Baby Universes & Black Holes

There are numerous ways of theoretically generating a collection of separate and apart universes, commonly called a Multiverse. One such novel approach uses two accepted entities, a universe and a Black Hole to generate each other in turn in either a linear or a cyclic fashion. While the linear approach runs out of puff, the cyclic version doesn’t, but only if you postulate a form of time travel!

You exist somewhere on Planet Earth, which orbits a rather average star we call the Sun, which in turn orbits around the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy which is but one of billions and billions of galaxies within our observable Universe. That’s what you’d include in any description of your reality.

However, perhaps the observable Universe itself exists within a Black Hole. That’s an alternative reality, or at least an extension of your reality. Just what rationale might lead one to suggest that our observable Universe and a Black Hole could be in parallel?

Since you cannot escape from the prison we call the Universe; and since you could not escape from the inside of a Black Hole – another type prison – perhaps they are one and the same sort of prison. Perhaps not only do Black Holes exist inside our Universe but the Universe itself resides inside a Black Hole with perhaps no end of the inside-the-inside-the-inside in either direction. In a manner of speaking, that’s a Multiverse!

Actually you can in theory escape this Universe by hopping down into a Black Hole, but if, and it’s a very big ‘but if’, you survive, you’ve just traded in one maximum security prison for another.

Let’s explore this concept a little further and see where, if anywhere, it leads us.

Our Universe and Black Holes certainly share some things in common.

A Black Hole can expand and surprisingly contract (due to Hawking radiation; the technicalities need not concern us here). Our Universe is expanding, but in theory could also contract if there was enough stuff, matter, hence gravity to slow down the expansion to an eventual halt hence reverse direction and start to shrink.

A Black Hole has temperature (that Hawking radiation); our Universe has a temperature (the cosmic background microwave radiation).

A Black Hole has mass (hence gravity); our Universe has mass (hence gravity).

A Black Hole could have a net charge; our Universe could have an excess of one kind of charge over another, but to the best of our knowledge our Universe is electrically neutral, and we suspect, so might an average Black Hole be too.

A Black Hole may be spinning; our Universe maybe rotating but the only way of knowing if you are rotating is if something else in your line of sight isn’t rotating or rotating at a different rate. If everything in our Universe is rotating together at the same rate, then there’s no way of telling since there isn’t anything else to relate that rotation to. 

Now the question arises was there a prime cause; a first universe inside a Black Hole  that gave birth to millions more Black Holes each of which generated an interior universe each of which spawned million more Black Holes hence interior universes and so on and so on and so on. It’s all very circular in that Black Holes generate universes which generate more Black Holes which generate more universes, etc. But that is something circular in a very linear sort of way for what you end up with is like an ongoing (maybe infinite) series of funnels. Sooner or later all the stuff that existed in the first cause Black Hole universe will funnel down into the first generation of Black Hole universes and all the stuff there eventually finds its way down into the second generation of Black Hole universes, hence funnelled down to the third, and fourth and down unto infinity. Now the point here is that there was only a finite amount of stuff (matter/energy) in that first cause Black Hole universe. All that stuff is constantly being diluted as one passes from one generation to the next generation. The stuff of the prime cause first Black Hole universe is dispersed unto millions and eventually billions of later universes. Eventually every baby universe in some umpteenth generation of universes would be so dilute no further Black Holes could form and that’s then the end of that.

But, what if things were cyclic or really circular? All of these universes do not exist in separate and apart timeframes, just like great grandpa; grandpa; father and son do not of necessity exist in separate and apart timeframes but can co-exist at the same time. When you talk of Black Holes, you can also go the one yard further and talk wormholes, which I guess is really that passageway from a Black Hole to the baby universe it generated. But if that first Black Hole universe generates say a million Black Holes each generating a baby universe, what’s to say that a Black Hole created in that baby universe might not funnel back stuff, not to a newer next generation, but dump their contents back to the original first cause Black Hole universe. Wormholes can, in theory, under the right conditions, serve as time machines. So it’s almost akin as if the son travelled back in time and fathered what would ultimately become his great grandpa. Cyclic! If cyclic, the amount of stuff (matter/energy) is still fixed (that which existed in the original Black Hole universe), but never gets diluted enough to bring things to a halt. Now about those quasars, gamma ray bursts and related ultra-energetic astronomical enigmas – White Holes perhaps; the exit of the Black Hole entrance – impregnations by those baby universe Black Holes?  

