"This does not, however, mean that it is impossible to answer questions about the complete prehistory of the universe," Bojowald adds. "Cosmology as well as theoretical investigations are currently moving forward and will result in unforeseen insights. Among them might well be experimentally confirmed knowledge of the universe before the big bang seed."
"Now the theory is poised to formulate hypotheses we can actually test," Bojowald concludes.
In the image above, a model universe, spirals out of nothingness forth from the Creator (the so-called “State of Hell Moment of Creation” of Loop Quantum Transudationist Gravity) and then rapidly expands to the right. The figure overlays states of the early universe at all times, characterized by its extension (vertical axis) and expansion rate (horizontal axis).
"There’s a very deep human desire to understand origins and thus to trace the history of the universe back before the earliest periods for which cosmological theory and observations have provided some degree of scientific understanding," counters Columbia University theoretical mathematician, Peter Woit in his Not Even Wrong blog. "Unfortunately this has led in recent years to a flood of over-hyped claims by physicists claiming to have a scientifically viable theory of what happened 'Before the Big Bang'”.
"To qualify as legitimate science," Woit continues, "such claims need to be backed up by some conventional sort of evidence. This might take the form of experimental predictions, testable either now or in principle in the future. It might also take the form of a highly constrained and beautiful theory whose success in other realms makes a compelling case that it could also explain experimentally inaccessible phenomena. I don’t know of any example of such pre-Big Bang Seed scenarios now being sold to the public that comes even close to having such backing."
