Cosmology and the Multiple You: Part One

The quantum mantra revolves around the theory that in physics, anything not forbidden is compulsory - given enough time and/or space. While there is nothing forbidden about an identical twin(s) of yourself existing elsewhere in the cosmos, how compulsory that is depends on what sort of cosmological model you adopt.

You are unique, aren't you? There never has been a person exactly like you before, there isn't now, and there never will be. Maybe! Depending on what's really real in all things cosmological, the odds that there are identical copies of you out there can range from plausible if improbable, to plausible and probable, to in fact near certainty, even certainty. The key issue revolves around the concept of infinity, or near infinity. If one has an infinite number of universes to play around with, and/or infinite time, then every possible history is, sooner or later, somewhere, compulsory.

The idea of a duplicate you or two or three isn't that farfetched. Even on Planet Earth, this tiny speck within the cosmos, you have had, do have, and will have doppelgangers. But those are just look-alikes, not actual duplicates of you down to the nittiest-grittiest detail.

From the outset, some definitions are in order. We have the 'observable universe' which is that part of the entire Universe we can actually see in the here and now. Parts of the Universe that exist, but which light hasn't yet reached us, aren't part of our 'observable universe' - yet. The 'Universe' is all that we can ever know about, regions seen, and regions as yet unseen. Then there is the 'Multiverse' which, if it exists, are a conglomerate of separate Universes, each of which exists as a discrete entity in a three dimensional arena and which we could potentially interact with. Think of separate houses along a street you can visit in turn as separate universes. An overall analogy could be the nucleus part of a liver cell (our 'observable universe'), the entire cell (the Universe), and the grand collection of liver cells - the liver Multiverse as it were. Apart from those, there are parallel (mirror/shadow/alternate) universes which 'exist' - for lack of a better phrase - in other planes of existence and like houses that exist in a time instead of a special sequence, say on the same block of land, one can't easily travel from one to another. There's also the Many Worlds Interpretation variation of parallel universe, and simulated universes.

Firstly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in the existing Universe? That's plausible, but probably unlikely.

Discussion: The existing Universe could be as near to infinite as makes no odds. It obviously can't be infinite, because it would take an infinite amount of time to expand the Universe to an infinite volume, and we know the Big Bang took place less than 14 billion years ago. And, the Universe can't contain an infinite amount of stuff; otherwise it would have to have an infinite volume to house it all. The fact that our night sky is dark, suggests that there can't be an infinite number of stars and galaxies in our observable universe, otherwise, no matter in which direction you looked, you'd see a star or galaxy and the night sky would be as light as the daytime. However, from our point of view, while not infinite, the Universe is still BIG! And it does contain a lot of stuff. It is within the bounds of possibility that within such a vast space, by chance, there could be a duplicate(s) of you, even more identical to you than any identical terrestrial twin you might happen to have. The odds aren't very high to be honest, but they aren't zero. However, even if an identical copy of you exists elsewhere out there, the probability is far greater that they already have, or someday will. The odds that two copies of you exist right now multiply the odds against by many orders of magnitude. Finally, even if another copy of you exists somewhere out there now, they are in all probability way to far away for the both of you to ever shake hands.

Secondly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in a cyclic Universe? That's not only plausible, it borders on near certainty.

Discussion: Current cosmological observations suggest that our Universe began some 13.7 billion years ago in a Big Bang. Alas, the expansion of our Universe appears not only not slowing down, but ever accelerating due to something cosmologists and astrophysicists are calling dark energy - which they admit they don't really understand. Anyway, despite dark energy, many cosmologists cling to the concept that eventually the expansion will slow down, halt, and reverse, resulting in ultimately a Big Crunch billions of years in the future. That Big Crunch leads directly to another Big Bang - expansion - contraction - Big Crunch - Big Bang, etc., etc. Thus one has an ever oscillating or cyclic Universe with no beginning and no end. Ah, the concept of infinity (this case in time) rears its head. Since the Universe has already gone through an infinite number of these cycles, as surely as night follows day follows night, anything that could have happened, has happened, and happened an infinite number of times. That includes in infinite number of you, and the life your leading now right down to the last detail an infinite number of times, as well as leading differing lives in every possible variation from the major (marriage, career, children, lifespan, etc.) through to the relatively minor, right down to the highly trivial (like an infinite number of lifetimes absolutely identical to the current one except for one morning when you had an ever so slightly different breakfast cereal). Just think, somewhere in the infinite past, there was a version of you who lived an entire lifetime driving a car and never hit a red light! Again, anything that is within the realm of possibility, even if improbable in the extreme, has happened, and has happened again an infinite number of times. Such is the nature of infinity. The other nice thing about an infinite Universe (whether in time or space) is that all those unsuccessful eggs and sperm, all those failed or un-germinated seeds, all those spores and pollen that never bore fruit, all those lives that never were, all now get their moment in the sun!

There's an interesting variation on the above theme. Most of us are probably familiar with the sci-fi idea of being caught in a time-loop. You repeat an interval of time over again and again, probably until some weird sense of deja vu alerts you that something's not quite right. Expand the idea to the grandest scale possible. Big Bang - expansion - contraction - Big Crunch - Big Bang - expansion, etc. but each cycle isn't a new cycle with a new history and new possibilities rather each cycle is absolutely identical to the one that came before, and the one before that, etc. So, there will be an endless number of you, but there will be no wild new things in your lives, just the same old life, again and again. Maybe that's where we get our now and again sense of deja vu from.

Of course in a cyclic universe, one universe dies before the next is born, so a copy of you in a previous universe is kaput before your universe comes into being, and you will be kaput before the next cycle starts, so there's no meeting of identically like minds.

Thirdly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in the Multiverse? That's not only plausible, but much more likely than if only our one Universe exists.

Discussion: We live in a Universe that is very friendly to life-as-we-know-it (life-not-as-we-know-it is another can of worms that need not concern us here). That is, it seems that the various physical laws and physical constants are fine tuned to allow our kind of life. If any of those values were slightly greater or slightly lesser, the biophysics and biochemistry that allow organic life forms to exist wouldn't be possible. For example, if gravity were ever so slightly weaker, atoms/molecules wouldn't coalesce into macro-bodies like galaxies and stars and planets. If gravity were ever so slightly stronger, stars would be far more massive on average, and the more massive a star, the shorter it's lifespan, to the point where there wouldn't be enough time for life in a young solar system to develop before the parent star went poof! So, that fine tuning leads to a trio of possibilities.

