Aug 19, 2026 06:16 PM
Cosmic birefringence: the signal that could upend cosmolog
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/...cosmology/
KRY POINTS: We assume there's no preferred frame of reference in the Universe, and that light behaves the same in all directions. What if we're wrong? The foundational principle of cosmology is the Copernican principle: the idea that we occupy no special place in the Universe, either in space, time, or orientation. A few observations can test this: looking for preferred directionality to galaxy rotations, for asymmetries in densities in the sky, for abnormalities in cosmic history, or from the Big Bang’s leftover light, the CMB. If light’s polarization gets inherently rotated, even by a fraction of a degree, it would mean there is a preferred direction to the Universe, and could indicate an exotic ingredient, or even a fundamental flaw, in our cosmic picture. (MORE - details)
What if the entire cosmos developed by evolution, too?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n...180989338/
EXCERPTS: Historically, scientists have viewed the cosmos as akin to a rock-complex, perhaps even beautiful, but formed through arbitrary events. Evolutionary cosmologists instead argue that universes, like living organisms, grow and reproduce, spinning off new universes with small variations from their progenitors. In doing so, these cosmic offspring are refined across generations into forms that maximize the number of universes yet to be born. Since the Big Bang, our universe, like any developing child, has been unfurling into an optimal shape.
Under this view, the universe is not a rock. It is an egg. [...] Julian Gough assumed someone else must have come up with the idea of an evolving cosmos before he did. A search through the scientific literature confirmed that someone had: Lee Smolin, a founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Smolin’s work was, in turn, inspired by physicists Bryce DeWitt and John Wheeler, who proposed that singularities inside black holes, the places where matter is crushed into a point of infinite density, might expand to produce new universes that follow different physics from the universes that produced them. Every universe-including our own-would, under this logic, have emerged from a Big Bang within a black hole.
Smolin realized that this hypothetical process would allow universes to reproduce, in a way, by making more black holes. And if those new universes could inherit the physics of their parents with small differences-just as new organisms inherit the genes of their parents with small differences-then universes could also evolve with each generation. Specifically, a form of cosmic natural selection would favor universes that make as many black holes as possible. Less fertile universes could persist, but they would produce far fewer offspring. So over time, an increasingly high proportion of universes would be optimized for black hole production-which would imply that our universe, given the odds, is one of those.
Smolin published his ideas in a 1992 paper titled “Did the Universe Evolve?” as well as a 1997 popular-science book called The Life of the Cosmos. Gough found both and read them excitedly. And yet, it seemed as though virtually nothing had come of Smolin’s ideas since.
[...] cosmic evolution did not make predictions that were easily testable at the time of its origin. But when Gough rediscovered the idea in the mid-2010s, that had changed: The upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope was about to reshape the study of the universe’s first billion years.
[...] On July 8, 2022, four days before Webb released its first data, Gough published his predictions on Substack. Already aware that his amateur background might make him sound unreliable, he feared being publicly wrong. “I was really terrified,” he says. “This could be fantastically humiliating.”
Fortunately for Gough, the results were the opposite. Webb found galaxies forming earlier, faster and in a more orderly manner than standard physics models had anticipated. In November 2022, NASA reported evidence that some galaxies had begun assembling only about 100 million years after the Big Bang, while follow-up observations of a galaxy just 470 million years after the event found an unusually massive black hole-nearly as massive as all the stars surrounding it.
[...] ince making those predictions, Gough has received funding from grant programs [...] Cosmological evolution would need to explain how black holes, which appear to crush everything inside them into an infinitely dense point, could produce universes inside of them that expand outward, like ours. Some recent research does indicate that our own universe might reside in a black hole.
