Cosmology: In the Beginning vs. Once Upon A Time: Part One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUR ISLAND UNIVERSE

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

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

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

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

THE ORIGIN OF OUR UNIVERSE: A BIG BANG

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

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

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

To be continued…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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