More Thoughts (and now math!) On What Came Before the Big Bang

by Nancy Atkinson on December 16, 2008

CMB Timeline. Credit: NASA

CMB Timeline. Credit: NASA


Physicist Sean Carroll gave a wonderful talk at the June 2008 American Astronomical Society meeting about his “speculative research” on what possibly could have existed before The Big Bang. (Here’s an article about Carroll’s talk.) But now Carroll and some colleagues have done a bit more than just speculate about what might have come before the beginning of our Universe. Carroll, along with Caltech professor Marc Kamionkowski and graduate student Adrienne Erickcek have created a mathematical model to explain an anomaly in the early universe, and it also may shed light on what existed before the Big Bang. “It’s no longer completely crazy to ask what happened before the Big Bang,” said Kamionkowski.

Inflation theory, first proposed in 1980, states that space expanded exponentially in the instant following the Big Bang. “Inflation starts the universe with a blank slate,” Erickcek describes. The problem with inflation, however, is that it predicts the universe began uniformly.

But measurements from Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) show that the fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) –the electromagnetic radiation that permeated the universe 400,000 years after the Big Bang — are about 10% stronger on one side of the sky than on the other.

WMAP map of the CMB. Credit: WMAP team

WMAP map of the CMB. Credit: WMAP team


“It’s a certified anomaly,” Kamionkowski remarks. “But since inflation seems to do so well with everything else, it seems premature to discard the theory.” Instead, the team worked with the theory in their math addressing the asymmetry, since one explanation for this “heavy-on-one-side universe” would be if these fluctuations represented a structure left over from something that produced our universe.

They started by testing whether the value of a single energy field thought to have driven inflation, called the inflaton, was different on one side of the universe than the other. It didn’t work–they found that if they changed the mean value of the inflaton, then the mean temperature and amplitude of energy variations in space also changed. So they explored a second energy field, called the curvaton, which had been previously proposed to give rise to the fluctuations observed in the CMB. They introduced a perturbation to the curvaton field that turns out to affect only how temperature varies from point to point through space, while preserving its average value.

The new model predicts more cold than hot spots in the CMB, Kamionkowski says. Erickcek adds that this prediction will be tested by the Planck satellite, an international mission led by the European Space Agency with significant contributions from NASA, scheduled to launch in April 2009.

For Erickcek, the team’s findings hold the key to understanding more about inflation. “Inflation is a description of how the universe expanded,” she adds. “Its predictions have been verified, but what drove it and how long did it last? This is a way to look at what happened during inflation, which has a lot of blanks waiting to be filled in.”

But the perturbation that the researchers introduced may also offer the first glimpse at what came before the Big Bang, because it could be an imprint inherited from the time before inflation. “All of that stuff is hidden by a veil, observationally,” Kamionkowski says. “If our model holds up, we may have a chance to see beyond this veil.”

Source: Caltech


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  • bob

    The matter does not come from anywhere. e=mc^2 and the results of inelastic scattering experiments point to the fact that energy was converted into the matter we see.

    The most fundamental particles are quarks and two of them (you can’t separate them) make up a meson. When a beam of electrons are fired into a meson, the exchange particles of the quarks, gluons, behave like rubber bands. They grow stronger as they expand. But when enough energy of a beam makes the gluon field snap, the energy is converted to another pair of quarks. This matches how a universe would start with just one meson and reproduce by inflation.

    Science is not based upon finding eternal truth. Science is based upon fasification and seeks ideas that are less false. Scripture is not the only basis for religion. Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton were both very religious persons. However, both felt that experimentation is the act of asking nature a question. When any of us puts water into a pot and adds enough heat it will boil no matter who does the experiment and no matter what language one speaks. Kepler reasoned that all experiments were the way in which humans communicated with superior beings. He felt that when there was a descrepency between scripture and experimental results, he would always side with those results from science for religious reasons. He saw too many believers of scripture bashing one another’s heads in to believe what was put in writing, something humans used to distort reality too often for their own selfish interests.

  • kenn hammer

    i just saw a program about the m teory with a mindblower

  • Chuck Lam

    To: Bob, You offer some very good points to ponder.

