All language subtitles for through.the.wormhole.s01e04.what.happened.before.the.beginning.hdtv.xvid-momentum

The Big Bang.

...A torrent of energy

that propelled our Universe
from nothing into everything,

creating both space and time.

It's the best theory yet

of what happened
at the beginning of time.

But a new generation
of scientists

is daring to contemplate what
was once thought impossible --

are we wrong about the Big Bang?

And might we soon discover what
happened before the beginning?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos lie
through the wormhole.

♪ Through the Wormhole 1x04 ♪
What Happened Before the Beginning?
Original air date on June 30, 2010

-- sync, corrected by elderman --
-- for www.Addic7ed.Com --

How did the Universe begin?

We've all heard of the Big Bang,

but how do we really know
that's the way it was?

I mean, after all, nobody
was around to see it happen.

And if that question seems
hard to answer, try this one --

what happened
before the Universe began?

I first encountered
this eternal question

at the Methodist church.

♪ Sweet chariot ♪

♪ coming for
to carry me home ♪

In the book of Genesis,
God said,

"let there be light,
and there was light."

God then created
the Heavens and the Earth.

But if everything began
at this moment,

how was God around to create it?

Could there ever have been
a time before time?

It's a question

that has intrigued
scientists and philosophers

and the rest of us
for more than 5,000 years.

But in the 1920s,
a scientific discovery

shone some new light
on the beginning of time

and what might have come before,

thanks to this man --
Edwin Hubble.

Atop Mount Wilson
in Southern California,

Hubble aimed a powerful,
new weapon at the heavens --

the mighty
Hooker 101-inch telescope.

As he looked through it,

he became
the first man to appreciate

the true scale of the Universe.

Hubble saw
that small patches of blurry sky

were not gas clusters,
but in fact other galaxies.

The Universe was filled
with not thousands,

but hundreds of billions
of them.

Remarkable as this discovery
was, Hubble's observations

would lead to an even more
profound conclusion --

the Universe is expanding,

every single galaxy drifting
farther and farther apart.

Run this picture back in time,

and all the math
points to a single moment

of an infinitely small,
infinitely dense beginning

to our Universe.

Scientists have a name for this
initial state -- a singularity.

Before this Big Bang,
there is nowhere and no-when.

There is literally nothing
before this beginning.

Run the clock forward
from that singularity,

and the starting gun
is the Big Bang...

...A colossal explosion
of energy and matter

that gave birth to everything
we see in the sky today.

It also created space and time.

As all the radiation and matter

shoots out
in different directions,

the Universe
eventually starts to cool.

Gravity causes matter
to clump together,

and stars are born...

And then explode.

Later, swirling discs
of dust and rocks

gather around newer stars.

Eventually, several billion
years after the Big Bang,

we get a planet like Earth.

This mind-twisting story
has become the new dogma,

but however robust,

the Big Bang
is still just a theory.

Princeton Professor of physics
Dr. David Spergel

has spent much of his career

trying to understand if and how
this cataclysmic event happened.

People sometimes call him
"Mr. Universe."

For Spergel, the Big Bang

is still the most complete
and scientifically sound model

of the early Universe.

Everything around us
came from the hot Big Bang.

The Universe started out --
Big Bang Theory --

very, very hot, very dense.

That hot radiation cooled.

From that emerged
matter, radiation,

everything that makes up
the world around us.

And here we are
at Bell Labs at Crawford Hill,

the place where the hot Big Bang
theory really all started,

in some ways.

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson
are a pair of radio astronomers

who worked here
at Bell Laboratories.

What they were doing is they
were studying the microwave sky

as Bell Labs was exploring

the idea of using it
for microwave communication.

It was 1964.

At this point,

the two men were not trying to
solve any big cosmic questions.

They were just trying
to get the darn thing to work.

For starters,
a mysterious hiss

was interfering
with their radio signal.

Dr. Spergel:
Penzias and Wilson were
really good radio astronomers,

so they built
a really nice telescope.

