Variations on a Theme Cosmological: Part Two

The standard model explaining the origin of our Universe basically attributes no causality to that origin. First there was nothing, and then there was something. The transition was the Big Bang event; the something was the creation of matter, energy, time and space. However, to my mind, any something must have a cause, and thus my variation on the standard model postulates that there was a cause; a before the Big Bang. The before recycled previous matter and energy to become our matter and energy; the Big Bang event itself happened within existing space and time.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

An Analogy: All analogies are a bit suspect, but this one I hope will illustrate my general idea from yesterday’s blog. I’m going to substitute a supernova for the Big Bang.

Interstellar gas and dust slowly come together, contracting under their mutual gravitational attraction, ultimately forming a massive star which ignites (via thermonuclear fusion). One could think of the process as a mini Big Crunch.

The star, being massive, rapidly exhausts its fuel supply, and the resulting imbalance between gravity (inward pressure) and radiation pressure (outward pressure), a balance of pressures that normally keeps a star’s size constant, results in a massive implosion hence explosion – a supernova. The supernova spews its stuff, most of it anyway, back into interstellar space. That’s a mini Big Bang.

Now supernovae occur in existing space-time; they don’t create space-time. They don’t create matter/energy; rather recycle it – from interstellar gas and dust, back to interstellar gas and dust. However, the intense energies and pressures can create new forms of matter (heavier elements) from their supply of lighter elements. This is ultimately necessary for the origin and development of carbon-based life.

So we have a micro system of mini Big Crunches (stellar formation) leading to mini Big Bangs (supernovae – stellar death) - a sort of cyclic universe in miniature.

Now we note that supernovae happen at specific coordinates. They happen at a point in space and time, like I suspect the real Big Bang did. A supernova is also not a quantum event, much like I suspect the actual Big Bang wasn’t.

It is claimed that our Big Bang had no point of origin, no specific coordinates in space-time. The Big Bang happened everywhere, since it created space-time in the first place. Thus, our telescopes can’t find or pinpoint where it happened.  In our supernova explosion, all the bits and pieces will, over the eons, become so spread out, and/or incorporated into other stellar/planetary bodies, as to be no longer detectable or associated with the supernova event. The core of the supernova might remain for a while as a neutron star or Black Hole, but they too will eventually radiate away – in the latter case via Hawking radiation. Thus, exactly where the supernova event happened, ultimately, over the eons, will no longer be identifiable on the cosmic map. I suspect the same for the real Big Bang.

Using another analogy, imaging a closed room with a fireplace and light the fireplace for, say an hour. Then put out the fire, and leave the room for a half hour. When reentering the room, it should be obvious, especially using an infrared detector, the exact point of origin for the heat – the fireplace. Now instead of reentering the room after a half an hour, delay reentry for a half year. By that time the fireplace will be equal in temperature to the rest of the room, and thus won’t stand out, infrared detector or no. Substitute the Big Bang for the fireplace; the Universe for the room. Too much time has elapsed for the Big Bang’s coordinates to be located. 

We note that the bits and pieces that are explosively emitted by supernovae are expanding throughout existing space, just like a mini Big Bang event and mirroring the real Big Bang event. Further, every bit ‘sees’ every other bit moving away from it at a velocity proportional to its distance away. The further away, the faster it’s going, just like a real Big Bang.

We note that a supernova has a cause. Supernovae don’t happen for no reason at all. That also mirrors what I feel must be the case for our own actual Big Bang.

One other word to make the analogy more complete – our Universe may have originated in a Big Bang, but it's unlikely to end in a Big Crunch. Well, that’s okay in our supernova analogy. A star doesn’t go supernova, spew out gas and dust, which then contracts in total to reform the star when then eventually explodes as a supernova, etc. Its explosive oomph is greater than the gravity needed to gather the gas and dust back together again.

So in our Universe we have local areas of gas and dust contraction – mini Big Crunches – stellar formation; local areas of expansion – mini Big Bangs – supernovae. Now expand the picture to the level of real large scale Big Crunches and real large scale Big Bangs, all inside a super-sized universe. This super-sized universe really is super-sized. It’s infinite in time and in space. It’s not a closed system in that there’s nothing outside of it. You can’t get any bigger than infinite volume.

