American physicists Paul H. Frampton and Lauris Baum from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, state a new cosmological model of the universe in their scientific paper “Deflation at Turnaround in Cyclic Cosmology”, which will appear in the journal Physical Review Letters.

In their paper, Frampton and Baum state: “One of the oldest questions in theoretical cosmology is whether an infinitely oscillatory universe which avoids an initial singularity [the Big Bang] can be consistently constructed. … one principal obstacle is the second law of thermodynamics which dictates that the entropy increases from cycle to cycle. If the cycles thereby become longer, extrapolation into the past will lead back to an initial singularity again, thus removing the motivation to consider an oscillatory universe in the first place. This led to the abandonment of the oscillatory universe by the majority of workers. Nevertheless, an infinitely oscillatory universe is a very attractive alternative to the Big Bang. One new ingredient in the cosmic make-up is the dark energy discovered only in 1998 and so it natural to ask whether this can avoid the difficulties with entropy.”

A model of a cyclic (or oscillating) universe was first proposed by cosmologists in the 1930s. However, it failed the entropy test of the second law of thermodynamics. The law states that entropy (a measure of disorder—the amount of energy unavailable to do work) cannot be destroyed. Thus, entropy increases with each subsequent cycle, resulting in larger and larger universes. Consequently, previous cycles are smaller and smaller—eventually resulting in the Big Bang (“the initial singularity”)—which negates the validity of the oscillating universe model.

Frampton and Baum believe that they have solved this problem with their new theory. The cyclic model proposed by the two physicists has four primary phases: expansion, turnaround, contraction, and bounce.

During the first phase—expansion—dark energy (a yet-to-be identified form of energy that supposedly pervades the entire universe) drives all matter into fragments, which the authors call patches, that are sent extremely far away from one another. In the second phase—turnaround—all matter within each patch disintegrates under the force of dark energy. Then, during the third phase—contraction—each patch contracts individually because of their extreme distance away from one another. That is, they do not contract as a group, similar to a reversal of the Big Bang (sometimes called the Big Crunch). Thus, each patch becomes an infinite number of independent universes. Eventually, all patches (including the patch that we call ‘our’ universe) reverse their contraction during the fourth phase—bounce. This bounce phase looks similar to the inflation of the Big Bang.

Frampton says, “This cycle happens an infinite number of times, thus eliminating any start or end of time. There is no Big Bang.”

Thus, Frampton and Baum state that any remaining entropy in any one patch is too distant to have any affect on the entropy contained in other patches. With each patch (universe) essentially void of matter and entropy, the condition allows contraction to occur without increasing the length of each subsequent cycle. Frampton says, “The idea of coming back empty is the most important ingredient of this new cyclic model.”

Whether this new theory is correct or not is still to be determined. Dark energy is still an unknown quantity. Future satellites may be able to determine characteristics of dark energy such as its density and pressure. These measurements are critical to deciding the ultimate fate of our universe—and possibly other universes out there.

For now, the Big Bang theory has a new challenger.

The Frampton/Baum article “Deflation at Turnaround in Cyclic Cosmology” appears at: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0610/0610213.pdf.

A couple of explanations about the Big Bang theory appear at: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bb1.html and http://www.pbs.org/deepspace/timeline/index.html.

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