The following ideas are primarily mine alone, the good, the bad and the ugly, albeit based on and influenced by reading multi volumes of tomes in modern cosmology. However, I’m also quite sure that numerous others have quite independently thought somewhat similar, if not exact, thoughts as well. Therefore, I’ll take no credit for being right, if I don’t get blamed for being wrong!
CONCLUSIONS (Part Two)
Okay, here are the answers (well, my answers anyway)!
4) The Origin and Fate of Our Universe - Is Our Universe Open or Closed? – Heat Death or Big Crunch? I opt for death by Big Crunch despite all the evidence currently against it! I reason as follows – we know matter can create energy. The reverse is also possible – energy can create matter. And thus the all pervasive, all surrounding, vacuum energy, seething with quantum uncertainty (albeit certain activity), will now and again produce particles, thus reducing the overall energy of the vacuum. This energy debt must eventually be repaid, so said particles usually decay (annihilate actually) back into pure energy and rejoin the vacuum pretty quick-smart. But, it’s possible that those particles, could, by chance, evolve into an entire universe. Particles, if they exist long enough, will be subjected to all manner of quantum effects and thus evolve into a universe instead of being immediately reabsorbed back into the energy vacuum. The energy debt however still must be eventually repaid, but who’s to say how quickly that is required? So, ultimately, in order to repay that energy debt, our Universe will need to ultimately collapse (undergo Big Crunch) back into the Superverse energy vacuum from which it originally came and pay the energy debt. The Universe (our Universe) begins and ends as pure energy – energy borrowed from the vacuum; energy returned to the vacuum. How exactly that Big Crunch is going to come about I know not, I’m just convinced it will happen.
So, why aren’t new universes being created from scratch in our backyards (where the energy vacuum holds sway as it does everywhere)? Because, for any given tiny area (like your backyard), under the relatively low probabilities of the exact circumstances coming together just so, it’s going to take trillions of years for it to happen. But, given the vast acreage of the Superverse, new universes probably pop into (and out of) existence on a fairly regular basis. It’s like you are fairly unlikely to have a meteor land in your backyard tomorrow, but somewhere tomorrow a meteor is likely to hit our planet.
Now, what if the vacuum energy (Superverse) can not produce a universe? Well, the next best (second) option I suggest is the black hole as universal mum idea. That is, the extreme conditions that produce a black hole in one universe ends up producing a new universe in a different place (obviously), maybe in a different time. Our black hole connects us to that new universe, but no physicist would advise you to make the trip! At least this origin-of-a-universe doesn’t rely on a Big Crunch ending.
The third best option is the Big Crunch of one universe producing the Big Bang of the next, but from observations, the prospect of a Big Crunch is dicey at best. But, I like to give the prospect of a Big Crunch the benefit of the doubt. Further, there’s nothing to say that option two, black holes, couldn’t produce a baby universe that would end up cyclic – Big Bang – expansion – contraction – Big Crunch – Big Bang, etc. Reproduction and reincarnation!
Lastly, albeit unlikely in the extreme yet I’ve sure sci-fi writers have a ball with this idea, is that advanced E.T. could manufacture a universe using the laws of physics, especially quantum physics, to do so. If nature can manufacture a universe, could not intelligence also manufacture a universe? Call it the mother of all engineering achievements. Now this differs from God creating universes, in that presumably God knows He/She/It can do so and knows the outcome to the Nth degree, but to E.T., this is just a scientific experiment. Whether an E.T. created universe would take on a life and evolution of its own, who knows? Now you’d think that creating a rapidly expanding universe in the laboratory would end up destroying said lab and surroundings. Of course maybe the physics of baby universe creation dictates that the universe forms elsewhere and/or elsewhen! One other scenario is that once universe creation becomes so routine as to end up being part and parcel of the science lab curricula at E.T. Junior High School, then it’s going to be universes galore – maybe that why we have a Multiverse!
5) Our Universe/Multiverse – Finite or Infinite in Time? The philosophical answer here is ‘infinite’. One can never get away from the question “Well that’s fine, but what happened before that?”
6) To Quantum or Not to Quantum the Big Bang? Here I opt for the Big Bang as a non-quantum event. I just can’t figure out how you can cram the entire contents of our Universe into a space smaller than an atom. In any event, if the point of origin of the Big Bang were a singularity, then because singularities can’t have zero dimensions and infinite density – that just makes no sense at all – then said singularity could have been large enough to exceed the volumes commonly associated with quantum physics.
