What if the Big Bang was not the start? Supercalculators are looking for indices

What if the Big Bang Wasn’t it really the start?

A team of cosmologists uses the power of supercomputer to go beyond the limits of Einstein equations and explore the formerly insoluble mysteries. By applying digital relativity – simulations that can model extreme conditions – they hope to discover clues to what preceded the Big Bang, that the cosmos is part of a rebirth cycle, or even if our universe collided with another.

Insoluble simulation: a new path before the Big Bang

It is often said that asking what came before the Big Bang is “non -scientific” or even “meaningless”. However, a recent article published in Living notice in relativity offers a different perspective. Written by Cosmologist FQXI Eugene Lim (King’s College London, United Kingdom), the Autrophysicist Katy Cloud (Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom) and Josu Aurrekoetxa (Oxford University, UK), the study suggests that complex computer simulations could provide a way to follow.

Using digital methods to approximate Einstein’s gravity equations under extreme conditions, researchers argue that cosmologists could finally be able to study the questions that have long been out of reach. These include what can have happened before the Big Bang, whether it be several universes, if our universe has collided with another, or if reality goes through repeated cycles of expansion and collapse.

Einstein general relativity equations describe how gravity shapes the behavior of matter and energy in the universe. However, when they go back to the first moments of the cosmos, they break down. At this stage, the equations predict a singularity, a state of temperature and infinite density where the known laws of physics no longer apply. Under such conditions, cosmologists cannot count on their usual assumptions to resolve the equations. The same problem appears when you try to describe other extreme environments, such as black holes centers.

“You can search around the floor lamp, but you cannot go far beyond the floor lamp, where it is dark – you just can’t solve these equations,” explains Lim. “Digital relativity allows you to explore the regions far from the floor lamp.”

Beyond the lamppos

Digital relativity was suggested for the first time in the 1960s and 1970s to try to determine what types of gravitational waves (The undulations in the space-time fabric) would be issued if black holes had collided and merged. This is an extreme scenario for which it is impossible to resolve Einstein equations with paper and a single computer pen – a pen and sopistically necessary digital approximations. Its development has been renewed at home when Ligo The experience was proposed in the 1980s, although the problem was only resolved in this way in 2005, which raises the hope that the method could also be successfully applied to other puzzles.

“You can search around the floor lamp, but you cannot go far beyond the floor lamp, where it is dark – you just can’t solve these equations. Digital relativity allows you to explore the regions far from the floor lamp, ”explains Eugene Lim.

A longtime puzzle that is particularly excited is cosmic inflation, an extremely rapid period of expansion in the early universe. Inflation has been initially proposed to explain why the universe looks like what it does today, stretching an initially small patch, so that the universe looks like a large expanse. “If you have no inflation, many things collapse,” says Lim. But while inflation helps to explain the state of the universe today, no one has been able to explain how or why the baby universe had this sudden short -term growth.

The problem is that to probe this using Einstein equations, cosmologists must assume that the universe was homogeneous and isotropic in the first place – something that inflation should explain. If you suppose rather that it started in another state, then “you do not have symmetry to easily note your equations”, explains Lim.

But digital relativity could help us get around this problem, allowing radically different departure conditions. It is not a simple puzzle to solve, however, because there are an infinite number of ways whose space-time could have been before inflation. Lim therefore hopes to use digital relativity to test predictions from more fundamental theories that generate inflation, such as string theory.

Cosmic strings, collision universe

There are also other exciting perspectives. Physicists could use digital relativity to try to determine what type of gravitational waves could be generated by hypothetical objects called cosmic strings – long and long “scars” in space -time, helping to confirm their existence. They could also be able to predict signatures, or “bruises”, on the sky of our universe colliding with neighboring universes (if they even exist), which could help us to check the multifiverse theory.

Ecpeatingly, digital relativity could also help to reveal if there was a universe before the Big Bang. Perhaps the cosmos is cyclic and undergoes “rebounds” of old universes in new, repeated rebirths, large fringes and big crackles. This is a very difficult problem to solve analytically. “The bouncing universes are an excellent example, because they reach a strong gravity where you cannot count on your symmetries,” explains Lim. “Several groups are already working on them – it was that no one was.”

Digital relativity simulations are so complex that they require the supercomputers to work. As the technology of these machines improves, we could expect a significant improvement in our understanding of the universe. LIM hopes that the new article in the team, which describes the methods and advantages of digital relativity, can finally help update researchers in different fields.

“We really hope to develop this overlap between cosmology and digital relativity so that digital relativists who wish to use their techniques to explore cosmological problems can move forward and do it,” says Lim, adding, “and cosmologists who are interested in resolving some of the questions they cannot resolve, can use digital relativity”.

Reference: “Cosmology using digital relativity” by Josu C. Aurrekoetxea, Katy Cloud and Eugene A. Lim, June 23, 2025, Living notice in relativity.
Two: 10.1007 / S41114-025-00058-Z

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