CHAPEL HILL, N.C., Jan. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. physicists have constructed a cosmological model that suggests the universe can endlessly expand and contract.
That cyclic model -- developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by Professor Paul Frampton and graduate student Lauris Baum -- has four key parts: expansion, turnaround, contraction and bounce.
During expansion, dark energy -- the force causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate -- pushes until all matter fragments into patches so far apart nothing can bridge the gaps. Everything from black holes to atoms disintegrates. That, a fraction of a second before the end of time, is the turnaround.
At the turnaround, each fragmented patch collapses and contracts individually instead of pulling back together in a reversal of the Big Bang. The patches become an infinite number of independent universes, contracting and then bouncing outward again, reinflating in a manner similar to the Big Bang. One patch becomes our universe.
"This cycle happens an infinite number of times, thus eliminating any start or end of time," Frampton said. "There is no Big Bang."
An article describing the model is to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