  • http://www.onesimpleprinciple.com Mr. Pressure

    All the phenomens can be explained by one force and this force is the pressure. (Don´t forget the power of thought! You also can move yourself by the power of thought! Quite right. You get yourself to move with the help of the muscles . You so you send message of your brains to your muscles and you get yourself to move? What is power/force of this thought, which get you to move there where you want?).

    We can describe by people what happens in the atomcores all the time. For example one thousand people can go to the space and curl up close to each other. Now we have made an energyconsentration of people that covers a certain spot of the space. We know that the biggest part of the atoms is empty space. Also between people there exists empty space that does not expand or curve.

    Now these people can begin to straighten or in other words to open up and this way they push themselves away from each other. One can observe the hardest pressure in the middle of this human energyconsentration and people who locate in the middle must do an enormeous job so that they woun´t
    flatten in the centre. These people in the centre sweat the most. This is excactly the same thing that happens without gravitation for example in the centre of the earth and in the centre of the sun.

    The density of the human energyconsentration reduces and the people push themselves away from the centre of the human energyconsentration. Now for a little while we can observe a phenomen of gravitation without a drawing force (that actually does not exist) on the surface of the human energyconsentration.

    In my opinion the space does not expand or curve. If it would expand, could you describe how does the space expand?

    It is easy to describe how the energy all the time turns into a less dense energy in the atomcores, so I think that it is time to forget all about the magical expanding and curving of the space. You can also forget all the spare spacedimentions, the dark substance and the dark energy.

    So the space does not expand or curve!

    The atomcores expand and open up expanding electrons and expanding photons and they beam their expanding energy as waves away from themselves. This is how it goes!

    When you look at the galaxy, you can understand that the energy inside the galaxy is denser than outside the galaxy. If you look at a star, you can understand that energy inside the star is denser than outside the star. This way you will know for sure that the energy inside the atomcore is denser than outside the atomcore. It is not difficult to understand that the energy inside the protons / neutrons is denser than outside of them and the energy inside the qvarks is denser than outside the qvarks and so on…

    It it also easy to realize that outside the visible universe the is an area, where is really much more energy than the visible universe has all together and the energy some where out there is much denser than than it is in a visible universe. Still in that area far away from the visible universe there is no centre point where the energy would be denser than outside it.

    That three-dimentionally expanding energyconsentration that bems energywaves with the nature of the galaxies, is formed also from separate three-dimentionally expanding energyconsentrations ect. And so the smaller separate energyconsentrations we talk about, the denser and denser the
    energy is all the time.

    So the atomcore does not have a centre point, where the energy would be denser than outside it. There is no centre point also at the universe, outside which the energy would be less denser.

    Because the MOVEMENT takes place towards a less dense area, then the visible universe MOVES as an entity away from that one point that is really far away from the visible universe and where the energy is much denser than it is in a visible universe.

  • dan

    what sparked the big bang, what created this reality which sparked the big bang, etc……the questions will never be answered and will go on forever. We need to accept our ignorance, people. God does exist. science and religions are trying to find this being but it doesn’t want to be found. keep looking….LMAO.

  • http://www.onesimpleprinciple.com Mr. Pressure

    Maybe we are “god” who want to forget all about everything!

    Maybe we using power of mind and maked lot of very thiny energyconcentration! And then we play dice with these very thiny energyconcentration?

  • http://www.dei.ac.in Anirudh Kumar Satsangi

    Excerpt from “The Yoga of Physics” by Fritjof Capra, his keynote address at the Los Angels symposium on Physics and Metaphysics, on October 29, 1977 is given below for reference.

    “What is the nature and origin of the universe? what is space? what is time? Throughout the ages men and women have been fascinated by these questions. Different approaches have been developed in different cultural contexts and at different times.”

    “We shall look at modern Western science, on the one hand , and Eastern mysticism – particularly the tradition of Yoga – on the other. We shall see that they lead to very similar views of the world.”

    “My field is Physics, a science which, in the 20th century, has led to a radical revision of many of our basic concepts of reality.”

