All Things Extraterrestrial: Physics

Showing posts with label Physics. Show all posts

Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Four

The Big Bang event is the leading scientific cosmological theory when it comes to explaining the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and simply everything. While the Big Bang event is the leading candidate and the standard model, it’s not the only one. That’s fortunate, because while a fair bit of once theoretical now verified observational evidence supports that standard cosmological model, it also comes as well with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage. It’s mainly that metaphysical baggage that concerns me.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL

So what if there is more than one expanding pre-Big Bang ‘universe’, say a pre-Big Bang Multiverse that contains lots of expanding ‘universes’. Some of these ‘universes’ are, like our own Universe, matter dominated. Some however are antimatter rich. Now say one of each start to intersect at their expanding boundaries. There will be very little direct meeting of the two minds since the matter (and antimatter) is spread thinly. It’s like you can have two galaxies collide without there being any actual collisions between the stars contained in each, because the distance between those stars is vast relative to the sizes of the stars. What does rule the roost however is the gravitational force. Slowly, but surely, the intersection starts the slow but sure collapse of all the stuff. Eventually, the bits get close enough where a few matter-antimatter annihilations take place, but that oomph drives more bits into each other’s arms and so you quickly get a chain reaction yet one that transpires in a medium still tenuous enough and a region without sufficient density to form a super-sized lump and a harmless Black Hole. Might that matter-antimatter chain reaction manifest itself as a non-quantum, macro Big Bang - our Big Bang?

Whether this scenario is plausible or even possible I know not, but it has a nice feel to it; it just might be. Even if not, it might suggest a seed for the next generation of cosmologists, or those currently more cosmologically savvy, to pursue.

YET ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE

Lastly, here’s a wicked curve ball. What if the Big Bang is a theoretical impossibility of physics pure and simple, despite the observational evidence? There’s only one way I know of to generate convincing impossibilities – virtual reality; a simulated universe where there need be no connection at all between what you observe and what theoretically caused the various things that you observe. My scenario: the expansion; the CMBR; the ratio of hydrogen to helium, are all simulated.

Our reality, our Universe including the Big Bang (and ultimately you) is nothing but a computer-generated program, software created by some entity, probably extraterrestrial. Having set up the parameters, it’s just a matter of hitting the ‘start program’ key and seeing what happens. We humans have already done this sort of activity so there’s nothing implausible about this possibility.

Now I’ve often wondered if some great extraterrestrial computer programmer specializing in generating virtual reality worlds and universes would leave enough clues to his (its) ‘subjects’ that they in fact were just software generated virtual beings in a simulated universe. One such type of clue would be no way those virtual creations could reconcile observation with theory, as in the case of the Big Bang.

For another example we have observations of four physical forces yet no theory which unites the three quantum forces (electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) with the one classical force – gravity. There is no viable theory of quantum gravity despite thousands of physicists searching for one over many generations now. It’s like there are two sets of different software running the Universe.

One of the many Big Bang ‘in the beginning’ predictions of theoretical things is 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 strange is that that a new concept states that the very early Universe underwent an additional oomph of very rapid inflation which so diluted the created monopoles that there are no longer any monopoles in our neck of the woods. That does appear a bit like clutching at straws.

You have a 120 order-of-magnitude (that’s one followed by 120 zeros) discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy and the theoretical value of the vacuum energy.

You have particles that behave both as a wave and as little billiard balls – observed but theoretically impossible in classical physics.

Speaking of particles, there are three fundamental properties of particles (like the electron, neutrinos, the numerous quarks, etc.) and their anti-particles (like the positron). They are charge, spin and mass. Despite the relatively large number of particles (including the equal and opposite anti-particles), there are only a few allowed values for charge and spin, values pretty much confined to the infield. But, for some reason, the mass (usually expressed in equivalent energy units – Einstein’s equation again) of the various particles are not only scattered throughout the ballpark but are all over the map. They take on values (albeit one value per type of particle) over many orders of magnitude without any apparent pattern or regularity or relationship between them – and nobody has the foggiest idea why, not even a validly theoretical idea. Nobody can predict from first principles what the masses should be. It’s like someone just drew a few dozens of numbers out of a hat containing multi hundreds of thousands of values and assigned them to the few dozens of particles willy-nilly. Something is screwy somewhere because something so fundamental shouldn’t be so anomalous.

In the real world, the macro world, the classical world, no two things are identical down to the last microscopic detail – you are unique; every bacterium is unique; every house, den, nest, and ant hill is unique; so is every baseball and grain of sand. In the unreal world, the micro world, the quantum world, all fundamental particles of their own kind (i.e. electrons or positrons or up quarks or photons) are identical to the last measurable detail. Why? Who knows! But a possibility from the simulated universe is that there is one software code or sequence of bits and bytes for each type of fundamental particle. So every time that sequence is used, you get that type of entity and only that type.

There are constant reports of physical constants that aren’t – constant that is. That’s totally nuts!

Then you have observations of quasars with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities) yet quasars which appear to be causality connected.

In physics, time travel to the past is theoretically possible – though damned difficult in practice. However, that means that those time travel paradoxes are possible, even likely. Paradoxes like going back in time, say ten years, and killing yourself (which is a novel way of committing suicide), means you couldn’t have existed to go back in time in the first place in order to kill yourself, which means you’re not dead so you can go back in time and murder yourself, etc. What kind of physics is that? Curiouser and curiouser.

Any and all miracles, Biblical or otherwise, are explainable as easily as saying “run program”.

More down to earth, you have multi-observations of things like the Loch Ness Monster, those highly geometrically complex crop circles, and ghosts, yet there’s no real adequate theory, pro or con, that can account for their observed existence or creation.

