The famous British radio drama writer Douglas Adams in his science fiction novel " Wandering Guide to the Galaxy ", describes such a scene: the mouse builds a super computer called Deep Thought. The mice asked this supercomputer: What is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything?
After a full 7.5 million years of continuous calculations, the supercomputer's deep thinking answer is: the ultimate answer to life, the universe and all things is: 42.
The ordinary 42 cannot be ranked in natural numbers, so why can it become the ultimate answer to all things in the universe? Therefore, almost all readers find it incredible to the answers given by supercomputers.
has another proposition similar to this question, which is equally profound, but the person who gives the answer is an absolute professional.
We all know that singularity is the starting point of the entire universe and a form of the existence of the universe before the Big Bang. The concept of singularity is very famous but extremely difficult to explain. Currently, no branch in physics can explain its behavior. Not only is Einstein's General Relativity unexplained on such a tiny scale, but particle physics at infinite density also exceeds the scope of understanding of the standard quantum physics model.
So what exactly is the singularity? We only know that singularities have a series of singular properties, such as infinitely large density of matter, infinitely curved space-time, and infinitely close to zero.
In the 1970s, British theoretical physicists Stephen William Hawking and others proposed the " singularity theorem ". They proved that when general relativity is applied to cosmology, "singularity" will inevitably appear. Not only will a "singularity" appear in a large-scale universe, but the final outcome of gravitational collapse when supermassive stars are dying is also a "singularity" (this "singularity" is actually a black hole, but it is similar to the characteristics of a singularity).
According to the view of the "Big Bang Theory", 13.8 billion years ago, a singularity with infinite size, infinite density, infinite temperature, infinite height, and infinite curvature of , , and infinitely large, occurred in a big explosion, resulting in the entire universe and all matter, time and space in the universe. After the "Big Bang Theory" was proposed, it gradually occupied the mainstream of the physics community in the following decades, and has developed to this day and has almost become the only explanation of the origin of the universe.
However, the "Big Bang Theory" has an obvious flaw: it does not explain clearly what was and what was before the Big Bang?
If the universe, time and space were created because of the Big Bang, then was there just a singularity before the Big Bang? And how did the singularity come about?
Especially for us ordinary people, we cannot imagine what a world without matter, time and space would look like. Einstein told people that time and space are the illusion of people's understanding, because everything in the world is constantly changing, so we can feel time and space.
Okay, since time and space are things that people imagine subjectively, then let’s ignore them for now. Yet Einstein still didn't give the answer we wanted, which was what was before the Big Bang.
55 years after Einstein's death, British mathematical physicist, emeritus professor of mathematics at Oxford University, and 2020 Nobel Prize winner in physics Roger Penrose gave an explanation: the Big Bang was the last Big Bang.
2010, Penrose systematically answered this question for the first time in his new book "The Cycle of the Universe: The Extraordinary New Perspective of the Universe" and proposed the theory of conformal cyclic cosmology.
So, what is the conformal loop universe? This may start with the "Big Bang Theory".
In the 1970s, Penrose and Hawking proved the singularity theorem together, but before the Big Bang, what did it look like? Penrose connects the beginning and end of the universe through conformal mapping, and he believes that the end of the universe is actually the beginning of the next Big Bang. The universe where humans are currently living is circulating infinitely in the Big Bang-expansion-big bang-expansion.
When the universe begins from a singularity explosion, it will enter an extremely long period of expansion. After expansion reaches its limit, all particles weaken due to the interaction force, causing the elementary particles to slowly separate, and eventually the entire universe becomes a state of pure energy. At this time, the entropy in the universe is removed through the black hole evaporation effect. After the evaporation is complete, it means the return to zero of entropy.
At the same time, the entire universe is in a highly consistent state, that is, all matter is located at the same point, which is the singularity. Next, another round of Big Bang.
This infinite cycle of big explosion-expansion-big explosion-expansion is equivalent to the infinite cycle of pure energy-mixed state of energy and matter-pure energy-mixed state of energy and matter, which looks very simple and beautiful.
Although Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology perfectly answers the extremely profound proposition of "what was before the Big Bang", any theory or theory requires practical or observational tests.
After proposing this theory, Penrose found that at least 6 Hawking points have been discovered in the cosmic microwave background. These circular spots with a diameter of only 8 moons and a temperature slightly higher than the surrounding environment are the spots left by the evaporation of supermassive black holes in the previous universe, and were also formed during the early expansion of this Big Bang.
However, some scientists do not buy into the discovery of Hawking Point because they did not find any special hot spots in their observations of the cosmic microwave background, and the so-called Hawking Point may not exist at all.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-