7) Are the Laws of Physics the Same or Different in Various Universes? The answer here is unknown and probably unknowable. However, I suspect that there is only one type of physics possible – as Einstein is quoted, ‘did God have any choice in the matter?’ – or maybe not. Anyway, my reasoning is that assuming that all universes arise from a common cause, say the Superverse vacuum energy or via Lee Smolin’s black holes as universe generators, or the budding off of universes via chaotic/eternal inflation, with no evidence to the contrary, it’s probably more logical to suspect that only one type of physics exists, and each universe will be the same – physics wise. But, what if you introduce extraterrestrial intelligence into the picture? Maybe, just maybe, intelligence advanced enough to create universes, may be intelligent enough to tweak the laws of physics and alter them. That certainly would be easy enough to do if you created computer software that simulated universes, each software package having different physics programmed in! So, maybe it’s just as well to fence sit on this issue.
8) Is our Universe real or simulated? The odds overwhelmingly favor our reality as being a simulated one. If that could be proved, it would also be proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. If all terrestrial life is simulated, who else is left to simulate us but extraterrestrials? I just bet we’re some alien’s Ph D thesis. Of course this is a fairly unpalatable theory, so I’ll just conclude here that the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of my being wrong.
Further readings in cosmology:
Barrow, John D.; The Book of Universes; The Bodley Head, London
Burbidge, Geoffrey & Narlikar, Jayant V.; Facts and Speculations in Cosmology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Carr, Bernard (Editor); Universe or Multiverse?; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Chown, Marcus; Afterglow of Creation: Decoding the Message from the Beginning of Time; Faber and Faber, London
Chown, Marcus; The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead: Dispatches from the Frontline of Science; Faber and Faber, London
Clegg, Brian; Before the Big Bang: The Prehistory of Our Universe; St. Martin’s Press, New York
Davidson, Keay & Smoot, George; Wrinkles in Time: The Imprint of Creation; Little, Brown and Company, London
Davies, Paul; The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?; Allen Lane , London ; 2006:
Gilmore, Robert; Once Upon A Universe: Not-So-Grimm Tales of Cosmology; Copernicus Books, New York
Goldsmith, Donald; The Runaway Universe: The Race to Find the Future of the Cosmos; Basic Books, New York
Gribbin, John; In Search of the Multiverse; Allen Lane , London ; 2009:
Guth, Alan H.; The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for A New Theory of Cosmic Origins; Vintage, London
Hawking, Stephen; A Brief History of Time; Bantam Books, New York
Hawking, Stephen & Mlodinow, Leonard; A Briefer History of Time; Bantam Press, London
Hooper, Dan; Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe’s Missing Mass and Energy; Smithsonian Books, New York
Kaku, Michio; Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos; Penguin Books, London
Krauss, Lawrence M.; Quintessence: The Mystery of Missing Mass in the Universe; Vintage, London
Lemonick, Michael D.; Echo of the Big Bang; Princeton University Press, Princeton , New Jersey
Lemonick, Michael D.; The Light at the Edge of the Universe: Leading Cosmologists on the Brink of a Scientific Revolution; Villard Books, New York
Leslie, John (Editor); Modern Cosmology & Philosophy; Prometheus Books, Amherst , New York
Liddle, Andrew & Loveday, Jon; The Oxford Companion to Cosmology; Oxford University Press, Oxford
Manly, Steven; Visions of the Multiverse; New Page Books, Pompton Plains , New Jersey
Moring, Gary F.; The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Theories of the Universe; Alpha Books, New York
Panek, Richard; The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality; Oneworld, Oxford
Rees, Martin; Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others; Free Press, London
Silk, Joseph; On the Shores of the Unknown: A Short History of the Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Silk, Joseph; The Infinite Cosmos: Questions from the Frontiers of Cosmology; Oxford University Press, Oxford
Singh, Simon; Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need to Know About It; Harper Perennial, London
Smolin, Lee; The Life of the Cosmos; Oxford University Press, New York
Steinhardt, Paul J. & Turok, Neil; Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang; Phoenix , London
Vilenkin, Alex; Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes; Hill & Wang , New York
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