The Big Bang theory, which claims the
universe began 15 billion years ago when a single point of unimaginable heat and density spontaneously exploded, is a scientific tale so well-known in popular culture that most people accept it as a fact.
However, while the Big Bang
theory explains many mechanisms of the universe, it leaves plenty of questions unanswered.
What caused the Big Bang? Why is the universe flat rather than curved, as predicted by the theory of relativity? Why is matter clumped into galaxies but more uniform at larger scales? How did the laws of the universe come into being?
Physics Prof. Andrei Linde has come up with a very
different explanation for the universe''s origin. In his theory, titled "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe," the universe is constantly spawning new universes.
"If my colleagues and I are right, we may soon be saying goodbye to the idea that our universe was a single fireball created in the Big Bang," Linde noted.
According to his theory, no
particles exist during the early stages of each universe''s life.
Instead, there is only something Linde calls an
inflaton field, a region of
space charged with energy.
This
energy drives the expansion of space itself, decreasing very gradually as the universe grows. Consequently, space will inflate exponentially, reaching an unimaginable size many orders of magnitude larger than the visible universe in a tiny fraction of a second.
Once the energy of the inflaton field drops below a certain level, space ceases to expand, and the remaining energy forms the basic particles that make up the universe today.
Since we can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, it appears flat even though, as a whole, it is curved according to Einstein''s theory.
However, the situation is a little more complicated. There are several different types of inflaton fields and multiple ways for the fields to settle into equilibrium.
Thus, while our area of the universe may have one set of universal constants, physical laws and particles, another area may have a completely different structure.
More abstracts about the How the universe was created: Is the Big Bang theory wrong? - Research presents new beginning to uni