The Russell Stannard Questions: Cosmology

There are many Big Questions in science, many of which go back to the ancients, even back into prehistory in all probability. One of the best modern set I’ve found recently were sidebars in a book by Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, Russell Stannard. These are my answers, thoughts and commentary to those Big Questions. Many readers might have ‘fun’ trying to come to terms with these in their own way based on their own worldview.

These are the Russell Stannard Questions* on or about cosmology:

Q. How close to the instant of the Big Bang are we likely to be able to probe?

A. We can currently probe or observe no farther back than 380,000 years post Big Bang because the cosmos was too opaque from the point of the Big Bang to roughly that point in time, 380,000 years into the post Big Bang era. However, gravity waves from the Big Bang event could take us to Ground Zero in theory. The problem is in the detection of gravity waves – in theory yes; in terms of actual observation (to date), no. Of course that hasn’t stopped theorists from going back to even less than nanoseconds post Big Bang by running the expanding universe film backwards to the greatest extreme possible, thus postulating and assuming a quantum sized object was at the heart of the Big Bang. Theorists have extrapolated back way beyond what is reasonable or even logical IMHO given so many unknowns. Theory should cease where currently observations cease – 380,000 post Big Bang. 

Q. Can we be sure that inflation took place?

A. No, because we weren’t there! Seriously, we have no direct observational evidence of inflation, only indirect evidence that a theory or theories of inflation can explain some observations (or lack of observations, like where are the monopoles). This reminds me of those epicycles once postulated to explain observations related to the motions of the planets in the night skies. Those epicycles eventually bit the dust; inflation might too. 

Q. If so, how are we to choose which type of inflation it was?

A. Pick a card, any card! Whatever theory of inflation best matches the observations and best conforms to what is known about the laws, relationships and principles of physics goes to the head of the class. 

Q. Was there a singularity at the instant of the Big Bang?

A. No, there was no singularity associated with the Big Bang event. A singularity in common usage by physicists implies a region of space that has zero volume and infinite density. Sometimes I think these eggheads need to observe the real world where volumes and densities are finite. In any event, the density at the point in existing space where the Big Bang happened had to be less than that of a Black Hole, otherwise there would be no ‘bang’. That in turn implies the Big Bang was a macro event, something that happened way outside the realm of quantum physics.   

Q. Does it make sense to enquire into the cause of the Big Bang?

A. Yes, absolutely! There had to have been a cause, physical or software, and it is quite legit to ask what that cause was and try to answer the question. Of course I never said that would be easy.

Q. Are there universes other than our own?

A. If you reject the supernatural and the software and coincidence, then you are left with the multiverse scenario to explain why we are here. We are in the one successful universe that produced that word-for-word typing of “Hamlet” by those millions of monkeys.

Q. What is the nature of dark matter?

A. Dark matter doesn’t actually exist. It is inferred only because the fallible Supreme Programmer made an ‘oops’ when programming the minimum required for the cosmic background wallpaper in our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.

Q. How are we to account for the observed value of the dark energy?

A. There is only ‘dark energy’ if the Universe is really accelerating when it comes to the expansion rate of the Universe. Cosmologists had to invent some sort of explanation for this anomalous observation, so why not call it ‘dark energy’ even if they haven’t the foggiest idea what it actually is. Now you know, and I know, that the Universe cannot be expanding at an ever accelerating rate due to that little factor we all acknowledge called gravity. Gravity exists; so-called ‘dark energy’ is theoretical, ad hoc, an epicycle and iffy at best. An accelerating Universe is like your car going uphill at an ever faster and faster rate without you putting the pedal to the metal. I’m reasonably certain that what has been interpreted as the expansion rate of the Universe accelerating has some other explanation. Perhaps not all type 1A supernovae are really peas-in-a-pod and thus are not the standard candles we think they are. Perhaps the velocity of light isn’t a constant after all and changes over cosmic time. That would throw one heck of a monkey wrench into the scenario. So, ‘dark energy’ doesn’t have a value since the Universe isn’t really accelerating. If, however, the [Simulated] Universe really is accelerating, then that’s obvious evidence for our Supreme Programmer screwing up the cosmic background wallpaper software. It’s just an ‘oops’, an oversight in overlooking the consequences of programming this variable at this value instead of some other variable at some other variable.

Q. Does the density of the dark energy remain constant with time?

A. There is no ‘dark energy’ IMHO so the question has no relevance. However, if the value or density of the alleged ‘dark energy’ is allowed to vary over cosmic time, then one could just about explain any observation relating to any value of the expansion rate of the Universe.

Q. Is there a connection between today’s repulsion of the galaxy clusters and the period of inflation?

A. If there was such an animal as inflation that happened quick-smart and cheek-by-jowl with the Big Bang event, well some force or other had to be responsible for blowing up that cosmic balloon. Fast forward to today and we see galactic clusters moving away from each other as if each had a bad case of B.O. Again, there must be some force acting on these clusters repelling them. I though conventional wisdom put that down to the so-called ‘dark energy’ but if there really is a ‘dark energy’ and if there really was a repulsive force that drove what we allege was cosmic inflation, it might be odd if the two repulsive forces in question didn’t share some sort of physics ancestry assuming they aren’t exact clones.

Q. Is the universe infinite in size, and if so, what exactly does that mean?

A. The universe is infinite in size solely on the philosophical grounds that one can always ask the question ‘what is beyond’ this barrier or at right angles to where I am. There always is a beyond, even if you have to postulate a higher dimension to get there, as it inhabitants of 2-D Flatland can escape by going into the third (higher) dimension that’s so familiar to us. In the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe scenario, well we’ve probably all seen computer/video games that have a wraparound feature. Something goes off the screen to the right or at the top and reappears at the left or at the bottom. That’s an infinite loop. To the inhabitants, it’s an infinite size where you can go round and round the mulberry bush for all eternity.

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*The following questions were taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.



Big Bang Blunders

If you read the Standard Model of Creation Cosmology (the Big Bang event), it reads an awful like the first few verses of Genesis. While I’m sure that is just a coincidence, neither scenario as given is a satisfactory explanation, for vastly different reasons. Here I tackle the physical ones, not the supernatural ones.  

In “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the White Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast. Exactly what those impossible things were is not stated – so here’s one possibility that reside in the land of cosmological physics.

The Big Bang event is no doubt a concept that nearly everyone has heard about, and swallowed hook, line and cosmological sinker because scientists present this creation of the Universe scenario as fact. It’s not fact; just the most viable theory of many theories and it has serious flaws. The accepted theoretical account of the creation or event that kick-started our Universe off not only has that event a something that created all of matter and energy, but all of time and space as well, and this creation event, to boot, all took place in a volume less than that of a pinhead (something in the realm of the quantum) and for no apparent reason at all. First there was nothing; then there was something. Wow!

Astronomers observe the universe – obviously. At best observations that support the Big Bang event are indirect being made some 13.7 billion years after-the-fact. Those indirect observations that provide evidence for the Big Bang event are the fact that the Universe is expanding (galactic red-shifts); the Universe has a temperature – the remnants from the hot Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) and the amounts and ratio of hydrogen to helium. In reality there are no direct observations as nobody was present at Ground Zero all those billions of years ago.

The galactic red-shift observation boils down to the fact that nearly all galaxies are moving away from each other and the distances between them are in relation to their velocities such that galaxies moving at X velocity will be Y distance apart; galaxies that are 2X velocities will be 2Y distances apart and so on. Translated, it’s what you would expect to see with respect to all the bits and pieces flying off on an exploding stick of dynamite. Thus we have an expanding Universe, and, by running the ‘film’ or the clock backwards, the Universe will have come to a ‘point’ roughly 13.7 billion years ago.

The detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (a cosmic temperature detectable in part as static or hiss on your TV set when tuned between stations) was in accordance with theoretical predictions if the cosmos started out as an extremely hot explosion and slowly cooled down as the Universe expanded.

Lastly, when one observes and calculates the relative abundance of hydrogen and helium in the Universe, the two simplest of elements, that ratio is what you’d expect given known interactions part and parcel of particle physics under the extremes of temperature and pressure that would be expected in a high temperature explosion.

So, the Big Bang gets a heads up. Things are looking good. But, and there’s always a ‘but’! There are immediately several issues with respect to this cosmic ‘explosion’ termed the Big Bang event. There are really a couple, well more than just a couple, of anomalies present in the standard Big Bang (standard cosmological model) account.

. The ‘bang’ wasn’t ‘big’ since cosmologists choose to run the clock back as far as they can and thus cram the entire Universe back into a volume less than that of a pinhead*. It’s absurd in the extreme to believe that our entire Universe – everything – could be squeezed into a volume of atomic dimensions.

Repeat - the first nanosecond of creation had the contents of what would become our observable Universe crammed into a volume less than a pinhead. Bull! If you could squeeze the contents of the observable Universe down into a pinhead’s volume, you’d end up with the Mother of all Black Holes from which nothing would escape. Therefore there would be no Big Bang and thus our Universe would not have been brought into existence. You have a violation of pure common sense. Common sense tells you that you can not stuff the contents of the entire Universe into the realm of the quantum, something actually way less in volume in fact than a pinhead. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is!

Another anomaly is that the Big Bang event created time itself. Cosmologists say the Big Bang event created time but without any explanation or recipe given as to how this quasi-Biblical miracle was accomplished. The creation of time can’t even be done in theory, far less in actual practice. Pull the left leg!

Related, the Big Bang event allegedly created space itself. The Big Bang event created space but yet again without any explanation or recipe being given by cosmologists for that either. Creating space too is beyond the theoretical limits of modern physics and certainly cannot be duplicated in the laboratory. You cannot create a something like matter and energy within a zero volume of space which would have been the situation at Time = Zero. Therefore the Big Bang event did not create space. It happened in existing space. That space was somehow created; well that’s another quasi-Biblical miracle. Now you can pull the right leg!

Then there are those violations in our dearly beloved conservation laws. First there was nothing; then there was something. That means the Big Bang event created both matter and energy out of less than thin ‘air’. How the Big Bang created matter and energy, again, without any explanation or recipe given, is another quasi-Biblical miracle. Do these constant ‘this is what happened though we’re lacking the nitty-gritty details’ by cosmologists, as in giving actual putting-cards-on-the-table explanations, surprise you? It should if cosmologists were really fair dinkum about the bovine fertilizer they pontificate. Perhaps they literally believe in the Biblical account of Genesis but like to disguise this with scientific mumbo-jumbo. Anyway, they pontificate that there was a violation of the laws that regulate the conservation of matter and energy. That’s also a free lunch, which is one of those impossible concepts the White Queen believes in before breakfast.

IMHO it’s impossible to create from scratch matter and energy. It’s a violation of the basic physics drummed into every high school science student – “matter (and energy) can neither be created nor destroyed but only changed in form”.

Related, we have an absolute violation in causality. Apparently the creation of the Universe (the Big Bang event) happened for absolutely no rhyme or reason at all. That means there was no first cause attributable for the effect that was Big Bang event. Does that strike anyone besides me as odd, as in fact absolutely impossible? Lack of causality is another of those impossible concepts the White Queen believes in before breakfast.

IMHO, causality demands that a cause creates an effect – the Big Bang was an effect, something caused it, and that something could only have preceded it in time. Therefore the Big Bang did not, could not, create time (as noted above). The Big Bang happened while the clock was already ticking.

Lastly, no energy source for the ‘bang’ is given and you’d think that it would take a hell of a lot of energy to give some serious expansion oomph to something as massive as the Universe. I’ve often read that apparently no energy source was actually necessary (because the Universe is energy neutral – it has as much positive energy as negative energy), which I find more than slightly odd.

My take on this can of worms is that the Big Bang was a macro event that happened in existing space and time. There was a before-the-Big-Bang, which for the time being, is out of observable reach – but then too the Big Bang itself can be ‘seen’ no farther back than roughly 380,000 years after-the-fact. The universe is indeed expanding, but it is expanding through existing space. Space itself is not expanding. In fact, there is no observational experiment that can be made that can distinguish between the two scenarios. 

So, yes there was a Big Bang event, but there is a lot of associated quasi-Biblical baggage which is totally impossible to support by anything approaching what’s taught in Logic 101.  

* I could easily blow up a balloon, and you could easily film it, and from that calculate the expansion rate of the balloon. You could then run the clock or the film and the associated equation backwards. However, would you be justified in extrapolating that backwards shrinking balloon scenario to the point where the balloon was the size of an atom? I think not. Yet that’s exactly what Big Bang cosmologists do, without any justification.



Before The Big Bang

Once upon a time, or was it in the beginning, there was a Big Bang and thus was born what we now call our expanding Universe – expanding because really Big Bangs are associated with explosive events and explosive events hurl out stuff hither and yon. But while there’s little dispute about the Big Bang event, the central question is, was it an ‘in the beginning’ event, or more akin to a ‘once upon a time’ event? If the latter, then it’s reasonable to suggest there was a prior existence to that ‘once upon a time’ event. 

I’ve gone on and on about how there must have been a ‘before-the-Big-Bang’, that the Big Bang event 13.7 billion years ago wasn’t the first cause. That’s because no effect (in this case that Big Bang event) can be the cause of itself. Cause is external to, separate and apart, and prior to the effect. Now it’s time to explore some actual before-the-Big-Bang scenarios even though there are still, even the majority, of cosmologists who suggest that speaking of a before-the-Big-Bang is akin to speaking of what’s further down from the centre of the Earth, or what’s north of the North Pole. 

Astronomers can’t see deeper into the history of our Universe than roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang event. Until then, the entire Universe was still too opaque. It’s like the Sun being too opaque such that we can’t see beneath the visible surface all the way down to the core. So it’s obvious that if astronomers can’t see post the Big Bang to the tune of some 380,000 years on, they can’t see before-the-Big-Bang. However, I’m quite certain there was a before-the-Big-Bang and that our Big Bang event was just one local cosmic pop in a cosmic ocean of bursting Champaign bubbles.

To understand the Big Bang event one needs to understand (as best as one can) what transpired just before the Big Bang event. And for reasons already outlined, what happened before exists in the realm of scientific speculation.

First cab off the rank, here’s a brief explanation why there has to be a before-the-Big-Bang. The Big Bang event did not, could not, create time. Although astronomers suggest just that, when it comes to actually giving the recipe for cooking up a batch of time, our astronomical chefs’ duck back into the pantry. So, IMHO, time already existed at the moment that the Big Bang went ‘bang’. The Big Bang could only happen in time if time already existed, which means that time existed prior to the Big Bang in order for the Big Bang to ‘bang’ in or at the time it ‘banged’.

As an aside, if our Big Bang wasn’t a first cause, then one is hard pressed to say there ever was a first cause for reasons exactly similar to why our Big Bang wasn’t the first cause. There always was a ‘before’ for whatever first cause you wish to postulate, therefore your first cause wasn’t a first cause at all. The regression extends back infinitely. If the cosmos extends back infinitely, it stands equally to reason that the expanding cosmos will extend for all future infinity – for all eternity. As a theological aside, that eliminates the need for a creator god. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating that if you have a timeless, existing for all eternity, creator God who created the Universe, why not eliminate the middleman (God) and postulate a timeless, existing for all eternity, Universe? By the way, a similar argument can be made for space. Anyway, back to the before-the-Big-Bang. 

