New Calculation Could Spell Trouble For a Popular Theory of the Universe's Origin

When running Hawking and Hartles’ as well as Vilenkin’s, math, the new team didn’t get the teeny quantum fluctuations required to create today’s universe.

What Was Our Universe Like Before the Big Bang?

Theoretical physicists and cosmologists deal with the biggest questions, like “Why are we here?” “When did the universe begin?” and “How?” Another questions that bugs them, and likely has bugged you, is “What happened before the Big Bang?”

Cosmologists show that universe is expanding uniformly

The universe is expanding uniformly according to research led by University College London (UCL) which reports that space isn’t stretching in a preferred direction or spinning.

Discovery nearly doubles known quasars from the ancient universe

New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados has discovered 63 new quasars from when the universe was only a billion years old.

The universe's primordial soup flowing at CERN

Researchers have recreated the universe's primordial soup in miniature format by colliding lead atoms with extremely high energy in the 27 km long particle accelerator, the LHC at CERN in Geneva.

New theory of secondary inflation expands options for avoiding an excess of dark matter

A new theory suggests a shorter secondary inflationary period that could account for the amount of dark matter estimated to exist throughout the cosmos.

10 Questions for Alan Guth, Pioneer of the Inflationary Model of the Universe

The theoretical physicist discusses the expanding universe and the infinite possibilities it brings.

Large Hadron Collider makes record-breaking collision

New collisions could help explain what conditions were like up to a billionth of a second after the Big Bang

Astronomers capture most powerful explosion since big bang

Astronomers capture an image of the continuing eruption of the most powerful explosion since the big bang.

New Hubble images reveal faint galaxies from the early cosmos

Spectacular new Hubble Space Telescope images reveal 250 previously unknown galaxies that formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Fundamental matter-antimatter symmetry confirmed

International collaboration including MPQ scientists sets a new value for the antiproton mass relative to the electron with unprecedented precision.

Could the Big Bang have been a quick conversion of antimatter into matter?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Suppose at some point the universe ceases to expand, and instead begins collapsing in on itself (as in the “Big Crunch” scenario), and eventually becomes a supermassive black hole. The black hole’s extreme mass produces an extremely strong gravitational field. Through a gravitational version of the so-called Schwinger mechanism, this gravitational field converts virtual particle-antiparticle pairs from the surrounding quantum vacuum into real particle-antiparticle pairs. If the black hole is made from matter (antimatter), it could violently repel billions and billions of antiparticles (particles) out into space in a fraction of a second, creating an ejection event that would look quite similar to a Big Bang.

Big Bang simulated in metamaterial shows time travel is impossible

(PhysOrg.com) -- By observing the way that light moves inside a metamaterial, researchers have reconstructed how spacetime has expanded since the Big Bang. The results provide a better understanding of why time moves in only one direction, and also suggest that time travel is impossible.