New theory suggests universe has no beginning or end

Melbourne, Aug 2 (ANI): A new theory, developed by a Taiwanese scientist, might soon change our understanding of the universe.

Wun-Yi Shu of the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, paints a picture of a universe where time and space are not independent, but can be converted back and forth between each other.

In his paper, appearing on the pre-press website ArXiv.org, Shu describes both mass and length as interchangeable with the conversion factor being dependant on the speed of light and the gravitational constant, neither of which actually need to be constant.

Since Shu's universe has no singularities it can have no beginning or end, simply alternating periods of expansion and contraction.

Shu's cosmology predicts that during periods of expansion, an observer in this universe would see an odd kind of change in the red-shift of bright objects such as Type-1A supernovae, as they accelerate away.

And Shu says this exactly matches real observations by astronomers.

This kind of acceleration is an ordinary feature of Shu's universe, but is in stark contrast to the models of the universe based on the Big Bang theory.

Ever since it was discovered that the universe is ungoing accelerated expansion, cosmologists have found it difficult to explain their observations using modifications to the laws of physics such as the force of dark energy.

For this model to work, dark energy must account for 75 per cent of the total energy-mass of the Universe.

But Shu says there is a serious price to pay for this idea: the law of conservation of energy which says the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time i.e. it can't be created nor destroyed, only changed from one state to another.

Shu believes there's no need to abandon conservation of energy to make his theory work.

But Professor Michael Drinkwater from the University of Queensland and a member of the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey team has some concerns.

"The speed of light being a constant in relativity theory is an assumption, but it's a very useful assumption and it's never failed the test so far," ABC Science quoted Drinkwater, as saying.

He continues: "Then there's the cosmic microwave background, the left over energy from the big bang of creation. Shu's cosmology can't yet explain this."

"Nor can it explain the ratios of hydrogen, helium and lithium in the distant universe, which exactly match what's expected in a big bang universe."

Drinkwater says apart from the speed of light being constant, the other big assumption of relativity theory is that the universe is smooth in density.

He says: "There is no evidence that the speed of light changes, but we do know that the density of the universe varies."

"If it's full of clumps and voids on the very biggest scales and we were in the middle of a less dense region, then that would have the effect of making it look like the region around us is accelerating" he says.

"But you would need a very large bubble with a very low density to reproduce the amount of acceleration that we see." (ANI)