And they designed it so there
shouldn't be any background,

yet it was there.

This background hiss they heard

was coming
from every corner of the sky.

Wilson and Penzias
tried everything,

even sweeping the dirt
and leaves out of the antenna,

but still there was noise.

They tried cooling the receivers
with liquid helium.

Still there was noise.

They even removed
a family of nesting pigeons

and their associated droppings.

And still
the noise would not go away.

Sometimes science consists
of cleaning up a lot of stuff

and seeing what's left behind.

Having eliminated
anything they can think of,

they realized there had to be
something else there.

The only possibility

was that it was coming from
someplace outside our galaxy,

and that seemed like
such a far-out idea.

We just didn't know
what to do with that result.

Consulting with a team
of Princeton physicists,

Wilson and Penzias realized
that the only reason

something could come
from every part of the sky

is if it were actually a faint
echo of a huge cosmic event.

We had really measured
the background temperature,

the remnant noise from
the creation of the Universe.

After 40 years
of speculation and calculation

by some of the most famous
scientists in the world,

the two radio engineers
had stumbled upon a faint cry

from our own cosmic birth.

The cause of the hiss had to be

the leftover heat
from the Big Bang.

A picture of the beginning
of time and space

was starting to emerge.

This balloon
is our whole Universe.

As I expand the Universe...

...Notice how
all the things on the balloon

move apart from each other.

We're not
in the center of the Universe.

It's the whole Universe that's
expanding -- expanding in time.

Same is true with the radiation.

It's not that the microwave
radiation is coming towards us

and we're
in the center of the Big Bang.

The whole balloon is filled with
radiation from the Big Bang.

As the balloon expands,
the radiation gets colder.

Bigger the balloon,
colder the Universe is.

We can now
run the Universe back in time.

The Universe is contracting,

getting hotter, getting hotter,
getting hotter, hotter still.

We're now back at the moment
of initial singularity.

We're at the moment
in which the Big Bang started.

Everything -- all of space --
is contracted right here.

This is when
the hot radiation was generated.

It's not generated in one spot.
It's generated everywhere.

The Big Bang happened everywhere
on the surface of the balloon.

The accidental discovery

of cosmic microwave
background radiation

earned the two radio engineers
the Nobel prize for Physics.

It also gave scientists

the first good estimate
of when the Big Bang happened --

between 12 and 14 billion
years ago.

Our understanding
of the Universe

would never be the same.

But for David Spergel,

listening to the echo
of the Big Bang

from a hill in New Jersey
was not good enough.

He wanted to time-travel
back to that first moment,

when light filled the Universe,
and see it.

What he needed was a rocket...

We have ignition.
Looking good.

Liftoff!

...A rocket
which would take a picture

of the earliest moment
of the Universe.

It's working its way
through the liftoff...

2001.

With the launch of the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe,

or WMAP,

scientists were attempting to
see as far back as they could,

to the beginning of our world.

Spergel's dream
was taking flight.

When we look
at the microwave background,

we're looking out in space,
back in time.

We're looking back

to when the Universe was only
300,000 years old.

That's the moment at which
the Universe became cold enough

that electrons and protons
combined to make hydrogen.

Hydrogen is transparent
to microwave light,

so light could then travel
freely from then to now.

Two years later,
the results are in.

First results from
NASA's Wilkinson microwave...

The WMAP
delivers on its promise --

a crystal-clear baby picture
of the Universe

just 380,000 years
after its birth.

These pictures are worth
more than a thousand words.

This is a picture
of me as a baby.

Notice the high forehead,
the ears, the nose...

Classic smile.

Well, I'm certainly older

and hopefully wiser
than I was in this picture.

The basic DNA is the same.

We try to do the same thing
in cosmology.

We take
the Universe's baby picture,

and we see what it looked like
when it was a few days old.

We can then use that picture

to look at how we got
from the baby picture

to the Universe we see today.

