Maybe there wasn't a Big Bang after all ...

[Ziggy Stardust]

From phys.org

The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.

Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.
"The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.
Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.

Old ideas revisited

The physicists emphasize that their quantum correction terms are not applied ad hoc in an attempt to specifically eliminate the Big Bang singularity. Their work is based on ideas by the theoretical physicist David Bohm, who is also known for his contributions to the philosophy of physics. Starting in the 1950s, Bohm explored replacing classical geodesics (the shortest path between two points on a curved surface) with quantum trajectories.

In their paper, Ali and Das applied these Bohmian trajectories to an equation developed in the 1950s by physicist Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri at Presidency University in Kolkata, India. Raychaudhuri was also Das's teacher when he was an undergraduate student of that institution in the '90s.

Using the quantum-corrected Raychaudhuri equation, Ali and Das derived quantum-corrected Friedmann equations, which describe the expansion and evolution of universe (including the Big Bang) within the context of general relativity. Although it's not a true theory of quantum gravity, the model does contain elements from both quantum theory and general relativity. Ali and Das also expect their results to hold even if and when a full theory of quantum gravity is formulated.

No singularities nor dark stuff

In addition to not predicting a Big Bang singularity, the new model does not predict a "big crunch" singularity, either. In general relativity, one possible fate of the universe is that it starts to shrink until it collapses in on itself in a big crunch and becomes an infinitely dense point once again.

Ali and Das explain in their paper that their model avoids singularities because of a key difference between classical geodesics and Bohmian trajectories. Classical geodesics eventually cross each other, and the points at which they converge are singularities. In contrast, Bohmian trajectories never cross each other, so singularities do not appear in the equations.

In cosmological terms, the scientists explain that the quantum corrections can be thought of as a cosmological constant term (without the need for dark energy) and a radiation term. These terms keep the universe at a finite size, and therefore give it an infinite age. The terms also make predictions that agree closely with current observations of the cosmological constant and density of the universe.

New gravity particle

In physical terms, the model describes the universe as being filled with a quantum fluid. The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity.

In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.

Motivated by the model's potential to resolve the Big Bang singularity and account for dark matter and dark energy, the physicists plan to analyze their model more rigorously in the future. Their future work includes redoing their study while taking into account small inhomogeneous and anisotropic perturbations, but they do not expect small perturbations to significantly affect the results.
"It is satisfying to note that such straightforward corrections can potentially resolve so many issues at once," Das said.

Certainly an interesting article. As always with articles about scientific discoveries in esoteric domains, I prefer to reserve judgment until I get a chance to look at some of the scholarly journal articles put out by the authors in question. In the meantime, I'm sure Kuroneko and some of the other folks here more formally versed on this subject will have some enlightening commentary.

[Simon_Jester]

Essentially, this seems to be saying that there was never a point at which the universe occupied literally zero volume- a mathematical singularity, as in all the stuff in the universe is in a singular point.

Whereas informally when we talk about the "Big Bang," we refer not to a mathematical singularity, but to the idea of a tremendous outward expansion and bursting forth of matter and energy. We think of the universe 'blowing up' from an ultra-compressed high-energy state into the relatively low-energy state of reality as we know it.

I suspect that the theory being discussed does NOT say 'there was no giant expansion of an ultra-compressed universe into the one we now know.' It says 'there was no time at which, by 'rewinding' time, we can reach a time at which the universe occupied literally zero volume.'

Although should he swing by, Kuroneko (among others) have no doubt forgotten more about cosmology than I ever knew and still apparently remember several times more than that, so don't take my word for it.

[Knife]

I found the idea of the graviton pretty interesting myself. A bit over my head though.

[Covenant]

When people say this model purposes an "infinitely old" universe I get my head twisted around. How can there be an objective or even subjective measure of time before an inflationary period takes place? Are we supposing some kind of nth-dimensional time arrow that points back beyond our window of time into the origin of the lumpy fluid wad proto-verse?

That wouldn't seem to be time as we know it. For a physics article it seems remiss to use that kind of language when it is potentially misleading, so I'm guessing there's an element of ticking quantum time or the assumption of some other "age" quantification to this wad of spacetime goop.

[Steel]

How can there be an objective or even subjective measure of time before an inflationary period takes place?

Just to make things even more confusing, there is a theory in cosmology called inflation, which is a period of rapid expansion that precedes the standard 'big bang'. In the inflation paradigm there are two regimes of expansion, 'inflation' and then the 'hot big bang'. Prior to inflation the situation is pretty much 'buggery knows, inflation flattens it all out anyway'.