The first is that we (meaning the Universe's life forms) are just incredibly lucky that our one and only Universe just happened to meet all the Goldilocks criteria that allow us to exist. The second is that there is indeed, an intelligent designer responsible for those conditions. For want of a better word, let's call this intelligent designer "God". (There's an interesting variation on this theme and that is this Universe was created by an extraterrestrial intelligence in another Universe, a feat which might be relativity simple to a highly advanced technology able to manipulate the basic forces of physics.)

The third possibility is that there is a Multiverse. We can all agree that our Universe is a Goldilocks universe. We can also all agree that we can imagine other universes, while superficially akin to ours (it would at least have space and time), have differing values for some of all of the physical properties we associate with ours - differing values for the physical constants, the types and numbers of physical forces and particles, the physical laws that are part and parcel of physics, etc. It's akin to humans - we're all superficially similar, yet each one of us (past, present and future) is unique (even identical twins differ and the same applies to clones as well as nurture affects us as well as nature). So, like we have a multiverse of humans, we could have a multiverse of universes (the Multiverse), some of which, like ours, will be Goldilocks universes, although most won't be because some critical constant(s) or force(s) or particle(s) or law(s) will be different enough not to allow the complexity we associate with life-as-we-know-it.

In other words, there exist dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe multi-millions or billions (or more) of universes where the physical laws and constants may well be different. That being the case, most universes will be barren of life because their physics, hence chemistry, aren't compatible with life-as-we-know-it. But a few, by chance, will be Goldilocks Universes. It wouldn't surprise anyone that because we exist, our Universe must be a Goldilocks Universe.

To be continued…

Our Universe in a Cosmic Fish Tank: Part Two

The Big Bang origin-of-our-Universe event was not the be-all-and-end-all of things. The Big Bang event was but a minor event in the larger cosmic scheme of things. If the elementary particles that comprise your mind and body could talk, what a tale of eternity they would tell!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

OUR BIG BANG ALPHA

Once upon a time there was this Big Bang origin of our Universe. Any Big Bang worthy of its salt results in an expanding Universe. What’s the evidence for the Big Bang, that our Universe is expanding (exploding?) from a point back in time (and therefore by running the film backwards contracting back to that point in time). Well, there are four lines. The first is theoretical. All universes are unstable (as noted above) and must either expand or contract. The second is observational – the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). An explosion – something hot – expands and cools off. The CMBR is the Big Bang’s heat that has now cooled after 13.7 billion years of expansion. The third is also observational – distant objects in space exhibit a red-shift – they look slightly redder than they actually are because they are moving away from us. The farther away, the faster they are moving, the redder they are. If they were moving towards us, they’d appear slightly bluer. The relationship between distance from us and velocity is what you’d expect from something that went ‘bang’.  Lastly, also observational, is the distribution of objects out there. If there were no ‘bang’, then the distribution of objects (galaxies and clusters of galaxies) in space would be more evenly distributed than what’s observed.

Ah, but where are the coordinates – that place in space – we can point our telescopes towards and literally see the remains of that Big Bang explosion? I mean we see the after affects of stellar (supernovae) explosions like the Crab Nebula which occurred in 1054 AD. Well, there’s a vast time difference between 1054 AD and 13.7 billion years ago! By analogy, say you have a fireplace, and on a cold winters night you fire up same, and thus warm up you home to a comfortable level. But after a while, the fire burns out. If you leave the house, but return after a few hours, you will note that your fireplace is still a tad warmer than the rest of the house. That’s like the 1054 AD event. But, now say you go on vacation and don’t return for say a month after-the-fact. When you do, will your fireplace be any warmer than the rest of your home? No! Well, that’s equivalent to the 13.7 billion years. We can’t place those Big Bang coordinates because they have cooled to such an extent as to be the same temperature as the rest of the house, or Universe in this case. The place, those coordinates, of the Big Bang event no longer has any distinguishing features our telescopes can pick up on.   

NOW

Once upon a time, a time we collectively call ‘today’ or ‘now’ or ‘the present’ is all we have to measure what came before and what will come after. What we currently believe is not what was believed a century ago; a thousand years ago; ten thousand years ago. Probably, a century from now; a thousand years from now; ten thousand years from now, what we believe about the Alpha and the Omega of our Universe, and its place, if there is a place, in an even larger context, will probably be as different. Knowledge evolves. The cosmology I learned as a teenager is already vastly different than the cosmology I read about today as a retiree. However, today is all we have to work with, but keep in mind it’s a work in progress. So what do we believe now? One – our Universe had a beginning. Two – our Universe won’t go out with a bang (or a crunch), but with a whimper, just slowly fading away getting thinner and thinner as if our Universe is on some sort of eternal diet. Three – our Universe is the be all and end all of all there is. What can we however speculate on now? One – There was a ‘before’ before our Universe began. Two – our Universe may have a different fate in store, and it could end in a bang (or crunch), not a whimper. Three – there may be far more to the cosmos than has yet been dreamt of in anyone philosophy. In fact, if one looks at the history of the size of our cosmic neck of the woods, the trend has always been towards a vaster and vaster cosmos. If our ancestors could only know then, what we know now, their minds would have been so boggled as to probably defy description. So, if we could know now, what our future generations will know, no doubt our heads would hurt too!

Part of our ‘now’ is the presence of something called ‘dark matter’, of immense importance to things cosmological, that cosmologists can’t yet explain or identify. Okay, I’ll make an heroic speculative effort to explain it in the light of what I’ve postulated above.