But perhaps even more exciting,

we can take the picture
and go further back in time

and learn about
the Universe's beginnings,

learn about
where the baby came from,

equivalently what happened

in the first moments
of the Big Bang.

The details of our birth

are actually imprinted
in this picture.

But what happened

between
that moment of singularity

and the AP image
380,000 years later?

For Dr. Alan Guth,
a physicist from M.I.T.,

this missing moment in our
Universe's timeline was the key

to everything that came
before and after the Big Bang.

The Universe that we see is,
in fact, unbelievably uniform,

and that's hard to understand,

because conventional explosions
don't behave that way.

But other scientists
have different ideas

about what might have happened
at that moment of singularity.

The physical laws break down.

The mathematical equations
just don't make sense anymore.

The beginning of time is about
to get a whole lot stranger.

40 years after

two radio astronomers
first heard a faint whisper

from our own cosmic birth,

David Spergel now has his
baby picture of the Universe.

Despite the vibrant colors
visible in the WMAP image,

it only describes a miniscule
variation in temperature

across the Universe.

When we look at the WMAP map,

what we're seeing
are tiny variations

in the temperature of the
Universe from place to place,

variations that are
1 part in 10,000,

1 part in 100,000.

So, I ink of the Universe we
look at with the WMAP satellite

as not being chaotic

but being very ordered,
homogeneous, and smooth.

But if time and space started

in a cataclysmic explosion
of energy,

wouldn't the Universe be uneven
and messy in all directions?

Not exactly.

I can't start this
with "not exactly," can I?

For Dr. Alan Guth,

what happened
during this early moment in time

was an intriguing mystery
that had to be solved.

Figuring this out
became his life's work.

There had been in cosmology
a serious problem

in understanding
the uniformity of the Universe.

It has the same intensity
in every direction that we look

to 1 part in 100,000.

And that means that the Big Bang
was unbelievably uniform.

And that's hard to understand,

because conventional explosions
just don't behave that way.

We've set up a balloon
that's gonna be dropped

from a very high height,
up there on a crane.

The balloon
is filled with paint,

and we'll get to see
what kind of a splat

a typical explosion makes.

So, this is what a typical
explosion might look like,

and as you can see,
it's anything but uniform.

There are spots here
and spots there

and white spots in between.

The early Universe was nothing
like what's on the canvas here.

Alan needed something that
would immediately smooth out

all the hot, dense plasma that
had just come into existence.

I came across
this idea of inflation,

the idea that gravity can,
under some circumstances,

act repulsively and produce
a gigantic acceleration

in the expansion
of the Universe,

and that
this could have happened

in the very early Universe.

The key idea behind inflation
is the possibility

that at least a small patch
of the early Universe

contained this peculiar kind
of repulsive-gravity material.

And all you need
is a tiny patch of that,

and the Big Bang starts to do
this repulsive-gravity effect.

Cosmic inflation takes place

right after a pop
from nothing into something.

About one trillion, trillion,
trillionth of a second

afterwards,

a force field takes
all the highly compressed space

created in that first singular moment,

which is still
almost infinitely small...

And drives it out.

A tiny fraction of a second later,

the Universe had doubled in size
100,000 times.

A different kind of painting
illustrates this idea.

We're going to paint
in time-lapse photography

a growing sphere.

Instead of getting
the "splot" that we had

when we just dropped
the balloon,

here we should see a very smooth
growth of an early Universe.

With this
smooth and orderly expansion,

our Universe was formed.

This idea of inflation
has now essentially become

the standard version
of cosmology,

and it makes
a number of predictions

which have been confirmed,

so it agrees very well
with what we see.

With the addition of inflation,

the Big Bang theory became
a cohesive three-act play.

Act one...

A singularity
pops into existence

out of nowhere and no-when,

containing in one single dot

all the energy that will ever be
in our Universe.

