Two researchers from the Vatican Observatory – the Vatican astronomical observatory – have proposed a radically new mathematical understanding of the initial moment of the Big Bang. They pointed to a new technique for understanding how gravity behaved in the first moments of the universe. “This new perspective could trigger a revolution in our understanding of the early Universe,” explains Specola. The results were published in the journal Physical Review D. The researchers are the Jesuit Fr. Gabriele Gionti and d. Matteo Galavernin of the diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla.
The two Vatican astronomers recall that at the beginning of time, it is thought that the universe expanded exponentially from a very high-density state: “cosmic inflation”. This phenomenon can be explained by assuming that the laws of gravity are much more complicated at that early stage than they are described by Einstein’s general relativity of 1915. Various alternative theories of gravity have been proposed in which this force varies in space and in the time. “One of the most studied – recalls the Specola – is the Brans-Dicke theory, an approximation of the much sought-after quantum theory of gravity. Quantum gravity would combine Einstein’s general relativity, which describes the behavior of matter on a large scale (such as clusters of galaxies), with quantum mechanics, which describes physics on microscopic scales (such as atomic and subatomic) “.
Yet Brans-Dicke’s theory is so difficult to describe mathematically that scientists often turn its complex equations into a reference in which they are much easier to solve. In this particular case the equations are transformed from the more complicated Jordan reference, to the simpler Einstein reference.
Now, in an article published on April 15 in the prestigious Physical Review D, Father Gabriele Gionti, Jesuit, and Don Matteo Galaverni (diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla) of the Vatican Observatory have shown that, “contrary to what scientists believe, the Jordan’s reference and Einstein’s are not always mathematically equivalent “. The Vatican researchers also found that, while the solutions in Jordan’s reference do not always map to Einstein’s, they nevertheless transform mathematically from Jordan’s reference to another reference “not previously considered. In the latter there is a limit in where the gravitational force goes to infinity while the speed of light approaches zero “. This study could therefore lead to “a revolution”, as defined by the Specola itself, in our understanding of the early universe.
Source: Ansa
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