An Alternative Big Bang Emerges from Quantum Paradoxes

Li Peng

Modern physics faces a constellation of foundational puzzles: the Big Bang singularity, time's arrow, dark matter and dark energy, the cosmological constant problem, fine-tuning, quantum measurement, and quantum gravity unification. This Perspective proposes a unified resolution grounded in complexity-driven selection from diverse quantum paths. Prior to the Big Bang, reality comprises a pre-temporal quantum substrate (lacking classical time coordinate but governed by unitary quantum evolution), evolving reversibly across multiple trajectories—including opposing time arrows. The Big Bang marks an emergence threshold (λ) where decoherence locks spacetime parameters, yielding our classical universe as a "survivor" of local emergence rather than a closed totality. Dark matter and dark energy represent unevolved quantum paths—residuals exerting gravitational influence without full manifestation. This framework reframes cosmology as the study of layered emergence, dissolving "why" questions into "when/how" selection dynamics, with testable predictions in CMB perturbations, quantum decoherence experiments, and gravitational wave observations. By shifting from reductionism to emergentism, it suggests a universal pattern: threshold-gated emergence from diverse substrates, applicable from the cosmos to consciousness.

George S. Musser

Fritz Bopp

An intricate quantum statistical effect guides us to a deterministic, non-causal quantum universe with given fixed initial and final state density matrix. A concept is developed on how and where something like macroscopic physics can emerge. The concept does not allow to incorporate philosophically indispensable free will decisions. If the quantum world and its conjugate evolve independently one can replace both fixed final states by a matching common one. This allows for external manipulations done in the quantum world and its conjugate which do not otherwise alter the basic structure. In a big bang / big crunch universe the expanding part can be attributed to the quantum world and the contracting part to the conjugate one. The obtained bi-linear picture has a number of beautiful and exciting consequences.

F. Selleri

Евгений Чернокнижный

A hypothesis is proposed concerning the birth of time before the Big Bang. Time is not a fundamental coordinate but a state that emerges with the first density shift of gravitational energy and the appearance of the first cause–effect relation. Prior to that moment, reality is in an inert state in which no state differentiation exists and the concepts “before” and “after” are undefined. It is shown that the question “what was there before the Big Bang” has a well-posed answer: before the Big Bang there existed a sequence of events ordered not by time but by an evolution parameter τ. A calibration test of the operationalization of the event density (Appendix A) shows that an event cannot be reduced to a local physical channel: under such an interpretation, the rate of time would vary between media by 10–35 orders of magnitude, which is not observed. The observational argument is strengthened by an analysis of clock corrections (GPS, optical standards): all applied corrections are described by the gravitational potential and contain no term dependent on the density of local events. This refines the notion of event in the hypothesis: an event is neither a transition nor a collision but a correlation between subsystems. A sketch of a decoherence mechanism explaining the transition from quantum correlations to classical spacetime is proposed.

Van der Merwe, Alwyn, Gino Tarozzi