One aspect that’s important from the get-go is that one needs to avoid the trap into thinking that the before-the-Big-Bang to Big Bang transition resulted in something quantum sized, like a singularity, at that point of inside-out transition. There just is no way IMHO one can take the contents of our entire Universe and squeeze that down into a size that would make a pinhead look massive in comparison. In addition, the laws of physics break down at such a scale since there is no adequate theory of quantum gravity. You’d require such a theory since 1) you’re postulating a quantum sized object, and 2) because the entire Universe makes for a lot of gravity, that’s a lot of gravity in an extremely tiny space. Since it can’t be done (and thousands have tried to merge quantum physics with general relativity (gravity), it’s best to bypass that can of worms entirely, if possible. 

When you think of bangs today, big or otherwise, it’s usually by something that’s been sitting around for a spell just waiting for a triggering device like an about to be blown tire; about to be popped balloon; about to be exploded stick of dynamite, nuclear bomb, or supernova, etc. So, maybe our before-the-Big-Bang was akin to a giant firecracker just waiting for some before-the-Big-Bang happening to light the fuse. The one scenario that fits that bill is the Ekpyrotic Universe which basically states that there exists a minimum of two 3-D universes each existing in a higher dimensional space. That means the two universes don’t actually see each other since photons can’t pass through that higher dimension. However, gravity can pass through the higher dimension so the two universes can feel each other Thus, these two universes mutually attract under gravity, collide (our Big Bang and equally their Big Bang), and bounce apart – rebound. That process repeats at vastly lengthy intervals as gravity draws them together, again, and again and again (more Big Bangs) and then each rebounds, again and again and again.  

The closest celestial firecracker we have is a supernova. Unfortunately, even the mother of all supernovas isn’t quite in the same league as the Big Bang event. It’s like pitting the Little Leagues against the Big Leagues.

A more theoretical firecracker might be the mother of all Black Holes which at some point reaches and exceeds bursting point vomiting out in reverse order its contents. That theoretical object is a White Hole, like perhaps a quasar (quasi-stellar object). Quasars spew out lots and lots and lots of stuff and energy all from a stellar-sized object. But that scenario too falls short of the amount of stuff comprising our Universe. It seems only the stuff of another universe could account for the amount of stuff that was ‘created’ to make our Universe. The one fly in the ointment here is that a singularity might lay at the heart and soul and centre of any proposed Black Hole and I wish to avoid that can of worms as noted above.  

The other kind of ‘bang’ expansion is say, using as an analogy, traffic approaching and merging at a four-way intersection. That’s the contraction bit. After the traffic lights change, the traffic is free to go on its way. That’s the expansion bit. There’s no real ‘bang’ per say. In other words, the Big Bang was the transition of space turning itself inside-out as it were. Either you had the collapse of a previous universe that went through that four-way intersection, or something akin, like a Black Hole that’s vomited up its contents in the form of a White Hole, sort of like post Xmas sale shoppers rushing the external department store doors and then being ‘vomited’ out the inside of those department store doors and expanding into and throughout the store.

The more logical of the two scenarios is the latter. That’s because we know that any universe is inherently unstable. You just can’t have a perfectly still and static universe if for no other reason than gravity will pull all the flotsam and jetsam together, or in other words, a contracting universe is viable and likely.

The fly in that ointment is that the alternative, an ever expanding universe is also viable and likely if the oomph force that caused the initial expansion is stronger than gravity’s grabbing force.  

We can garner some insight as to whether the immediately pre-Big Bang era was hot or cold. If the Big Bang was an in-place explosion, well most explosions involve giving off heat, be it sodium placed in water (ka-boom), a firecracker (ka-boom), an atomic bomb (ka-boom) or a supernovae (ka-boom), these all appear to be exothermic reactions – they give off heat. However, an explosion in waiting is a much cooler state of affairs. While holding a firecracker in your hand won’t burn your hand, the same cannot be said if it goes bang while you’re holding it. So the pre-Big Bang era wasn’t exactly hot stuff.

If the Big Bang was the result of a previous universe contracting, like cars approaching an intersection from all four directions, well the very act of compression heats things up. So, the Big Bang was a hot (time in the old town tonight) event, and therefore just before the Big Bang was also pretty heated.

Well, maybe we can’t garner any insight after all since the era just before the Big Bang may have been hot or cold. But the Big Bang itself was a high temperature event no matter which way you slice and dice things which is good since that’s what you’d expect from the observational evidence.

What about entropy? Our Big Bang Universe started off in a state of high temperature, a state of high order, or in other words low entropy and has been going downhill (cooling off) ever since. That is, the Universe is becoming more disordered as it heads towards an inevitable heat death. A head death means that the entire Universe is now at the same temperature and no further cosmic evolution or change can happen. But if our Universe started off in a state of high order, then the pre-Big Bang phase must have been in a state of high order too. Well, high order would have been the order of the day in either of the two pre-Big Bang scenarios.    



Cosmological Epicycles: Part Two

Sometimes observations are hard to explain. So you just have to tack on the best ad-hoc explanation that fits the facts, even if the explanation itself is lacking the nitty-gritty details. Astronomy went through such an exercise when anyone who was anyone said that the Earth was the centre of all things, and all things revolved around the Earth. That didn’t end very well. I suspect that modern cosmology is in a similar situation that ultimately won’t end well as far as the status quo is concerned either.

Continued from yesterday’s blog...

So how does an extreme, but brief, burst of expansion (i.e. – Inflation) solve the flatness, horizon and monopole issues?

The horizon problem is solved by inflation. While, initial pre-inflation Big Bang conditions would have provided for the required close enough contact to achieve uniformity, regions flying apart would soon acquire their own distinct ‘personalities’ and be far enough apart that equilibrium could never be restored between these regions, even at light speed. However, that additional serious bout of Inflation then rapidly expanded out that evenness, Inflation providing the extra oomph and freezing the uniformity in place to the distances we observe today.  

The flatness problem is explained because an extremely rapid rate of Inflation would smooth out the Universe. If you’re bacteria on the surface of an uninflated balloon, you’ll see peaks and troughs – wrinkles. If that balloon is blown up thousands of times greater in extent, the surface will now appear flat – just like the surface of the Earth appears flat to us.

The monopole problem is solved because the volume of the Universe increased thousands of times over in nanoseconds such that monopoles were now dispersed over an incredibly large volume such that the odds one would be in our cosmic neighbourhood becomes vanishingly tiny.

The odd thing here is that I sometimes read that Inflation preceded the Big Bang, although it’s usually an after-the-fact event. Obviously cosmologists haven’t really a clue which came first – no, not the chicken or egg but the Big Bang or Inflation.

Okay, we’ve explained cosmological observations via the Big Bang and Inflation. Can we go on R&R now? No, not quite. For you see, yet another very nasty observation has surfaced that requires yet another ad hoc tack-on explanation that well, has no explanation.

We have been aware that our Universe has been expanding for going on nearly a century now. Of course we are also aware, from a quite considerable earlier time that what goes up must come down. In other words, gravity grabs. The Universe has lots and lots of gravity, so presumably, what goes up (i.e. – the expansion rate) must come down (i.e. – the expansion rate must at least slow down, maybe even stop and reverse). Cosmologists were very interested in finding out exactly what the rate of deceleration was. How fast was the Universe’s expansion rate decreasing? It’s like you car might be going uphill, but at an ever slower and slower rate.

