 13 billion years ago, but instead of happening to a singularity with no time or space it happened to something more comprehensible and more similar to the Universe as it's now. Something we can research further. Which would be great news if they can prove it.

 

(mind blown)

 

That was beautiful :tears:

 

Perhaps society is at the point where all new scientific breakthroughs are results of grasping desperately for an answer when there is none. It's ironic science and we're finding patterns that are not meant to make sense only because humanity's excessive capacity for knowledge compels them to reason deductively. This would corroborate the idea that science is not in fact true, but is rather socially influenced, thereby more subjective than it is objective....Nice article anyhow and having said what I said, still incredible to contemplate because who knows what the world truly is. Physics has become increasingly theoretical and even philosophical over the years because our brightest can only speculate at its magnificence.

 

So it's always been and forever will be?

Alpha and Omega?

 

It's still kind of a big bang, albeit modified from what we know now.

 

It's not like physics and cosmology didn't have similar crises before... 250 years ago the best explanation anyone could come up with for long-term stability of the Solar System was divine intervention. Then perturbation theory was developed and Laplace could say "I had no need of that hypothesis" to Napoleon...

110 years ago "indivisible" and "immutable" atoms were shown to be neither. And again, no one could explain why they are as stable as they are, straightforward application of classical physics led to all kinds of absurd results. People started to doubt if considering all that, matter even could be said to "exist" in any objective sense... But it was gradually sorted out by quantum physics.

And so on.

Modern cosmology, Hubble's red shift to dark energy was there for less than 100 years. We didn't even begin to really explore it, and we already solved several "unsolvable" problems along the way, so why give up that easily?

 

I don't usually "bro" people, but... bro. What is all this supposed to mean? How you say "physics has become increasingly theoretical" well, all science is organized into theories, that is bodies of knowledge about a certain topic. And if you only mean "not based on observations but rather pure calculations" there's a branch of physics called "theoretical physics" that does that, which produces all of these crazy ideas. All the other scientists still observe and experiment.

"Not meant to make sense"? By whose design are they meant to or not? If you are talking about God who created things man was not supposed to know, alright I'll give you that one. Otherwise you're entering Lovecraftian territory, which is decidedly more entertaining than it is educational. EDIT: If you mean we see correlation where there is no actual relationship, occasionally. But examples of that are rooted out and disregarded as soon as it can be proven. Adoption of the new ideas by the public may not move so quickly. :/

And lastly, what do you mean about science being socially driven and subjective? Because the last time I checked, a majority of the population could hardly even tell you what the Big Bang is, let alone know the specifics and keep up on news about cosmological discoveries. So society can't play that big a role.

I'll let Isaac Asimov explain how it is that science can be both trusted in its current accuracy and constantly updated through the centuries:

Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong

 

The essay itself is great, as would be expected from Asimov, but I especially want to point out this fantastic quote:

"I am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone."

 

Not giving it up easily, but rather just stating alternatives. Many people read these ideas and take it for fact blindly, but even the common person can, and should be critical of their world even if the need to do so isn't immediately apparent. A simpleton thinks differently and may therefore see something his betters may have missed. I admit my comment makes science appear void and worthless, but that's not my intent.
I don't like making statements without providing counter-arguments to my ideas. I need to say something and give an opposing view because I like dealing with both sides of the topic. That also ensures I'm not too biased. Naturally, I'm skeptical about things, a trait that becomes cynical in extremes.
We're constantly learning things, but we still have multiple theories for the same things. Which one is the truth? Can the actual world be measured if there's places beyond? I think the same applies to any scientific breakthrough like those you mention and the evidence that supports or disproves them.

 

Theoretical physics uses abstract mathematical models to explain or predict what experimental physics observes. I know that, but the fact that we have so many interpretations as evidenced by these theories indicates that these models are being tweaked constantly. Either that or it depends on the equation one uses or the evidence that is plugged in. It can be an error as well.
When I said that it's not meant to make sense, I was referencing to how lack evidence does not imply absence of evidence, leaving an observer uncertain and compelled to reason why for the sake of continuity. We need the pieces to fit, but they may not be the right ones. We need more evidence because we have many contradictory ideas or they are both right and exist simultaneously. Not sure how the latter can work out, but further advances may support or disband it.
The uncertain and need for answers in the gaps of our understanding is why it may be subjective. Our cognitive abilities help us, but they present themselves as a hindrance in some cases. Don't you agree we're not perfect, and that in being so our cognition and perspectives biased and imperfect? It's basically the post-modernist theory of science; social influences, not systematic logic drives our "truths".
Ironic science is another interesting opinion similar to the aforementioned one. Why I Think Science Is Ending | Edge.org
Physics is very complex and I'm not invalidating the world of science, but I'm making compromises with my opinion which comes off as inarticulate. I haven't seen anyone that can read this and provide WHY this is right and not just because some stranger wrote so. What I can do though, since I'm no expert, is question its validity, and perhaps bring up another stance to this topic.

 

I realize I'm going to sound like a bit of a wet blanket here, but as I'm a programmer--not a physicist--I shouldn't be caught dead trying to evaluate models, evidence, or conjectures about cosmology and physics.

I think the limits people have understanding science make it a bit dangerous for the public to be evaluating science. "Oh look, the scientists changed their minds again. All of this is too theoretical and abstract, and they are going back and forth." Science is about using observational processes to prove statements of the form "if A, then B," not "if and only if A, then only B."

 

I've heard the argument about creation so many times but the truth is nobody will ever know

 

I am no expert of course but once read that the big bang is beginning of just our universe and there are parallel worlds we can't see. So they haven't discovered anything really?

 

Yes and no. There is a sense in which no one will ever know that the Universe wasn't created this afternoon. As Bertrand Russell put it "We may all have come into existence five minutes ago, provided with ready-made memories, with holes in our socks and hair that needed cutting."

But if you assume natural explanations for things, and a universe governed by logic and laws, then it can be possible to know the history of the universe in any sense by which we would normally be considered to know something.

For example the galaxies are rushing apart. Therefore they were closer together in the past. The cosmic microwave background and the relative abundance of deuterium to hydrogen in the universe are both excellent pieces of evidence for a hot Big Bang, even if they don't provide evidence about what happened close to the purported moment of t=0. But we can keep looking and learning.

The idea of many universes comes up quite differently in a few fields of physics. The thing you are describing sounds like a model called the ekpyrotic universe, in which universes drift through a high dimensional space, and big bangs are triggered when they collide. It's a model. I don't know if anyone has thought of a way it could be tested.