Indian has new theory on Big Bang

A new controversial analysis by an astronomer of Indian origin has suggested that the Big Bang might not have come at the beginning of the Universe, but after a long and slow period of shrinkage.

According to a report, the theory has been put forward by Amit Yadav, an astronomer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

If this theory holds any ground, it would show that the early universe did not inflate with the smoothness that many theorists expected. "The standard, canonical models will be ruled out if this holds," said Yadav. "The simplicity is gone," he added.

Yadav's result suggests that models of inflation - a furious hyperexpansion in the instant after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago - have to be much more complicated than previously thought, or else that inflation never occurred at all and that the Big Bang came after a period of contraction.

"If the result sticks, it would be the first time that one of the predictions of simple inflation failed. And it could also lead to a radical reinterpretation of what the Big Bang was and whether it marked the universe's beginning,"he said.

Standard, simple inflation – needed to achieve a flat, smooth universe - holds that, just after the Big Bang, a uniform negative gravitational field drove a brief period of accelerated expansion.

Then the field died out, creating the matter and energy known in the universe today and leaving an afterglow of microwave radiation just a few degrees above absolute zero. If simple inflation theory is right, this imprint should be almost, but not quite, perfectly gaussian - a pattern with smooth-looking noise.

The analysis of Yadav and adviser Benjamin Wandelt showed that the CMB map was not gaussian with a certainty of 99.5%.