The standard model of cosmology, the Big Bang event, not only postulates an origin for all matter and energy (out of nothing) but of time and space too (equally out of nothing). First there was nothing; then there was something. The Big Bang cosmology is seriously flawed IMHO. That the Big Bang event, our entire universe, started out being smaller than the head of a pin puts the icing on this cake of the absurd. Fortunately however, there are alternatives.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
3) The Big Crunch/Cyclic Model – Most of the standard Big Bang texts deal with the question of what would happen if our Universe’s expansion rate slowed, stopped, and reversed direction (under the attraction of gravity), ultimately contracting in what’s called a “Big Crunch”. The idea is that the Big Crunch would result in another Big Bang and the cycle (BB – BC – BB – BC, etc.) would repeat endlessly. However, since it looks extremely likely that our Universe will never slow, stop, and reverse, it’s a moot point. However, if there’s a Multiverse, then perhaps some other universe did undergo a Big Crunch turning into the Mother of all Black Holes and singularities in the process, so warping the fabric of space and time that the contents of that universe spewed out and became our Big Bang event and hence our Universe.
4) String Theory’s Colliding Membranes Model – Despite my bucketing string theory for having lacked the ability (to date) to put experimental runs on the board, the mathematics can easily come up with a quantum theory of gravity, a key to understanding what happened before our Big Bang event. The basic idea is that string theory predicts the existence of branes (short for membranes) separated by something called “the bulk”, all existing in higher dimension space-time. If two of these branes (or braneworlds) collide, and our Universe is one of those braneworlds by the way, then that event mirrors what we observe as the Big Bang. The branes would collide, separate and re-collide at regular intervals, a sort of variation on the cyclic universe theme.
Gasperini, Maurizio; The Universe Before the Big Bang: Cosmology and String Theory; Springer, New York
Steinhardt, Paul J. & Turok, Neil; Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang; Phoenix , London
5) The Dual Matter/Antimatter Model – Nobel Laureate physicist, the late Richard Feynman, proposed that antimatter was the same as normal matter, but matter traveling backwards in time. To the best of my knowledge, not having seen the proposal anywhere else – yet – I did an extreme extrapolation of that to suggest that, because the standard Big Bang event model predicts that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created at that event, that in fact the Big Bang created two universes – ours of normal matter going forward in time; another equal but opposite universe going backwards in time (from our point of view) and composed of what we call antimatter.
6) The Multiverse Model(s) – For reasons way too numerous to mention, one of the current in-topics in cosmology is whether or not our Universe is unique, or one of many, and there are in fact many theoretical roads which lead to a Multiverse. I sum it up this way – if Mother Nature can create one universe (ours), she can create more than one. It is getting to the point by the way, where the evolution of the concept of a Multiverse, or parallel universes or alternative universes has passed from sci-fi through to not just scientific speculation but to the point of becoming nearly a scientific/cosmological requirement.
Carr, Bernard (Editor); Universe or Multiverse?; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Gribbin, John; In Search of the Multiverse;
Allen Lane , London
; 2009:
Kaku, Michio; Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos; Penguin Books, London
Rees, Martin; Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others; Free Press, London
Vilenkin, Alex; Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes; Hill & Wang , New York
Wolf, Fred Alan; Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds; Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York
7) The Steady State/Quasi-Steady State Model – The original Steady State cosmology, proposed by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, was once a serious rival to the Big Bang cosmology. It suggested that our Universe has always existed and will always exist and wouldn’t change in its overall appearance. The way that was accomplished was to suggest that as the Universe expanded and stuff got diluted, new stuff was being ever created and thus the density of the Universe never changed. However, the Steady State theory has gone the way of the dodo because it failed various observational tests. In particular, the original Steady State theory failed to predict the cosmic microwave background radiation, and couldn’t actually explain it. However, Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge and Jayant V. Narlikar have proposed a modified version, which they term the “quasi-steady-state-cosmology”. Unfortunately, Sir Fred passed away before the layman’s text was published.
Casting one’s fate into the wind could the original Steady State theory and the Big Bang theory both be right? Not in our Universe, as one, the Steady State, has no beginning, and one, the Big Bang does (even if both may have no end – at least they are compatible that way). But, if you scale a Steady State universe up – super-size it – then you could have Big Bangs inside the super-sized Steady State. These Big Bangs replace the creation of bits of matter in the original scaled down Steady State. Of course we’re in one of those Big Bang bits contained in a larger super-sized Steady State universe.
Going one weird step further, in a similar way, of our Universe on a micro scale produces all these virtual particles via the vacuum energy which pop into and out of existence, in a super-sized universe, the equivalent might be Big Bangs yielding to Big Crunches – an equivalent of particles coming into existence and popping out of existence.
Burbidge, Geoffrey & Narlikar, Jayant V.; Facts and Speculations in Cosmology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Hoyle, Fred, Burbidge, Geoffrey & Narlikar, Jayant V.; A Different Approach to Cosmology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2000: (technical version)
So you see, there really are lots of alternatives to, or variations on, the standard Big Bang cosmological model, and many propose, indeed require, a before-the-Big-Bang scenario.
You’ll note that I never said there wasn’t a Big Bang event, it just wasn’t IMHO 1) a quantum event, and that 2) it occurred in existing space and time, just like every other happening you’ve ever learned about, witnessed, studied in depth or otherwise experienced in one way or another.
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