Now, it has been speculated that matter that gets sucked into a Black Hole undergoes a phase change into a new form of matter, sort of like ice to water to steam, or steam to water to ice. What exactly the nature of that inside-the-Black-Hole phase change is – well, your guess is as good as mine. However, I have come up with an idea. The matter sucked inside a Black Hole has been transformed into ‘dark matter’! Now ‘dark matter’ has mass and gravity, but doesn’t interact with any electromagnetic forces. We know that because ‘dark matter’ exists within our Universe; not of necessity hidden exclusively within Black Holes. So, how does ‘dark matter’ get out of a Black Hole and into our Universe at large? It doesn’t, at least not as ‘dark matter’ but maybe a Hawking radiation. Well, that doesn’t explain the ‘dark matter’ all around us. So there has to be an exception, and I suggest that exception was the transformation of a previous universe’s Big Crunch – forming the Mother of all Black Holes – so warping space-time that it turned itself inside out and emerged as a While Hole, spilling out its contents and forming our Universe in the process. The Mother of all Black Holes transformed much of that universe’s ordinary matter into ‘dark matter’, but the process of Black to While Hole transformation happened so rapidly that not all matter got so converted before the spewing. So, what was vomited as our Universe was a lot of ‘dark energy’, but not quite 100%, keeping in line with what we observe, or rather detect but don’t directly observe, today. 

THE FATE OF OUR UNIVERSE OMEGA: HEAT DEATH & THE BIG RIP

Once upon a way, way, way future time, our Universe will be drastically different than the one we know today. There are three possibilities. Firstly, the total amount of gravity (a pull force) will be enough to cause our Universe to slow down, stop, and reverse direction, to ultimately result in a Big Crunch. That’s unlikely based on current observational evidence. Secondly, the Universe’s gravity could be just enough to slow the expansion rate of the Universe down, such that it reaches zero velocity after an infinite amount of time. That sort of knife-edge balance is unlikely. Way too many factors have to balance each other out. It’s like tossing a ball at a ceiling hundreds of metres high, and having the ball just stop its upward trajectory just as it ever so barely caresses the ceiling. That’s way too unlikely a scenario. Thirdly, the Universe’s gravity won’t be enough to stop, far less reverse the expansion, and thus our Universe will forever, and forever, and forever (amen) grow ever bigger, ever decrease in mass/energy density, until overall, there’s so little energy available per volume of space that even one minute of warmth will be worth thousands of times what the price of gold is today. In fact, it will be priceless. That’s what is known as the Heat Death fate of our Universe.

Current observational evidence suggests the third option as the likely option. Contrary to expectations, our Universe’s expansion rate is not slowing down (under gravity’s pull force), but is instead accelerating under a currently postulated but mysterious ‘Dark Energy’ (push) force. Now this ‘Dark Energy’ push force is a function of space itself. The more space, the more ‘Dark Energy’ there is. Space is of course expanding, so ‘Dark Energy’ is becoming ever more dominant. Eventually, ‘Dark Energy’ could be powerful enough to push clusters of galaxies apart; push the components of individual galaxies apart; then the stars that comprise those galaxies and the solar systems that surround those stellar systems. ‘Dark Energy’, as it grows more powerful, could then push apart stars and planets; hence the molecules than make up those bodies into atoms. In turn, those atoms could be pushed apart into their fundamental particles – quarks and electrons and photons, etc. Whether or not quarks and electrons and photons can be further torn apart – well, that’s pushing the boundaries of current particle physics. Anyway, all this pushing apart is collectively termed ‘The Big Rip’.

The interesting bit is that if there is an outside of our Universe, then in theory, humans – assuming there are humans around trillions of years hence – or other intelligent life forms will be able to escape the Heat Death and/or Big Rip.

One obvious question rears its ugly head. If our Universe originated from another Big Crunch universe, and if our Universe is not fated to end in a Big Crunch, that breaks any sort of expected oscillation or cycle. Our Universe in turn can’t generate another universe further on down the track. Yet it should since we presumably inherited that previous universe’s full compliment of matter and energy and thus should be fated to ultimately Big Crunch as well. Presumably, something happened during the Big Crunch – Big Bang transition to perhaps siphon off some of the matter/energy and send it to an else-where or else-when. The extreme physics that would operate during such a transition aren’t well understood and I have to leave open the possible that something more relevant to “The Twilight Zone” can happen. Of course perhaps something further on down the track might revise the current expectations for the fate of our Universe – the pendulum could swing back towards a Big Crunch scenario.

 So, how do we get Big Crunches?

There are two possible ways. One is a universe that’s massive enough to collapse, generate a new universe, which then collapses and the cycle repeats. No “Twilight Zone” weird physics happens within the transition, or at least not enough to alter the outcome. The other is to have one ever expanding universe intersect another ever expanding universe. The area of intersection would increase (double) the mass/energy content within that area. That then might be enough to cause that area to start contracting and ultimately Big Crunch. This is similar to, say one supernova spewing out dust and gas; another supernova – ditto. The intersection of part of the two expanding regions of gas/dust is then enough to cause a local contraction of the combined gas/dust, ultimately forming a new, next generation, star, probably an entire stellar system (star + planets). 

DOES THE COSMOS CARE?

In our Universe, stars are born; stars die. Their matter and energy get recycled into new stars. In our cosmic fish tank, universes are born; universes die and their matter and energy get recycled into new universes. It doesn’t really matter whether a universe dies in a Big Crunch or in a Big Rip/Heat Death. The elementary bits and pieces, electrons and quarks and photons are eternal or immortal. They, unlike us, don’t age. And so, in the broadest of broadest of points of view, our Universe comes to some sort of end, but ‘life’ goes on. The fish tank cosmos doesn’t concern itself with the end of our Universe, any more than our galaxy gives a stuff about the end of our solar system, no does our Sun concern itself with the petty affairs on one of its planets – Earth.

Humans may care – all else is indifferent.

AN ULTIMATE TRUTH

Whether or not there was some sort of ultimate beginning; whether or not there will be some sort of ultimate ending, the bits and pieces that currently make up you, were there and will be there. That, in one sense, makes you as immortal as the cosmos itself.