Act two...
Inflation suddenly takes hold --

an unimaginably rapid
expansion of space

smoothly spreading out that energy,

bringing order to the Universe.

It's now a massive soup
of evenly expanding plasma.

Act three...The Universe cools.

Matter starts to clump together
under the force of gravity,

eventually forming
stars, galaxies, and planets.

For most cosmologists,

this three-act play
is the best explanation

for what happened at
the beginning of the Universe.

But not for everybody.

Interpreting this as a beginning
is indeed just a crutch.

It's not derived from any theory.

It's just a place where
the theory itself breaks down.

Dr. Martin Bojowald
is a Professor of Physics

at the institute for Gravitation
and the Cosmos at Penn State.

He's a rising star in a
new generation of cosmologists

which is challenging
some long-held beliefs

about the Universe.

Inflation may have fixed
act two,

but Martin thinks

the play still starts
with a very unlikely act one --

the sudden and singular pop

from nothing
into the entire Universe.

A singularity just means

we don't understand the theory
well enough.

Alan Guth used
the theory of inflation

to dig down to a trillion,
trillion, trillionth of a second

after the beginning.

Martin went
a million times closer.

In Bojowald's theory,
time is not free-flowing,

but made up of discrete,
measurable chunks.

These chunks of time
are called "space-time atoms."

It's a very different way

of thinking about what happened
before the beginning.

Here we have a beautiful,
old grandfather clock.

As we can see,
there's a pendulum.

It's swinging
in a continuous way,

thereby telling the clock
how time is proceeding.

They're not discrete marks,

but rather a continuous motion
of the pendulum.

This is the classical picture
of time measured continuously.

Now, in quantized time,
it's a whole different story.

For quantized time,
we have a picture

as given by the second hand
of the clock here.

It's not continuous.

It's not the pendulum swing,

which we could stop
at any time, at any position.

Here, the different positions
are given

by certain discrete sets between
one tick and the next one.

It's a finite amount of time

which cannot be
further subdivided.

In Bojowald's version
of the early Universe,

you never get to nothing.

The second hand
on the quantized clock

marks not just
the beginning of one moment,

but the end of another.

The tick that signaled dawn
in our Universe

marks one second past midnight
in the last.

So, we have this balloon Universe.

If we imagine what it could have
been before the Big Bang,

it was collapsing,
so the volume was shrinking.

Now, if we follow
the usual evolution,

according to general relativity,

that would have been ending
in a singularity.

The whole balloon
would just completely deflate.

But with the atomic nature
of space and time,

the attractive behavior
of gravity changes.

It becomes repulsive
at these high densities.

The collapse stops.

Then the forces turn around,
so there's a repulsive force

which makes the Universe
re-expand.

At some point --
we're not sure yet --

but it might recollapse
at some time in the future,

so all the air might go out again.

The volume would decrease,

the density would increase,

and then probably approach
another Big Bang.

The Universe
expands and contracts,

but it never actually begins.

There could have been a series
of Universes before this one

and more to come after this one.

Bojowald is working through
the problems and conundrums

that all radical new theories face.

His theory is by no means
complete, and it may never be.

We are still
working on the equations.

We don't have
the complete answer yet,

but it seems to be
the best theory yet

to address these issues.

But in 2001,

two of the leading cosmologists
in the world

published a paper suggesting
an even more radical approach

to what happened
at the beginning.

For these two scientists,

there was another answer
so strange and unexpected

that it had never been considered.

There are bangs and bangs
and bangs forever.

Our Universe
may not be the only one,

but one of hundreds, thousands,
maybe an infinite number.

It's an inspiring
and daunting suggestion --

the Universe is an endless cycle

prompted by
an endless series of bangs,

forever.

When you look out into space,

gaze at a distant star,

you also look back in time.

Light from distant galaxies

can take billions of years
to reach us.

Now we know there's a limit
to how far back we can see,

an edge to the visible Universe.

The light
from that cosmic backdrop

has taken 13.7 billion years
to make it to Earth.

