The universe is definitely stranger (and possibly older) than we thought. Imagine finding out that your house existed before it was built. Sounds crazy? Yet that's exactly what's happening with the big bang theory. A group of physicists has identified traces of primordial particles that may have taken shape during cosmic inflation. Their study suggests that dark matter did not simply emerge from the primordial chaos, but was already there, a silent witness to an event that we have mistakenly considered the origin of everything.
The Great Cosmic Illusion
For decades we have been told that the Big Bang represents the zero moment, the primordial instant in which space and time began to exist. A narrative so powerful that it has almost become a scientific dogma; too bad it could be a half-truth, if not a well-packaged cosmic lie.
Research on thecosmic inflation (that phase of extremely rapid expansion that would have preceded the big bang) has progressively complicated this apparently perfect picture. If inflation occurred earlier, it could have left subtle imprints in the cosmic microwave background radiation, that faint echo that still resonates from the birth of the universe.
It fascinates me to think that just when we thought we had understood the beginning of everything, nature reminds us how much we still are beginners in understanding the cosmos. It's almost ironic: the more we advance in knowledge, the more the origin seems to move away, like a horizon we never reach.
Primordial Particles and the Time Paradox
According to this new research, dark matter (the invisible substance that shapes galaxies) may have formed just before the big bang. A hypothesis which, if confirmed, It would make the idea that our universe started with a big bang fundamentally wrong.
I study, published by researchers atUniversity of Texas at Austin, proposes that dark matter had already begun to form during inflation. Their model, called “hot inflation via ultraviolet freeze-in” (or WIFI), explains how the extreme heat and energy of inflation could have generated radiation and triggered tiny interactions that created primordial dark matter particles before the big bang even began.
I find this concept particularly provocative: particles that existed “before” time itself. It is like being faced with a philosophical paradox that physics is trying to solve with equations and mathematical models. Yet, if you think about it, it is precisely this continuous moving of the boundaries that makes science one of the greatest human adventures.
An origin older than the origin
This approach contrasts sharply with most models, which assume that anything formed during inflation would have been destroyed by the expansion. But the WIFI model suggests the opposite: In this scenario, dark matter not only survives, but thrives and becomes one of the first building blocks of the universe.
Dark matter has long been a mystery at the heart of modern physics. It neither reflects nor emits light, yet its gravitational pull shapes galaxies and cosmic structures. Scientists have never directly observed it, and its origins remain unknown. If it did exist before the big bang, it could radically change our understanding of everything from the formation of matter to the birth of time itself.
What strikes me about this theory is how elegant it is in its audacity: It doesn't just refine the details of an existing model, it proposes a conceptual reversal that could lead us to a completely new cosmology. It's a bit like discovering that the book we were reading with such interest actually had a whole previous volume that we didn't know about.
Primordial Particles, the Questions No One Dare to Ask
The research still needs further validation, but its implications are huge. If dark matter can form before the big bang, what else could exist beyond the beginning of our universe? What if that isn't true at all, and previous theories that the universe began with two bangs are actually correct?
These questions seem to me much more interesting than the partial answers we have today. Because ultimately science is not so much a catalog of certainties, but a continuous process of ever deeper and more subtle questions. And if there is one thing that primordial particles teach us, it is that the universe still has many secrets to reveal, perhaps even before its supposed beginning.
In an age of polarization and oversimplification, I find it comforting that the universe retains its elusive and mysterious character, reminding us that our best theories are always provisional approximations of a reality too vast to be fully grasped.
