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Scientists claim to have found the answer what existed before the Universe

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Non-scientific versions of the answer to this question have basically been the basis of all religions and most philosophies.

Now a team of mathematicians from Canada and Egypt have used cutting-edge scientific theories and a huge set of equations to figure out what predates the universe in which we exist. The universe did not start with a Big Bang

In their work, they applied the theories of the world of quantum mechanics and found that the universe basically goes through four different phases.

Just as importantly, they discovered that this universe was… another universe, or more accurately, another “cosmological phase”.

Although the universe is infinite in size, it is cyclical and has always existed in one of four phases.

The universe continues to expand, but a team of mathematicians believes that certain changes caused by quantum mechanics will eventually stop the expansion and return everything to a near-infinity point, after which the universe will start expanding again.

The theory of the cyclic universe was expounded by mathematicians from Canada and Egypt. It is very difficult to understand, but one of the participants in the study, Professor Mir Faisal, outlined its main provisions.

Professor Mir Faisal said: “In our cosmological model, the universe did not start with a Big Bang, but there was a phase transition from one phase of the universe to another.”

“This is possible, since the universe can exist in four different phases, just as ordinary water can exist in three different phases. Just as we can learn about the properties of ice by studying the water that formed from it, we can learn about pre-big bang cosmology by studying the physics of this universe.”

“Using the developed model, we can study the physics of the cosmological phase before the beginning of our universe.”

In their model, scientists were able to figure out the state of the universe before the Big Bang. The mathematical equations in their model show that the expansion of the universe will stop at some point, and then immediately followed by a contraction phase.

Professor Mir added: “Other researchers have proposed a big bang and big crunch scenario, but these models have their own quirks.

“Singularities are bad in physics because they indicate a place where the laws of physics are violated, and in such places one cannot use physics to get meaningful results. The new cosmological model eliminates this feature. Therefore, the big bang singularity can also be avoided.”

In the cosmological model of scientists, the cyclical nature of the universe arises as a result of adding quantum effects to the cosmological model of the universe.

Professor Faisal explained that while there are many different approaches to quantum gravity, such as string theory and loop quantum gravity, what most of these different approaches have in common is that there is a minimum length below which space does not exist.

Many of these approaches also predict that there is also a maximum energy, and no object in the universe can have an energy greater than this maximum energy.

The research team incorporated the effect of minimum length and maximum energy into the cosmological model, after which they came up with a cyclic universe.

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Elon Musk Claims SpaceX Starship Will Take Humanity To Mars

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Even though his rocket exploded under atmospheric pressure
after its launch, Elon Musk has proudly proclaimed that his Starship
will be taking humanity to Mars.

The huge rocket hit a major milestone during its flight test on Thursday.

Though the test flight was launched successfully into space, it ended in
tragedy when the rocket lost contact with SpaceX while re-entering the
atmosphere.

This has lead some to questioning whether Musk’s Starship is even capable of reaching the Red Planet without exploding.

The Mail Online reports:
The mishap marks the third $3 billion Starship to be lost during tests
flights in less than one year – and the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) has opened investigation to determine what went wrong.

The two-stage craft, consisting of the Starship cruise vessel mounted
atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, took off from SpaceX‘s Boca Chica, Texas, flight test facility on the Gulf Coast at 9:25am ET.

But SpaceX revealed around 10:35am ET that the world’s most powerful rocket had been lost.

‘The team has made the call that the ship has been lost, so no
splashdown today,’ said Dan Huot, SpaceX communications manager, during
the live broadcast.

‘But again, just it’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around.’

SpaceX’s mission plan did not include recovering the rocket from the
Indian Ocean after splashdown, but Starship breaking up in the
atmosphere was unexpected.

n 2020, Musk revealed his plan for Starship to send humans to Mars.

He calculated that to put one million humans on the Red Planet by
2025, his rockets would need to conducted around three flights a day and
a total of 1,000 flights a year – but 2025 is just around the corner.

The billionaire previously renewed his vow to colonize the Martian world in a post on X last month.

‘I’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind multiplanetary civilization,’ the post read.

Musk’s reposted the message from his personal account with the accompanying words: ‘Only if civilization lasts long enough.’

One day before the mission, former President Barack Obama was
speaking at a renewable energy conference in Paris and mentioned
‘tycoons, many of whom are building spaceships’ that could take humans
to Mars.’