Cosmology 101: Part Two

The standard cosmological model, the standard origin of our Universe model, the Big Bang event, is an “in the beginning” model. The Big Bang marked the beginning of our Universe; what happened before that is akin to asking what’s south of the South Pole. However, I prefer a “once up a time” scenario, which implies there was a time before the Big Bang created our Universe, and ultimately, us.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

THE CENTER OF THINGS #1

The Black Hole is at the centre of things between the Big Crunch and the Big Bang. I’ll suggest it’s a frictionless place – there are those who suggest that the interior of a Black Hole, call it a singularity, is a transformation to a new state of matter totally outside our experience. What happens at the singularity is a pretty big unknown as one can’t look inside a Black Hole, explore a Black Hole (and live to tell the tale), and even the relevant physics equations break down when trying to describe the Black Hole’s singularity environment. However, whatever a Black Hole is, and whatever a singularity is, it’s not a fantasy realm where just anything goes. Firstly, I suggest that internal conditions will be quite suggestive of extreme temperatures and pressures (the two are related). All previous structure is totally broken down and recycled back to the most elementary, fundamental bits. No structure from the previous universe survives intact into ours. Secondly, the transition into, through, and exiting a Black Hole, from Big Crunch to Big Bang, I suggest won’t alter the laws, principles, and relationships of physics. They will be the same before and after. Thirdly, the total amount of matter/energy on either side of the transition via our Black Hole centre of things will be the same. However, the ratio of mass to energy could well be different. That coupled with the random nature of quantum fluctuations means the new universe, our Universe, won’t of 100% necessity, right down to the Nth detail, be an identical clone of the previous universe. You retain your uniqueness!  

Once the former universe (now our Universe) starts expanding again, other energy sources come into play to add to the oomph. A second source of energy is that in-between a Big Crunch and a Big Bang all matter gets reduced to the basics of fundamental elementary particles due to the resulting immense temperatures and pressures present. Molecules are torn apart to atoms; atoms to electrons (and positrons) and atomic nuclei; nuclei to protons and neutrons; protons and neutrons to quarks (and anti-quarks). Now, given that this transition phase produces or reduces everything to basic fundamental matter and antimatter particles, what’s the most efficient form of energy production known? Well, it’s matter-antimatter annihilation!

Matter-antimatter annihilation plus momentum from the Big Crunch to the Big bang – well, that’s energy enough to expand our Universe to the state of play we observe today.

But wait, there’s maybe more. There’s also the contribution from the vacuum energy (perhaps the cause of an extra postulated ‘inflation’ phase just after the Big Bang event itself), and/or ‘dark energy’*** which is a push or pseudo-antigravity force apparently causing our Universe’s expansion rate to ever increase – something quite contrary to common sense given that the mass, therefore gravity, of our Universe should be slowing things down.

THE CENTER OF THINGS #2

Traditional Big Bang cosmology states that the origin or our Universe created space and time as well as matter and energy (first there was nothing; then there was something) and that space is expanding carrying matter along for the ride. Thus, there is no centre within our Universe where the Big Bang happened. There’s no set of coordinates. The event happened everywhere because in the beginning everywhere was just that one tiny Big Bang point and nothing existed outside that tiny (but now rapidly expanding) point.

Well, my untraditional Big Bang cosmology has the Big Bang event taking place in existing space and time, so there is a set of coordinates in our Universe where the event took place, and that our matter is expanding through that pre-existing space. And by the way, there’s no observational technique available that can distinguish space expanding carrying matter along like an ocean current can carry a ship, and matter moving and expanding in space, like a ship under steam moving through the water.

Well, if we’re not the centre of things, how do you explain the observation that all but the closest of the galaxies are red-shifted and moving away from us? Doesn’t that imply we have bad breath? Well, at the time of the Big Bang, not everything gets hurled outwards at the same velocity. Something hurled out faster than us will be obviously moving away from us. But, something hurled out slower than us will have us moving away from them, but from our relative perspective, it will appear as if that slower moving bit of stuff is moving away from us. So, even though there is a centre where the Big Bang happened, we still get the illusion that all things are moving away from us.

Why can’t we see the remains where the Big Bang happened? No, I won’t copout and say there’s all this interstellar/intergalactic gas and dust in the way blocking the view. Don’t forget some 13.7 billion years have gone by the boards since that explosive event. Say you are watching a candle from several miles away, both in the visible and in the infra-red (since the candle is giving off heat as well as light). Now what can you detect once the candle burns down and will obviously go out? In fairly quick-smart order you will detect bugger-all. You can’t see it any more, and in short order the now totally consumed candle will assume the temperature of the local environment. Infra-red wouldn’t distinguish it (or the burning event) from all that’s nearby. Our Big Bang event happened so long ago that the residue has become part of the background common to everywhere else. So, we can’t pick up the specific location anymore. Too much time has elapsed. 

HOW DO YOU CREATE A BIG CRUNCH?

Well, the obvious way is that an expanding universe has enough stuff, enough gravity, so slow the expansion down until it ceases, then reverses direction and starts to contract under that gravity, very slowly at first, but over time as stuff gets closer together, faster and faster until like cars meeting at an intersection, everything comes together at one point in space and time. That’s your basic Big Crunch.

But, our Universe isn’t apparently going to do the Big Crunch boogie. However, there is an alternative way. If our Universe is ever expanding, and meets another universe that’s ever expanding, then the partial intersection of the two might increase the overall mass density sufficiently to cause that local intersected area to start contracting. And when that contraction reaches its logical conclusion, you have a – wait for it – a Big Crunch. 

The inhabitants of a doomed Big Crunching universe could in theory escape their fate because there is an outside (the wider infinite cosmos) to escape into.

ALTERNATIVES

Other island universes may have had other origins and/or fates compared to ours. Our Universe had a Big Bang origin and apparently will have a Heat Death final. Another universe may have a quantum fluctuation beginning and a Big Crunch ending. Maybe all universes, including ours, are cyclic as the result of (via string theory) two branes colliding (the Ekpyrotic universe theory).

As long as the origin of our Universe happened in pre-existing space and time, I’m a happy camper.

Not up for grabs in this essay, or in the context of the infinite cosmos including our Universe and all other universes within, is the Many Worlds theory of all things quantum, nor ideas central to the concept of a parallel/alternative/mirror/shadow, etc. universe(s) as they fall, assuming they exist at all, outside our space-time continuum.

