The dark Big Bang theory is a new but growing field of research that seeks to explain how the universe began. By combining many aspects of cosmology, dark matter, dark energy and general relativity, this theory sheds light on the earliest moments of our universe and provides an alternative explanation for its origin.
The Big Bang may not have been alone. At the beginning of the universe another phenomenon may have occurred. And it would have been created by the ubiquitous dark matter particles. This is the dark Big Bang theory.
There was a key event in the early universe. It was inflation. This phenomenon expanded our universe extremely fast. When inflation ended, the exotic quantum fields that drove that event decayed. They became the avalanche of particles and radiation that remains to this day.
Double explosion
It occurred when our universe was less than 20 minutes old. Those particles began to assemble into the first protons and neutrons. This is what we call Big Bang nucleosynthesis. But it is not yet possible to understand dark matter. It is the mysterious and invisible form of matter that occupies the vast majority of the mass of the cosmos.
A team of researchers has proposed a new idea. They argue that our Big Bang eras of inflation and nucleosynthesis were not alone. Invisible matter may have evolved along a completely separate path. When inflation ended, this too flooded the universe with particles and radiation, but not dark matter. It was some quantum field that did not vanish.
The universe expanded and cooled. And that extra quantum field eventually became dark matter. This approach opens avenues to explore a rich variety of theoretical models of dark matter. It has a separate evolutionary path. And it is easier to follow up in calculations to see how it might compare with observations.
New Pathways
The team that developed the dark Big Bang theory determined another fact. They say this had to occur when our universe was less than a month old. The research also proposes other hypotheses. This event released a very unique brand of strong gravitational waves that would persist in today’s universe.
It is not yet possible to know whether a dark Big Bang occurred. But this work provides a clear path to test the idea, the researchers say.
