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Forget the Big Bang: Gravitational waves may have really created the Universe
(www.sciencedaily.com)
imma need a pbs space time for this.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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Sorry, no more PBS.
PBS isn't going anywhere. The organization that handles distributing the federal funds is what's going away. Federal funding was only like 2% of PBs operating budget
Ooh, I like this idea! I've always found physics (espeicsly cosmology) to have a few too many handwaves around some pretty odd ideas. Renormalization for one. The rapid inflationary model for another. It's just a silly suggestion. "The big bang happened, but then the universe expanded super fast for no reason before it slowed way down also for no reason. Inflatons maybe?"
An emergent model based in interactions of known forces would seen much more sensible to me.
There's nothing handwavy about renormalization, it's just a way of describing the mathematics which is easier for a human brain to deal with, so we've standardised on it.
An unnormalised wave function can show you the relative probability of any given thing, but it makes like easier if you set the scale so that you can read an actual probably straight off it, rather than having to ask "relative to what?"
A couple notes:
First, renormalizarion was hand-wavy when it was first introduced, but it has since been made mathematically rigorous. Additionally, renormalization is a mathematical process to make a theory self-consistent. If you consider it an odd idea because it is physically nonsense, I would caution against forming a physical intuition from any given accurate mathematical model. Especially with fundamental quantum mechanics—there’s a reason why there are several interpretations of QM and have been for a century.
Second, and arguably more importantly: this ScienceDaily article is extremely misleading. The original paper (linked by OP in another comment) says
This is a scenario where the inflaton does not exist, and thus opens up the possibility to provide a picture of inflation that is model independent
So the paper does rid itself of the inflaton field, which is, as you said, a bit of a hand-wave. Crucially, however, it does not abandon inflation—in fact, it explains those “for no reason”s that you mentioned.
i don't understand how super fast expansion following the big bang can be described as "for no reason"
(I'm not a physicist) I think the rapid inflation proposed didn't begin at the instant of the big bang but a little later
Anyone have a link to their full article about this? How do they theorize gravitational waves interacting with quantum mechanics still resulted in a rapid expansion of the universe instead of the Big Bang/inflationary model? Admittedly I don't know much about astronomy or astrophysics; I just enjoy reading explanations about them at a more basic pop science level.