Okay, so, several teams of astronomers did the relevant observations and crunched the numbers and guess what – the Universe’s expansion rate was accelerating, and gravity be damned. That’s sort of like driving your car uphill and having it go faster and faster without you putting the pedal to the metal. Well, that surely was an unexpected result. So, they needed an explanation. The astronomers (team leaders anyway) got the Nobel Prize, but that was for the discovery, not for the explanation. You see, there wasn’t any explanation. So, what do we want – an epicycle. When do we want it – now! What was the ad-hoc epicycle to be? It was called “Dark Energy”, a sort of antigravity that was pushing the Universe apart faster and faster and faster. Trouble is, nobody then, or now, has the foggiest idea what Dark Energy is, yet in order to account for what this epicycle does, it must represent some roughly 70% of what makes the Universe up. That’s a lot of epicycle that lacks any plausible explanation. Did someone mention rabbits and hats? 

Now can we go home? Sorry, not yet.

There’s yet another astronomical observation that in fact goes back to the first half of the 20^th Century that has to deal with, at least initially, our own cosmic neck of the woods, the Milky Way Galaxy.  Now you’d be well aware that in our solar system, Mr. Sun is the Big Cheese and keeps all of her planets in orbit via her gravity. However, gravity weakens as you get away from the source (the inverse square relationship) so it’s not surprising that the farther a planet is outward bound from the Sun, giver the ever increasingly longer distance of its orbit around the Sun, the slower it orbits; the longer is its year. Now does that relationship apply to all the bits and pieces (i.e. – stars) that orbit around the centre of our galaxy? Well, in fact no. The outer stars whiz along just as quick-smart as the inner stars, so much so that the outer stars, given the amount of gravity the galaxy apparently has, should in fact escape altogether and head off into intergalactic space. The fact that they don’t does mean the galaxy has a lot more gravity than apparently meets the astronomical eye. Oops, there’s another epicycle coming on. This time the ad-hoc explanation is Dark Matter. It is dark because we can’t see it. It is matter because it has (all that required additional) gravity. Of course, it makes up the majority of matter in our galaxy; of course nobody has a clue what it actually is, although the astronomical powers-that-be have been able to rule out a lot of what’s dark, but common stuff like interstellar gas and dust, Black Holes, etc. So, for the here and now, Dark Matter is another epicycle, and what applies to our galaxy also has been observed for other galaxies. 

The concept of epicycles was originally used in order to explain observations. That remains the case in modern cosmology, only the ad-hoc explanations themselves need explaining.

In conclusion, the state of cosmology and of our understanding of the Universe, its substance and structure, is pretty much at a crossroads where the state of our solar system was all those centuries ago. Once upon a time epicycles were heaped on epicycles in order to explain the solar system until everything fell to pieces. I suspect that history will repeat itself when it comes to the current state of cosmology. Explanations of observations are just too ad-hoc; too many things left unexplained by those ad-hoc epicycles. We’ve had the Copernican Revolution; it’s time for the equivalent revolution in cosmology.

SUMMARY

Observation: Galactic Redshifts        

Observation: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR)

Observation: Ratio/Abundance Hydrogen & Helium

Ad Hoc Epicycle: Big Bang (no energy source given)

Observation: Horizon Problem                                                  

Observation: Flatness Problem

Observation: Magnetic Monopoles

Ad Hoc Epicycle: Inflation (many varieties, just like Heinz)

Observation: Accelerating Universe                                          

Ad Hoc Epicycle: Dark Energy (unexplained)

Observation: Galactic Rotations with Gravity Out of Sync           

Ad Hoc Epicycle: Dark Matter (unexplained)

Cosmological Epicycles: Part One

Sometimes observations are hard to explain. So you just have to tack on the best ad-hoc explanation that fits the facts, even if the explanation itself is lacking the nitty-gritty details. Astronomy went through such an exercise when anyone who was anyone said that the Earth was the centre of all things, and all things revolved around the Earth. That didn’t end very well. I suspect that modern cosmology is in a similar situation that ultimately won’t end well as far as the status quo is concerned either.

Once upon a time humans thought and believed that the Earth was the centre of the cosmos and that all things revolved around the Earth. When it came to the Sun and the Moon, things worked out pretty smoothly. The Moon does go around the Earth and the Sun damn well appears to. The ‘fixed’ stars also appear to go around the Earth and provide no ammunition to suggest otherwise.

But the ‘wandering stars’, the planets, were different horses of other colours. Their motions, assumed to be going round the Earth, were difficult to reconcile with that stationary Earth in the middle. Nobody (at the time) was willing to abandon the Earth-centred cosmos, and so the motions of the planets had to be tweaked in order to get observation and theory to gel. Thus was invented the epicycle.

Planets were assumed to go through various loop-the-loops and other gyrations or acrobatics (collectively called epicycles) in order to conform to observation. But original epicycles had in turn to be provided with second generation epicycles as observations still didn’t fit the ‘facts’, then third generation epicycles tacked on to the second generation tacked on to the original generation, until things go so out of hand and complicated that everything just collapsed in a heap. That resulted in a paradigm shift.

When the positions of the Earth and Sun were reversed, everything fell into place, theory matched observation (once ellipses were substituted for circles – the perfect circle was yet another once upon a time when humans were dictating to nature what nature should do requirement), and all those epicycles fell by the wayside.

We seem to face a similar situation today when it comes to modern cosmology. We have lots of observations that require ever increasing ad hoc epicycles to account for them.

Many an observation has been made in the sciences, and then to explain a group of them, some sort of all encompassing explanation is given. That in turn results in various issues or problems and so to resolve them, another all encompassing explanation is given to explain that lot of them, and that in turn, well etc. etc. A clear case in point revolves around the standard model of cosmology.

Astronomers observe the universe – obviously. Certain observations in need of explanation have given rise to just such an explanation, albeit incomplete and rather unsatisfactory. That trilogy of observations is: 1) galactic redshifts; 2) The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR); and 3) the ratio/abundance of hydrogen & helium.

The galactic redshift observation boils down to the fact that nearly all galaxies are moving away from each other and the distances between them are in relation to their velocities such that galaxies moving at X velocity will be Y distance apart; galaxies that are 2X velocities will be 2Y distances apart and so on. Translated, it’s what you would expect to see with respect to all the bits and pieces flying off on an exploding stick of dynamite. Thus we have an expanding Universe, and, by running the ‘film’ or the clock backwards, the Universe will have come to a ‘point’ roughly 13.7 billion years ago.

The detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (a cosmic temperature detectable in part as static or hiss on your TV set when tuned between stations) was in accordance with theoretical predictions if the cosmos started out as an extremely hot explosion and slowly cooled down as the Universe expanded.

Lastly, when one observes and calculates the relative abundance of hydrogen and helium in the Universe, the two simplest of elements, that ratio is what you’d expect given known interactions part and parcel of particle physics under the extremes of temperature and pressure that would be expected in a high temperature explosion.

So, the Big Bang gets a heads up. Things are looking good. But, and there’s always a ‘but’!

There are immediately several issues with respect to this cosmic explosion termed the Big Bang. Firstly, it created time (no explanation or recipe given as to how); secondly it created space (no explanation or recipe given for that either); thirdly it created matter and energy (again, no explanation or recipe, given); fourthly the ‘bang’ wasn’t ‘big’ since cosmologists choose to run the clock back as far as they can and thus cram the entire Universe back into a volume less than that of a pinhead; and lastly, no energy source for the ‘bang’ is given. In fact I’ve often read that apparently no energy source was actually necessary (because the Universe is energy neutral – it has as much positive energy as negative energy), which I find more than slightly odd.