***I’ve often wondered whether ‘dark energy’, a push or repulsive force, could be the result of our Universe having a slight excess of positive charge over negative charge (or vice versa) – although our Universe is supposed to be overall charge neutral. If it is not, and since like charges repel or push, a surplus of either positive or negative charge would give our Universe an overall repulsive force edge to it. 

Cosmology 101: Part One

The standard cosmological model, the standard origin of our Universe model, the Big Bang event, is an “in the beginning” model. The Big Bang marked the beginning of our Universe; what happened before that is akin to asking what’s south of the South Pole. However, I prefer a “once up a time” scenario, which implies there was a time before the Big Bang created our Universe, and ultimately, us.

THE COSMOS IS THE BE ALL AND END ALL OF ALL THAT IS OR EVER WILL BE

“The Cosmos”: That’s what I call all that is, and all that every will be. My cosmos is infinite in size and in time*. From the get-go I’m eliminating the philosophical issues of ‘what comes before time existed’; and ‘what exists beyond any existing space’? The answers are that nothing came before time existed because time has always existed; and nothing exists beyond existing space because existing space is ever endless. 

Into this infinite sea of time and space resides an infinite (or even finite if you prefer – that’s not the critical bit) amount of matter and energy. One can put an infinite amount of stuff into an infinite amount of space and still have lots of room left over for the matter/energy to move about and interact in.

Now that matter/energy can be infinitely old because matter, in the form of elementary particles like electrons and quarks do not age (like humans do) and energy particles, like photons (and thus far hypothetical gravitons) don’t age either. A billion years is to an electron or a photon as a nanosecond is to a human.

This cosmos is overall in a ‘steady state’, even though there’s lots of activity going on, from transitions (beginnings and endings) and evolutions (interactions) constantly taking place. This is much like a box full of water molecules, where, depending on local conditions, some molecules are disassociating into hydrogen and oxygen atoms; oxygen and hydrogen atoms are combining to form water molecules; some molecules are travelling at rapid rate and the local state is gaseous; some are travelling at a somewhat slower rate and are in a liquid state; some are really sluggish and are in a solid state. There are lots of things happening, but overall, the box is in a relatively steady state. 

Within this infinite cosmic sea, pockets of matter and energy have now and then clumped together to form what we would term a universe (like interstellar gas and dust can clump together to form a star). Actually in this infinite sea there are many universes, like raisins in a loaf of raisin bread. One could call this set of island universes The Multiverse and indeed many have, but The Multiverse could equally include all those multi-trillions of theoretical Many World universes (the common alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation of all things quantum) or the set of often proposed parallel universes or even the proposed set of computer-generated and simulated universes. Since I’m not dealing with those sorts of universes in this scenario, I’ll refrain from using the term Multiverse and stick with cosmos. 

OUR ISLAND UNIVERSE

Now our Universe is but one tiny island in this infinite sea. And while the infinite cosmos, all that is and every will be, didn’t have any origin, our Universe did. And, as things appear now, will have a predictable end.

And there are lots of other universe islands too, some or all of which may or may not have origins and endings similar to ours. Some of those other island universes may have destinies linked with ours, not so much in space (although that’s possible), but in time.

Because our Universe resides in an infinite sea of space, our Universe, since it had an origin and is expanding through that sea, must have a boundary. That boundary however isn’t how far matter has expanded into that sea; rather it is how far the light from our Universe has expanded, at the speed of light. Thus, if we assume our Universe is spherical, the outermost boundary is one of the maximum extent to which light has travelled, and so observers outside our Universe will see us way before they can touch us, as our light is obviously travelling at a higher velocity, and has expanded further, than our matter.

In such a scenario as I have proposed, our Universe could rotate. Why not? Motion is the rule, not the exception in the Universe. Everything inside our Universe seems to rotate or revolve. Earth rotates on its axis; the Sun rotates on its axis; the Solar System rotates and the planets revolve around the Sun. Our Milky Way Galaxy rotates; entire clusters of galaxies revolve around a common centre of gravity. If our Universe is all there is, it’s pretty meaningless to talk of its rotation or revolution, for with respect to what is it rotating or revolving? But, if there is a larger existence outside, then it is meaningful to talk about our Universe having motion relative to that larger outside.

THE ORIGIN OF OUR UNIVERSE: A BIG BANG

So, what is the origin of our Universe? Well, cosmologists tell us it was the Big Bang** event. Somehow, some 13.7 billion years ago, our Universe came into being from something relatively tiny (not ‘big’ at all), which ‘exploded’ (‘banged’), spewing its matter/energy guts out thus spreading the contents of said matter/energy ever outwards resulted in the expanding Universe (of matter/energy) we see all around us today.

Now there’s one hell of a lot of stuff in our Universe, all of which is in motion – expanding, ever expanding outward. Now it takes energy to put matter into motion, so given the lot of stuff present at the origin of our Universe, there had better be a lot of energy available to give all that stuff a bit (and then some) of a push. Now where, did all, that required energy come from?

If time and space; matter and energy, have always existed, it’s illogical to suggest that the origin or our Universe can be explained somehow as ‘in the beginning there was nothing; then there was something – our Universe’.  It’s more logical to propose a ‘in the beginning there was something; then there was something else – our Universe’.  That previous something I suggest was a previous universe.

HOW DO YOU CREATE A BIG BANG?

If our Universe is expanding, then it’s logical to propose that a universe can also contract. In fact, given the force of gravity, it’s very logical that a universe chock full of matter will contract under the combined force of all that gravity – which is a pull force. If a universe contracts, it must of necessity get smaller and smaller, the opposite of a Big Bang. We call that sort of contracting universe experiencing a Big Crunch event.

Now, can a Big Crunch universe give rise to our Big Bang Universe? The end product of a Big Crunch is the mother of all Black Holes. So how do you get out of a Black Hole? Well, any Black Hole, even the mother of them all, has extreme gravity, even to the extent of preventing light photons from reaching escape velocity, but that’s not the same as infinite gravity, so, given enough oomph – in this case momentum – a Black Hole can be a very quickie sometime thing. So, what’s this momentum thing? Well, it’s just the product of mass multiplied by velocity. A high mass at a low velocity can have the same momentum as a low mass travelling at a high velocity; obviously a high mass travelling at a high velocity must have a very high momentum, one that’s hard to stop. The mass of an entire universe travelling at near light speed is about as close to an infinite runaway freight train as it gets. 

