James Randerson, science correspondent


The Guardian, Thursday 4 May 2006



The universe is at least 986 billion years older than physicists thought and is probably much older still, according to a radical new theory.

The revolutionary study suggests that time did not begin with the big bang 14 billion years ago. This mammoth explosion which created all the matter we see around us, was just the most recent of many.

The standard big bang theory says the universe began with a massive explosion, but the new theory suggests it is a cyclic event that consists of repeating big bangs.

"People have inferred that time began then, but there really wasn't any reason for that inference," said Neil Turok, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, "What we are proposing is very radical. It's saying there was time before the big bang."

Under his theory, published today in the journal Science with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton University in New Jersey, the universe must be at least a trillion years old with many big bangs happening before our own. With each bang, the theory predicts that matter keeps on expanding and dissipating into infinite space before another horrendous blast of radiation and matter replenishes it. "I think it is much more likely to be far older than a trillion years though," said Prof Turok. "There doesn't have to be a beginning of time. According to our theory, the universe may be infinitely old and infinitely large."

Today most cosmologists believe the universe will carry on expanding until all the stars burn out, leaving nothing but their cold dead remains. But there is an inherent problem with this picture. The Cosmological Constant - a mysterious force first postulated by Albert Einstein that appears to be driving the galaxies apart - is much too small to fit the theory. Einstein later renounced it as his "biggest blunder".

The Cosmological Constant is a mathematical representation of the energy of empty space, also known as "dark energy", which exerts a kind of anti-gravity force pushing galaxies apart at an accelerating rate.

It happens to be a googol (1 followed by 100 zeroes) times smaller than would be expected if the universe was created in a single Big Bang. But its value could be explained if the universe was much, much older than most experts believe.

Mechanisms exist that would allow the Constant to decrease incrementally through time. But these processes would take so long that, according to the standard theory, all matter in the universe would totally dissipate in the meantime.

Turok and Steinhardt's theory is an alternative to another explanation called the "anthropic principle", which argues that the constant can have a range of values in different parts of the universe but that we happen to live in a region conducive to life.

"The anthropic explanations are very controversial and many people do not like them," said Alexander Vilenkin a professor of theoretical physics at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Rather than making precise predictions for features of the universe the anthropic principle gives a vague range of values so it is difficult for physicists to test, he added.

"It's absolutely terrible, it really is giving up," said Prof Turok, "It's saying that we are never going to understand the state of the universe. It just has to be that way for us to exist." His explanation by contrast is built up from first principles.

But if he's right, how long have we got until the next big bang? "We can't predict when it will happen with any precision - all we can say is it won't be within the next 10 billion years." Good job, because if we were around we would instantly disintegrate into massless particles of light.

Oh? Have you read the work of Lowen and Turner before rendering judgment?

Many dislike reading anything that disagrees with what they want to believe

Oh? Have you discovered the LACK of mention of "god" and Christianity in the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

Thanksgiving, as we envision it, is a MYTH. http://americanhistory.about.com/od/holidays/a/thanksgiving.htm
http://hnn.us/article/406

I will agree with you about our history books. Thankgiving was a trick. they gave them blankets to go back to thier tribes that had the small pox virus in them. I would like to go someday and Protest with the Indians at Plymouth Rock at thankgiving each year. never see the news cover that story

Try "Lies my Teacher Told Me" by James W. Lowen and "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" by Frederick Jackson Turner for viewpoints that differ from the homogenized / Europeanized views presented in standard / politically correct textbooks.

Lowen does an outstanding job of presenting a realistic view of American history (that is nothing like what we were taught -- and is well documented).

Much of what this nation was built on was from Native Americans. The idea of democracy was far more evident in their societies than in European nations of that era.

I do not disagree; however, many believe that their favorite "god" provides a "hell" in an "afterlife" for "souls" of those who refuse to worship "him" and follow rules made by "priests" and "prophets."

Interesting conjecture. Is there any way to verify that it is true (more substantial than ancient folklore and texts promoting religion)?

Please tell me again about the great Era of Free Scientific Inquiry from the End of the Roman Empire up to the Renaissance,supported by the Church,until the Renaissance put Paid to it!
Stop trying to sell that Revisionism!
The Church was a Millstone around the neck of Scientists,and it was only Islam,that for a while upheld Scientific Thought,until the Fanatics there also got the better of the more enlightened Leaders,and followed the Footsteps of the Catholic Church!

...His cosmological theories, which anticipated fundamental aspects of the modern conception of the universe, led to his excommunication by the Roman Catholic, Calvinist, and Lutheran churches.

Now now. Let's all get along.

You don't know for sure that there aren't any people out there that would read this and think I'm evil for proposing this idea.

Even some religious people who might have had the same thought probably believed it was wrong or evil to think such things. These would be extremists in religious circles. But I know they are out there somewhere. lol

Santa is not said to send people to "hell" if they do not worship him

People do not hate and condemn each other over differences in Santa beliefs

Wars are not caused by differences in Santa beliefs

Elaborate Palaces of Worship are not constructed for Santa

Offerings collected for Santa are typically limited to cookies

No sacrifices (animal or human) are made to Santa

Santa believers do not generally consider themselves superior to those who do not believe or worship

So if we are all related because we all came from Adam and Eve then why aren't there more deformities and numerous other problems that come from so many years of inbreeding?

Your parents are 99.9% the same. You probably know that you receive half of your DNA or genes from each parent. So this means that you are 100% identical to each parent for each set of genes that you get from them. (Click here to learn why this isn't strictly true.)

People today look remarkably diverse on the outside. But how much of this diversity is genetically encoded? How deep are these differences between human groups? First, compared with many other mammalian species, humans are genetically far less diverse – a counterintuitive finding, given our large population and worldwide distribution. For example, the subspecies of the chimpanzee that lives just in central Africa, Pan troglodytes troglodytes, has higher levels of diversity than do humans globally, and the genetic differentiation between the western (P. t. verus) and central (P. t. troglodytes) subspecies of chimpanzees is much greater than that between human populations.

I kind of wonder how many religious people are reading this and thinking I am the anti-Christ. hahaha

I have been dating an amazing man for 8 months. ...I want to become a couple.

Yes when a star dies the gravitational distortion left behind is called a black whole. We've never seen one, all we've seen is the absence of light which is part of how the THEORY of black holes came about. But since we lack the technology to actually go and study one, all we can do is use theory to attempt a rational explanation for what we see or don't see. My understanding is that the scientific community has not been able to prove definitively that they exist, or that they don't exist.

No one has ever seen or even documented a black hole with sensors, they are just theories.

Hawkings has a theory that Einsteins theory is wrong, that's all. Both of their theories are based on what we know so far, but neither can be proven or disproven.

Bruno!
Galilei had to recant,or he would have shared the same fate as Bruno!
Da Vinci would have been a Goner if the Church had discovered some of his Research!

like you said, to be a scientist back then, you had to be a part of the church and only give out the findings they allowed you... how many "scientists" were killled because they went against god/church?

lol, i think the supernatural scientists are called "ghostbusters"...

Then it simply makes you wrong on both counts.