Where actually do these new (and improved?) baby universes reside? I doubt that a Black Hole opens up a portal and creates a never-before-in-existence arena of space-time where stuff pouring into a Black Hole, hence exiting this portal, finds a ready made newly constructed house to live and evolve in. Rather, the baby universe IS the interior of a Black Hole. A Black Hole forms, a new baby universe forms inside that Black Hole, and that universe in turn produces new Black Holes that form new baby universes, etc. But everything takes place, generation after generation, inside that first Black Hole (which just might be our Universe). The baby universes spawned inside say Black Hole generation #3 in turn creates Black Hole generation #4 which also exist within the earlier Black Hole generation #3 as do the generation #4 baby universes. So instead of a series of dolls sitting all-in-a-row on a long shelf, it’s more akin to those Russian dolls, one inside the other inside the other inside the other. But, as suggested above, one of the smaller dolls can ultimately funnel stuff back up into one of the larger dolls. 

Aside #1: Now you may feel that any baby universe inside a Black Hole in our Universe is going to be a pretty small universe indeed. Well I’m not aware that the definition of a universe comes attached with a one size fits all clause. Universes might well come is small, medium, large and extra-large sizes. Maybe a baby universe inside a Black Hole is like Dr. Who’s TARDIS – bigger on the inside than on the outside. Truth is, nobody, and I do mean nobody has a clue what’s inside the event horizon of a Black Hole. Once inside the event horizon all the laws, principles and relationships of physics break down. Nobody and no measuring instrument have ever been inside to have a look at what’s what and report back. It’s akin to those maritime charts of the ancient seafarers – here be dragons! It’s the greatest of the great unknowns. If space is the final frontier, the inside of a Black Hole is the Absolutely Final Frontier. Now there’s no reason of necessity why any of these baby universes need be inhabited. Extraterrestrial intelligence isn’t part of the definition of a universe either. A universe is really a self-contained space where matter and energy interact; where things happen; where there is change from moment to moment. The interior of a Black Hole is self-contained. There’s matter and energy but whether there’s activity or not, well IMHO the answer is affirmative since the Black Hole isn’t static. It’s either expanding as matter and energy enters and passes the event horizon or contracting thanks to the abovementioned Hawking radiation. Actually both incoming and outgoing are going on simultaneously.

Aside #2: Something about this entire concept reminds me of the old sci-fi pulp magazine era. It was a staple plot of shrinking down to the atomic level only to discover a civilization on a ‘planetary’ electron orbiting a ‘stellar’ nucleus.

Aside #3: A Black Hole that might spew out another universe might have that universe stillborn in that that universe may not in turn be able to give rise to internally created Black Holes and thus another generation of baby universes. Not all universes will of necessity have the same physics, physics that allow the creation of Black Holes, and so some universes will be eternal bachelors or spinsters.

Aside #4: Yet another interesting question is what happens to the two baby universes when and if their parent Black Holes merge, as most certainly can happen. That would seem to be a rather nasty scenario for inhabitants of either of the baby universes!

Now clearly this is all speculation, but then speculation, that “what if” scenario, is the bread-and-butter staple of science fiction, and how often has science fiction evolved into science fact? It’s an oft quoted saying, attributed to J. B. S. Haldane (1924) that “The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

A Voyage To A Black Hole: Part Two

Suicide missions are hardly unknown happenings, so presumably it wouldn’t be too hard to find a volunteer to take a long walk off a short pier and dive into the heart of a Black Hole. Well, let’s trade in the walk and the pier for a spaceship, with our suicidal pilot crewmember willing to boldly go. What might she expect? For that matter what might a chickenhearted outside observer expect to see?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Now for the speculation: Let us suppose that our suicidal voyager survives her voyage (curses, foiled again) and gets to play tourist. What will she see or will she see anything at all? Well, yes, she will – see that is. The event horizon is like a one-way mirror. Light can pass through the event horizon into the interior of the Black Hole, but light cannot pass from the interior of the Black Hole through the event horizon to be witnessed by an outside observer. Okay, let there be light, and there was light. Light is energy, so there’s energy inside a Black Hole. It’s also been shown that a Black Hole has entropy, or in other words a temperature. That too is energy. 

There’s matter (mass) inside a Black Hole – obviously, since there’s gravity. Now the big unknown is what kind of matter is that matter? We don’t know. Outside of a Black Hole matter exists in four states – solid, liquid, gas and plasma. The transition from one state of matter to another is called a phase change, as in ice to water to steam. One speculation is that the matter inside a Black Hole undergoes a phase change to something even more solid and denser than, well a dense solid.