What lies beyond that curtain?

According to
Professor Martin Bojowald,

time becomes
squeezed and distorted

as it nears a singularity

and then bounces back out
into another expansion.

But perhaps there's
an altogether different way

to look at what happened
before the beginning.

South African scientist
Dr. Neil Turok

is now daring to go
further into the past

than almost anyone else.

Africa!

Africa!

His radical view of the cosmos
was influenced

by his parents' struggles
during apartheid.

My father and mother
were political activists

against the South African government.

They went to jail
for their opinions.

But ultimately,
democracy came to South Africa

and they were both elected
members of parliament --

the only husband-and-wife
members of parliament

apart from
Nelson and Winnie Mandela.

They served
as a model of persistence.

Just because at the moment

your ideas are not fashionable
or agreed upon,

if you believe what you're doing
is right, persist.

From the moment he entered the
field of theoretical physics,

the South African scientist

was looking for new answers
to age-old problems.

There is
a conventional wisdom

in the field,

and people are very slow
to adopt new ideas.

And, frankly,

many people have built
their careers on the status quo,

and they don't want a new idea

coming along
and rocking the boat.

For Neil, the WMAP announcement

brought up familiar feelings
about seeing the Universe

through a slightly different lens

than some of his colleagues.

In the WMAP press announcement,

of course the scientists involved

linked it explicitly to inflation

and said, "this dramatically
confirms inflation."

And this made me squirm.

My point of view

was that the information
contained in the WMAP data

was, in itself, not sufficient

to prove or refute inflation.

He wasn't alone.

Across the Atlantic, another
intrepid scientist labored

to uncover the truth behind what
happened before the beginning.

Paul Steinhardt

is the Albert Einstein
Professor of Physics

at Princeton University.

As a young man,

Paul was inspired to study
science by the moon landings.

We choose to go to the moon
in this decade

and do the other things,

not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.

In 1999,
the two men combined forces

to see if they could answer
some of their problems

with the inflationary model of
what happened at the beginning.

Inflation had
some extraordinary successes,

so it's tough competition
to compete with inflation.

So I will not tell you all
the ideas that were attempted

and dumped in the wastebasket.

We have similar objectives,

which is to shake the field up
once in a while

and come up with something
bold and original and different

and to improve
on the status quo.

I organized
a conference with Neil Turok.

We had a common interest
in string theory,

which were just coming out
at that time,

whether they might stimulate
some new ideas in cosmology.

String theory was
developed in the last 35 years

as an attempt to devise
a single theory

explaining everything
in the Universe.

In it, everything is made
of minute, vibrating strings.

But for the mathematics
of string theory to work,

there have to be

more than the three dimensions
of space that we see.

Rather, there are 10 dimensions,
plus time.

Space-time is a flexible
substance, like a membrane,

and it can stretch and shrink.

So, we knew
these things could move,

but nobody had really studied
the dynamics of that process.

So we brought in experts,
like Burt Ovrut,

who is one of the most
proficient developers

of particle-physics models
based on string theory.

And he gave
a beautiful series of lectures

in which he described to us

this idea of our
three-dimensional world

being embedded in a brane world

separated by a small gap
from another brane world

along an extra spatial dimension.

And as we sat there,
we both had the same thoughts...

...Which is, if you imagine

that this is really
the structure of the Universe,

there's a new
possible interpretation

for what is the Big Bang.

What have we
not been facing up to, you know?

What is the elephant in the room?

And the number-one question
was the singularity.

We both sort of approached Burt
from both ends...

...And cornered Burt
after his lecture...

...And each of us finished
the sentence of the other...

...And said, "you know, well,

"what about if these things collide?

What would happen then?"

"And is it possible
the Big Bang is not a beginning,

but is a collision?"

And his response was, "maybe."

The meeting soon broke up,

but the three men
had all been invited

to attend the same play
in London that evening.

