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"SIGNALS FROM BEFORE THE BIG BANG" --WERE TELLTALE PATTERNS GLIMPSED IN THE AFTERGLOW?
The Daily Galaxy
March 20, 2013 Wednesday 7:13 AM EST
In 2010, University of Oxford theoretical physicist Roger Penrose[1]
made the sensational claim that he had glimpsed a signal originating
from before the Big Bang[2] working with Vahe Gurzadyn of the Yerevan
Physics Institute[3] in Armenia. Penrose came to this conclusion
after analyzing maps from the Wilkinson Anisotropy Probe. The NASA
WMAP satellite data reveals the cosmic microwave background, believed
to have been created just 300,000 years after the Big Bang when the
Universe cooled enough to allow electrons to link up with protons
and form hydrogen atoms. The short gap between the two events means
that the CMB captures details of the birth of our Universe, like its
composition and the processes leading to its current state. So far,
Nobel Prizes have been awarded both to its discovery and to the first
detailed characterization of its properties.
However, critics such as Sean Carroll, a theorectical physicist and
Senior Research Associate at the California Institute of Technology,
counter that the Penrose circles are simply what you would expect
from random alignments, not a new signal over and above the usual
Standard Model[4] predictions. The most obvious empirical fact about
our observable universe, Carroll says, "is its temporal asymmetry -
the early phase is very different from the late phase, even though
no such difference is to be found in the fundamental laws of physics."
Regardless, Carroll points out, Penrose has been correct in insisting
that the low entropy of our early universe is a crucial problem that
is not well-addressed in modern cosmology.
Penrose's finding runs directly counter to the widely accepted
inflationary model[5] of cosmology which states that the universe
started from a point of infinite density known as the Big Bang about
13.7 billion years ago, expanded extremely rapidly for a fraction of a
second and has continued to expand much more slowly ever since, during
which time stars, planets and ultimately humans have emerged. That
expansion is now believed to be accelerating due to a scientific
"X" factor called dark energy and is expected to result in a cold,
uniform, featureless universe.
Penrose, however, as he reported in Physics World[6], takes issue with
the inflationary picture "and in particular believes it cannot account
for the very low entropy state in which the universe was believed to
have been born - an extremely high degree of order that made complex
matter possible. He does not believe that space and time came into
existence at the moment of the Big Bang but that the Big Bang was
in fact just one in a series of many, with each big bang marking the
start of a new "aeon" in the history of the universe."
The core concept in Penrose's theory is the idea that in the very
distant future the universe will in one sense become very similar
to how it was at the Big Bang. Penrose says that "at these points
the shape, or geometry, of the universe was and will be very smooth,
in contrast to its current very jagged form. This continuity of shape,
he maintains, will allow a transition from the end of the current aeon,
when the universe will have expanded to become infinitely large, to
the start of the next, when it once again becomes infinitesimally small
and explodes outwards from the next big bang. Crucially, he says, the
entropy at this transition stage will be extremely low, because black
holes, which destroy all information that they suck in, evaporate as
the universe expands and in so doing remove entropy from the universe."
The foundation for Penrose's theory is found in the cosmic microwave
background, the all-pervasive microwave radiation that was believed
to have been created when the universe was just 300,000 years old
and which tells us what conditions were like at that time.
The evidence was obtained by Vahe Gurzadyan[7] of the Yerevan Physics
Institute in Armenia, who analysed seven years' worth of microwave
data from WMAP, as well as data from the BOOMERanG balloon experiment
in Antarctica. Penrose and Gurzadyan say they have clearly identified
concentric circles within the data - regions in the microwave sky in
which the range of the radiation's temperature is markedly smaller
than elsewhere.
The Cosmic Microwave Background[8] (CMB) radiation is the remnant
heat from the Big Bang. This radiation pervades the universe and, if
we could see in microwaves, it would appear as a nearly uniform glow
across the entire sky. However, when we measure this radiation very
carefully we can discern extremely faint variations in the brightness
from point to point across the sky, called "anisotropy". These
variations encode a great deal of information about the properties
of our universe, such as its age and content.
The "Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe[9]" (WMAP) mission has
measured these variations and found that the universe is 13.7 billion
years old, and it consists of 4.6% atoms, 23% dark matter, and 72%
dark energy.