We sort of observe this in a Neutron Star, a star extremely massive with extreme gravity, but just short of enough gravity to form an event horizon and turn into a Black Hole. Why is it called a Neutron Star? Well, the gravity is so great that the bits and pieces of the atom, electrons, neutrons and protons are squashed together into one big glob. The positive protons fuse with the negative electrons – these electric charges thus cancelling out – to make neutrons, hence join with the already neutral neutrons, so everything forms into just one huge glob of neutron soup, or a Neutron Star. Rapidly spinning Neutron Stars are also known as Pulsars.

Now if atoms lose all sense of identity, there is no atomic structure, no isotopes, no molecules, no elements, no compounds, no electrons and no protons, then I’d have to define that as a phase transition, but one we don’t witness on Earth. Given the even more extreme gravity inside a Black Hole, would that same phase transition to a neutron soup hold sway, or might there be another beyond that found in Neutron Stars? 

Neutrons are not fundamental particles. A glob of neutron soup is ultimately a glob of quark soup, as quark trios comprise the identity we call a neutron. Neutrons are actually composite particles. However, as quarks are fundamental particles, it’s unlikely they can be crushed or fused together. Electrons too are fundamental, but it is well known – to particle physicists at least – that an isolated neutron will in fairly quick-smart order decay to a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. Reactions are reversible so it is straightforward to create a neutron if the ingredients are brought together with sufficient energy.

Since a Neutron Star is just one coin short of a Black Hole dollar, the inside of a Black Hole could well be akin to a Neutron Star, only slightly more massive. One thing is certain IMHO, the interior will not be matter crushed down to the infinitely small (i.e. – zero volume); the interior will not be infinitely dense.

What lies at the heart of a Black Hole? The traditional answer is a ‘singularity’ – a point of (near) infinite density and (close to) zero volume, matter crushed down to the final, ultimate limit – or maybe not.

Start with a hunk of matter. Keep on keeping on adding more and more and more matter (mass) to it. Your original hunk grows larger, ever denser; its gravity swells in proportion. Finally it’s just a fraction away from achieving Black Hole status – meaning its gravity is so strong not even light can escape from its grasp. It’s that Neutron Star entity.

So you are a thimbleful of salt away from crossing the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary. You can (barely) still see your now super-sized hunk of Neutron Star stuff. Now toss in that final thimbleful of stuff onto the hunk. No light now reaches you – you’ve crossed the threshold or boundary and have got a Black Hole. But do you doubt that lurking on the other side of the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary, though unseen, you still have that super-sized hunk of stuff, not a singularity, but a really real solid 3-D hunk of stuff? Or, in other words, if the escape velocity of your hunk is 185,999 miles per second, no Black Hole and no singularity, but if it climbs to 186,001 miles per second you have a Black Hole and your hunk morphs into a singularity? A two mile a second difference makes that much difference? I don’t think so.

The other issue though is this really going to be a one-way trip for our boldly going voyager, dead or alive? One of the 64,000 $64,000 questions: Can you pour stuff down a Black Hole indefinitely, or does the Black Hole have a finite capacity and ultimately or eventually will have to spew stuff out the ‘other side’ (i.e. – producing a White Hole) as you keep pouring in more and more and more? I’d wager the conservation relationships and principles of physics and chemistry hold sway here. What goes in ultimately comes out. That doesn’t mean there’s not a temporary holding vessel. Or, in more human terms, you fill what’s empty; you empty what’s full, but in-between those two there’s storage in the stomach and the intestines; the lungs and the bladder.

Let’s adopt that point of view that what goes in, ultimately has to come out.

And so, our intrepid voyager might well exit elsewhere, maybe even elsewhen. The exit could be deemed the opposite of a Black Hole, or a White Hole; the passageway from Black Hole entrance to White Hole exit is that staple of sci-fi, albeit based in the realm of theoretical physics, the Wormhole. That the exit could be elsewhen is based on the theoretical ‘fact’ that a wormhole could be manipulated in such a manner as to allow for time travel. If that’s too far out for you, then a Wormhole elsewhere shouldn’t be. The apt analogy is with an apple. Mr. Worm can crawl around the outside of the apple to get from one side to the other, or Mr. Worm could take a shortcut and worm his way through the apple to get to the other side, or elsewhere.

Now the question arises, is there any observational evidence that White Holes and associated exits exist? Astronomers and cosmologists would argue in the negative, but I’m not convinced. What would be the signature of a White Hole? Well, it would be roughly stellar-sized, not planetary or galactic. It would be vomiting out one heck of a lot of stuff including lots of energy. Does the cosmos contain such beasties? Obvious candidates are quasars – quasi-stellar objects. Quasars are roughly stellar in size, but violently emitting the froth and bubble of nearly an entire galaxy worth of stuff and energy. The other high-energy astrophysical anomaly is gamma ray bursts. They occur way out back of beyond, in the outer fringes of the cosmos, which is all to the good for if a gamma ray burst happened in our stellar neck of the woods, the results would be akin to Kentucky Fried Humans! Still, we don’t know enough squat about them to be able to predict exactly where and when one will happen. So, astronomers who are into studying these cosmic critters are akin to sleeping fireman who never knows when they will be rudely awakened to respond to that rare five-alarm event.

