[quote]
[quote][img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50169000/jpg/_50169535_50169534.jpg[/img]
[b]The variation in the background shifts sharply within the rings[/b][/quote]
[b]Evidence of events that happened before the Big Bang can be seen in the glow of microwave radiation that fills the Universe, scientists have asserted.[/b]
Renowned cosmologist Roger Penrose said that analysis of this cosmic microwave background showed echoes of previous Big Bang-like events.
The events appear as "rings" around galaxy clusters in which the variation in the background is unusually low.
The unpublished research has been posted on the Arxiv website.
The ideas within it support a theory developed by Professor Penrose - knighted in 1994 for his services to science - that upends the widely-held "inflationary theory".
That theory holds that the Universe was shaped by an unthinkably large and fast expansion from a single point.
Much of high-energy physics research aims to elucidate how the laws of nature evolved during the fleeting first instants of the Universe's being.
"I was never in favour of it, even from the start," said Professor Penrose.
"But if you're not accepting inflation, you've got to have something else which does what inflation does," he explained to BBC News.
"In the scheme that I'm proposing, you have an exponential expansion but it's not in our aeon - I use the term to describe [the period] from our Big Bang until the remote future.
"I claim that this aeon is one of a succession of such things, where the remote future of the previous aeons somehow becomes the Big Bang of our aeon."
This "conformal cyclic cosmology" (CCC) that Professor Penrose advocates allows that the laws of nature may evolve with time, but precludes the need to institute a theoretical beginning to the Universe.
[b]Supermassive find[/b]
Professor Penrose, of Oxford University, and his colleague Vahe Gurzadyan of Yerevan State University in Armenia, have now found what they believe is evidence of events that predate the Big Bang, and that support CCC.
They looked at data from vast surveys of the cosmic microwave background - the constant, nearly uniform low-temperature glow that fills the Universe we see.
They surveyed nearly 11,000 locations, looking for directions in the sky where, at some point in the past, vast galaxies circling one another may have collided.
The supermassive black holes at their centres would have merged, turning some of their mass into tremendous bursts of energy.
[quote][img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50169000/jpg/_50169740_50169739.jpg[/img]
[b]The microwave background has, on average, only minor variations[/b][/quote]
The CCC theory holds that the same object may have undergone the same processes more than once in history, and each would have sent a "shockwave" of energy propagating outward.
The search turned up 12 candidates that showed concentric circles consistent with the idea - some with as many as five rings, representing five massive events coming from the same object through the course of history.
The suggestion is that the rings - representing unexpected order in a vast sky of disorder - represent pre-Big Bang events, toward the end of the last "aeon".
"Inflation [theory] is supposed to have ironed all of these irregularities out," said Professor Penrose.
"How do you suddenly get something that is making these whacking big explosions just before inflation turns off? To my way of thinking that's pretty hard to make sense of."
Shaun Cole of the University of Durham's computational cosmology group, called the research "impressive".
"It's a revolutionary theory and here there appears to be some data that supports it," he told BBC News.
"In the standard Big Bang model, there's nothing cyclic; it has a beginning and it has no end.
"The philosophical question that's sensible to ask is 'what came before the Big Bang?'; and what they're striving for here is to do away with that 'there's nothing before' answer by making it cyclical."
Professor Cole said he was surprised that the statistical variation in the microwave background data was the most obvious signature of what could be such a revolutionary idea, however.
"It's not clear from their theory that they have a complete model of the fluctuations, but is that the only thing that should be going on?
"There are other things that could be going on in the last part of the previous aeon; why don't they show even greater imprints?"
Professors Penrose and Cole both say that the idea should be shored up by further analyses of this type, in particular with data that will soon be available from the Planck telescope, designed to study the microwave background with unprecedented precision.
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[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50169000/jpg/_50169743_50169742.jpg[/img]
[b]Planck will provide a plethora of data that may prove or disprove the idea[/b]
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[b][url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11837869]Source[/url][/b]
Holy shit :science:
[b]tl;dr - [/b] There might have been something before the Big Bang.
Well, duh.
:psyboom:
"Conformal cyclic cosmology" sounds so much better than "big bang theory".
Also, jesus shitting christ!
How can you measure the effect of something that happened before cause and effect?
[QUOTE=Capitulazyguy;26366926]How can you measure the effect of something that happened before cause and effect?[/QUOTE]
This is the whole point. If you're measuring cause and effect before you thought there WAS cause and effect, then clearly your initial assumption (big bang theory) was wrong.
Of course there was something before the big bang, how else would there be a big bang.
[QUOTE=cyanidem;26367011]Of course there was something before the big bang, how else would there be a big bang.[/QUOTE]
Well, the general consensus was that time itself began with the big bang, meaning that there was no 'before'.
But holy shit, this is interesting.
there was bound to be somthing befor the bigbang
God :downs:
those who came before
i did 911
oh god all the theories are flooding back
i can't be alone with my own thougts
/gribble
inb4 Stargate Universe.
Really.
But yeah, :science: Holy shit, etc.
[QUOTE=imadaman;26367324]inb4 Stargate Universe.
Really.[/QUOTE]
I was just about to post this. Interesting timing.
Wouldn't this mean we'd be able to predict how long the universe lasts eventually?
Coincidentally, Cosmo ran an article about Big Gang Bangs
Well shit.
its like we see gods hand planting galaxies everywhere
God? Is that you?
Might want to note that the big bang wasn't the creation of the Universe, only the current model of the Universe (the one with galaxies, etc)
Update for op: they just released a picture that they uncovered
[IMG]http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/hand-galaxy.png[/IMG]
Wouldn't it be cool, if before the big bang there was another universe. And that universe died in what ever way it happened, and recycled it self like a Phoenix.
Carl Sagan would be very proud. This is why I am going into astronomy. :buddy:
[QUOTE=DesolateGrun;26368156]Wouldn't it be cool, if before the big bang there was another universe. And that universe died in what ever way it happened, and recycled it self like a Phoenix.[/QUOTE]
So before the Big Bang, another universe collapsed into itself in a massive Big Splutt?
[QUOTE=DesolateGrun;26368156]Wouldn't it be cool, if before the big bang there was another universe. And that universe died in what ever way it happened, and recycled it self like a Phoenix.[/QUOTE]
futurama?
This could be a part of the puzzle that we were looking for. I am so amazed by this but still I want to ask you a question, do you think we will evanually reach the point where we will be able to build our own world and galaxyies and beyond that?
[QUOTE=Roof;26368836]futurama?[/QUOTE]
Futurama - Leading the World in Science since the year 3000
[QUOTE=Roof;26368836]futurama?[/QUOTE]
that episode was so good
Wait, so this theory is essentially a re-imagining of the old cyclic universe theory? Whereby one universe grows old and dies (probably collapsing into a singularity) which then explodes outwards and is born as a new universe?
If that's so: how the hell does information leap over from the previous universes to our one? Shouldn't any information be destroyed in the previous universe-killing event?
Wasn't this discovered ages ago? I believe you are late by four hundred years.
Roger Penrose is a senile old man who refused to back down when people proved wrong his assumption that the human brain relies on quantum events and is therefore irreproducible. He spends his days mumbling around and misinterpreting the meaning of Gödel's theorem and applying it to his quantum-mind theory that has long been disproven.
Quantum events in the brain are too sparse, too small, happen for too little time, yet Penrose continues to believe that the human mind is oh so special.
AND in this case, he never specified (In the articles I have read) the system for restarting entropy.
So yeah, I call dubious on this one.
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