    “In the Yoga tradition it is said that there are many paths, all leading to spiritual knowledge and Self-Realization. I believe that modern physics, to some extent, can be such a path. Its view of the universe is in harmony with those of the great yogis and sages. In that sense, I’m going to talk of the Yoga of Physics.”

  • http://www.dei.ac.in Anirudh Kumar Satsangi

    Many views on the Origin of Universe are available. Most popular view is that universe was born with a big-bang from a highgly dense energy point. But I have some different view on it. I think the universe was not born from a concentrated point or ball like structure but it has evolved from an infinite vast expanse of field of gravity. Philosophically or religously we may call it field of consciousness or spirituality.

    A great flow of current of gravitation force descended down from this source and has created many regions of pure gravitation force below it. This was the creation for quite some time in the first phase of the creational process. In the second phase when the current of gravitation force further descended down then electromagnetic forces and matter (weak and strong nuclear forces)manifested and the entire universe of the second phase was completed with the admixture of all the forces viz., gravitatin force, electromagnetic forces, and matter (weak and strong nuclear forces. The completion of the whole cosmos in two phases was also hinted in one of the speeches of Prof. J.V.Narlikar some years back. When the process of creation of universe reverts back in Brahmand (universe created during second phase of creational process)the matter merges into electromagnetic force and then finally electromagnetic forces merge into gravitation force and nothing remains except field of gravity in a highly dense body (Black Hole. The process of reversal does not take place in the universe created during first phase of creation. The cycle of universe completes like this.

    Many philosophical-scientific evidences and theologians views can be quoted in support of this assumption

  • jerry

    I’ve conducted some curve fitting exercises too. Ever notice how the anisotrophy in the CMB resembles the back of a reptile?

    It’s turtles…all the way down.

  • Dirk

    When we talk cosmology can we please stop explaining our own fabrics by thinking of crypto-theorethical solutions starting with God, philosophy, 12 dimensions and other crap to explain a made up big bang, incredible dark matter or evil gravity waves. We reached a sad point where scientific progress stands still, for these counterproductive interferences have become a serious part of ‘fundamental’ physics.
    Science is explaining phenomena by experiments and logic, that’s all there is to it. Concentrate at the donut, not at the hole.

  • peter thurley

    if time began at the big bang then before this cause and event was non existant,. If this is true then man can never expect to even theorise on anything before the big bang as it is impossible to reason without causality. Perhaps before the beginning of the universe the event preceded the cause………No time?unchanging eternity? Oh, but it changed. I suppose we will always wonder why.

  • Chuck R.

    God I’m tired of God showing up in these articles.

    *forehead/palm*

  • Mars A. Saurian

    dan Says:
    December 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    God does exist.

    No, no he does not. If you want to believe there is a higher force at work in the universe, that’s fine and dandy. But to think that in the vastness of this universe this crap planet was created before anything else and then because of an insignificant spec named “Adam” ate an apple which brought a curse into all of the universe which allowed God to create death, degeneration, suffering, to think that there is a grand invisible human like creator that is always responsible for good happenings and the slaughter of evil but never bad things and the killing of innocent, and that he’s never wrong even when he is, he knows all even when he doesn’t, to think that even though God created non-frequent homosexual behaviors in the animal kingdom which would include the fully sentient beast we call Man (and Woman), meaning things like the immense pleasure one can experience in sexual play while the internal prostate of the male is stimulated (by another man or a woman) is a big oops on God’s bodily design & sexual guidelines, to think he gives a hoot if you take his name in vain, lie with a person of the same sex, don’t show up for worship on Sunday, kill a fellow human being for your own undesirable pleasure or for the glory of him, eat shellfish, get a handjob before marriage, steal a pack of gum while in line at the grocery store, understand and believe (belief with reason, not with faith) in the natural process of evolution, and all that jazz, to think all of that and so much more just so you can have a religion to cling to, just so you can preach the parts you like, just so you can follow the bits of the faith’s practices as you see fit and not as the religion itself commands, thereby perpetuating the lie that there is a Biblical God no matter what bigotry that brings or simpleton mentality it continues to support is the most egotistical, ignorant, hypocritical, self-righteous, willfully blind-eyed, socially degressive, undermining, and pretentious nonsense one can spout, ever.

    ^_^

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