The whole article is well worth the short read, but here is the core idea:<p>"<p>The researchers showed that if the amount of matter is negligible compared to the amount of dark energy, then the singularity can be eliminated. “Light rays can actually go through the boundary,” Quintin said. “And in that sense, you can see beyond the boundary; it’s not like a brick wall.” The universe’s history would extend beyond the Big Bang.<p>However, cosmologists think that the early universe had more matter than energy. In this case, the new work shows that the BGV singularity would be a real physical curvature singularity, at which the laws of gravity stop making sense.<p>A singularity hints at the fact that general relativity can’t be a complete description of the basic rules of physics. Efforts to form such a description, which would require reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics, are ongoing. Ling said he sees the new paper as a stepping stone to such a theory.<p>"