However, postulating the Big Bang to explain the above trilogy of observations caused issues with another trilogy of observations. These observations centred on: 1) the horizon problem; 2) the flatness problem and 3) the monopole problem

The horizon problem – contact between two regions – is a problem in that if you look at exact opposite regions of the Universe; you tend to see pretty much the exact same thing, especially when it comes to temperature. So what? Well, in order for things to achieve equilibrium, your hot cup of coffee cooling off while the kitchen gets ever so slightly warmer until both coffee and room are the same temperature, requires that the two regions (coffee and room) be in relatively close proximity since the exchange can only happen at velocities equal to or less than the speed of light. If two opposite areas of the sky, looking deep into space, are the same temperature, it requires that these two regions were once close together, close enough for equilibrium at or less than the speed of light to have taken place in order to even conditions out. Unfortunately, the distances observed between opposite points in the sky are such that uniformity could not have been possible. They are now out of contact with each other – beyond each other’s ‘horizon’ so any bits of non-uniformity between regions that eventuated way back when should have persisted – and when we look that deep into space we are looking way back when. We need some serious additional oomph to get uniformity between regions from way, way back then (i.e. – immediately post Big Bang) out to currently observed distances.

The flatness problem revolves around the observation that the Universe is fine tuned with respect to the density of matter and energy contained within, a density that has resulted in a just so ‘flat’ universe. Translated, a flat universe is one where Euclidian geometry holds sway (the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees). Now if the density was greater, the Universe would be closed, like a sphere (i.e. – the Earth), where the angles of a triangle on the surface add up to more than 180 degrees. If the density were less, the Universe would be an open (i.e. – saddle-shaped) hyperbolic Universe where the angles of a triangle add up to less than 180 degrees. If you have a potentially wide range of possible densities, it’s amazing that our Universe has that just-so flatness.

The monopole problem is that under the conditions of the Big Bang, one should have generated monopoles – magnets with either a north pole, or a south pole, but not both. Alas, no monopoles have ever been detected or observed. They appear to be rarer than hen’s teeth.

Well, the way to circumnavigate those problems is to propose not just an original Big Bang explosion, but an additional super-ultra ‘explosion’ that speeded up the expansion of the Universe, ever so briefly, by a very, very, very large factor indeed. This secondary ‘explosion’ was termed Inflation. Inflation made the expansion rate of the Universe caused by the Big Bang to appear almost insignificant.

To be continued.

Our Expanding Universe: Part Two

You will read in astronomical texts the idea that space is a thing, a flexible membrane that can influence the motion of objects, in fact carry the flotsam and jetsam of the Universe around. This flexi-space is expanding over time, and by carrying the bits and pieces that comprise the Universe, provides the reality behind the common phrase ‘the expanding universe’. Unfortunately, space is not a thing and the consequences arising means the common mechanism for an expanding universe is nonsense.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

SPACE-TIME

Anyone who is anyone who knows a bit about gravity and General Relativity knows that space-time is flexible. Mass ‘tells’ space-time how to flex; how space-time flexes ‘tells’ mass how to move. However, that also implies that space-time is a thing, a physical medium that can be manipulated.

Matter and energy and associated forces and force particles are two sides of the same coin as related by Einstein’s famous equation. So, that should be sufficient for any and all actions, reactions, interactions, etc. to be explainable without resorting to warped space-time. However, let’s look at the most well known illustration of alleged warped space-time, the experimental observation that proved Einstein’s prediction that Mass indeed ‘tells’ space-time how to flex and how space-time flexes ‘tells’ mass how to move. The case in point was the deflection of photons of light emitted by a star whose light passed very close to our Sun. That deflection meant that observers on Earth saw the star ever so slightly out of position while the Sun was in the line-of-sight vicinity. (All this was observed during a solar eclipse; otherwise the starlight would have been drowned out by the Sun’s light.) The explanation: starlight photons (mass or energy) want to go straight but space-time was warped and thus those photons got deflected from the straight and narrow. Well, that’s one way of looking at it.    

On the other hand, the starlight’s light-wave photons are things; the Sun is a thing; the Sun’s gravity is a thing. So objects, matter and energy, things existing in space and time that pass within the Sun’s gravity, should be affected, in this case deflected from their straight and narrow path. Why invoke warped space-time? It might be a nice way of looking at things, but airbrushing isn’t confined to just the fashion industry!

Roll an iron ball past a magnet and you’ll get a deflection from the straight and narrow – like with the photon and the Sun. But roll a marble past the same magnet and the marble will continue on straight and true. So, the trajectory of the iron ball or the marble vs. the magnet (part of the electromagnetic force) has nothing to do with warped space-time, though the action took place in space-time.

 

Take your basic trilogy of quarks (in a neutron or proton) who love each other so dearly that they can’t stand to be apart. If you force them apart, the strong nuclear force which normally keeps the quarks cheek-by-jowl will just get stronger the farther apart you pull the trio of quarks apart – like a rubber band being stretched. When you release your hold on this threesome, they snap back together. Their path deviates back from what you dictated – nothing to do with warped space-time though the action took place in space-time.

Or take the decay of an unstable atomic nucleus. The castoff particles hit other unstable nuclei cascading off more bits and pieces which hit more unstable nuclei on the brink, etc. You get a chain reaction, even perhaps a nuclear blast. That’s the weak nuclear force in action. Again, that’s not dependent on warped space-time though the chain reaction takes place in space-time.   

But let’s back to the warping of space-time which seems allegedly to be the providence of gravity and just gravity.

But what kind of flexing, or space-time warping could account for most (not all) galaxies running away from most (not all) other galaxies – actual observations of the expanding Universe. None that is obvious and leaps to mind other than a sort of infinite Mexican sombrero type structure where all large clumps of matter (most galaxies) start off at the top of the hat and roll off, to the north, south, east and west, and all points of the compass in-between, down to the – well the ‘down’ doesn’t end. But somehow you have to picture that in 3-D since the surface of the ‘sombrero’, where all the action is, is 2-D.   

CONSEQUENCES

Once you accept the idea that the notion of space itself is expanding – space itself creating more space out of nothing – is total nonsense, then certain consequences follow. One is that the stuff of the Universe is expanding through existing space rather than the stuff of the Universe being carried piggyback on the back of space. If the stuff of the Universe is expanding through existing space, the stuff of the Universe has always expanded through existing space. Existing space was present throughout the Universe’s expansion right back unto the beginning – that Big Bang event. If space existed at the time of the Big Bang event then space existed before the Big Bang event, as the Big Bang event needed space to bang into, just like any other explosive event you can think of, from a firecracker to an H-Bomb to a supernova has to happen in existing space. Therefore there was an existence before the Big Bang. There was a before the Big Bang and whatever cosmology accounts for the Big Bang needs to take that into account.

IS THERE AN OBSERVATIONAL TEST?

Is there any actual observational evidence that proves conclusively that it is space expanding and not flotsam and jetsam moving apart through existing space? No. But I can think of a possible test or two that might conclude the issue. If space is expanding then objects that are approaching each other (like the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy) due to mutual gravity or because of intrinsic motion, should be fighting against the grain and be approaching each other more slowly than would otherwise be the case. Or, on the other hand, two objects receding apart, like the Earth and the Moon (due to tidal forces) are going with the grain and should be separating more rapidly than otherwise would be the case. I’ve yet to read any account of this sort of measurement and observational confirmation which would only arise if the velocities of the Milky Way/Andromeda pair or Earth/Moon pair were indeed anomalous. The latter experiment, the increasing Earth/Moon separation should be a relatively easy experiment to do. Due to the reflective mirrors lent on the lunar surface by the Apollo moonwalkers we know the Earth-Moon distance to extreme precision. It should be straightforward whether the Moon is receding from the Earth faster than tidal forces can account for.  

