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Horizon – Before the Big Bang

10 years ago, the only idea in cosmology was the unexplained big bang followed by inflation. “Pre-big bang” was only talked about behind closed doors by radicals. But today it’s almost mainstream.

Back at the Perimeter Institute, there are any number of strange ideas about how our universe was born. And perhaps the strangest of all comes from the institute’s director, Professor Neil Turok.

Neil Turok “There are essentially two possibilities at the beginning. Either time did not exist before the beginning, somehow time sprang into existence. Now that’s a notion which we have no grasp of which may be a logical contradiction. The other possibility is that this event which initiated our universe was a violent event in a pre-existing universe.”

Professor Turok and his colleagues have come up with a model that assumes a complex version of existence, requiring 10 spatial dimensions, plus time. Simple(!)

Professor Turok “What is present in these models, the picture of the world in these models, is that we live on an extended object called the brane. And a brane, it’s B-R-A-N-E, short for membrane. But it’s a membrane which is three-dimensional. All of space that we live in this part of this brane. And within these models you have to have at least two of these branes. You can’t have only one, there have to be at least two. And they are separated by a little gap along a four dimensional of space. It’s not one of our existing dimensions. And it basically within these models, these two branes can collide. When they collide, they remain extended. It’s not all of space shrinking to a point. They fill with a density of plasma and matter, but it’s finite. Everything is a definite number, which you can calculate, and which you can then describe using a definite mathematical laws, and so that’s the essential picture of the big bang in our model. And I think it’s becoming a real alternative to the conventional picture that everything was created at the big bang.”

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For many cosmologists, this is mathematical sleight of hand, and an unwelcome distraction to the serious business of improving on the tried and tested.

Andrei Linde “What happens is that the authors are producing one version of the theory after another. Usually the lifetime of their ideas is about one year, after which it is replaced by the new set of ideas, then by another set of ideas, and then still buy another set of ideas. Not because they want to replace it, but because of previous versions were disproved by investigation of other people. So that is something which unless the whole line of research and claims and statements, will become more accurate. This is something which undermines the whole idea.”

So far just about every prediction made by inflationary theory has checked out in many, many observations. So it’s not surprising that people like Andrei Linde are sometimes irritated by what they see as speculative mathematical attacks on inflation. But it’s not quite a done deal. And while there is any doubt, the likes of Neil Turok feel that it is their duty to point out where those doubts lie.

Neil Turok “They are basing their theory on shaky foundations. They cannot explain what happens before inflation. And I think they’ve got themselves into a whole host of puzzles to do with eternal inflation, and in a sense, not being able to predict anything. So I feel that we ARE being constructive. We’re putting board an alternative, one which can be proven wrong, and one which I think may in time become much more complete and satisfying than the theory of inflation.”

Ever since the idea of the big bang, people have wondered what caused it. What made everything apparently spring un-bidden from nothing? Might it be that Neil Turok’s right, that the miracle was due to colliding branes and another dimensional? Or perhaps Lee Smolin has the answer. Our big bang was simply the other side of a black hole in a galaxy far, far away.