According to Penrose and Gurzadyan, as described in arXiv[10]:
1011.3706, these circles allow us to "see through" the Big Bang into
the aeon that would have existed beforehand. They are the visible
signature left in our aeon by the spherical ripples of gravitational
waves that were generated when black holes collided in the previous
aeon.
The "Penrose circles" pose a huge challenge to inflationary theory
because this theory says that the distribution of temperature
variations across the sky should be Gaussian, or random, rather than
having discernable structures within it.
Julian Barbour, a visiting professor of physics at the University of
Oxford in an interview with Physics World, says that these circles
would be "remarkable if real and sensational if they confirm Penrose's
theory". They would "overthrow the standard inflationary picture",
which, he adds, has become widely accepted as scientific fact by
many cosmologists.
But Barbour believes that the result will be "very controversial"
and that other researchers will look at the data very critically. He
says there are many disputable aspects to the theory, including the
abrupt shift of scale between aeons and the assumption, central to the
theory, that all particles will become massless in the very distant
future. He points out, for example, that there is no evidence that
electrons decay.
Penrose and colleague Gurzadyn have answered the numerous critics
who say that the circles do not contradict the standard model of
cosmology in follow up paper, published on arXiv[11]. In the short
article, they agree that the presence of circles in the CMB does not
contradict the standard model of cosmology. However, the existence of
'concentric families' of circles, they argue, cannot be explained
as a purely random effect given the pure Gaussian nature of their
original analysis. 'It is, however a clear prediction of conformal
cyclic cosmology,' reports Physics World.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef0153941dcd1c970b-pi
The Daily Galaxy via Cosmic Variance
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang [3]:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.2063888889,44.485amp;spn=0.01,0.01amp;q =40.2063888889,44.485%20(Yerevan%20Physics%20Insti tute)amp;t=h
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model [5]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29
[6]: http://physicsworld.com [7]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vahe_Gurzadyan [8]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation
[9]: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov [10]:
http://arXiv.org/ [11]: http://arxiv.org/ [12]:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/12/07/penroses-cyclic-cosmology/#.UUj_rBxJOAg
[13]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706 [14]:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/nov/19/penrose-claims-to-have-glimpsed-universe-before-big-bang
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/03/signals-from-before-the-big-bang-patterns-glimpsed-in-the-cmb-todays-most-popular.html#more
The Daily Galaxy
March 20, 2013 Wednesday 7:13 AM EST
In 2010, University of Oxford theoretical physicist Roger Penrose[1]
made the sensational claim that he had glimpsed a signal originating
from before the Big Bang[2] working with Vahe Gurzadyn of the Yerevan
Physics Institute[3] in Armenia. Penrose came to this conclusion
after analyzing maps from the Wilkinson Anisotropy Probe. The NASA
WMAP satellite data reveals the cosmic microwave background, believed
to have been created just 300,000 years after the Big Bang when the
Universe cooled enough to allow electrons to link up with protons
and form hydrogen atoms. The short gap between the two events means
that the CMB captures details of the birth of our Universe, like its
composition and the processes leading to its current state. So far,
Nobel Prizes have been awarded both to its discovery and to the first
detailed characterization of its properties.
However, critics such as Sean Carroll, a theorectical physicist and
Senior Research Associate at the California Institute of Technology,
counter that the Penrose circles are simply what you would expect
from random alignments, not a new signal over and above the usual
Standard Model[4] predictions. The most obvious empirical fact about
our observable universe, Carroll says, "is its temporal asymmetry -
the early phase is very different from the late phase, even though
no such difference is to be found in the fundamental laws of physics."
Regardless, Carroll points out, Penrose has been correct in insisting
that the low entropy of our early universe is a crucial problem that
is not well-addressed in modern cosmology.
Penrose's finding runs directly counter to the widely accepted
inflationary model[5] of cosmology which states that the universe
started from a point of infinite density known as the Big Bang about
13.7 billion years ago, expanded extremely rapidly for a fraction of a
second and has continued to expand much more slowly ever since, during
which time stars, planets and ultimately humans have emerged. That
expansion is now believed to be accelerating due to a scientific
"X" factor called dark energy and is expected to result in a cold,
uniform, featureless universe.
Penrose, however, as he reported in Physics World[6], takes issue with
the inflationary picture "and in particular believes it cannot account
for the very low entropy state in which the universe was believed to
have been born - an extremely high degree of order that made complex
matter possible. He does not believe that space and time came into
existence at the moment of the Big Bang but that the Big Bang was
in fact just one in a series of many, with each big bang marking the
start of a new "aeon" in the history of the universe."
