Researchers Look Beyond the Birth of the Universe

The figure represents our expanding universe as the right branch of the arc. Our time now is located at the 1.8 grid mark on the right side of the drawing. According to Ashtekar's team's calculations, when looking backward throughout the history of the universe, 'time' does not go to the point of the Big Bang but bounces to the left branch of the drawing, which describes a contracting universe. Singh explains, "The state of the universe depicted by its wavefunction is shown in space (\mu) and time(\phi). The big bang singularity lies where space vanishes (goes to zero). Our expanding phase of the universe is shown by the right branch which, when reversed backward in time, bounces near the Big Bang to a contracting phase (left branch) and never reaches the Big Bang."