[...] For now, the theory’s strongest appeal may be the reach of the idea behind it. Evolution “is always the best explanation,” Gough says, when asked about Dennett’s framing of evolution as a universal acid. “He’s correct. … Why wouldn’t it apply to universes when it applies to everything else?” (MORE - missing details)
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/...cosmology/
KRY POINTS: We assume there's no preferred frame of reference in the Universe, and that light behaves the same in all directions. What if we're wrong? The foundational principle of cosmology is the Copernican principle: the idea that we occupy no special place in the Universe, either in space, time, or orientation. A few observations can test this: looking for preferred directionality to galaxy rotations, for asymmetries in densities in the sky, for abnormalities in cosmic history, or from the Big Bang’s leftover light, the CMB. If light’s polarization gets inherently rotated, even by a fraction of a degree, it would mean there is a preferred direction to the Universe, and could indicate an exotic ingredient, or even a fundamental flaw, in our cosmic picture. (MORE - details)
What if the entire cosmos developed by evolution, too?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n...180989338/
EXCERPTS: Historically, scientists have viewed the cosmos as akin to a rock-complex, perhaps even beautiful, but formed through arbitrary events. Evolutionary cosmologists instead argue that universes, like living organisms, grow and reproduce, spinning off new universes with small variations from their progenitors. In doing so, these cosmic offspring are refined across generations into forms that maximize the number of universes yet to be born. Since the Big Bang, our universe, like any developing child, has been unfurling into an optimal shape.
Under this view, the universe is not a rock. It is an egg. [...] Julian Gough assumed someone else must have come up with the idea of an evolving cosmos before he did. A search through the scientific literature confirmed that someone had: Lee Smolin, a founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Smolin’s work was, in turn, inspired by physicists Bryce DeWitt and John Wheeler, who proposed that singularities inside black holes, the places where matter is crushed into a point of infinite density, might expand to produce new universes that follow different physics from the universes that produced them. Every universe-including our own-would, under this logic, have emerged from a Big Bang within a black hole.
Smolin realized that this hypothetical process would allow universes to reproduce, in a way, by making more black holes. And if those new universes could inherit the physics of their parents with small differences-just as new organisms inherit the genes of their parents with small differences-then universes could also evolve with each generation. Specifically, a form of cosmic natural selection would favor universes that make as many black holes as possible. Less fertile universes could persist, but they would produce far fewer offspring. So over time, an increasingly high proportion of universes would be optimized for black hole production-which would imply that our universe, given the odds, is one of those.
Smolin published his ideas in a 1992 paper titled “Did the Universe Evolve?” as well as a 1997 popular-science book called The Life of the Cosmos. Gough found both and read them excitedly. And yet, it seemed as though virtually nothing had come of Smolin’s ideas since.
[...] cosmic evolution did not make predictions that were easily testable at the time of its origin. But when Gough rediscovered the idea in the mid-2010s, that had changed: The upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope was about to reshape the study of the universe’s first billion years.
[...] On July 8, 2022, four days before Webb released its first data, Gough published his predictions on Substack. Already aware that his amateur background might make him sound unreliable, he feared being publicly wrong. “I was really terrified,” he says. “This could be fantastically humiliating.”
Fortunately for Gough, the results were the opposite. Webb found galaxies forming earlier, faster and in a more orderly manner than standard physics models had anticipated. In November 2022, NASA reported evidence that some galaxies had begun assembling only about 100 million years after the Big Bang, while follow-up observations of a galaxy just 470 million years after the event found an unusually massive black hole-nearly as massive as all the stars surrounding it.
[...] ince making those predictions, Gough has received funding from grant programs [...] Cosmological evolution would need to explain how black holes, which appear to crush everything inside them into an infinitely dense point, could produce universes inside of them that expand outward, like ours. Some recent research does indicate that our own universe might reside in a black hole.
[...] For now, the theory’s strongest appeal may be the reach of the idea behind it. Evolution “is always the best explanation,” Gough says, when asked about Dennett’s framing of evolution as a universal acid. “He’s correct. … Why wouldn’t it apply to universes when it applies to everything else?” (MORE - missing details)