A new theory of the universe, suggests two explosions: a big bang that created matter, and another bang that filled the cosmos with dark matter (sometimes called dark energy).
Scientists agree that the universe began with a singularity after the Big Bang, the enormous energy of which gave birth to all matter. However, this does not explain the existence of dark matter, whose mass dominates in all galaxies.
Two scientists think a double-Big-Bang scenario could explain dark matter and why we haven’t been able to detect it.
Until now, physicists have assumed dark matter was created in the same flash of heat that jump-started the universe. But dark matter lives in a kind of parallel, shadow world, barely interacting with the regular matter that makes up everything we can see, feel, and observe.
Maybe it was created in a kind of “shadow” Big Bang, days after the universe began.
That’s what UT Austin physicists Katherine Freese and Martin Winkler propose in a new theory they’re calling the “Dark Big Bang,” which may explain why dark matter has avoided detection thus far and how scientists might be able to finally change that.
“In our scenario there are two big bangs,” Winkler said of the result, which appeared in preprint last month. “The Hot Big Bang, as in the standard picture, creates the hot plasma of visible matter and radiation.” The dark matter, however, is created in a later, ‘darker’ Big Bang.
The double big bang theory can explain the different rates of evolution of visible and invisible matter and energy.
Computer simulations showed that several months could have elapsed between the two explosions. Only after the second explosion, unique gravitational waves began to form in the Universe, which have survived to this day.
The origin of the universe and its many mysteries are endlessly fascinating. The double big bang theory, still discussed in scientific communities around the world, is one of many hypotheses that have been proposed over the years to better understand the cosmos and the universe.
There are many amazing mysteries in the universe, and humanity should strive to uncover as many of them as possible.