I asked about the energy supply. Well, a Big Crunch universe has massive kinetic energy. As it crunches, the velocity of all its bits and pieces ever increases, until, as close to Big Crunch time as makes no odds, everything is coming together at pretty close to light speed as suggested above. It’s hard to stop massive amounts of matter, travelling at such a velocity, dead in its tracks! It is much like a swinging pendulum which has mass and velocity and so the pendulum travels from one side, through the bottom of its arc due to its momentum, and up the other side. A contracting (Big Crunch) universe will pass though its minimum (the point of least volume) and via pure momentum, start expanding (call this a Big Bang) again. That’s one source of energy oomph. The Black Hole in-between is a sometime thing.

To be continued…

*Our expanding Universe is, in terms of space, a three dimensional structure (and not by analogy so beloved by traditional cosmologists something represented as a two dimensional expanding balloon’s surface). You, as a smaller three spatial dimensional object, reside inside the Universe (like your liver resides inside you). And just as you have an inside and outside (your skin separates the two), and your liver has an inside-the-liver and an outside-the-liver, so too must our Universe have an inside (where you reside) and an outside, but if, and only if our Universe has a specific shape, and therefore a finite internal volume.

I can think of no three dimensional geometric shape of any kind, which if finite in surface area, doesn’t also contain within a finite volume. To have an infinite volume would imply this shape has no boundary, border, edge, or membrane; whatever. If it has no shape, it can’t be a geometrical structure, like that of a sphere, ellipsoid, cylinder, cube, funnel, or pyramid, or even something totally irregular in structure (possessing no overall symmetry at all) like that of an amoeba. If our Universe has no overall shape, then no boundary, border, edge, or membrane – whatever - is possible. There’s actually only one ‘shape’ that can contain an infinite volume, and that’s a ‘shape’ that’s infinite in extent in all three dimensions, which is to say no shape at all.

One could go off the deeper end and imagine a ‘shape’ that’s finite in two dimensions but infinite in the third, like a cylinder whose length extends infinitely. Perhaps there’s a ‘shape’ to the Universe that’s finite in one dimension but infinite in two, say like a cube but with the left – right and back – forward dimensions just going on, and on, and on, and on forever. Both these ‘shapes’ have infinite volumes, but there’s no reason to suggest, no observational, even theoretical evidence, that any direction, any dimension is preferred or is unique vis-à-vis any other. It’s said that our Universe is both isotropic and isometric in that it tends to look the same in any direction and has no preferred directionality to it. That’s one reason the Universe is assumed to be of spherical shape, if it has to have any shape at all.

So, get into a rocket ship and head off in a constant straight line direction of your own choosing, making any course corrections necessary when gravitational forces from within the Universe, like from stellar or galactic objects, Black Holes, etc. deviate you from your one true path. Because this is a thought experiment, you can imagine yourself travelling as fast as you want to and ignore general relativity and speed limits. If you’d rather not do that, confer upon yourself immortality and live to see the end of your journey. Sooner or later, if the Universe has finite volume, you’ll encounter that border, boundary, edge, or membrane – whatever. You now have an awkward question to face. What’s on the other side?

By proposing from the get-go, a Universe with an infinite volume, a no shape Universe, there can not ever be that border, boundary, edge, or membrane – whatever – that you eventually run into. And therefore, there’s no awkward question to ever have to face and answer.    

I’m just changing the word ‘Universe’ to ‘cosmos’ and placing our Universe within that larger infinite ‘shape’.

Oh, you hit that same brick wall, that awkward question, with our fourth dimension, time. What comes before, whatever; what comes after, whatever?

**I could use the synonymous (to my way of thinking) phrase “White Hole” event, since the Big Crunch resulted in a Black Hole which immediately upon rebounding (expanding) became the opposite of a Black Hole – a White Hole which we have named the Big Bang.

Cosmology: In the Beginning, and Afterwards Too

Gravity rules the cosmos. You can’t come to terms with the origins, evolutions and ultimate fates associated with cosmology or astrophysics without understanding gravity and the theory of relativity. Quantum theory also has to apply to cosmology (and astrophysics) anytime you run across micro phenomena where quantum effects need to be considered and where they apply. Unfortunately, there are circumstances where both gravity and quantum physics need to be simultaneously considered - singularities. Unfortunately gravity and quantum physics aren’t compatible.

The Alpha: In the beginning was the Big Bang event origin of our Universe – 13.7 billion years ago. The origin of the Universe (the Big Bang) was a quantum event because the initial size of our Universe was such that quantum effects dominated. At least that’s what the standard model dictates. It was also a time of extreme gravity, since all the mass of the cosmos was situated at the same time and place. But the relevant and separate equations of relativity and quantum mechanics break down as one approachs such extremes as would of applied at the Big Bang Alpha, giving rise for the necessity of a new theory of quantum gravity in order to come to terms with the Alpha object.

There are two main pillars of modern physics – relativity (part of classical physics) and quantum mechanics or quantum physics. Alas, the two pillars aren’t compatible, and thus, a Holy Grail for physicists is to find a ‘Theory of Everything’ (TOE) that merges the two. Now in the day-to-day life of physicists, a TOE isn’t essential, because relativity deals with the very big (the macro-universe) and quantum mechanics the very small (the micro-universe), and rarely do the twains meet. But, meet the two do in exceptional circumstances. Relativity deals with gravity (in the main), and on quantum scales, gravity is so weak that gravity can safely be ignored. But, there are objects that are very small, yet very dense – that is, tiny objects that have high gravity. There are basically two such objects – the Alpha Big Bang object or singularity and Black Hole singularities, or, to be honest, singularities in general regardless of where or when. And thus, to come to terms with the physics of singularities (immense gravity; micro size), the relativity and quantum worlds need to combine. So, TOE is basically a search for a theory of quantum gravity, and there are various highly complex and theoretical scenarios that fit the bill (though not yet even remotely experimentally confirmed).