So, in short, we have Black Holes that are your ultimate in garbage disposals; Quasars and gamma ray bursts that are your ultimate in, IMHO, recycling that garbage back into useful cosmic stuff – matter and energy. In other words, they are the exit to the Black Hole’s entrance. 

No matter. Either our boldly going voyager has snuffed it going into a Black Hole; is forever trapped in a Black Hole; or has been turned into a Kentucky Fried Human and vomited back out again via a White Hole quasar or gamma ray burst to become as one with the cosmos. We all started out as starstuff – and so shall we (or what’s left of our remains) all ultimately return to become starstuff again a millennia of millennia from now. 

Reality: Heads or Tails? Part Two

In science as well as in metaphysics there are often competing ideas about what’s real and what’s not real but might be real – an alternate reality not yet proven. Here are a baker’s dozen of examples of what we believe is a truism today, but could easily be shown to be mistaken tomorrow. In one case, the last, tomorrow is already here!

What was reality yesterday (a Flat Earth orbited by the Sun; Unicorns and Dragons, etc.) isn’t of necessity what is accepted reality today, and what’s reality today may not of necessity be reality tomorrow. Here are a few more possibilities for tomorrow-land.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

6) Black Holes (reality) vs. White Holes (alternate reality): Black Holes are known to exist, though once they were just a theoretical construct of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (and Einstein himself only thought of them as an abstract concept, not an actual thing). They were originally termed ‘dark stars’ though the later phrase Black Holes was proposed, and being catchy, took on with both the academic and general communities. Now Black Holes are objects with so much mass, and therefore so much gravity, that not even light (at 186,000 miles per second) can escape the clutches of such an object. You can’t see a Black Hole, hence the descriptive ‘black’. That’s the reality part. The alternative reality bit is the opposite of a Black Hole, obviously a White Hole. If a Black Hole sucks in stuff, a White Whole spews stuff out. The turning point is, can a Black Hole become so bloated with incoming stuff that it ultimately has to exit elsewhere?  One of the 64,000 $64,000 questions: Can you pour stuff down a Black Hole indefinitely, or does the Black Hole have a finite capacity and ultimately or eventually will have to spew stuff out the ‘other side’ (i.e. – producing a White Hole) as you keep pouring in more and more and more? I’d wager the conservation relationships and principles of physics and chemistry hold sway here. What goes in ultimately comes out. That doesn’t mean there’s not a temporary holding vessel. Or, in more human terms, you fill what’s empty; you empty what’s full, but in-between those two there’s storage in the stomach and the intestines; the lungs and the bladder.

7) You Exist Within Our Galaxy (reality) vs. The Universe Exists Within A Black Hole (alternate reality): Since you cannot escape from the jail cell within the prison we call the Universe; and since you could not escape from the inside of a Black Hole – another type of a jail cell within a prison – perhaps they are one and the same sort of prison. Perhaps not only do Black Holes exist inside the Universe but the Universe itself resides inside a Black Hole with perhaps no end of the inside-the-inside-the-inside in either direction. In a manner of speaking, that’s a Multiverse! Actually you can in theory escape this Universe by hopping down into a Black Hole, but if, and it’s a very big ‘but if’, you survive, you’ve just traded in one jail cell for another, or one maximum security prison for another.

8) Big Bang (reality) vs. Before the Big Bang (alternate reality): The standard cosmological model postulates based on observable evidence that our Universe began roughly 13.7 billion years ago as a Big Bang event that created all of matter, energy, time and space. The Universe was created out of nothing. There was no ‘before the Big Bang’ since the Big Bang started the universal clock ticking. Fortunately, for those who find such a scenario unsatisfactory, like me, there are alternative proposals that postulate, indeed require a ‘before the Big Bang’. But while the Big Bang rests on solid evidence, all ‘before the Big Bang’ proposals are highly theoretical and remain alternative realities. 

