and we're the result of yet another big bang?
2006-10-11 10:02:38 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
What you are discussing is the oscillatory universe hypothesis, which was pretty popular back in the 60s and 70s, especially among Russian astrophysicists. However, it doesn't currently have a lot of support among cosmologists due to several problems.
(1) When it collapses, the Universe would contract into a singularity (think: black hole) and there is no known way to get a singularity to expand again. So if the Universe collapsed, it would stay collapsed and there wouldn't be another Big Bang.
(2) Recent observations indicate that there is not enough mass-energy in the universe to pull everything back together again. All of the data that we currently have indicate that the Universe will not recontract.
(3) Even if the universe could recontract and then subsequently expand again, entropy would carry over from cycle to cycle. Thus, the entropy of the universe would continue to increase, it would not be reset with each new iteration. So the universe would eventually suffer heat death, meaning that there cannot have been an infinite number of cycles in the past.
In the past few years, the Cyclic model has been proposed by some scientists working with string theory. I can't claim to understand it, but it appears to solve some of the above problems. Unfortunately, it also introduces other difficulties which would have to be addressed, and string theory itself, despite the hype, is very far from becoming established fact.
See the attached two articles for further details.
2006-10-11 14:18:19 · answer #1 · answered by Jacob1207 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Current cosmological speculation nowdays often includes multiple big bangs, or a single big bang that is perpetually inflating and then tranitioning to "normal" space in many (perhaps infinite) different places, giving rise to many universes.
None of these theories require a collapse, however. It now seems that our Universe will never collapse, but will keep expanding forever. Some theories have new big bangs emerging as a very rare event inside other empty, inflating universes, similar to what our universe may become.
2006-10-11 10:12:45 · answer #2 · answered by cosmo 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
That is one of the accepted theories during this time. Yes. The universe is forever expanding and in the end it will expand too far and gather again to form a big bang
2006-10-11 13:29:38 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
That is possible but we have no way of knowing that.
2006-10-12 03:27:55 · answer #4 · answered by Krissy 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Anything goes.
2006-10-11 10:06:29 · answer #5 · answered by Dr M 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
that's an posibility
2006-10-14 23:08:58 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sure that is possible. Good Luck ! :)
2006-10-11 10:05:23 · answer #7 · answered by tysavage2001 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