Now while theories of everything or theories of quantum gravity are, in the final analysis, necessary (it just doesn’t wash that relativity and quantum mechanics can’t be made compatible – you can’t have two separate software packages governing the overall Universe), it is my opinion that they aren’t necessary to come to terms with singularities, which are usually described as an object of zero (point) dimensions and infinite density.

However, it is my opinion that it is absurd, in the extreme; to even slightly entertain the idea that a (Big Bang or Black Hole) singularity even remotely approaches such limits, far less acquires them. One cannot have a zero (point) dimensional object; one cannot have an object of infinite density. A singularity must have some sort of volume, and must have a finite density, even if the volume is very tiny, and the density is extremely extreme.

The basic logic is that a singularity has a finite volume and finite density. As you add more stuff to the singularity, the volume might remain the same but the density increases. However, as more and more stuff gets added, ultimately the density reaches the maximum possible, and from that point onwards, the volume of the singularity increases, finally increasing beyond the point where quantum mechanics can play any useful role, and gravity alone is the lone player left standing in the game.

Thus, a singularity could be large enough in volume that relativity theory alone can deal with the extreme gravitational conditions. The Big Bang object, containing the mass of the entire Universe, would be (the ultimate as) such a singularity. Massive (Galactic) Black Hole singularities, ditto. Singularities aren’t quantum objects. If you continue to add mass to a Black Hole, it gets bigger; the singularity at the centre gets bigger. To believe otherwise is, IMHO, entering the realm of scientific fantasy.

The upshot off all this is that the Big Bang was not a quantum event, nor would a future Omega Big Crunch be, and likewise, Black Holes are not quantum objects.

The Omega: In the beginning was the Big Bang event origin of our Universe – 13.7 billion years ago. Now what? It’s taken 13.7 billion years to get to ‘now’; what’s the state of play in another 13.7 billion years, or even 137 billion years hence?

What’s the ultimate fate of our Universe? Our Universe is currently expanding post Big Bang – ever increasing in volume like a balloon blowing up and up. Now either our expanding Universe will one day cease to expand as gravity slows things down to a crawl, then a stop, then a reversal – a contracting Universe, or our Universe will keep on expanding forever and ever and a day, ultimately terminating in a Heat Death. A Heat Death is when the temperature of the entire Universe becomes uniform. Everyplace has the same temperature, and that’s going to be cold – as close to absolute zero as makes no odds. Thus the Heat Death is the death of heat. That’s the Universe ending not with a bang (or even a very Big Crunch) but with a whimper. I really don’t like that ending at all.

Assuming that the Universe will ultimately contract into a Big Crunch, what will happen? Well, as one gets ever closer to the Big Crunch, density increases (but will not, can not, become infinite) and temperature increases (but again, not infinitely so) and the volume of space decreases (but will never become infinitely tiny) and time just keeps ticking on. Further, we know there are lots of Black Holes out in the cosmos; both small and massive (such as exists at the centre of our own galaxy). As the Universe contracts, these Black Holes will get closer and closer, not only to each other, but to the rest of non-Black Hole stuff as well. Ultimately, all the non-Black Hole stuff will get sucked into existing Black Holes as the Universe shrinks and matter’s density increases. Of course large Black Holes will also suck in smaller Black Holes, until ultimately, at the time approaching Big Crunch; there will be one ultimate/universal Black Hole left containing all that was.

Then what happens? The conditions inside a Black Hole are still unknown, beyond the equations of current physics, but whatever parameters are present, infinities aren’t among them (which might put me at odds with most astrophysicists). My reasoning is that no matter what, there’s only a finite amount of stuff comprising the universal Black Hole. Squeezed into a tiny area, the density will be extreme, but not infinitely so. The volume will be tiny, but not infinitely so. That is because there is an ultimate limit to how small length (hence volume) can get. The smallest possible length is known as Planck length and anything less than that space ceases to exist. Planck length is 1.6 x 10 to the minus 35 meters. Gravity might be so intense that not even light can escape, but it doesn’t take an infinite amount of gravity to do that. And there can’t be a time equals zero, either at the beginning (Big Bang) or at the end (Big Crunch). Because time exists in discrete quantum units (Planck-Wheeler time units), one must go from a minus one (contracting phase) time unit directly to a plus one (expanding) time unit, as there can be no time unit where time equals zero.  In other words, you go from a Big Crunch directly to a Big Bang, contraction to expansion, endlessly cycling or recycling. Or, the universal Black Hole sucking in all matter and energy (approaching the Big Crunch) turns inside out and becomes a universal White Hole (the Big Bang) spewing out stuff (matter and energy).

That’s sort of akin to having four cars approach an intersection, on each from the north, south, east and west. If each car is one kilometre from the intersection, and each car is travelling at say 50 kilometres per hour, then it is clear this contraction of automobiles will result in a Big Crunch. However, it might be difficult to then go to an automobile expansion as the cars will be a wreck and in no condition to go anywhere! That’s one possibility.

The other possibility is that it might be unrealistic to expect in a contracting Universe that each and every bit and piece will meet at exactly the same point in time and space. Using our car analogy, what if each car was one kilometre away from the intersection, but say the north car was going 46 kilometres per hour, the east car 48 kilometres per hour, the south car 50 kilometres per hour, and the west car 52 kilometres per hour. Then, we can go directly from automobile contraction to automobile expansion as each car passes through the intersection while only having near misses with the other vehicles.

Some Alternative Cosmologies: Part Two

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; 2008:

Steinhardt, Paul J. & Turok, Neil; Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang; Phoenix, London; 2008:

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; 2007:

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; 2005:

Rees, Martin; Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others; Free Press, London; 2002:

Vilenkin, Alex; Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes; Hill & Wang, New York; 2006:

Wolf, Fred Alan; Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds; Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York; 1988:

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; 2008: (layman’s version)

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.

