BKL singularity

A Belinski–Khalatnikov–Lifshitz (BKL) singularity is a model of the dynamic evolution of the universe near the initial gravitational singularity, described by an anisotropic, chaotic solution of the Einstein field equation of gravitation. According to this model, the universe is chaotically oscillating around a gravitational singularity in which time and space become equal to zero or, equivalently, the spacetime curvature becomes infinitely big. This singularity is physically real in the sense that it is a necessary property of the solution, and will appear also in the exact solution of those equations. The singularity is not artificially created by the assumptions and simplifications made by the other special solutions such as the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker, quasi-isotropic, and Kasner solutions. The model is named after its authors Vladimir Belinski, Isaak Khalatnikov, and Evgeny Lifshitz, then working at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. The picture developed by BKL has several important elements. These are: Near the singularity the evolution of the geometry at different spatial points decouples so that the solutions of the partial differential equations can be approximated by solutions of ordinary differential equations with respect to time for appropriately defined spatial scale factors. This is called the BKL conjecture. For most types of matter the effect of the matter fields on the dynamics of the geometry becomes negligible near the singularity. Or, in the words of John Wheeler, "matter doesn't matter" near a singularity. The original BKL work posed a negligible effect for all matter but later they theorized that "stiff matter" (equation of state p = ε) equivalent to a massless scalar field can have a modifying effect on the dynamics near the singularity. The ordinary differential equations describing the asymptotics come from a class of spatially homogeneous solutions which constitute the Mixmaster dynamics: a complicated oscillatory and chaotic model that exhibits...