We met at the train platform,

and then we began to really
imagine this idea in more detail

about what it would mean if the
Big Bang were not a beginning

but the Big Bang
were a collision.

And then
we had a train ride to London,

where we just brainstormed
about this

in a very loose and unstructured
and unmathematical way.

We asked ourselves the question,
"could we invent something

"which was different
than the inflationary picture,

that was different
than the standard picture?"

We had
some rough ideas how to do it,

but it wasn't at all obvious.

Time was flying past us
as the train was moving along.

It's one of those rare occasions

when you're having a conversation

and you feel like a really
exciting idea is emerging --

sort of that sixth sense

that something important
is happening.

Coming up with this rough idea
for how things might work

is, of course, exciting.

But in having an idea like that,

and then deciding to really pursue it,

you are condemning yourself
to years of misery,

because you now have to
flesh this out.

And to solve
this mystery, Neil and Paul

would turn to one of
the toughest mental challenges

of the human mind --

the incredibly strange world
of 11-dimensional space...

And Universes parallel to our own.

Albert Einstein
was a formidable thinker.

His theories of relativity
were groundbreaking developments

that triggered
a century of cosmic insights.

But even more fundamental

was his realization that
time and space are intertwined.

The three dimensions of space

are really part
of a four-dimensional fabric

called "space-time."

But now there's a new movement
in theoretical physics.

It's called "string theory."

And out of string theory
comes "m-theory."

In m-theory, there are not four,

but an astounding
11 dimensions --

10 dimensions of space
plus one of time.

Uh, what is m-theory?
Uh, okay.

So, uh, m-theory
is an attempt to, uh --

let me start again.

Three-dimensional infinite
worlds stretching off --

uh, let me start again.

Why would one
even think about --

how does one make that not
sound crazy in two sentences?

So, m-theory is a...

Promising, unified theory

of all the fundamental forces
and constituents

that we observe in nature.

In a sense,
you could describe it

as the culmination
of all the developments

in theoretical physics
over the 20th century.

In order
to make this theory work,

one needs to have more than the
usual three spatial dimensions,

so a key idea behind m-theory

is that there are more than
the three dimensions of space

that we experience.

There are hidden dimensions.

In fact, there are seven more,

and the reason
we're not aware of them

is that they are so, so tiny
that in order to see them,

you'd need an enormously
powerful microscope

far more powerful
than any we have.

Our three-dimensional world
lives in a surface

embedded in a space
with an extra spatial dimension

that separates it
from another such surface.

One possibility that springs
from these extra dimensions

is that this other
three-dimensional world

could be just a fraction
of a centimeter from ours

and yet hidden from our view.

These surfaces
are called "branes,"

standing for "membrane,"

which is to remind us
that these surfaces are elastic.

They can stretch,
they can wiggle, they can warp.

They can move
along this extra dimension.

All of the particles
we're made of

are actually
curled-up little branes.

And all the dimensions of space
we travel in

are comprised
of branes themselves.

And so everything in the Universe

is composed
of these geometrical objects.

I don't know
if I can repeat that again.

Caution --

you have entered a place
called "brane world."

We're stuck like flies
on fly paper to our brane world.

We simply can't reach out
into the extra dimension --

even 10 to the minus-30
centimeters --

to touch the other brane world.

It was
rough this world of branes

that Paul and Neil

stumbled onto a potentially
radical new theory

of what happened
before the beginning.

So, here
I have a piece of material,

and it looks like
a two-dimensional object,

because one of the dimensions
goes up

and one goes side to side.

But if we look a little bit
closer at this object,

and look at it from the side,
you'll see that actually

there are two
pieces of material,

separated by a tiny gap.

And you could think of this gap

as being
the fourth dimension of space.

And the collision of these two
three-dimensional worlds --

the one we live in
and another one --

would have been the Big Bang.

It would be a collision, instead
of a springing from nothingness.

So, if the branes existed
before and after,

that means
space and time existed before.