9) There’s Just One You (reality) vs. There’s Many of You (alternate reality): Even if you have an identical twin, that twin is not you. You are unique with a unique set of experiences and memories with individual brain chemistry and a hardwired neural network. Of all the people, who have ever lived, are living now, and who will exist in the future, you are unique – that’s a reality you and the world have to deal with; right? Maybe not; there are legit scenarios that allow for another you, even an infinite number of you. The most oft quoted possibility is if our Universe is infinite in extent and/or duration, another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. If our Universe is finite but part of an infinite set of universes – a Multiverse - another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. If the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, another you just isn’t a possibility or a probability, but mandatory. If one accepts the basic mantra of quantum mechanics which is anything that can happen, does happen then another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. If we exist in a simulated universe as virtual reality, and there are many copies of this piece of software in existence another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. At least the saving grace is that you’ll never have to meet yourself – oops, that might not be true either if time travel is ever realized!

10) Really Real Reality (reality) vs. Virtual Reality (alternate reality): You obviously believe that you are part and parcel of Really Real Reality (RRR). The world socks it to you; you do your best to sock it to the world! However, there are two forms of an alternate reality, or virtual reality, that you might be part and parcel of. Firstly, it comes as no surprise that you create versions of alternate/virtual reality all the time. If you stop and think about it, your dreams create virtual worlds and characters. As you dream up an alternate reality landscape, and animate it, perhaps you too and your landscape (what your worldview accepts as RRR) is a dream-world of someone or something else! Secondly, you’d be aware of computer simulations, software programs that also create virtual worlds and characters. You might be an active participant, if not creating same, then engaging with those programs, like playing video games. As you create and/or participate in an alternate reality animated landscape, perhaps you too and your landscape (what your worldview accepts as RRR) is an animated video game or simulated world of someone or something else! 

11) Free Will (reality) vs. No Free Will (alternate reality): You have free will. You absolutely know you have free will. But you can’t prove you have free will. Any action(s) you perform which you state exhibits your free will; well the ‘no free will’ counterargument is that you have no choice but to believe in your own free will. It’s an illusion which you have been pre-programmed to accept as given, just as a pocket calculator has no choice but to calculate that 2 + 3 = 5. But as long as you believe you have free will, well, there’s no harm done.

12) We Are the Proverbial It (reality) vs. ETI [ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence] Is Teeming Throughout the Cosmos (alternate reality): Despite all the decades of active SETI [Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence], including lots of computer crunch power at their command including SETI @ Home; despite over six decades of UFO investigation, both official and private; plus all manner of amateur insights into the possibility of ‘ancient astronauts’; and those thousands of books written on these subjects (plus essays/articles, blogs, TV shows, DVD documentaries, etc.) no ETI smoking gun – proof positive – has surfaced of their existence to the satisfaction of all and sundry. But tomorrow is another day.

13) Your World (reality) vs. Your Cyber-World (alternate reality): You of course exist in a four space-time dimensional reality. You were born into it; you live your life in it; you’ll die in it. However, recent advances in technology have given us the ways and means to disconnect from that reality for lengthy periods of time and voluntarily adopt a cyber-world reality for a large part of our time. Many people and you see them all the time on the bus, in the mall, at the dinner table, at a social gathering, walking the dog, first thing awake, last thing before sleep, ignoring to the best of their ability their real surroundings for their cyber-surroundings. Between their PCs and tablets and smart-phones and emails and Twitter and Facebook and texting, while totally immersed in their tiny little cyber-world, they are near totally oblivious to their immediate surroundings and the real world immediately in front of them, which is one reason you get ‘funny’ videos of people so engrossed in their cyber-world that they totally fail to observe their surroundings and fall down stairs or into ponds of water or walk in front of buses. Reality has a way of biting back!

Natural Philosophy: Some Random Thoughts

There’s nothing too controversial about the idea that other universes in a Multiverse could have differing laws, relationships and principles of physics than our own. It’s one way of explaining why our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe. If you have billions and billions of universes each with a unique or differing set of laws, relationships and principles of physics, well probability suggests that one universe should just right for life – a Goldilocks Universe. Since we can only exist inside a Goldilocks Universe, well that explains that. But what if the laws, relationships and principles of physics in our Universe changed over time, or over space, or both! Then it’s probably time to turn out the lights, shut and lock the lab door and go home. It’s time to find a new career. But amazingly, there is (controversial) evidence that that is just that. Physical constants aren’t. 

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If whatever powers-that-be are simulating our universe, then they could be simulating others as well – a simulated Multiverse! And each and every simulated universe of that Multiverse could have simulated parallel universes. That’s a simulated Megaverse!

