PBS Space Time

What If The Universe DID NOT Start With The Big Bang? (2024x25)

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Here’s the story we like to tell about the beginning of the universe. Space is expanding evenly everywhere, but if you rewind that expansion you find that all of space was once compacted in an infinitesimal point of infinite density—the singularity at the beginning of time. The expansion of the universe from this point is called the Big Bang. We like to tell this story because it's the correct conclusion from the description of an expanding universe that followed Einstein's general theory of relativity back in the 19-teens. But since then we've learned so much more since then. Does our modern understanding of the universe still insist on a point-like Big Bang? Recent work actually gives us a way to avoid the beginning of time.