This infinite cosmos contains lots of embedded universes, maybe even an infinite number of them. Some universes are expanding then contracting; some universes (like ours) are expanding, forever and ever expanding; some areas of ever expanding expansion can intersect with other universe’s ever expanding expansions, as in the case of two or more supernovae, causing local pockets of contraction, or Big Crunches.

As I said, analogies are not the actual same as what they are meant to represent, but, I think the supernova substitute for the Big Bang more exactly illustrates reality than some of the claptrap offered up by the professionals. 

Postscript: Can one however now logically ask whether or not our Universe arose directly from the vacuum energy 13.7 billion years ago and bypass all this Big Crunch, Singularity, space warping nonsense? While that’s of course a possibility - see references below - that specific scenario, as opposed to universes in general being so formed, hasn’t been considered as serious an option vis-à-vis the death of one universe giving rise, Phoenix-like, to the birth of another, as in ours. My gut feeling says that you wouldn’t have the same sort of observational evidence that we have to currently account for (i.e. – cosmic microwave background radiation, etc.) in an origin via the vacuum energy. Regardless, a vacuum energy origin still differs from the standard Big Bang model in that the vacuum energy, (time and space, matter and energy), preexisted the Big Bang – and that’s not on according to traditionalists.

References

Cole, K.C.; ‘The ultimate free lunch’ (in) The Hole in the Universe; Harcourt, San Diego; 2001; p.168-171:

Tryon, E.P.; ‘Is the universe a vacuum fluctuation?’ (in) Nature, Vol.246, 1973; p.396-397:

Vilenkin, A.; ‘The universe as a quantum fluctuation’ (in) Many Worlds in One: The Search for other Universes; Hill and Wang, New York; 2006; p.183-186:

John’s Cosmology - Supernovae Analogy

1) Contraction of a universe                                          1) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust

2) Big Crunch   (Black Hole)                                        2) Massive star forms

3) Transition to                                                             3) Stellar life span

4) Big Bang (White Hole)                                             4) Supernovae

5) Expanding Universe                                                 5) Expulsion of gas/dust

6) Intersection with another expanding universe             6) Interaction with other gas/dust

7) Gravity rules                                                            7) Gravity rules

8) Contraction of new universe                                     8) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust

Gamma-Ray SETI

Gamma-ray bursts are cosmic phenomena. As far as terrestrial astronomers go, they are unexpected (you can’t point your telescope in advance knowing where and when one will happen) and they are short-lived (so when one is detected you have a rather limited window of opportunity to point your telescope). Now, the question arises, are they all totally natural phenomena, or could some be manufactured, and like artificially generated radio waves, perhaps contain a message in a cosmic bottle? - A message of interest to those who seek out new life and new civilizations.

SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientists search for ET’s intelligent messages in the radio spectrum; and also in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Should they, despite the inherent difficulties, take the opportunity to analyse gamma-ray bursts for a signal in the gamma radiation noise? If they in fact they already have been examined for a signal I’m unaware of it or any such analysis and conclusions. It’s those unexpected and short-lived aspects that make gamma-ray SETI difficult in the extreme. It’s like sometime in the next 24 hours, on just one radio station, in some unspecified part of the world, lasting for only ten seconds, you will hear a voice. Good luck picking it up.

Gamma-ray bursts were discovered accidentally by the Vela series of satellites. The Vela satellites were sent up by the Americans to keep tabs on those naughty commies and to make sure they didn’t violate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Vela satellites indeed picked up one of the telltale signatures of atmospheric nuclear explosions (gamma-rays), except they weren’t coming from Terra Firma or within our atmosphere, but somewhere out there – way, way, way out there. Though first detected in 1967, the anomalous nitty-gritty details weren’t made public until about six years later – well these after all were top secret military spy-in-the-sky satellites.

Anyway, it was quickly realized that these cosmic gamma-ray bursts were coming from really, really far away. They weren’t sourced locally; they weren’t sourced at interplanetary distances, or even at interstellar distances. They were happening in galaxies far, far away, so far, far away that they happened a long, long time ago too (since it takes electromagnetic radiation, of which gamma-rays are a part thereof, finite times to cross finite distances). To cross such vast distances with such energy intensities suggested that gamma-ray bursts were not akin to a galaxy what a firecracker is to Planet Earth. Rather, it was more a galactic case of, well a terrestrial super-duper nuclear explosion on Planet Earth. 

Now gamma-rays are very high energy electromagnetic photons, more energetic than ultraviolet and X-rays. Even before the detection of those intergalactic gamma-ray bursts, we knew about gamma-rays since they are a natural product of electron – positron annihilation and of some radioactive decay processes.

