What if everything we think we know about the universe’s origins is only part of the story? For decades, the Big Bang has reigned as the cornerstone of modern cosmology, offering a narrative of how time, space, matter, and energy erupted from a single, all-encompassing singularity. But Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), has a daring new proposition: perhaps the universe didn’t just begin with one cosmic bang—it could be pulsing forward through a chain of explosive, fleeting events that no telescope has yet seen.
In his latest paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, Dr. Lieu introduces a reimagined vision of the cosmos—one that sidesteps the mysterious requirements of dark matter and dark energy, replacing them with a series of unseen, rapid-fire bursts called “transient temporal singularities.” These singularities, like cosmic fireflies, flicker in and out of existence across the fabric of spacetime, giving rise to matter, energy, and the very expansion of the universe itself.
A Radical Break from Conventional Cosmology
Lieu’s theory doesn’t merely tweak the standard cosmological model—it upends it. Where traditional physics requires invisible scaffolding like dark matter to explain galactic structure, and a perplexing force like dark energy to account for cosmic acceleration, Lieu’s model dispenses with both. Instead, he proposes that the universe periodically receives injections of matter and energy—unseeable, yet powerful—driving expansion and structure formation without defying known laws of physics.
“These singularities don’t violate conservation of energy,” Lieu explains. “They’re not constantly occurring. Instead, they appear in short, rare bursts that flood the universe with uniform energy and matter, then vanish.”
This approach contrasts sharply with the one-time, all-in Big Bang scenario. In the standard model, the universe begins from a single singularity and evolves continuously from there. But in Lieu’s framework, these singularities act like repeated cosmic resets—each one momentarily filling the universe with new energy and material before fading just as suddenly as it appeared.
Echoes of Fred Hoyle, Without the Contradictions
Lieu’s model echoes, in spirit, the “steady state” universe once championed by Sir Fred Hoyle. Hoyle believed the cosmos had no beginning or end, with matter continuously created to maintain a constant density as the universe expanded. That idea eventually fell out of favor, largely due to its conflict with the conservation of energy.
Lieu, however, believes he’s found a way to preserve Hoyle’s conceptual boldness while remaining within the bounds of physical law.
“In Hoyle’s model, constant matter creation violated conservation laws,” Lieu notes. “But in my model, the bursts happen too fast to detect and don’t occur continuously. That’s the crucial difference—these momentary events don’t break the rules.”
By proposing these ultra-brief, sporadic injections of energy and matter, Lieu avoids the theoretical pitfalls that doomed Hoyle’s idea, while also offering an alternative to the still-unproven existence of dark matter and dark energy.
The Hidden Mechanism Behind Expansion
At the heart of Lieu’s theory lies the concept of “negative pressure.” In classical physics, pressure is a force that pushes outwards—like steam inside a kettle. Negative pressure, however, is a peculiar beast. It exerts an inward force that actually results in outward acceleration—an idea Einstein himself considered when introducing the cosmological constant in 1917.
In Lieu’s model, these transient singularities generate not just matter and energy, but also negative pressure. That negative pressure behaves similarly to dark energy in the standard model, pushing galaxies apart at accelerating speeds.
“Magnetic fields, for instance, can produce negative pressure along field lines,” Lieu says. “That’s a familiar concept in physics. Combine positive mass-energy density with negative pressure, and you can still maintain the consistency required by relativity. There’s no need to invoke exotic things like negative mass or negative density.”
Not Always There: A New View of the Universe’s Invisible Forces
The title of Lieu’s paper poses a question that goes to the heart of his model: “Are dark matter and dark energy omnipresent?” His answer is a confident “no.”
“They’re not always there. In fact, they’re not ‘things’ at all in the conventional sense,” Lieu asserts. “They are temporary, large-scale phenomena—fleeting states that arise during these singularities, then disappear. What we interpret as the effects of dark matter and dark energy may simply be brief universal phases.”
This concept fundamentally alters our perception of the universe. Instead of an ever-present dark framework shaping everything invisibly, the cosmos might be undergoing a series of sudden, transformational pulses—brief, yet powerful enough to shape the structure of galaxies and drive cosmic expansion.
It also potentially explains why, despite decades of searching, dark matter and dark energy remain elusive. If they are, as Lieu suggests, only present during rare, ultra-fast events, then it’s no wonder we haven’t detected them: they vanish before we ever get a chance to see them.
Peering Into the Cosmic Past—From Earth
Lieu’s model isn’t just theoretical. He has clear ideas about how it might be tested—and surprisingly, it doesn’t require deep space missions or billion-dollar telescopes in orbit.
“The best way to search for the effects of these singularities is from the ground,” he says. “Using large terrestrial telescopes—like the Keck Observatory in Hawaii or the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes in La Palma, Spain—we can perform deep field observations sliced by redshift.”
Redshift refers to the stretching of light from distant galaxies as the universe expands—effectively a cosmic timestamp. By analyzing redshift data with fine enough resolution, Lieu believes we might find telltale jumps—sudden shifts in the redshift-distance relationship that reveal when and where one of these temporal singularities occurred.
“Imagine examining a Hubble diagram,” Lieu says, “and instead of a smooth curve, you see discrete jumps or steps. That would be a strong signal that something unusual is happening—something like what this model predicts.”
Rethinking the Origin Story
If Lieu’s model is correct, it challenges not only the existence of dark matter and dark energy, but the very notion of a singular origin for the universe.
“The Big Bang might not have been the beginning,” he says. “It may have just been the first observed instance of a singularity—one of many. The universe might be defined not by a single birth, but by a sequence of rebirths, each brief and brilliant, all building toward the structure we observe today.”
The origin of these singularities remains a mystery. But then again, so does the cause of the Big Bang. For Lieu, the point isn’t to have all the answers—it’s to offer a coherent alternative that solves longstanding problems without multiplying unknowns.
And in that sense, his theory is a breath of fresh air. It dares to imagine a universe that pulses with hidden energy, that doesn’t need mysterious dark scaffolding to hold it up, and that can be explored and understood using the tools we already have—if only we know where, and how, to look.
The Cosmic Frontier: Open to New Ideas
As the debate around dark matter and dark energy continues, Lieu’s model serves as a reminder that science thrives on bold thinking. Sometimes, the path forward isn’t to find new particles or forces—but to ask new questions entirely.
Is the universe truly expanding because of invisible dark forces? Or could it be that we’ve misread the signs, mistaking cosmic pulses for a smooth flow?
Dr. Richard Lieu’s proposal doesn’t pretend to be the final word on cosmology. But it opens a thrilling new chapter—one in which the universe may be built not on a single moment of creation, but on a rhythm of luminous, unseeable beats echoing across the vastness of space and time.
Reference: Richard Lieu, Are dark matter and dark energy omnipresent?, Classical and Quantum Gravity (2025). DOI: 10.1088/1361-6382/adbed1