‘But when I hear some of the people talk about the plan to
colonize Mars because the Earth environment may become so degraded that
it becomes unlivable, I look at them like, what are you talking about,’
he continued.

‘I would rather us invest in taking care of this planet here.’

While Thursday’s mission did not end as planned, the test flight was the farthest performed with a Starship rocket.

The most powerful and largest launch vehicle ever constructed,
Starship achieved one key first goal: successful separation from its
Super Heavy booster.

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There’s one last place Planet Nine could be hiding

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A study recently submitted to The Astronomical Journal
continues to search for the elusive Planet Nine (also called Planet X),
which is a hypothetical planet that potentially orbits in the outer
reaches of the solar system and well beyond the orbit of the dwarf
planet, Pluto.

The goal of this study, which is available on the pre-print server arXiv,
was to narrow down the possible locations of Planet Nine and holds the
potential to help researchers better understand the makeup of our solar
system, along with its formation and evolutionary processes. So, what
was the motivation behind this study regarding narrowing down the
location of a potential Planet 9?

Dr. Mike Brown, who is a Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of
Astronomy at Caltech and lead author of the study, tells Universe Today,
“We are continuing to try to systematically cover all of the regions of
the sky where we predict Planet Nine to be. Using data from Pan-STARRS
allowed us to cover the largest region to date.”

Pan-STARRS, which stands for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid
Response System, is a collaborative astronomical observation system
located at Haleakala Observatory and operated by the University of
Hawai’i Institute of Astronomy. For the study, the researchers used data
from Data Release 2 (DR2) with the goal of narrowing down the possible
location of Planet Nine based on findings from past studies.

In the end, the team narrowed down possible locations of Planet Nine
by eliminating approximately 78% of possible locations that were
calculated from previous studies. Additionally, the researchers also
provided new estimates for the approximate semimajor axis (measured in
astronomical units, AU) and Earth-mass size of Planet Nine at 500 and
6.6, respectively. So, what are the most significant results from this
study, and what follow-up studies are currently being conducted or
planned?

“While I would love to say that the most significant result
was finding Planet Nine, we didn’t,” Dr. Brown tells Universe Today. “So
instead, it means that we have significantly narrowed the search area.
We’ve now surveyed approximately 80% of the regions where we think
Planet Nine might be.”

In terms of follow-up studies, Dr.
Brown tells Universe Today, “I think that the LSST is the most likely
survey to find Planet Nine. When it comes online in a year or two it
will quickly cover much of the search space and, if Planet Nine is
there, find it.”

LSST stands for Legacy Survey of Space and Time, and is an
astronomical survey currently scheduled as a 10-year program to study
the southern sky and take place at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in
Chile, which is presently under construction.

Objectives for LSST include studying identifying near-Earth asteroids
(NEAs) and small planetary bodies within our solar system, but also
include deep space studies, as well. These include investigating the
properties of dark matter and dark energy and the evolution of the Milky
Way galaxy. But what is the importance of finding Planet Nine?

Dr. Brown tells Universe Today, “This would be the 5th
largest planet of our solar system and the only one with a mass between
Earth and Uranus. Such planets are common around other stars, and we
would suddenly have a chance to study one in our own solar system.”

Scientists began hypothesizing the existence of Planet Nine shortly
after the discovery of Neptune in 1846, including an 1880 memoir
authored by D. Kirkwood and later a 1946 paper authored by American
astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, who was responsible for discovering Pluto in
1930.

More recent studies include studies from 2016 and 2017 presenting
evidence for the existence of Planet Nine, the former of which was
co-authored by Dr. Brown.

This most recent study marks the
most complete investigation of narrowing down the location of Planet
Nine, which Dr. Brown has long-believed exists, telling Universe Today,
“There are too many separate signs that Planet Nine is there. The solar
system is very difficult to understand without Planet Nine.”

He continues by telling Universe Today that “…Planet Nine explains
many things about orbits of objects in the outer solar system that would
be otherwise unexplainable and would each need some sort of separate
explanation.”

“The cluster of the directions of the orbits is the best know, but
there is also the large perihelion distances of many objects, existence
of highly inclined and even retrograde objects, and the high abundance
of very eccentric orbits which cross inside the orbit of Neptune. None
of these should happen in the solar system, but all are easily
explainable as an effect of Planet Nine.”

More information:
Michael E. Brown et al, A Pan-STARRS1 Search for Planet Nine, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.17977

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