So much for some background on gamma-rays and astronomical bursts of gamma radiation, how might that apply to SETI? Let’s assume that there is at least one highly advanced technological extraterrestrial civilization somewhere out there, who wishes to draw attention to themselves via a signal of some sort (which is not quite the same thing as actual one-on-one communication).  That desire might be akin to a more relevant terrestrial analogy like an anonymous show-off graffiti artist – “here I am; I exist”. How would, or at least could, our ET do it?

Now what’s the biggest cosmic bang advertisement for your buck you can get? My understanding would be matter-antimatter annihilation. If an electron meets a positron, you get a gamma-ray. So, I wonder whether the rather anomalous and unpredictable gamma-ray bursts that are somewhat common, but not too common in the cosmos, might, or at least some of them might, be artificially created by that highly technological extraterrestrial civilization or perhaps, if plural, those extraterrestrial civilizations. An alien ‘message’ (as it were) or signal, in plain sight.

Here’s another possible scenario. Say once upon a time, billions of years ago, you had various, even numerous, high-tech extraterrestrial civilizations in various galaxies. In the classification scale of ET civilizations they would fall somewhere between a Type II (mastery of the energy output of a stellar object) and a Type III civilization (mastery over the energy resources of an entire galaxy). They shared information (‘communication’ in real time being out of the question due to the intergalactic distances involved) via radio waves, laser beams, etc. It’s efficient to send an electromagnetic packet of info in a tightly compressed, and short-lived, burst. In-person travel to and on-site visitations, possible in interplanetary and interstellar scenarios, are impossible when it comes to intergalactic scenarios. The distances are just too vast.

Now, Cosmology 101, the expanding universe, tells us that most galaxies are moving away from most other galaxies. To keep intergalactic ‘communications’ or data sharing viable over the long term, you need to shout louder as time goes by; as your neighbouring or nearby galaxies gets farther and farther away from you. Gamma-ray bursts are ‘louder’ than most other energetic phenomena in the Universe. The basic data sending principle is the same. If you can use light waves or radio waves, etc. to send a message, why not a gamma-ray?

The drawback is that this is really high-energy expenditure. But, if you are a Type II or Type III civilization, ‘burning’ this amount of energy is akin to a billionaire lighting a match.

Now the odds are very high that in all probability, gamma-ray bursts are a totally natural phenomenon, albeit still a very mysterious one. But, you never know. I think it premature to rule out ET, at least until such time as we have a better grounding in the theory behind them and/or do a detailed analysis of a typical gamma-ray burst happening looking for some signal in the cosmic noise but not finding any.

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…

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Two

The Big Bang event is the leading scientific cosmological theory when it comes to explaining the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and simply everything. While the Big Bang event is the leading candidate and the standard model, it’s not the only one. That’s fortunate, because while a fair bit of once theoretical now verified observational evidence supports that standard cosmological model, it also comes as well with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage. It’s mainly that metaphysical baggage that concerns me.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

BIG BANG EVIDENCE

If the Big Bang is so apparently wrong on so many fundamental counts, then what’s the positive evidence for it? What prompts cosmologists to advocate the standard model?

1) Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR): If you have a massive hot explosion (like the Big Bang), and all that heat energy expands and expands, then you’d expect the temperature of the area occupied by that energy to drop, the temperature ever decreasing as the volume that finite amount of energy occupies increases. As the energy expands it gets diluted and thus cools, but can never reach an absolute zero temperature. And that’s just what we find on the scale of the Universe. There’s a fine microwave energy “hiss” representing a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero that’s everywhere in the cosmos. That’s the diluted heat energy of the very hot Big Bang – well it has been a long time and is now spread throughout a lot of volume. That microwave “hiss”, called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), was predicted way before it was discovered, and one bona fide way of confirming evidence for a theory is to make predictions that are born out by experimental observations.

2) Composition of the Universe:  At the theoretical but expected temperatures and pressures of the Big Bang, you might expect a certain amount of some interesting nuclear chemistry to take place and generate various substances. Particle physicists used to calculating such things predicted the relative amounts and types of stuff the Big Bang event would generate, and the theory matches observations to a high degree of accuracy – nearly all hydrogen and helium will be created by a ratio of roughly three to one. All the rest of stuff (very, very minor amounts relative to hydrogen and helium) that we know and love (like oxygen and iron and gold, etc.) was synthesised via the conversion of hydrogen and helium to those heavier elements by nuclear fusion processes – cosmic alchemy – in stars and often resultant supernovae, not in the Big Bang. 

