It appears, if I understand this article, that the big bang may not be exactly what we thought it was. Some crazy smart theoretical physicists came up with this testable theory called loop quantum cosmology (LQC) which seems to be saying that the universe just explodes and contracts repeatedly. Basically the universe would have no start or end. I’m going to try and explain what this thing looks like from my limited understanding but someone smarter than me should really come along and correct whatever parts I get wrong.
Picture a point that’s the size of a proton. That’s the universe in its contracted state. Once it gets to that point it bursts out like a spring that you can’t hold closed any longer. After expanding for a while it reaches it’s maximum size and starts to pull back with enough force to eventually reach the size of a proton again.
Apparently this is a much different view of the universe from what scientists have thought for a while. Also, this is testable and gives some hard evidence for a lot of other important ideas that have remained educated guesses.
Honestly, most of this is just a million miles over my head. I think I get the gist of it but the fascinating part to me is the fact that we’re still making big breakthroughs in understanding our universe. I get the impression that this is almost equivalent to Einstein’s formulation of general relativity.
The world is unfolding. I think that’s neat.
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