New cosmology model without a Big Bang

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... But two theorists have just fired their latest volley at that belief, saying there could be a timeless cycle of expansion and contraction. It’s an idea as old as Hinduism, updated for the 21st century.

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In the cyclic model, our three-dimensional universe is one of two surfaces, or "branes," separated by an extra dimension. The two branes bounce off each other to give rise to matter and radiation, and then expand and dissipate due to dark energy. Click for more information from Princeton cosmologist Paul Steinhardt, including a Flash animation.

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The cyclic model, developed by Princeton University’s Paul Steinhardt and Cambridge University’s Neil Turok, made its highest-profile appearance yet Thursday on Science Express, the Web site for the journal Science. But past incarnations of the idea have been hotly debated within the cosmological community for the past year and Steinhardt acknowledges that he and Turok have an uphill battle on their hands.

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Think parallel branes and five dimensions. Science never sounded so cool.

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The new idea would not replace the Big Bang, which has for more than 50 years dominated cosmologists' thinking over how the universe began and evolved. But instead of a universe springing forth in a violent instant from an infinitely small point of infinite density, the new view argues that our universe was created when two parallel "membranes" collided cataclysmically after evolving slowly in five-dimensional space over an exceedingly long period of time.

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Mario Livio, who heads up the science division of the Space Telescope Science Institute, said it's way too early to predict whether the theory will withstand scrutiny by other researchers. But he called the concept very important and exciting: "We're talking about a new idea about the origin of our universe."

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