3) Expansion: If you have a large explosion, a really big bang, a violent vomit event, you’d expect the bits that received the most oomph, the bits with the most energy would be expelled the fastest; other bits with less energy would lose the race (if this were a track meet). And thus the bits of spewed stuff spreads out – fastest in front, like a marathon run. A bacterium on one of these bits would see every other bit moving away from it. Some faster bits are outpacing the bacterium inhabited bit; the bacterium occupied bit is outpacing and leaving behind the slower bits. If the bacterium assumes it is standing still, then both the faster and slower moving bits appear to be receding away from it. The bacterium observes all other bits moving away from it at speeds proportional to their distance from it. The bacterium might assume from all of this that its bit was a special bit – the centre bit – but we can see that’s not so. Any bacterium on any of the bits would conclude the same thing. They too would be wrong. Does that mean there was no centre? Of course there was. Equally incorrect would be the conclusion that there was no centre – there was, the site of the original big spew.  

Substitute our local gravitationally bound cluster of galaxies as the bacterium’s bit; all other external galaxies and clusters of galaxies that have no connection to our local galactic group are the other bits, and there’s your analogy. Do we observe these other galactic bits to be moving away from us at velocities proportional to their distance from us? Yes indeed; you bet we do; spot-on! 

As an alternative, let’s look at a marathon analogy. We have this long distance marathon that starts off with say 1000 runners at a specific point in time and space. The finishing line is at a 150 mile radius out and the runners can run in any direction they choose. They, for the sake of this analogy, run at 15, 12, 9, 6 or 3 miles per hour. Let’s look at the relativities from the point of view of the middle runner, the one running at 9 miles per hour. After one hour he sees the 15 mph runner six miles ahead running at a relative velocity of 6 mph; the 12 mph runner 3 miles ahead with a relative velocity of 3 mph; the 6 mph runner 3 miles behind also at a relative velocity of 3 mph; and the 3 mph runner 6 miles behind with a velocity relative to our 9 mph runner of 6 mph – that’s assuming all took off and headed in one direction.

But if the 9 mph runner looks at those running in the exact opposite direction, the anti 3 mph runner is 12 miles behind with a relative velocity between them of 12 mph; the anti 6 mph runner is 15 miles away with, you guessed it a relative velocity difference of 15 mph; the anti 9 mph runner is 18 miles distant, relative velocity 18 mph; the anti 12 mph runner is 21 miles away at 21 mph relative velocity; the anti 15 mph runner is 24 miles away and moving away at 24 mph. Translated, there is a direct correlation between how far away the various runners are, and how fast they are running, which you can graph for verification. After two hours the distances between any two runners moving at different velocities will have doubled; after three hours trebled; after four hours quadrupled, and so on, though each runner is maintaining their respective velocities. Again, the relationship holds for each runner; each runner might think themselves in the centre as all other runners appear to be moving away from that runner’s point of view, yet it’s not the case that any runner is the centre – yet there was a centre when the starting gun went off.

Now kindly note that there is nothing in that trilogy of evidence for the Big Bang that requires that event to have: 1) created time; 2) created space; and 3) to have been a quantum-sized happening.

WHERE’S THE RECIPE BOOK?

The ultimate recipe book that would support the Big Bang event’s causality with the creation of time and space; the origin of matter and energy, has yet to be written by those advocating that very point of view.

There’s no recipe to the best of my knowledge for how to cook up a batch of time!

Equally there’s no recipe for how to bake a cake of space!

How do you mix up a quark salad or a neutrino soup when there’s nothing in the pantry to start off with? Can anyone please give me the recipe?

From an equally empty supermarket you apparently can produce a kinetic energy pie. I want to see the recipe for that!

The Universe, it has been said, is the ultimate free lunch. But a lunch still needs a recipe book. When physicists, astrophysicists and cosmologists can actually write and publish such a cookbook, well then its Nobel Prizes all around. Till then, I think they should veer away from statements about the creation of time, space, matter and energy from nothing. Till then, my mantra remains “there is no such thing as a free lunch”.   