CONCLUSIONS

There’s a very solid principle in science known as Occam’s Razor, which pretty much states than when faced with a pot-full of competing ideas or explanations, bet the family farm on the one which makes the least assumptions and seems the most straightforward. In other words, “keep it simple, stupid!” Applying Occam’s Razor, there’s a very easy and commonsense answer to this claptrap. All objects at any scale move through existing space. Space just is – it contains things from the energy of the (not so perfect) vacuum, to interplanetary/interstellar/intergalactic gas and dust, to solar systems, to quasars, to the largest of galactic clusters. Therefore, if now, then way back when. The origin of the Universe also took place in existing space. The Big Bang event did not create space for space is not a tangible thing that can be created. Further, there’s no astronomical, observable test (apart from the possibilities I suggested above and variations on those themes) that can distinguish between expanding space, and matter expanding through space. 

And if you are of a religious frame of mind (and I’m not), well God couldn’t have created the heavens and the earth; life the universe and everything, unless God had some existing space in which to work. God Himself took up space.  

P.S. That space is not a thing was demonstrated back in the late 1880’s by the famous Albert Michelson and Edward Morley experiment. The idea was that since light or rather light-waves traveled through space (i.e. – from the Sun to the Earth), they had to be carried along by a something, just like water-waves are carried along by the medium we call water and sound-waves need air, liquid or a solid to propagate them. So light-waves, by analogy, needed a medium to carry them, which was called the ether or the ether wind, which was space. Now the idea was that the Earth, in orbit around the Sun, would sometimes be moving with the ether grain and sometimes against the ether grain. The speed of light should therefore vary when measured on Earth depending on whether light was moving parallel with the ether grain, parallel against the ether grain, or crossing perpendicular to the ether grain as Earth was orbiting through the ether grain. Of course the null results shocked the physics community for it showed no variation at all in the velocity of light regardless of the time of year it was measured; therefore no ether; therefore waves were being transmitted through nothing. The null result eventually led a young Einstein into his radical proposal that the speed of light was constant anywhere and everywhere to any and all observers, but that’s another story. The Michelson/Morley experiment has been repeated many times with ever more accuracy – still a null and void result.    

My Top Astronomical Anomalies: A List

The Universe is filled with mystery. There are a myriad of things that are, but shouldn’t be, or probably shouldn’t be. Adequate explanations are not only lacking, but even the wildest possible theoretical explanations are rather thin on the ground. There often tends to be a massive divide between observation and theory. These anomalies run the range from the Universe as a whole, down to your local neck of the woods, well the solar system anyway. Here are a few my favourite astronomical anomalies.

THE BIG BANG EVENT: This is no doubt a concept that nearly everyone has heard about, and swallowed hook, line and cosmological sinker because scientists present this creation of the Universe scenario as fact. It’s not fact; just the most viable theory of many theories and it has serious flaws. The accepted theoretical account of the creation or event that kick-started our Universe off not only has that event a something that created all of matter and energy, but all of time and space as well, and this creation event, to boot, all took place in a volume less than that of a pinhead (something in the realm of the quantum) and for no apparent reason at all. First there was nothing; then there was something. Wow!

At best observations that support this are indirect being made some 13.7 billion years after-the-fact. Those indirect observations that provide evidence for the Big Bang event are the fact that the Universe is expanding; the Universe has a temperature – the remnants from the hot Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) and the amounts and ratio of hydrogen to helium. In reality there are no direct observations as nobody was present at Ground Zero all those billions of years ago.

There are really a couple of anomalies present in the standard Big Bang account. 1) You have a violation of causality – something (space, time, matter and energy) created from nothing which is a violation of several conservation laws or relationships. 2) You have a violation of pure common sense that tells you that you can not stuff the contents of the entire Universe into the realm of the quantum, something actually way less in volume in fact than a pinhead. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is!

ACCELERATING UNIVERSE: The anomaly here is quite straightforward in that there’s considerable observational evidence that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. However, logic dictates that because of the overall gravity that the Universe has, the expansion rate of the Universe should be decelerating. The ‘antigravity’ energy required to accelerate the Universe’s expansion has to come from somewhere, and in ever increasing amounts to keep on keeping on the ever increasing rate of acceleration, yet, the Universe, almost by definition, already contains all there is and ever will be. If extra ‘antigravity’ energy is being created, it’s being created out of nothing. Something from nothing is a clear violation of the basic conservation laws and principles that form the bedrock of modern science.  

DARK ENERGY & DARK MATTER: When considering all things cosmological, it’s become apparent that astronomers only observe about 4% of the matter plus energy that should be present. That is, about 96% of the matter plus energy that should be present and detectable to account for the observed behaviour of our observable universe is missing! Now 1% might be understandable given measurement uncertainty (error bars), but hardly 96%! So, cosmologists have postulated concepts termed ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ to make up the deficit. However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ actually is. Neither has actually been detected either out there on in the laboratory down here – obviously. The anomaly here is that ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ are both ad hoc theoretical concepts to make sense of various astronomical observations, but without benefit of any actual observation of ‘dark matter’ and/or ‘dark energy ’to back things up. That’s a rather slight-of-hand trick, and until cosmologists put actual observational money on the board where their theoretical mouth is, it’s all an anomalous pie-in-the-cosmic-sky.

MATTER-ANTIMATTER RATIO: In our Universe, there should theoretically be equal amounts of matter and antimatter created at the time of the Big Bang, but there’s not. We observe a Universe made out of matter. Our antimatter has gone walkabout. Why is it so? That question illustrates a big anomaly that doesn’t have a really satisfying answer. Mother Nature shouldn’t favour one form of matter over the other, yet apparently that’s the case. Perhaps that’s just as well. A Universe that’s 50% matter and 50% antimatter will ultimately become a Universe of just 100% radiation or energy, and thus no material you and no material me.

MONOPOLES: We all know about magnetic fields having two sides, whether it’s a bar magnet or the Earth’s magnetic field (or those part and parcel of many other astronomical bodies) – there’s a south pole and a north pole; a positive and a negative. It will probably come as a surprise that there should also be a monopole – a magnet with just one pole, north OR south; positive OR negative. That’s because one of the many Big Bang ‘in the beginning’ predictions of all things theoretical is the existence of magnetic monopoles – magnets with either a south pole or a north pole, but not both. Alas, we’ve never ever found and confirmed the reality of even one monopole, so theoretical prediction and observation are not in harmony. In other words, an anomaly exists.

QUASARS: Quasars are ‘quasi-stellar objects’. They are ‘stellar’ because they aren’t all that large (like a galaxy). They are ‘quasi’ because they give off energy way, way, way more times greater than any star known in any astronomical catalogue. They seem to be primordial objects – they formed long ago and are now far away.  Quasars, like stars or galaxies, are their own entities and if two or more show a very close and special causality relationships then they should show identical recessional velocities (since the Universe is expanding and they are part of the Universe and that expansion). Recessional velocities are measured by an object’s red-shift. Theory identifies red-shift with velocity. However, you apparently have some observations of causality connected quasar pairs with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities). The anomaly, in an analogy, is that you can not have a runner running at 15 miles per hour holding hands with another runner running at 3 miles per hour!

NEITH: Neith is, or was, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t. now-forever-lost satellite of our twin planet (in size if nothing else), Venus. The anomaly here is that bona-fide professional astronomers, not one but numerous celebrated astronomers, including Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712), sighted, noted and logged the existence of the damn thing and wrote up their findings in their professional journals. Okay, the time period was the mid-1600s to mid-1700s, but the professional eyeballs and the professional equipment was good enough to verify one way or the other the presence or absence of a reasonably sized natural satellite in orbit around Venus.

