Singularities in Silent Universes: State of the Art

Abstract

After a brief overview of the so-called silent models and their present status, we consider the subclass of Bianchi Type--I models with a magnetic field source. Due to the presence of the magnetic field, the initial singularity shows ``oscillatory'' features reminiscent of the Bianchi Type--IX case. The Bianchi Type--I models with a magnetic field are therefore a counterexample to the folklore that matter fields can be neglected in the vicinity of the singularity.