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, color, 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!
To be continued...
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