A Parallel Analogy between Supernovae & Cosmology: Part Two

Parts of the current standard model of the origin of our Universe (the Big Bang event) violate nearly every principle of physics there is – from causality to the conservation laws. There’s got to be a better answer. Fortunately there are cosmological alternatives (not detailed here) including perhaps my own variation on the theme (which is detailed here). Supernovae gave me a possible clue to a cyclic Multiverse.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

One set of assumptions has to be made from the get-go. I postulate that the cosmos, all that is and ever will be, is infinite in both space and in time. This assumption is more philosophical than scientific. If you ever postulate a finite cosmos, a cosmos with a boundary, a fixed volume, you must, of necessity, deal with that maverick who asks, “Well, what exists beyond that boundary?” If you postulate a beginning and/or an end, that same maverick will annoy you with, “Well, what happened before that or after that?” It’s just easier to wrap your head around a cosmos that is infinite; a cosmos that had no beginning and will have no end. Unfortunate, the standard model of cosmology postulates a beginning, and a fade-away ending and a finite amount of stuff and space to stuff it into.

We all know the standard scientific spiel to the creation of our Universe – no, not the Biblical Book of Genesis, but the Big Bang event. Well, already we have a parallel analogy – supernovae are mini big bang events.

Now the Big Bang and other associated real time events like an additional oomph of an in the beginning “inflation” have resulted in our Universe expanding, ever expanding. There’s lots of observational evidence for the Big Bang and the expansion. So, lots of stuff has been vomited out into the cosmos from a unique point in time – 13.7 billion years ago. But if there was a finite Big Bang, then there must also have been a finite amount of space to stuff that vomit into. That violates my philosophical ideals of not only no boundary in time, but no bounds in space for our Universe to strut its stuff in.

Anyway, we have expansion of stuff spreading out through space. Well, that’s a parallel analogy with the spewing out of gas and dust via stars going nova and supernovae. Now commonsense might suggest that the original oomph of the Big Bang would eventually run out of puff as the one-way attraction of gravity would slow the expansion down, and down, and down and eventually cause the expansion to come to a grinding halt – then reverse, as gravity would cause everything to contract once again back into the configuration from which the Big Bang arose from. In other words, the expected fate of our Universe was to be born from a Big Bang, live and evolve, and die in a Big Crunch.

Alas, life isn’t that simple – Mother Nature is a baseball pitcher with a wicked curveball or knuckleball. Mother Nature’s a real Hall-of-Fame bitch. A bunch of astronomical party-poopers discovered that the expansion of the Universe isn’t slowing down; it bloody well accelerating! Thus, no Big Crunch is on the horizon in the far future, only a “Heat Death” as entropy ends up ruling the roost. So runs the standard spiel.  So how are you going to eventually generate a second or third or one-hundredth generation universe out of that mess? But that’s the limited view. Let’s climb the cosmic mountain for the grander picture. 

What comes now to the rescue is that there is more than one Big Bang (maxi nova or supernovae) universe; more than one expansion event, because, there’s more than one universe, more than just our Universe, within that infinite (in space and time) cosmos referred to above.

And so, while from our limited point of view there is our Universe, and thus we assume the one-and-only-Universe, in fact there is more – much, much more. If you have a lot of universes in the infinite cosmos, all of which started off with a supernovae-like Big Bang, then, sooner or later, the spew of one (or more) will intersect with the spew of another (or more).

Thus, a lot of expanding regions of individual universes will intersect, eventually. That intersect region will, under combined gravities, start to slow things down. That region will slowly, but surely, start to contract. That contraction will eventually collapse into a Big Crunch. It seems something cyclic has happened. Lots of Big Bangs have generated a Big Crunch – actually a lot of Big Crunches when you look at the total 3-D picture. Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions B, C, and D in one direction, say left. Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions E, F and G in the opposite direction. Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions H, I, J and K in the up direction; Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with the L, and M Big Bangs in the downward direction, and so on and so forth. The Big Crunches (resulting in the Mother of all Black Holes) will be symmetrical, turning inside out into newly vomiting Big Bangs, or White Holes.

And so the endlessly cycling of stellar nova/supernova (expansion) to intersecting clouds of interstellar gas/dust (contractions) thus forming new stellar objects, some of which will in turn vomit up their quota of interstellar gas/dust has a parallel though many orders of magnitude on up the line. Endlessly cycling Big Bang expansions intersect to form high gravity regions which contract (in Big Crunches) to form new regions where conditions are ripe for a new Big Bang event. And so we have an overall cyclic cosmos or Multiverse (because there is more than one universe). There’s not just one expanding universe slowing down and contracting to ultimate reform that one expanding universe again, but a whole potpourri of universes that are all just expanding, intersecting and contracting, comings and goings at different times and places – night and day; Full Moon to New Moon; evaporation to rainfall; etc. 

In fact, if you think about it, the idea that there are many expanding and contracting universes is but the next logical step in what was already proven to be a natural progression. Once upon a time Terra Firma (Earth) was the centre of the Universe. Now we know better. Then the Sun and solar system were elevated to that centre. Now we know better because there are lots of suns and planets that have eliminated our uniqueness. Once upon a time our galaxy was considered to be the be-all-and-end-all of the Universe. Today we know better. There are billions and billions of other galaxies out there and our galaxy occupies no special place in space or time and has no special appearance. So, I suggest that our Universe is now not the centre of the universe (or cosmos to avoid confusion). We have a Multiverse! And we have a cyclic Multiverse that should satisfy that philosophical idealistic need referred to at the start.  

Now it could already be the case that part of our expanding Universe has recently (even as in multi-millions of years ago) intersected part of another expanding universe. However, we wouldn’t be aware of that because it’s going to take billions of years for the visuals and the gravitational effects to reach us from such vast distances.

There is at least one interesting consequence inherent in this cyclic Multiverse. Even if there is only a finite amount of mass and energy in this infinite volume (and that doesn’t have to be the case since you can fit an infinite amount of mass and energy into an infinite volume), that finite mass and energy has been recycled an infinite number of times in the unending past and will be recycled an infinite number of times in the unending future. The upshot of that is that anything and everything that can happen, everything that is not forbidden by the laws, principles and relationships inherent in nature, has happened an infinite number of times and will happen again an infinite number of times. Translated, you have and will exist again, and again, and again in all possible permutations. Although the ‘you’ that is reading this in the ‘now’ will fade away (that sounds nicer than kicking-the-bucket), take comfort in that another ‘you’, somewhere and somewhen else, will carry on carrying on the ‘you’ tradition. 

To be continued…