Of over thirty sightings of Neith, the best known and verified were in 1645, 1672, 1686, 1740, 1759, 1761 and 1764 (multiple sightings on numerous days in March). Observations over that stretch of period would seemingly rule out the ‘satellite’ being a faint star or asteroid or outer planet like Uranus or Neptune that just happened to be way beyond Venus but in the direct line of sight. Sometimes the observed phase of Neith matched the phase of Venus, which again suggests that the object was in close proximity to the planet.

Venus, inward and closer to the Sun than Earth, is a very visible and prominent celestial object when viewed from Earth, commonly called the Morning and Evening ‘Star’. We’ve all seen Venus; in fact if you know exactly where to look it can be seen in the daytime sky. Venus is far enough away from the Sun that the Sun’s glare doesn’t drown out reflected light from Venus, and presumably any objects near or in orbit around Venus. A natural satellite of Venus of any reasonable size should be readily detectable with the astronomical equipment available at the time. And so it really didn’t raise any astronomical eyebrows when Neith was in fact discovered. The anomaly here is that all and sundry were wrong. Neith doesn’t exist. Venus has no natural satellite(s). Now either all and sundry were totally incompetent and wouldn’t know one end of a telescope from the other, or else Neith really existed but somehow exited the local neighbourhood. If that’s the case, then Neith wasn’t natural at all but under intelligent control, and not by any terrestrial intelligence. What Neith was, and where it disappeared to, are major anomalies. 

From the examples above, I conclude that it almost seems as if someone (something) is ultimately responsible for our Universe, but he / she/ it / they didn’t quite think things through sufficiently. Methinks an all knowing, all powerful supernatural God type being wouldn’t have stuffed things up. So either the Universe is naturally stuffed up, or it was created stuffed up!

Dark Energy: The Ultimate Free Lunch

Science is full of surprising discoveries. One that recently won the Nobel Prize in Physics was the discovery that the Universe is not just expanding, but that expansion rate is accelerating. The cause is a mysterious and unexplained ‘dark energy’ which is ever increasing right along with the accelerating Universe. But if the Universe contains all that is and ever will be, where is this extra ‘dark energy’ coming from and is this creation out of nothing a gross violation of the basic laws and principles of physics? If yes, perhaps there’s an even more surprising alternative.

  

If you toss a ball into the air, there are two basic forces at work acting on the ball (ignoring atmospheric friction or drag of course but one can pretend there’s no atmosphere). There’s the oomph (kinetic) energy you give the ball in the upwards direction; there’s the gravitational force that pulls on the ball in the opposite direction. There are two outcomes. 

If you toss a ball up into the air, you expect just one thing to happen – the ball will go up; the ball will slow down; the ball will stop; the ball will fall back to the ground. Why? Earth‘s gravity, that’s why.

If your name is Hercules and you really toss that ball up into the air, maybe, just maybe, the ball won’t fall back down to the ground. You have given the ball enough oomph energy to overcome, though not avoid, Earth’s gravitational pull. But, even if it doesn’t fall back to ground level, even if it keeps on going up, up and away for all time, it will still be forever slowing down. Why? Earth’s gravity, that’s why.

In both scenarios the oomph you give the ball can never be enough to enable the ball to escape Earth’s gravity entirely. The ball must slow down. That’s because the gravitational pull of the Earth on the ball (and also the ball on the Earth) extends to infinity. At no point does gravity cut out. You can’t escape gravity though your energy oomph can be enough to prevent its domination – the ball doesn’t have to fall back to Earth.

Now, the absolutely one scenario you would never expect, is that if you toss the ball into the air, even if the ball didn’t fall back down to ground level if it was given really lots and lots of oomph, that the ball would somehow not only fail to slow down but would in fact speed up. If you witnessed that you’d suspect that your mind or vision was faulty. The only way the ball could accelerate away from you is if it had some sort of additional, internal energy supply (like a rocket). Since it doesn’t, it can’t.

Now apply that logic to the Universe as a whole. In the beginning the Big Bang (the explosive event of the creation) gave a certain finite amount of oomph to all the bits and pieces that make up the Universe. And thus the Universe is expanding – a standard scenario when you have an explosion. When a bomb explodes, the result is an expansion of bomb-stuff. Now all those bits and pieces have a certain finite amount of gravity. The Universe as a whole therefore has a certain finite amount of gravity.

And so we have a similar contest as per the ball’s oomph and Earth’s gravity. Now, either the combined universal gravity of all those bits and pieces will be enough to overcome the finite amount of oomph provided by the Big Bang, and the Universe, like the ball, will slow down, stop and reverse direction (becoming a contracting Universe) or the oomph will prove greater than all those combined bits and pieces gravity and the Universe will expand forever, though that expansion rate will slow down over time. The expansion rate may never reach zero, but the gravity of the bits and pieces must drag forever and ever on the overall initial oomph. The Universal expansion will slow down, albeit never to zero. Okay, like the ball and the Earth, it’s pretty much one or the other. You, as per the ball and the Earth, wouldn’t expect the expansion rate of the overall Universe to increase. That defies logic, everyday experience and basic physics.

For the Universe to accelerate, it would have to be supplied with extra energy from outside, but the Universe is everything and contains everything, there is no outside, so where can additional energy come from? It can’t, not without violating one of the most basic of all basic fundamental physical principles – you can change one form of energy into another form, but you can’t create energy from nothing. Wouldn’t it be nice to just snap your fingers; wave a magic wand, and presto, your empty gas tank is now full or your cold house is now snug and warm! You don’t get something from nothing! The common phrase is that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch!”

So the fundamental question cosmologists (astronomers who study the Universe as a whole) were interested in finding out was whether the Universe’s expansion rate was slowing down enough to cause the Universe to grind to a halt and then reverse; or not. There was never any question that the expansion rate was slowing down. It was just a question to what order of magnitude and was it enough to ultimately cause a Big Crunch.

And so it came to pass that two competing teams of astronomers embarked on a study to crunch the deceleration rate numbers; answer that question of whether the Universe will eventually cease expanding and undergo a contraction (like that ball falling back down to Earth) or not (like the ball that Hercules tossed). Nobody on either team would have bet a nickel, far less the family farm, that the answer would be none of the above. Somehow or other, the bits and pieces that make up the Universe gave the middle finger to gravity. The unthinkable became thinkable, in fact, it became fact. The Universe’s expansion rate was accelerating; therefore energy must be being created out of nothing to provide that extra gravity-defying oomph; there was such a thing as a free lunch after all! The mysterious and unknown energy source behind this unexpected phenomenon was termed ‘dark energy’.

There’s little to dispute in terms of observational evidence for the existence of ‘dark energy’, or rather the fact that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. Evidence has gone from strength to strength.

This discovery was so great, and so totally unexpected, that the team leaders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2011) for it. But, it must be pointed out that the recognition was for the discovery, not for the explanation. There is no explanation. You can’t adequately explain a free lunch! You need extra energy oomph to power up the acceleration rate of the Universe just like you need an extra surge of gasoline to accelerate your car. Where does that extra energy come from and keep on keeping on coming on from? Just calling that addition source ‘dark energy’ provides no explanation for the free lunch it is. There is a fundamental problem here.

How so a free lunch? Well if I have my facts right, the way ‘dark energy’ works is this. Dark energy is an intrinsic property of space that exerts a pressure that causes that space to expand, which in turn creates new space which has ‘dark energy’ as an intrinsic property which results in that space expanding thus creating more space and thus more ‘dark energy’ and so on and so on. More space means more ‘dark energy’ which means more space, etc. It’s creation out of nothing, or, it’s a free lunch. Now this notion of an expanding space alone puts me at odds with the establishment of modern cosmology. We part company here since I remain convinced the Universe is expanding through existing space. But that still leaves the acceleration rate to the expanding Universe, even if through existing space, as an anomaly.

