The Universe Might Be In Ground-Hog Day
By: Will Lockett
Tags: Science, Space, Technology, Physics, Data Science

Hubble Deep Field — WikiCC

The Universe Might Be In Ground-Hog Day

We have all heard about the horrible fate that awaits the Universe, but a new theory may give existence hope of new life.

The heat-death of the Universe has been a commonly known fact since the discovery of Dark Energy in 1998. Since then science predicts that the Universe will expand, at an ever-increasing rate, until all the stars have died and Black Holes have evaporated, leaving a cold dead sea of fundamental particles across all of existence. Quite a sad death for such a magnificent Universe, although this death will take trillions of years. But, the infamous Roger Penrose (Steven Hawkings’ close colleague) may have discovered that the Universe is immortal, and will be reborn over and over again. Hoorah!

To prove this bizarre theory correct, we need ancient aliens and infinitesimally small ripples in spacetime. But before we dive into that, let’s start at the beginning.

You may have heard of the Big Bounce, which was a prevalent theory before we discovered Dark Energy. In this theory gravity eventually pulls the Universe back from its expansion after the Big Bang and crushes it all together to form a new singularity. That singularity then goes on to ‘Bounce’ back and create a new Big Bang. This cycle continues over and over again, forming a cyclical Universe. Sadly, we know this can’t be the case because of Dark Energy, the force causing the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe. But Penrose has come up with a theory that allows for a cyclical Universe without needing a Big Bounce.

Penrose’s breakthrough came when he realised that the state of the Universe at the beginning of the Big Bang and at its’ heat-death are functionally the same. At least from the photons perspective… Let me explain.

At the moment of the Big Bang, all the matter-energy of the Universe was skewed towards energy. The vast majority of matter hadn’t condensed out of the high energy soup that was the early Big Bang. Instead, it would have been full of energetic photons of light. The Big Bang is far more complicated than this, but this picture of a bright Big Bang helps explain Penrose’s theory easily.

During the life of the Universe, the matter-energy balance goes more in favour of matter. Right now we have lot’s of matter in the form of stars, planets and the objects that inhabit them, but the amount of energy in the Universe has decreased.

But in the heat-death of the Universe, matter gets transformed back into energy as particles decay. So the Universe’s matter-energy balance gets skewed back towards energy as everything slowly decays and turns to photons of light.

But, photons are very special particles. They have no mass, and so they travel at the speed-of-light. That speed means that they don’t experience time or distance (in the direction they travel in). So, from the photons’ perspective, they get emitted and appear at their destination instantly.

This weird property of photons means that they don’t ‘know’ how big the Universe is, to them, distance has no meaning. A photon flying about at the end of the Universe would think it looked identical to the Big Bang, with lot’s of other photons of light and no matter, while the Universe appears to be squashed into a distanceless point.

This led Penrose to suggest a new model for a cyclic Universe called Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC). It states that as the Universe undergoes heat-death, the shift of matter-energy to mostly energy causes a new Big Bang to take place, starting the Universe up once more, and so on and so on. This means that there could be countless Universes that existed before our own, and there will be countless after our own, which is challenging to get your head around.

CCC, unlike the Big Bounce, doesn’t require the Universe to collapse back on itself to start a new. Instead, it’s better to think of it as distance and time becoming meaningless as there is nothing that can experience them in the distant future, where everything is just photons. Then from this distanceless timeless period, a new Big Bang can start, which creates its own distance and time.

This theory isn’t as mad as you might think. The very complicated maths involved in creating CCC, which is based on Einstein’s field equations, all workout perfectly fine. What’s more, this theory does answer some really puzzling problems with the Universe, like the reason for Big Bang uniformity and the Black Hole Information Paradox.

But, there are some predictions of this theory that could give us the telltale signs that could prove Penrose correct. There are two and they are both even weirder than the theory itself!

The CCC predicts that we should see hot rings in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This isn’t a mark of the previous Universe but is a message from an advanced civilisation in the previous Universe. Penrose has shown they can leave us a message in the background noise that is spread across the whole Universe.

So have we found such rings? If so, it would show that another Universe existed and that advanced aliens existed! Two birds one stone.

The Cosmic Microwave Background — ESA

While it’s hard to see any in the CMB maps, computers have found what could be these rings hidden in plain sight; they are just very, very faint. These results are contested, but none-the-less, the CMB could prove Penrose correct, we need a more accurate map to find these rings, if they do exist.

It is worth stating that these rings would be the discovery of the century, possibly even the millennium!

The second prediction is based on the recent Gravitational-Wave results at LIGO, which could also show us some evidence for CCC without the need for aliens.

In theory, as the Universe decays towards a ‘mostly energy state’, it releases low-level Gravitational Waves. This is known as Erebon Decay. The equations in CCC predict that some Erebon Decay should have already happened and that we should have some minimal Gravitational-Wave radiation washing over us from it.

LIGO, our best Gravitational-Wave detector, has picked up noise from both its detectors that appear to correlate. In other words, the noise that they have filtered out might be the small gravitational waves from Erebon Decay. Penrose himself has even published a paper describing how LIGO and other gravitational wave experiments could prove him right.

What’s even more incredible, CCC allows gravitational energy from a previous Universe to radiate into the next. This could actually be the force behind Inflation and Dark Energy, the mysterious force that is pushing the Universe to expand faster and faster.

Needless-to-say that Penrose’s theory and equations can explain a plethora of unexplained phenomena, it isn’t without its critics, but it seems to answer so many problems physics throws up.

So, will our Universe be born again like the Pheonix from the ashes? It looks promising, and if it is accurate, we can open up a whole new world of science and peer into a time before the Big Bang. To find the answer, all we need to do is get better CMB and Gravitational Wave data, which we are already in the process of doing.

The future of CCC looks very promising indeed. If gives me comfort in the thought that our Universe might be immortal, being born again and again, creating untold Solar Systems, stars and natural wonders, rather than this magnificient entity dying a long cold death for eternity.