First discovered by NASA’s WMAP mission and then later reproduced by ESA’s Planck mission the large scale anisotropies seen in the final high resolution map shows, in the southern polar region, a cold spot next to an adjacent hot spot. Spiralling out from these spots two arms extend, one hot and one cold, to envelope the southern hemisphere of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. This is the signature of a kilonova!

When binary neutron stars spiral in towards each other they generate a spiral pair of gravitational waves. Understanding that self-similar patterns repeat irrespective of scale gives us mathematical permission to see the same spiral wave pattern repeat at the largest known scale, that of our universe and the Big Bang. The spiral waves and the resultant dual collision we see imprinted on the microwave sky as a pair of spiral arms and two spots each hot and cold respectively.

We explore the Big Bang Kilonova Hypothesis across a series of three podcasts. The first, and most current, “The Microwave Story” presents the hypothesis in full where we account for all the major features identified in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. In turn we are able find simple answers to simple questions such as “Why is the universe homogenous and isotropic?” and “Why is the universe flat?” to name but a few.

The second, and first made, “The Big Bang Kilonova Hypothesis” is where I present this idea for the first time. Previously, I had been using the pattern of a core-collapse hypernova as the causal mechanism of the Big Bang. In looking to understand what General Relativity tells us about the structure of a rotational black hole I came upon the maps showing the large scale anisotropies and saw said pattern of a kilonova.

“What is a kilonova?” is the question we explore in my third podcast of the series “Anatomy of a Kilonova”. The universe, being a living consciousness in its own right, reacted in kind while making this. For instance, the observation that a kilonova explosion’s shape is symmetrically spherical when a bipolar shape had been predicted was one such happy coincidence. The importance of spherical symmetry, in talking about the Big Bang and the expansion of spacetime, is that it is the essential precondition required by Friedman’s solution of General Relativity in order to describe an expanding universe.

As two neutron stars spiral in towards each other a pair of spiral gravitational waves are generated warping the spacetime fabric of our verse. At the epicentre of the spiral waves the two neutron stars collide in an event called a kilonova. This rotational collision gives birth to an entrapped manifold of spacetime called a black hole. A rotational black hole to be precise and by following Penrose’s conformal solution it leads to a pair of entrapped manifolds each a new universe in its own right. This signature of this the Big Bang Kilonova event we can clearly see in both WMAP and Planck’s data of the microwave sky.

Picture a balloon inflating inside a room. So it is with our universe! Our universe and its CPT-symmetric parallel anti-verse are like balloons, or rather entrapped manifolds, inflating inside the room. The room itself is an entrapped manifold whose proportion of scale is far greater than our own. As self-similar patterns repeat irrespective of scale we can image this room being an exact copy of our universe. Or rather, our universe, is given form by our parent universe into whose expanse our universe is expanding. This the Superverse warps the shape of our early universe leading to the imprint of the gravitational waves upon the microwave sky.

But after the Big Bang Kilonova the source of the gravitational waves is gone leaving our universe to expand into the vacuum of the Superverse. The spacetime curvature of vacuum is flat and so we observe a universe that is itself flat. For the same reason, in that our universe is warped by the spacetime curvature of our parent universe, we are able to explain both the large scale anisotropies and the observation that our universe has a flat spacetime curvature using the same explanation.

What is a neutron star but a massive atomic nucleus? Composed of neutrons, each exactly the same as the other, packed isometrically together. The nucleus of a Primeval Atom as Georges Lemaître the father of the Big Bang Theory envisioned in his Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom. Effectively the form of matter from which a neutron star is composed could be said to be perfectly homogeneous and isometric.

Inside the core of a neutron star the cohesion of neutrons breaks down such that the star’s core is filled with a form of matter known as a quark-gluon plasma. This is the same type of matter that is only seen in one other place in time and that was in the milliseconds after the Big Bang. It is this form of matter, quark-gluon plasma, that physicists at the LHC at CERN seek to create in order to understand the universe when it was only a millisecond old.

Recent astrophysical observations of kilonovae, coupled with nuclear experiments, show how fragments of a neutron star undergo nuclear fission by a process known as the rapid neutron capture. The end result of this nuclear fission and decay is responsible for the creation of the heavy stable elements, such as Gold, inside our universe. Without kilonova explosions there would be no gold or platinum in the universe. Meaning, as unveiled by science, a kilonova is the true Philosopher’s Stone that alchemists like Issac Newton sought for. The actual rapid neutron capture process given first voice by Georges Lemaître. After all self-similar patterns repeat irrespective of scale and so; as above so below.

Super-massive black holes exist in the very early universe and how they came to be needs to be explained. Well when two neutron stars collide they break apart into fragments. Off course, the core of a neutron star is not solid but quark-gluon plasma. However the neutron stars of the Big Bang Kilonova event were massive, with to respect to us, so what would such a fragment from such an object look like? Super-massive black holes is the answer.

The same pattern of central axioms connected by filaments is seen both in the neural network of the brain, on the left, and the cosmic web, on the right. A. Left: Hippocampal mouse neuron studded with synaptic connections (yellow). The green central cell body is 10µm in diameter. B. Right: Cosmic web with a scale of 31.25 Mpc/h. (Springel et al., 2005)

The Cosmic Web, is the name given to the large scale structure of the universe. It is the interconnection of galaxy clusters tied and connected together by dark matter forming a web like structure that in turn form superclusters. This structure that is the cosmic web follows the same self-similar pattern, which repeats irrespective of scale, as the neuronal networks such as the one that makes up our brains. Self-similar patterns repeat irrespective of scale and you are universe made manifest. There is a reason I am talking about the Philosopher’s Stone.

But the Grail, well get me down the pub and I’ll tell you a few tales that would even turn Merlin’s beard more white than it already is. And so you can, for I need help. I need help from simply bouncing this idea back and forth. Or I need help in video and website construction in order to build an effective communications platform to present this holy original idea. So feel free to drop me an email at stuart@bigbangkilonova.org