In a study published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, Dr. Richard Lieu, a physics professor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), which is a part of The University of Alabama System, suggests that the universe was formed on the steps of multiple singularities rather than the Big Bang alone to explain the universe’s expansion.
The new model does not require dark matter or dark energy to explain the expansion of the cosmos or the formation of structures like galaxies.
The researcher’s work expands on an earlier model that hypothesized gravity could persist without mass.
This new paper proposes an improved version of the earlier model, which is also radically different. The new model can account for both structure formation and stability, and the key observational properties of the expansion of the universe at large, by enlisting density singularities in time that uniformly affect all space to replace conventional dark matter and dark energy.
Dr. Richard Lieu, Professor, The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Dr. Lieu added, “Sir Fred Hoyle opposed Big Bang cosmology and postulated a ‘steady state’ model of the universe in which matter and energy were constantly being created as the universe expands. But that hypothesis violates the law of mass-energy conservation. In the current theory, the conjecture is for matter and energy to appear and disappear in sudden bursts and, interestingly enough, there is no violation of conservation laws.”
He stated, “These singularities are unobservable because they occur rarely in time and are unresolvedly fast, and that could be the reason why dark matter and dark energy have not been found. The origin of these temporal singularities is unknown – safe to say that the same is true of the moment of the Big Bang itself.”
These singularities in space, instead of dark matter, generate “negative pressure,” a type of energy density similar to dark energy that has a repulsive gravitational impact, forcing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate.
“An example is the negative pressure exerted by a magnetic field along a field line. Einstein also postulated negative pressure in his 1917 paper on the Cosmological Constant. When positive mass-energy density is combined with negative pressure, there are some restrictions which ensure the mass-energy density remains positive with respect to any uniformly moving observer, so the negative density assumption is avoided in the new model,” Dr. Lieu noted.
The title of Lieu’s latest study, Are dark matter and dark energy omnipresent?, suggests the researcher’s ultimate conclusions.
He stated, “They are not omnipresent – meaning, not present at all times. They only appear in brief instances during which the matter and energy do fill the entire universe uniformly, apart from random spatial density variations which grow to form bound structures like galaxies. In between which they are not to be found anywhere. The only difference between this work and the standard model is that the temporal singularity occurred only once in the latter, but more than once in the former.”
Looking ahead, Lieu believes the next step in confirming his model of the universe will be observations made with earthbound instruments rather than something like the James Webb Space Telescope.
The researcher noted, “The best way to look for the proposed effect is actually to use a large ground-based telescope – like the Keck Observatory [Waimea, Hawaii], or the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes in La Palma, Spain – to perform deep field observations, the data of which would be ‘sliced’ according to redshift. Given sufficient redshift (or, equivalently, time) resolution effected by the redshift slicing, one might just find that the Hubble diagram exhibits jumps in the redshift distance relation, which would be very revealing.”
Journal Reference:
Lieu, R. (2025) Are dark matter and dark energy omnipresent? Classical and Quantum Gravity. doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/adbed1
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