What if the Big Bang Wasn’t the Beginning?
Few things are as mysterious as where and
how we came to be.
It’s a question that has fascinated humanity
for thousands of years, with different theories
often changing our very understanding of our
own existence.
But maybe what we commonly hold to be true
isn’t actually true at all.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering
the extraordinary question; what if the big
bang wasn’t the beginning?
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The big bang is currently held as one of our
best and most popular explanations for the
origins of the universe.
It’s been around for almost a century, proposing
that 13.8 billion years ago everything sprang
into existence in a trillionth of a second
from one infinitely dense point, and that
in this trillionth of a second the universe
grew from a singularity to be much, much larger.
While the big bang is still just a theory,
there’s plenty of scientific evidence that
may support its existence, like universal
expansion and the detection of cosmic microwave
background radiation.
Universal expansion was first observed in
the 1920s by Edwin Hubble, as he was studying
redshift.
Because space is so unimaginably large and
light takes such a long time to reach anywhere,
the further away an object is the longer the
wavelengths of light allowing us to see that
object are.
This means that far away objects lean more
towards the “red end” of the electromagnetic
spectrum.
Hubble realised, though, that those far away
objects were in fact getting redder, meaning
that they weren’t just distant but were
also moving further and further away.
This proved that expansion is definitely happening,
and so could feasibly be traced back to one
origin point.
Cosmic microwave background radiation, on
the other hand, was discovered much later,
in the 1960s.
It can be detected uniformly in every direction
from as far back as 13.8 billion years, and
is thought to be residual radiation left over
from the initial “origin of the universe”
event.
So, what we do know is that expansion is still
happening, and that the CMB can be traced
back to almost the start of everything.
But the big bang is still only one explanation
that caters for both of these phenomenons.
Bouncing cosmology is an alternative fringe
theory which seemingly solves some of the
big bang’s discrepancies.
It argues in favour of something that Einstein
suggested, that we live in a “cyclic universe”…
That, yes, there was a monumental event 14
billion years ago, but it was more of a bounce
than a bang.
Reconciling the arguably hard-to-swallow idea
that before the big bang happened absolutely
nothing existed, the big bounce suggests that
there was another universe out there before
ours, and the “event” that created our
existence simultaneously ended, or at least
drastically rearranged, another.
The theory also to some degree allows for
the cosmological constant - another Einstein
prediction - which doesn’t otherwise fit
with the big bang; if expansion comes and
goes and isn’t a permanent state, then the
cosmological constant could exist.
Finally, if bouncing cosmology were true,
it’d also grant us an answer to how the
universe will end; we’d simply see another
big bounce and another universe will begin
again in its place.
While the big bounce doesn’t have nearly
as much credibility as the big bang, many
proponents of it say that we have about as
much evidence for bouncing cosmology as we
have for the singularity – that is, very
little.
The wider issue is that big-bang-style singularities
themselves (as we understand them) do end
up breaking the laws of physics, and we still
can’t prove what these points of infinite
density are really like or what ultimately
happens inside them.
For big bounce supporters, this could suggest
that things did exist before inflation.
So, the event known as the big bang isn’t
the beginning, but rather the end of something
else.
But, there’s still no way of knowing what
might have come before.
We might think our own universe is pretty
great, that there are a lot of interesting
things to study here, but who’s to say that
the one that theoretically stood before wasn’t
much more exciting?
It might’ve been bristling with populated,
alien worlds in every single star system;
it could have been much larger and stocked
with rare resources; or it could’ve housed
celestial bodies that we can’t even begin
to understand or imagine.
The other big, scientific theory about the
dawn of the universe is eternal inflation.
This relies on there being an inflationary
vacuum, which is a hypothetical vacuum our
entire universe sits inside like a bubble.
As such, eternal inflation also allows for
the existence of a multiverse - where multiple
universes reside in multiple bubbles.
As per this theory, while the big bang may
well have been the beginning of this universe,
it wouldn’t have been the beginning of anything
on a larger scale.
Instead, it’d be just one of potentially
infinite big bangs happening everywhere at
once all across the vacuum.
Were eternal inflation to be proven, and if
we could find a way to traverse the vacuum,
then we could wind up visiting these other
universes to see for ourselves what they’re
like.
We might even be able to witness another big
bang actually taking place, which would show
us an alternative version of our own origin
story and go a long way to answering the age-old
question of where we came from.
There are some even zanier, though less-scientific
theories too.
The steady state theory argues that expansion
is real but has been happening infinitely
for all of time, thereby creating a universe
where there is no beginning and no end.
Although, what little evidence we do have
for the big bang disproves this almost completely.
And of course, one other huge alternative
to the big bang is creationism, which predates
the big bang theory by centuries.
Creationism, the idea that the universe was
created as we know it by a divine entity,
exists in some form in most major religions,
and people believe in it to different extents.
While some argue that the universe is only
around 10,000 years old, others say that it
was God who actually caused the big bang,
creating the laws of nature and physics and
to some degree reconciling faith with science.
If the creationists are correct, then scientific
evidence for cosmology is perhaps little more
than a stringent test of faith - a test that
those who do subscribe to the big bang theory
have supposedly failed.
Arguably, though, creationism isn’t even
the most elaborate cosmological alternative.
The “digital simulation” theory has a
growing number of believers, too.
And if the universe isn’t actually real
because it’s a sim or another kind of digital
creation – like a hologram – it doesn’t
even require a conclusive origin explanation
at all.
We, and everything we’ve ever known, were
simply “switched on”.
By who is another question entirely!
The idea that “nothing is real” is perhaps
also popular because it provides a great way
to explain away things that don’t make sense
or don’t match up - because things don’t
need to match up.
Whoever designed the simulation may have just
done a really bad job, accidentally leaving
all that CMB radiation for us to detect, and
forgetting to make the speed of light fast
enough so that we can actually see and understand
everything there is.
Expansion might also just be a weird glitch
the simulation authors never managed to iron
out.
For any alternative origin theory, though,
learning that the big bang either didn’t
happen or was something else entirely, and
maybe not even that important, would categorically
change our understanding of science and existence.
But that’s what would happen if the big
bang wasn’t the beginning.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
Let us know in the comments, check out these
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