MessageToEagle.com -We all know that the Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe.

However, Australian team of theoretical physicists at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University say that it's time to change our understanding of this process.

Instead of thinking of the start of the universe as being a Big Bang, we should imagine it as water freezing into ice.

"Quantum graphity is a background independent model that provides an alternative viewpoint on the notion and structure of space, based on condensed matter concepts but extended to a dynamic quantum lattice," Quach and his colleagues state in their paper.

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This new theory of "quantum graphity", suggests "that space may be made up of indivisible building blocks, like tiny atoms. These indivisible blocks can be thought about as similar to pixels that make up an image on a screen.

The challenge has been that these building blocks of space are very small, and so impossible to see directly."

James Quach and his colleagues believe they may have figured out a way to see them indirectly.

"Think of the early universe as being like a liquid," he said.
"Then as the universe cools, it 'crystallises' into the three spatial and one time dimension that we see today. Theorised this way, as the Universe cools, we would expect that cracks should form, similar to the way cracks are formed when water freezes into ice," he explains.

And if such cracks do exist - "light and other particles would bend or reflect off such defects, and therefore in theory we should be able to detect these effects," according to Professor Andrew Greentree, RMIT University research team member.

The team has calculated some of these effects and if their predictions are experimentally verified, the question as to whether space is smooth or constructed out of tiny indivisible parts will be solved once and for all.

For more info: arxiv.org/pdf/1203.5367.pdf

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