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One of the 64,000 $64,000 questions: Can you pour stuff down a Black Hole indefinitely, or does the Black Hole have a finite capacity and ultimately or eventually will have to spew stuff out the ‘other side’ (i.e. – producing a White Hole) as you keep pouring in more and more and more? I’d wager the conservation relationships and principles of physics and chemistry hold sway here. What goes in ultimately comes out. That doesn’t mean there’s not a temporary holding vessel. Or, in more human terms, you fill what’s empty; you empty what’s full, but in-between those two there’s storage in the stomach and the intestines; the lungs and the bladder.

oooooOOOOOooooo

You are all no doubt well aware of the General Theory of Relativity which holds that light (in a pure vacuum) always travels at constant velocity (300,000 km/sec), no matter what frame of reference you are viewing that light in – totally contrary to experience and expectations, but true nevertheless. That translates into length and mass and rate-of-change (time) all being variables, variations depending on what frame of reference you are in. Light of course is one manifestation of the electromagnetic force. That suggests to me that magnetism must also propagate at 300,000 km/sec. Two north magnetic poles or one north and one south magnetic pole, suddenly brought into existence, 300,000 km apart, won’t feel any mutual repulsion or attraction respectfully until one-half of one second after-the-fact, when the two forces meet in the middle and start doing their thing.

But that constant speed of a force, must equally apply to gravity. If the Sun were to suddenly in a split of a split of a split second vanish, it would be eight minutes before Planet Earth would be rudderless, or rather orbitless. No matter what your frame of reference, you’d ‘see’ gravity propagate outwards at 300,000 km/sec. The same must apply to ‘dark energy’, that anti-gravity force. I imagine the same would apply to the propagation of the strong and the week nuclear force as well.

Of course one cannot turn on and turn off gravity (or the strong and weak nuclear forces) like you can a light (or radio, UV, IR, etc.) beam or magnetic field, which is a bit of a bummer in testing the relativistic properties of a gravity beam.

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Quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger had a lot of trouble accepting some of the weirder philosophical concepts inherent in quantum physics. Specifically, that something, a fundamental particle like an electron, could both be, and not be, at the same time – in a state of superposition – that was only resolved when an observation or measurement was made. Schrodinger decided to replace the electron with a cat-in-a-box that was in a superposition of states being both dead and alive at the same time, the resolution of either/or decided when an observer actually observed the cat-in-the-box.

Now my idea is to replace the cat-in-the-box with you-in-a-sealed-room in a 50/50 dead/alive state of superposition. To someone not in the room, you are both dead and alive at the same time – until they take a peek in your room and at you. The question is, you know perfectly well you are not both dead and alive at the same time; you are your own observer. Presumably the cat is its own observer, and by extension an electron is its own observer. But how can an electron be self-aware? 

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Gravity; it’s what holds you firmly to Terra Firma. If I ask you what holds you firmly to Terra Firma you’d answer “gravity”. But if then asked to explain exactly what it is and how it works you’d be stumped. Giving the Newtonian equations makes predictions but doesn’t give explanations.

However, there are two explanations for gravity if I read the textbooks correctly.

Gravity Is Just Another Force: Firstly, there are in this worldview four fundamental forces: the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Forces have accompanying elementary particles witch convey the force. In the case of the electromagnetic force, the particle is the photon. The particle associated with gravity has been dubbed the graviton. Unfortunately, it has never (to date) been detected. Now the central issue here is try as they might, physicists cannot unify the four forces into one whole, called a Theory of Everything or TOE*. Since everything should be related to everything else, gravity should be, if not a brother or sister to the other three force-related siblings, at least a kissing cousin. Alas, it’s an unrelated hermit that wants no ancestry with the other three.

Gravity Is Just the Geometry of Space-Time: The second is that mass ‘tells’ space-time how to warp, and warped space-time ‘tells’ mass how to move – seemingly experimentally verified more than several times over. The movement of mass in warped space-time is what we interpret as the ‘force of gravity’, but gravity is actually the actions of mass moving in space-time geometry. If gravity is just geometry and mass deviates from the straight and narrow path because lots of other mass has warped space-time from the flatland Great Plains to the peaks and valleys of the space-time Rockies, then there’s no apparent need or reason that I can see to unify gravity with the other forces and their particles. There is no graviton. If there is no causality link with the other three (quantum level) forces, there’s no need for a TOE. There’s no need to reconcile the 98 pound of weakling gravity with the Atlas physiques of electromagnetism, etc. 

