Continued from yesterday’s blog…
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.
THE CENTER OF THINGS
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
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.
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