![]() ![]() The greatest mystery surrounding the origin of the universe is what cosmologists call the big bang "singularity"-the point at the beginning of the universe, prior to the existence of space and time, when gravity, along with the temperature and density of the universe, becomes infinite. Instead of a universe that emerged from a point of infinite density, we will have one that recycles, possibly through an eternal series of expansions and contractions, with no beginning and no end.īojowald's major realization was that unlike general relativity, the physics of LQC do not break down at the big bang. If they are verified, the big bang will give way to the big bounce. ![]() Now the theory is poised to formulate hypotheses we can actually test. Loop quantum cosmology was born, and with it, a theory that managed to do something even Einstein's general theory of relativity had failed to do-illuminate the very birth of the universe.Įver since, loop quantum cosmology, or LQC, has been tantalizing physicists with the idea that our universe could conceivably have emerged from the collapse of a previous one. In 2000, Martin Bojowald, then a twenty-seven-year-old post-doc at Pennsylvania State University, used a relatively new theory called loop quantum gravity-a cunning combination of Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum mechanics-to create a simple model of the universe. ![]()
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