‘Cyclic universe’ can explain cosmological constant

May 5, 2006 | Source: NewScientist.com news service

A cyclic universe, which bounces through a series of big bangs and “big crunches,” could solve the puzzle of our cosmological constant, physicists suggest.

At every big bang, the amount of matter and radiation in the universe is reset, but the cosmological constant is not, Paul Steinhardt at Princeton University and Neil Turok at Cambridge University believe. Instead, the cosmological constant gradually diminishes over many cycles to the small value observed today.