BEFORE THE BIG BANG

While I’m convinced there was a before the Big Bang, the nature of that ‘before’ is vague at best since the transition between before the Big Bang through the Big Bang to after the Big Bang is unknown (at present anyway), since the relevant equations break down into pure nonsense under those extremes. What’s probably reasonable is to call whatever existed pre Big Bang a ‘universe’, maybe a ‘universe’ within a larger Multiverse. If conservation laws have any meaning, that ‘universe’ (within a Multiverse perhaps) contained the same amount of stuff (matter and energy) as ours does though the mix might have been different. This pre Big Bang ‘universe’ certainly consisted of volume (space) and change (time). What’s less certain is whether that ‘universe’s’ laws, principles and relationships of physics were the same as ours. If not, just about anything goes. It’s probably more reasonable and constructive to assume their physics is our physics. Translated, to answer Einstein’s famous question, God, or Mother Nature, had no choice in the matter about how to construct or arrange a universe.

WHAT CAUSES EXPLOSIONS?

What caused the Big Bang explosion? Okay, we have a pre Big Bang ‘universe’. Something happened there that caused our Big Bang explosion. What causes explosions (ultimately a lot of kinetic energy) and could they be up to the task of causing our Big Bang spew?

Well fine particulate matter like coal dust or equivalents when in the presence of oxygen and ignited can violently explode and expand. Still, that’s hardly a sufficient means to create our Universe. However, that’s a form of chemical energy, and under the right conditions, chemical energy can be released quickly enough that for all practical purposes you have an explosion – think of gunpowder, a firecracker, sticks of dynamite, hand grenades or their mature equivalents, conventional bombs dropped from aircraft, or even the mini controlled explosions that drive your automobile engine and hence your car. You also have other explosive mixtures, like when sodium hits water, and there are lots more to boot, often the staple of high school chemistry classes. However, chemicals are very inefficient in terms of being converted to energy. Hardly any of the matter gets converted to energy. Chemical energy is not the way to proceed to generate a really big, Big Bang.

Then there is nuclear energy. Atomic energy can be controlled, released steady-as-she-goes, as in electricity-generating nuclear power plants or facilities. Or, nuclear energy can be released in real quick-smart fashion, as in uncontrolled reactions that result in ka-booms that produce mushroom clouds as in thermonuclear weapons; the A-bomb, the H-bomb, etc. Energy is released when atomic nuclei are split apart (fission) or rammed together (fusion). It’s the former that produces our electricity; both can power up those mushroom clouds. Its fusion that powers our Sun (and all the other shinning stars), which in simple form is just one gigantic bomb continuously going off. Only the Sun’s immense inward gravity contains the explosion (outward radiative pressure) keeping it confined to the circular disc we observe in the daytime sky. Alas, fuel eventually runs out, in petrol tanks and in stars. In stars, when the fuel is finally consumed, gravity wins. Stars collapse slowly, or if originally massive enough, really suddenly. These massive stars implode; rebound and explode – a supernova is born. But even a supernova pales in comparison to what the Big Bang must have been like, for even supernovae in particular, and nuclear energy in general, while more efficient in converting matter to energy relative to chemical energy, still would fail any efficiency audit.  

If you want to pass the matter-to-energy efficiency exam, there’s only one game in town: matter meets antimatter! Matter-antimatter reactions produce the most efficient means known to humans of generating explosive energy – 100% efficiency to be precise. Translated, 100% of the matter (and the antimatter) gets converted to energy. No leftovers. If a little bit of matter can generate a massive amount of energy in ultimately what amounts to a relatively highly inefficient nuclear fusion process, imagine what a massive amount of matter meets antimatter could generate!

One could image a super-lump of matter merging with an ever-so-slightly-less super-lump of antimatter. That would in theory result in a super-ultra violent explosion (the Big Bang) but giving us, our Universe, its matter dominance (over antimatter) that we observe. However, I strongly suspect that such super-sized lumps would have to be so massive that they would turn into Black Holes first, and the merger of two Black Holes, even one each of matter and antimatter, just gives you a larger Black Hole. All annihilation hell might be going on inside, but since the explosion can’t escape the pull of a Black Hole’s gravity, it’s of no consequence.

Still, as the most efficient means of generating explosive kinetic energy, getting the biggest bang for your buck, matter-antimatter annihilation needs some further thought and consideration. Is there a way of generating a Big Bang via the matter-antimatter component of a prior, pre-Big Bang ‘universe’ without the massive lumps?

To be continued…