Powell, James R.Lopez-Mobilia, RafaelMatzner, Richard A.2021-04-192021-04-192020-07-21Entropy 22 (7): 795 (2020)https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12588/505The cosmological singularity of infinite density, temperature, and spacetime curvature is the classical limit of Friedmann's general relativity solutions extrapolated to the origin of the standard model of cosmology. Jacob Bekenstein suggests that thermodynamics excludes the possibility of such a singularity in a 1989 paper. We propose a re-examination of his particle horizon approach in the early radiation-dominated universe and verify it as a feasible alternative to the classical inevitability of the singularity. We argue that this minimum-radius particle horizon determined from Bekenstein's entropy bound, necessarily quantum in nature as a quantum particle horizon (QPH), precludes the singularity, just as quantum mechanics provided the solution for singularities in atomic transitions as radius r → 0. An initial radius of zero can never be attained quantum mechanically. This avoids the spacetime singularity, supporting Bekenstein's assertion that Friedmann models cannot be extrapolated to the very beginning of the universe but only to a boundary that is 'something like a particle horizon'. The universe may have begun in a bright flash and quantum flux of radiation and particles at a minimum, irreducible quantum particle horizon rather than at the classical mathematical limit and unrealizable state of an infinite singularity.Attribution 4.0 United Stateshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Bekenstein entropy boundcosmological singularityholographic entropy boundquantum particle horizonArticle2021-04-19