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While scientists are steadily gathering data about both the inflationary and dark energy eras of the universe, we really only know one thing about the pre-inflationary era—our universe arose from it. According to a new hypothesis, during the pre-inflationary era many possible spacetimes existed in superposition before a measurement-like event selected our known universe from the primordial “Schrödinger’s cat box.”Observing hypothetical phenomena could support the idea that our universe is one of many possible spacetimes, but the pre-inflationary era will likely remain one of cosmology’s greatest mysteries.
Over the centuries, as direct observations of the universe have grown exponentially in number and precision, our knowledge has expanded to the point that we can ask increasingly difficult and fundamental questions. In 1610, Galileo Galilei discovered the first moons beyond our own planetary system using a rudimentary telescope. Some three hundred years later, Edwin Hubble discovered the first galaxy beyond our own (using a much less rudimentary telescope). Today, the James Webb Space Telescope can see direct evidence of the early universe (just 200 to 400 million years after the Big Bang), sensitive instruments like LIGO are revealing unprecedented data about black holes and gravitational waves, and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is providing scientists with immensely useful information on the Big Bang itself.
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In other words, we’ve come a long way in our collective attempt to understand the nature of our universe. But one of the biggest, most enigmatic mysteries of early cosmology remains unsolved: What came before everything we think of as ‘the universe’ today? A new study in the journal Universe, authored by physicist Konstantin Zloshchastiev at the Durban University of Technology, puts forward a mind-bending hypothesis that our universe is actually the product of a break in the linear superposition of a quantum multiverse that existed during what is also known as the “pre-inflationary” period—the extremely brief time preceding the universe’s rapid inflation. While no telescope could ever hope to glimpse evidence of this period, Zloshchastiev claims that at least one piece of evidence does exist from this crucial moment in cosmic history—the universe itself.
“The time preceding these [dark energy and inflation] epochs, the pre-inflationary era, largely remains a mystery, both empirically and theoretically,” Zloshchastiev wrote. “However, one large and easily observable natural phenomenon exists, which is directly related to the pre-inflationary period. This is our Universe itself, with its diverse yet quite orderly and mathematically predictable structure, allowing us to exist and rationalize our reality by assigning laws to the surrounding world.”
Before the inflationary period of our known universe—that is, the rapid expansion of the universe mere moments after the Big Bang—matter as we know it didn’t exist. Instead, everything in existence was made up of indistinguishable particles in a quantum superposition. In a sense, all possibilities—and, in effect, all possible space-times—both existed and didn’t exist in what Zloshchastiev calls the “proverbial Schrödinger’s cat box.” Then at some critical moment this linear superposition broke, reducing all possible universes into a single state—our universe.
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Zloshchastiev describes the collapse of quantum superposition in the primordial universe as a measurement-like Shannon information transfer (named after Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory). He postulates that ‘which-possibility’ information leaked out of a primordial quantum superposition into an external record-like environment, making one outcome effectively real. According to Zloshchastiev, this Shannon information transfer eventually led to the creation of a logarithmic quantum liquid, which in turn gave rise to the physical vacuum of our universe. That vacuum, he explains, isn’t truly empty, but is actually a low-energy quantum field—a sort of ground-state for all other quantum fields. Finally, Zloshchastiev notes that this hypothesis could also explain the universe’s transition from the after-inflationary period to the dark-energy era that now dominates the known universe, providing a stable thread linking the pre-inflationary universe to today.
This might all sound very tidy, but any hypothesis is only as good as its ability to be proven or disproven. Zloshchastiev claims that astronomers could attempt to test this hypothesis by searching for hypothetical vacuum Cherenkov radiation (when particles move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum), which could lead to the generation of energy in blazars, quasars, and fast radio bursts.
But for now, the pre-inflationary universe is a cosmic mystery that’s almost impossible to solve—without more data, at least. But, as history has shown, humans have an uncanny knack for finding that data and learning more and more about both the universe and our place in it.
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Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.