The 'Big Bang' May be Confirmed with a New Method Examining the Beginning of the Cosmos

There may be a new method to probe the very beginnings of the universe. Theorists have proposed a new way to better understand the cosmos.

The most widely accepted theoretical scenario for the beginning of the universe is inflation, which predicts that the universe expanded at an exponential rate in the first fleeting fraction of a second. However, a number of alternative scenarios have been suggested, some predicting a Big Crunch preceding the Big Bang. In order to distinguish between these scenarios, though, it's necessary to find measurements.

One promising source of information is the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This is the remnant glow of the Big Bang that pervades all of space. The glow appears smooth and uniform at first, but upon closer inspection varies by small amounts. Those variations come from quantum fluctuations present at the birth of the universe that have been stretched as the universe expanded.

"Here we are proposing a new approach that could allow us to directly reveal the evolutionary history of the primordial universe from astrophysical signals," said Xingang Chen, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This history is unique to each scenario."

The conventional approach to distinguish different scenarios is to search for possible traces of gravitational waves in the CMB that were generated during the primordial universe.

In this latest study, the research suggests that "clocks" in the form of heavy particles may reveal the order in which events occurred in the early universe. More specifically, subatomic heavy particles behave like a pendulum, oscillating back and forth in a universal and standard way. They can do so quantum-mechanically without being pushed initially. These quantum wiggles act like clock ticks, adding time labels.

With that said, technology still isn't precise enough to be able to measure these wiggles. However, research in the next few decades may be able to confirm this theory.

The findings are published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

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