From the Oxford Companion to Cosmology (2008) we have this snippet: “The simplest dark energy model is the cosmological constant*, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands. … Thus far the cosmological constant has proven capable of explaining all relevant observational data, and thus is the chosen ingredient of the standard cosmological model.”

What’s wrong with this statement? It postulates a free lunch, that’s what.

Let’s drop down a notch in scale and look at something more familiar.

To illustrate, take a pure ice cube which has a density slightly less than the pure fresh water from which it came (which is why ice cubes float in water). Say the ice cube is one inch by one inch by one inch or one cubic inch in volume. Now double the dimensions to two inches by two inches by two inches. The ice cube is now eight cubic inches in volume. The ice cube has expanded in volume -so far so good. The density of the ice cube hasn’t changed, so you have to account for the creation of the extra seven cubic inches of ice. If you can’t account for the additional seven cubic inches then something is amiss. The alternative is that the original ice cube has expanded, but no additional ice has been added, so the density of the ice cube has decreased – same amount of ice but spread over a greater volume. But that’s equally screwy. You can’t change the density of ice and still have ice. Density is a fixed parameter of the substance we call ice.

Now change the ice to water vapour and you can alter the parameters. One cubic inch of water vapour can expand to eight cubic inches of water vapour. If you don’t add extra water vapour then the density of your original cubic inch of water vapour obviously decreases in the expansion. You have less water molecules per unit of volume than you had originally. Now the Universe is like water vapour. The Universe is not one solid lump like our ice cube; rather it’s zillions of bits and pieces (like water molecules) that occupy and spread throughout an ever expanding volume. The same amount of stuff expanded into a greater volume means of necessity less density. Any high school student knows that.

You cannot have the concept of density without also talking about the density of a something (like the cosmological constant). It’s meaningless to talk about the density of nothing. That something could be matter, energy or more likely a mixture of both since it’s hard to conceive of energy-less matter or matter in an energy-less state. In fact it’s physically impossible.

But note the Oxford phrase above: “the cosmological constant, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands” - something’s screwy somewhere.

If we can’t accept creation of this mysterious cosmological constant ‘dark energy’ out of nothing, whatever is driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe (call it ‘dark energy’ if you must) must also be getting thinner and thinner on the ground, but that would be like easing your foot off the accelerator pedal of your car. You car would cease to accelerate and ease back to a constant velocity (in Universe terms a steady expansion rate) or a deceleration (which is what our two teams of cosmologists were trying to measure in the first place). So it’s a Catch-22. We can’t have creation out of nothing (a free lunch) – that is just not acceptable - but without it you can’t have an expanding and ever accelerating Universe which has been experimentally observed.

I used to think that ‘dark energy’ must be a variation on the theme of the vacuum energy, but I couldn’t figure out how to get a free lunch out of the vacuum energy. For the perplexed, the vacuum energy just means that even when you seemingly have nothing, a vacuum, you still have some energy present. Translated, you can’t have an absolute state of nothingness which would be a theoretical temperature of absolute zero. At the micro or quantum scale, since energy and mass are equivalent (Einstein’s famous equation), energy can be converted to mass  – usually a pair of matter-antimatter particles, which annihilate each other quick-smart returning the energy back to the environment that created them in the first place. Mass can be converted to energy. There’s no free lunch. Conservation laws and principles rule the vacuum energy roost.

Has the Universe always been expanding at an ever accelerating rate? No. There are two competing forces at work. Gravity, a pull force, and this ‘dark energy’, a kind of antigravity or push force. Over time, so the story goes, the amount of ‘dark energy’ increases as space expands. But gravity doesn’t increase. The amount of gravity the Universe has now is the amount the Universe had way back when. At the start gravity was king of the hill because there wasn’t that much space, therefore that much ‘dark energy’. However, with every passing second the amount of ‘dark energy’ increased until it finally overran gravity which was standing still or constant. At that point of intersection the acceleration began in earnest. Apparently that was some five or so billion years ago. Prior to that, the Universe was expanding but at a decelerating rate.

There are two related offshoots to this ‘dark energy’ puzzlement. One is the Big Bang itself. Now the standard cosmological model has it that the Big Bang took place in a small space; a very, very, very small space. In fact the space available was something atomic sized. You couldn’t even see our Universe with the unaided eye a micro-second prior to the Big Bang Ka-Boom it was that tiny, yet anything and everything that exists today, existed then in that tiny volume. Now the problem is that when you try to figure out the state of play with the mass of the Universe (gravity) crushed down to the size of an atom, (the realm of the quantum), the equations break down. You have no idea what the state of play was. In a broader context, the physics of gravity (general relativity) cannot be reconciled with the physics of the quantum. Thousand have tried over many decades. They were just banging their heads against a brick wall. To this day, nobody can fit the hand of gravity into the glove of quantum physics. The way I like to put it is that you apparently have two different and incompatible sets of physics software running the cosmos. That’s nuts! That too needs an explanation.

The other – well there’s an awful lot of Universe for just little old us, and an awful lot more was created (that accelerating Universe) in the time it took you to read that. It’s like having a flea housed in Buckingham Palace that’s adding additional rooms on at a rapid rate of knots. For the flea, it’s a lot of wasted space. There’s an awful lot of just about empty space between the planets; between the stars; between the galaxies; between clusters of galaxies, etc. Why do we, and any other extraterrestrial life forms that may exist, need with so much empty space and pretty much worthless real estate, nearly all of which we can’t even reach? That’s nuts. That needs an explanation, like maybe most of the Universe is just visual holographic wallpaper and has no more reality than the images on your bedroom wallpaper. Is the Universe in fact just a simulation; a virtual reality?   

The way to befuddle an artificially (simulated) intelligent ‘life’ form is to give it an unsolvable problem like dividing a number by zero; calculating the square root of a negative number; coming up with the definitive final value of Pi; or solving an unsolvable paradox like something that both is and is not at the same time; how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; or create a spherical cube. The possibilities are numerous and it’s been used many a time in sci-fi plots to demonstrate the superiority of wetware (brains) over software (silicon chips).

But what if we weren’t wetware (any more than the characters in your dreams are), but in reality software – say a simulated being – an artificial intelligence being given unsolvable puzzles to solve like quantum gravity; why is there so much Universe; why are all electrons identical; why ghosts; and how come crop circles; how can dragons and griffins be real creatures without any fossil remains; and how can a viable breeding herd of lake ‘monsters’ exist in Loch Ness for so long without absolute verification, along with other anomalies that make no apparent sense, like why the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating.

Conclusion: There’s no disputing the observations that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. While that appears to be wildly improbable, a violation of natural law, that is creation from nothing – a free lunch in other words – it’s not difficult to do as a simulation. So, do we live in a simulated Universe as virtual beings?

*The cosmological constant was a concept invented by Einstein. He knew that the Universe should be contracting under its mutual gravity yet he and nearly everyone else knew (or assumed) that the Universe was static. So he needed a constant outward pressure (the cosmological constant) to balance gravity just-so to enable the Universe to be static – unchanging. So, when Einstein learned, along with the rest of the world later on down the track that the Universe wasn’t static but expanding, he called his ad hoc cosmological constant mechanism the greatest blunder of his career in science. However, the concept, though dormant post-Einstein, has never been too far from the minds of those who could resurrect it in a flash if it served their purpose, like explaining the accelerating expansion rate.