The core concept in Penrose's theory is the idea that in the very
distant future the universe will in one sense become very similar
to how it was at the Big Bang. Penrose says that "at these points
the shape, or geometry, of the universe was and will be very smooth,
in contrast to its current very jagged form. This continuity of shape,
he maintains, will allow a transition from the end of the current aeon,
when the universe will have expanded to become infinitely large, to
the start of the next, when it once again becomes infinitesimally small
and explodes outwards from the next big bang. Crucially, he says, the
entropy at this transition stage will be extremely low, because black
holes, which destroy all information that they suck in, evaporate as
the universe expands and in so doing remove entropy from the universe."
The foundation for Penrose's theory is found in the cosmic microwave
background, the all-pervasive microwave radiation that was believed
to have been created when the universe was just 300,000 years old
and which tells us what conditions were like at that time.
The evidence was obtained by Vahe Gurzadyan[7] of the Yerevan Physics
Institute in Armenia, who analysed seven years' worth of microwave
data from WMAP, as well as data from the BOOMERanG balloon experiment
in Antarctica. Penrose and Gurzadyan say they have clearly identified
concentric circles within the data - regions in the microwave sky in
which the range of the radiation's temperature is markedly smaller
than elsewhere.
The Cosmic Microwave Background[8] (CMB) radiation is the remnant
heat from the Big Bang. This radiation pervades the universe and, if
we could see in microwaves, it would appear as a nearly uniform glow
across the entire sky. However, when we measure this radiation very
carefully we can discern extremely faint variations in the brightness
from point to point across the sky, called "anisotropy". These
variations encode a great deal of information about the properties
of our universe, such as its age and content.
The "Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe[9]" (WMAP) mission has
measured these variations and found that the universe is 13.7 billion
years old, and it consists of 4.6% atoms, 23% dark matter, and 72%
dark energy.
According to Penrose and Gurzadyan, as described in arXiv[10]:
1011.3706, these circles allow us to "see through" the Big Bang into
the aeon that would have existed beforehand. They are the visible
signature left in our aeon by the spherical ripples of gravitational
waves that were generated when black holes collided in the previous
aeon.
The "Penrose circles" pose a huge challenge to inflationary theory
because this theory says that the distribution of temperature
variations across the sky should be Gaussian, or random, rather than
having discernable structures within it.
Julian Barbour, a visiting professor of physics at the University of
Oxford in an interview with Physics World, says that these circles
would be "remarkable if real and sensational if they confirm Penrose's
theory". They would "overthrow the standard inflationary picture",
which, he adds, has become widely accepted as scientific fact by
many cosmologists.
But Barbour believes that the result will be "very controversial"
and that other researchers will look at the data very critically. He
says there are many disputable aspects to the theory, including the
abrupt shift of scale between aeons and the assumption, central to the
theory, that all particles will become massless in the very distant
future. He points out, for example, that there is no evidence that
electrons decay.
Penrose and colleague Gurzadyn have answered the numerous critics
who say that the circles do not contradict the standard model of
cosmology in follow up paper, published on arXiv[11]. In the short
article, they agree that the presence of circles in the CMB does not
contradict the standard model of cosmology. However, the existence of
'concentric families' of circles, they argue, cannot be explained
as a purely random effect given the pure Gaussian nature of their
original analysis. 'It is, however a clear prediction of conformal
cyclic cosmology,' reports Physics World.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef0153941dcd1c970b-pi
The Daily Galaxy via Cosmic Variance
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang [3]:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.2063888889,44.485amp;spn=0.01,0.01amp;q =40.2063888889,44.485%20(Yerevan%20Physics%20Insti tute)amp;t=h
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model [5]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29
[6]: http://physicsworld.com [7]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vahe_Gurzadyan [8]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation
[9]: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov [10]:
http://arXiv.org/ [11]: http://arxiv.org/ [12]:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/12/07/penroses-cyclic-cosmology/#.UUj_rBxJOAg
[13]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706 [14]:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/nov/19/penrose-claims-to-have-glimpsed-universe-before-big-bang
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/03/signals-from-before-the-big-bang-patterns-glimpsed-in-the-cmb-todays-most-popular.html#more