They could have helped set up

the conditions we observe
in the Universe today --

they collide,
and they move apart again.

The Big Bang
is not the beginning.

That means we have more time

to solve
all the cosmological problems

that inflation was designed
to solve.

So, we began to imagine,
"could we replace that idea

with something that occurred
before The Bang?"

And as we were going
along the train ride,

we began to imagine
lots of possibilities,

so that by the end,

it seemed like
a very exciting alternative

to the standard
Big Bang inflationary picture.

For the next 18 months,

the three men and another
physicist, Justin Khoury,

worked feverishly
to clarify and justify

their initial spark of creativity.

Now we had to
make the mathematics work,

and this involved
developing a lot of new physics

to explain the motion of branes
moving along extra dimensions

under the influence

of a force which is
trying to draw them together.

This mathematics
didn't exist before.

A new theory of the
Universe starts to come alive.

The picture we had in mind

was two three-dimensional worlds
stretching off to infinity

but separated from each other
by a tiny gap --

a fourth dimension of space.

The two three-dimensional worlds

are actually pulled together
by a very, very weak force.

The force
has to be very, very weak,

otherwise the bang would occur
too quickly.

We know that
the cycles can't be too short,

because the Universe has already
gone 14 billion years

since the last bang.

A trillion years is probably
a good, you know, typical value

for what we expect
the length of a cycle to be.

As the branes approach,

the force
gets stronger and stronger.

And when they collide,
kinetic energy of the branes

is then converted
into the hot radiation

that fills
both three-dimensional worlds

and looks like the Big Bang.

So that when
the branes move apart again,

they're now filled
with the matter and radiation

that was created at the collision.

This then causes the branes to
begin to expand again and cool,

creating a new period
of expansion, cooling,

creation of new atoms,
molecules, stars, and galaxies.

We now had an explanation
for the Big Bang.

This is normally referred to
as "cosmic singularity" --

some sort of breakdown
in the laws of physics,

which in the standard Big Bang
theory, you simply ignore.

But in this picture,

you are actually providing
an explanation for it.

It was, in fact, the collision
between these two brane worlds.

It was a theory of
what was the cosmic singularity.

It was a radical
and elegant solution

to one of the great
cosmic mysteries of all time.

According to Neil and Paul

and their colleagues
Burt and Justin,

there was always
a time before time.

After almost two years of work,
it was time

to present this new theory
to their fellow scientists.

At a conference in Finland,

the two physicists
laid out their theory.

The reception was icy.

The criticism was that we were
simply assuming or asserting

the branes would be
flat and parallel to begin with

without showing
why that should be the case.

We'd been so excited
about this idea,

and yet everyone else
was just poo-pooing it.

To be fair, I mean, the session
did not go well for us.

The next morning,
we were both rather depressed,

so we began to travel
along the River near Rovaniemi

and have this discussion

about "what could we replace
this idea with?"

So, we began to think

about something that wasn't yet
included in the theory,

which was
the idea of dark energy.

Dark energy is a recent

and totally surprising
astronomical discovery --

a mysterious force

that's causing the Universe
to expand even faster.

Eventually, the dark energy
will expand the Universe so much

that it will be nothing
but cold and empty space.

In the language of m-theory,
that translates to a flat brane.

The dark-energy phase stretches
out the three-dimensional worlds

and makes them very flat and
very empty and very parallel.

Of course, that immediately
clicked with another idea.

Well, we're using something now,

but we're using it
before the bang.

Well, maybe
the source of dark energy then

was actually
the same as the one now

and the Universe is cyclic
somehow.

So, you could have a bang

followed by
a normal period of the Universe,

like we live in today,

followed by a second bang
in our future,

followed by another bang,
and so on.

There are bangs
and bangs and bangs forever.

Their theory was now complete.

Two branes come together,
inject one another with energy,

then dark energy
takes a trillion years or so

to spread that energy out.

The branes flatten
and then come together again.

This cycle happens endlessly.