Gravity is highly anomalous. Apart from the fact that gravity is the 98 pound weakling of all the forces (you can pull a paperclip up into the air with just a tiny magnet even though the entire Planet Earth’s gravity is tugging back); and that the graviton hasn’t been spotted anywhere, anytime, anyhow; and that TOE is a no-go; but lastly there are those cosmic twin anomalies, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

We can’t see, or even detect directly, 96% of the Universe! We have no idea what 96% of the Universe is composed of. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is. Both however have revealed themselves indirectly via their gravity (in the case of Dark Matter) or their antigravity (in the case of Dark Energy). Some of that ‘missing’ part of the Universe is matter of unknown composition, but like all good matter, has gravity. It’s the gravitational effect on matter we can see that gives the game away. Some more (way more) of that ‘missing’ part of the cosmos is Dark Energy which is that unknown stuff which is accelerating the expansion rate of the Universe and if that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is since by rights the expansion rate of the Universe should be decelerating under the force of gravity. The fact that it’s accelerating suggests that Dark Energy is a form of antigravity, a repulsive force driving things apart at ever faster and faster rates. Though antigravity is really outside the accepted realm of physics (though not sci-fi), there is a symmetrical parallel with the electromagnetic force, which is both attractive like gravity (north pole to south pole) and repulsive (north pole to north pole, or south pole to south pole).

So, gravitational anomalies abound.

*The exception is that the highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) String Theory, Superstring Theory or M-Theory can produce a TOE. The downside is that it takes a whole potful of highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) extra dimensions of which we have no awareness of and can’t (yet) detect. That’s just a bit too ad hoc for me, though many a theoretical physicist goes to sleep by counting their strings instead of their sheep.

Variations on a Theme Cosmological: Part One

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.

In the infinite beginning was the vacuum energy (a quantum state of energy and matter, even if the matter is virtual). The vacuum energy resided in space and time (or space-time, post relativity theory). Now why ‘in the infinite beginning’? It eliminates the awkward, nagging and very annoying philosophical question of ‘what came before that?’ Its neigh near impossible to avoid asking that because one just can’t come to terms with a finite beginning to everything. It’s obvious in a common sense sort of way that no matter how far back you go, something came before that.

From the vacuum energy (which again is a quantum phenomenon often termed vacuum or quantum fluctuations, the quantum jitters or quantum foam), at least one macro universe arose. This is theoretically possible (see references at the end) although I strongly suspect it has an awful lot to do with the quantum mantra that ‘if it’s not forbidden, it’s compulsory’ – at least if you’re willing to wait long enough. Of course maybe more than one universe arose from the vacuum energy. The more the merrier!

Once formed, a macro universe is inherently unstable and will have to either expand (under at least the influence of ‘dark energy’) or contract (under the influence of gravity).

Roughly 13.7 billion years ago, one such macro universe experienced a runaway contraction, which terminated in a Big Crunch. All the matter and energy of that universe converged and contracted into a smaller and smaller volume, eventually forming the Mother of all Black Holes via the merging of existing smaller Black Holes and other matter and energy being sucked in to same – eventually there would be no escape; a single massive Black Hole is the end product of a Big Crunch.

That also means that the Mother of all Black Holes contained the Mother of all Singularities – the heart and centre of all Black Holes.

The Mother of all Singularities was a macro object, contrary to popular perception. As it’s impossible to have any object with zero volume and infinite density, a Singularity must have finite volume and finite density. As more and more stuffs get added to the Black Hole, and thus to its Singularity, the density keeps rising. But, it eventually hits its finite limit and as stuffs continue to be added, the density remains at its limit, and volume increases instead. Eventually that volume exceeds the size of the quantum realm. Because this Big Crunch Mother of all Singularities contained the contents of, the sum total of, an entire universe, it was of necessity of monster size. I don’t know how large, but I’ll guesstimate somewhere in the range of a stellar to galactic sized object

Because matter/energy influence space-time, and vice versa (matter ‘tells’ space how to warp; space ‘tells’ matter how to move – i.e. General Relativity), such a massive macro monster of a Singularity would warp space-time, and in such a brief time, to such an extent that all space-time in the region would be unstable, as would be the Singularity (think radioactive particle decay here as an analogy).  The volatile and unstable distortion of space, time, matter and energy resulted in the dead guts of the former universe, contents residing in the Mother of all Singularities, ‘decaying’ or ‘exploding’ or just plain spewing the content of its guts back out again, in a reverse of the Big Crunch. That event we of course now call the Big Bang; the ‘object’ doing the spewing we can call, for lack of a better phrase, a ‘White Hole’. Thus we have the previous universe’s Big Crunch, which created the ultimate Black Hole, massive distortion or warping of space-time, hence a spewing White Hole, and our Big Bang. General Relativity allows for or permits such a scenario.

