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Forget the Big Bang: Gravitational waves may have really created the Universe
(www.sciencedaily.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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Ooh, I like this idea! I've always found physics (especially cosmology) to have a few too many handwaves around some pretty odd ideas. Renormalization for one. The rapid inflationary model for another. It's just a silly suggestion. "The big bang happened, but then the universe expanded super fast for no reason before it slowed way down also for no reason. Inflatons maybe?"
An emergent model based in interactions of known forces would seen much more sensible to me.
A couple notes:
First, renormalizarion was hand-wavy when it was first introduced, but it has since been made mathematically rigorous. Additionally, renormalization is a mathematical process to make a theory self-consistent. If you consider it an odd idea because it is physically nonsense, I would caution against forming a physical intuition from any given accurate mathematical model. Especially with fundamental quantum mechanics—there’s a reason why there are several interpretations of QM and have been for a century.
Second, and arguably more importantly: this ScienceDaily article is extremely misleading. The original paper (linked by OP in another comment) says
So the paper does rid itself of the inflaton field, which is, as you said, a bit of a hand-wave. Crucially, however, it does not abandon inflation—in fact, it explains those “for no reason”s that you mentioned.