Neil Turok and Paul Steinhardt
had come up with

a remarkable alternative theory
to the Big Bang

and cracked the door onto what
happened before the beginning.

As different as the models are,

they produce
the same exact variations

in the background radiation.

The same WMAP image
fits both ideas.

It's truly the case that
when WMAP made its announcement,

the way most people interpreted
that announcement was,

it's beautifully consistent

with the Big Bang inflationary
picture.

To us, it meant that
the cyclic model was in the game

as much as inflation was.

But which theory is right?

The answer to one of the biggest
cosmic mysteries of all --

was there a time
before our time? --

could be circling the Earth
a million miles over our heads.

What happened
before the beginning?

The question is posed.
Sides are drawn.

The closing arguments
are being prepared.

Is the answer "nothing"?

Did a Big Bang suddenly
and inexplicably burst into life

from a time of no-when
and a place of nowhere?

Or could we have bounced

from the contraction
of another Universe

that existed before ours?

Or are we living
a trillionth of a trillionth

of the width of an atom
away from a parallel Universe,

and every trillion years,

these parallel worlds
bump into one another

and fill each other up with huge
amounts of energy and matter?

Professor Martin Bojowald's
bouncing Universe

is still a work in progress,

but for proponents

of the cyclic and
the Big Bang inflation model,

the answer to how and when
the Universe started

may be moving toward us
across time and space

like tiny ripples
in the cosmic ocean...

...Gravitational waves.

Gravitational wave is
pretty much like a sound wave.

We're used to a sound wave

traveling from me to you
as I speak,

as a compression and expansion
of the air between us.

And so the molecules get more
densely packed and further apart

as the wave moves
from me to you.

But gravitational waves ripple

not air molecules,
but space itself, which means

that they can stretch out
or compress a beam of light

and cause a shift in its color.

So, if space is expanded,

we'll see the radiation shifted

to red frequencies,
longer wavelengths.

But if it's coming towards us,
we'll see

it's slightly bluer than
it would otherwise have been.

And so, by carefully analyzing

the pattern of radiation
on the sky,

we can, in fact, infer
if there are gravitational waves

traveling through
our part of the Universe.

And rocket technology

will get the scientists
far enough up into space

to espy
these gravitational waves.

The Planck satellite

is the successor to WMAP.

It will be measuring the sky
with about twice the resolution

and about
10 times the sensitivity.

The Planck satellite is really
the first device we have

which seems to have
a strong capability

of maybe finding"these gravity waves.

And if we're lucky,
that'll tell us what happened

during the first moments
of the Big Bang,

or maybe even before.

For proponents
of The Big Bang inflation model,

finding significant
gravitational waves

would be the final step
in proving

that there was a giant expansion
of whooshing energy

from a place
of nowhere and no-when.

But Paul Steinhardt
and Neil Turok

are also looking forward
to the Planck satellite results.

In their cyclic model of
the beginning of the Universe,

two branes coming together

would be
a much less intense collision,

and the chances are

that gravitational waves
would be almost nonexistent.

If we observe
these gravitational waves

in the Planck satellite,

that will support
the inflationary theory

and rule out the cyclic picture.

And conversely,
if we don't see them,

that would strongly support
the cyclic picture.

But no matter which description

of the beginning of the Universe
appears to be more accurate,

the true winner will be

our own scientific understanding.

Yeah, to me,
it's man against nature.

We're trying to figure out
nature's secrets.

If we're lucky,
we'll be surprised.

These tiny,
almost undetectable waves

will have a tsunami-like effect

on the future direction of cosmology.

Instead of appearing
from nowhere and no-when

and rising
from stardust to humankind,

we may have to consider
the mind-boggling premise

that we are just
the latest version

of an endless series
of Universes.

We still might not know what
happened before the beginning...

But we would know
that something did.

The final answer
may be close at hand.

-- sync, corrected by elderman --
-- for www.Addic7ed.Com --