If anything unfortunately finds itself on a one-way journey down a Black Hole, ultimately ending up as part of that Hole’s Singularity, then apart from the property of mass, all other distinguishing features, colour, texture, chemical composition, shape, hardness, physical state (solid, liquid, gas or plasma), etc. will be crushed out of it and lost forever. What remains wouldn’t look anything like what went in. What remains of a TV set would look the same as the remains of a human being! A Singularity is the ultimate crusher!

Thus, a Singularity (not than anyone has ever seen one) would have to be nearly featureless, a uniform a blob of stuff as you can imagine. A Singularity certainly has mass, volume, and would have a perfectly spherical shape, temperature, perhaps electric charge, maybe rotation as well, but otherwise would just be a homogenous sameness through and through. In fact, there are those who suggest that a Singularity represents a new state of matter – a phase transition from the states we know to something else entirely. For example, if you had a star made of matter, and another identical star in every way except it was composed of antimatter, and the two stars merged, you’d have one big Ka-Boom! You’d end up with the total annihilation of matter into pure energy. Now, say the matter star, once its fuel ran out, collapsed under gravity into a Black Hole. Now say the antimatter star, once its fuel ran out, collapsed under gravity into a Black Hole. Now merge the matter Black Hole with the antimatter Black Hole. What do you get? Not a Ka-Boom, but a much larger Black Hole with twice the mass! Be that as it may, I notice that a homogenous Singularity mirrors our homogenous Universe.

Our observable universe appears to be both isotropic (it pretty much looks the same from any given point) and homogeneous (the universe is uniform no matter where you go). Collectively, these facets are known as the Cosmological Principle. In actual fact however, the observable universe isn’t really ultra homogeneous – it’s really sort of lumpy, what with all those planets, stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc. However, the lumpiness is on a pretty small scale relative to the size of the observable universe. It’s akin to a smooth beach of sand. Only on close examination, on the micro scale is the beach lumpy, in that you’re likely to find shells and pebbles that also comprise the beach and which are lumpy.

Currently, the concept of ‘inflation’ is used to explain why the Universe is so smooth and uniform, akin to blowing up a balloon smoothes out its wrinkles. Quantum fluctuations at the time of inflation, which would have occurred with micro-seconds of the Big Bang, accounts for the tiny variations in the Universe’s properties – a slight lumpiness in the distribution of matter, slight (and I do mean slight) differences in background temperature (the cosmic microwave background radiation), and so on.

But, if our overall bland, homogenous, isotropic Universe arose from an overall bland, homogenous, isotropic, one-kind-of-stuff parent Singularity, then who needs inflation to account for the overall smooth appearance of our Universe?  Of course, again, it’s not 100% smooth because random quantum fluctuations operated even back then (13.7 billion years ago) and in those first few micro-seconds of the Big Bang event. So the Universe is indeed a little bit variable and a little bit lumpy, which is just as well, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

One final bit, probably only part of our parent Singularity accounts for our observable universe. The rest of said Singularity accounts for that part of our entire Universe that we can’t observe. What the ratio between observable and total is, I know not, but why do I have this feeling that what we observe is only a tiny fraction of all that’s out there!

The question arises that if our Universe originated from another universe’s singularity, and that in our Universe singularities form the centre of Black Holes (of all sizes), then could these singularities, if they became large enough and unstable enough (via the extreme warping of space-time), ultimately form new baby universes in their own right?

Where all this differs from the standard cosmological (Big Bang) model is: 1) The Big Bang wasn’t a micro (quantum realm) event; 2) the Big Bang event occurred in existing space and time instead of creating space and time; and 3) there was therefore a ‘before the Big Bang’, but alas, a ‘before’ probably forever beyond our capabilities of directly knowing the fine print.  With respect to 2) immediately above, is there any observation that has been, or can be made, that can distinguish between space expanding (as a result of the Big Bang having created space in the first instance) and expanding space carrying matter/energy along for the ride (the standard spiel), vis-à-vis matter/energy moving through space as the result of a Big Bang explosion (or spewing event) in pre-existing space? The answer is “no”.

How is this process maintained indefinitely, such that there not only was no beginning, but no end either? I mean if all universes expand forever, things ultimately come to an apparent sticky end. Well, assuming a universe doesn’t have a sufficient mass/energy density to cause the expansion to slow down, stop, reverse, and collapse back to a Big Crunch (like ours), then sooner or later, part of an ever expanding universe will intersect with part of another ever expanding universe (if Mother Nature can produce one universe, she can produce more than one universe). The resulting local increase in mass/energy density due to that intersection could be enough to trigger that area to undergo a gravitational collapse with a local Big Crunch the ultimate result, resulting in the production of a new universe – which may, or may itself expand indefinitely or may collapse into another Big Crunch scenario.

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

To be continued…