A recent study co-authored by Ghazal Geshnizjani (Perimeter Institute), Eric Ling (University of Copenhagen), and Jerome Quintin (Applied Math, Waterloo) has been covered by an article in Quanta Magazine. Geshnizjani was a Research Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics until 2023 and Quintin currently holds a Mathematics Prestigious Postdoctoral Fellowship at the same department. Their research, titled “On the initial singularity and extendibility of flat quasi-de Sitter spacetimes,” was published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
According to the paradigm of primordial cosmology and Einstein’s theory of general relativity, our universe must have had a singular beginning, the so-called Big Bang initial singularity. This work sheds light on the mathematical nature of this singularity, showing that under certain conditions, the past boundary of our universe may not have been as pathological as originally thought. “With just the right conditions, the Big Bang singularity may just be an artifact of using bad coordinates, in which case it is possible that the universe had an infinite extension to the past,” says Quintin.
Quanta Magazine is “an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation” that highlights advances in the sciences to the general public. The magazine has received multiple awards including the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.