All up, perhaps some cosmic computer programmer/software writer whiz with a wicked sense of humour (a trickster ‘god’?) is laughing its tentacles off since we haven’t been able to figure it (our virtual reality) out. Of course maybe the minute we do, the fun’s over and ‘Dr. It’ hits the delete key and that’s the way the Universe ends – not with a Big Crunch, nor with a Heat Death, but with a “are you sure you want to delete this?” message! “Yes”.

Friday, March 2, 2012

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Three

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

BEFORE THE BIG BANG

While I’m convinced there was a before the Big Bang, the nature of that ‘before’ is vague at best since the transition between before the Big Bang through the Big Bang to after the Big Bang is unknown (at present anyway), since the relevant equations break down into pure nonsense under those extremes. What’s probably reasonable is to call whatever existed pre Big Bang a ‘universe’, maybe a ‘universe’ within a larger Multiverse. If conservation laws have any meaning, that ‘universe’ (within a Multiverse perhaps) contained the same amount of stuff (matter and energy) as ours does though the mix might have been different. This pre Big Bang ‘universe’ certainly consisted of volume (space) and change (time). What’s less certain is whether that ‘universe’s’ laws, principles and relationships of physics were the same as ours. If not, just about anything goes. It’s probably more reasonable and constructive to assume their physics is our physics. Translated, to answer Einstein’s famous question, God, or Mother Nature, had no choice in the matter about how to construct or arrange a universe.

WHAT CAUSES EXPLOSIONS?

What caused the Big Bang explosion? Okay, we have a pre Big Bang ‘universe’. Something happened there that caused our Big Bang explosion. What causes explosions (ultimately a lot of kinetic energy) and could they be up to the task of causing our Big Bang spew?

Well fine particulate matter like coal dust or equivalents when in the presence of oxygen and ignited can violently explode and expand. Still, that’s hardly a sufficient means to create our Universe. However, that’s a form of chemical energy, and under the right conditions, chemical energy can be released quickly enough that for all practical purposes you have an explosion – think of gunpowder, a firecracker, sticks of dynamite, hand grenades or their mature equivalents, conventional bombs dropped from aircraft, or even the mini controlled explosions that drive your automobile engine and hence your car. You also have other explosive mixtures, like when sodium hits water, and there are lots more to boot, often the staple of high school chemistry classes. However, chemicals are very inefficient in terms of being converted to energy. Hardly any of the matter gets converted to energy. Chemical energy is not the way to proceed to generate a really big, Big Bang.

Then there is nuclear energy. Atomic energy can be controlled, released steady-as-she-goes, as in electricity-generating nuclear power plants or facilities. Or, nuclear energy can be released in real quick-smart fashion, as in uncontrolled reactions that result in ka-booms that produce mushroom clouds as in thermonuclear weapons; the A-bomb, the H-bomb, etc. Energy is released when atomic nuclei are split apart (fission) or rammed together (fusion). It’s the former that produces our electricity; both can power up those mushroom clouds. Its fusion that powers our Sun (and all the other shinning stars), which in simple form is just one gigantic bomb continuously going off. Only the Sun’s immense inward gravity contains the explosion (outward radiative pressure) keeping it confined to the circular disc we observe in the daytime sky. Alas, fuel eventually runs out, in petrol tanks and in stars. In stars, when the fuel is finally consumed, gravity wins. Stars collapse slowly, or if originally massive enough, really suddenly. These massive stars implode; rebound and explode – a supernova is born. But even a supernova pales in comparison to what the Big Bang must have been like, for even supernovae in particular, and nuclear energy in general, while more efficient in converting matter to energy relative to chemical energy, still would fail any efficiency audit.

If you want to pass the matter-to-energy efficiency exam, there’s only one game in town: matter meets antimatter! Matter-antimatter reactions produce the most efficient means known to humans of generating explosive energy – 100% efficiency to be precise. Translated, 100% of the matter (and the antimatter) gets converted to energy. No leftovers. If a little bit of matter can generate a massive amount of energy in ultimately what amounts to a relatively highly inefficient nuclear fusion process, imagine what a massive amount of matter meets antimatter could generate!

One could image a super-lump of matter merging with an ever-so-slightly-less super-lump of antimatter. That would in theory result in a super-ultra violent explosion (the Big Bang) but giving us, our Universe, its matter dominance (over antimatter) that we observe. However, I strongly suspect that such super-sized lumps would have to be so massive that they would turn into Black Holes first, and the merger of two Black Holes, even one each of matter and antimatter, just gives you a larger Black Hole. All annihilation hell might be going on inside, but since the explosion can’t escape the pull of a Black Hole’s gravity, it’s of no consequence.

Still, as the most efficient means of generating explosive kinetic energy, getting the biggest bang for your buck, matter-antimatter annihilation needs some further thought and consideration. Is there a way of generating a Big Bang via the matter-antimatter component of a prior, pre-Big Bang ‘universe’ without the massive lumps?

To be continued...

Thursday, March 1, 2012

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Two

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

CORRECTIONS TO THE BIG BANG STANDARD MODEL

1) Correction number one - the Big Bang was a macro event:

I’m not out of my stark raving mind, so it’s the standard modellers that are totally nuts. Now that’s easy to say, but basic everyday logic backs me up. Let’s start with the notion that it is impossible to achieve infinite density. There is a limit, a finite limit, to how much stuff you can cram into how much space there is available (which is what density is – mass per unit volume). Once that limit is reached, any more stuff added on will not increase the density any further, just increase the volume. Keep on keeping on piling on the stuff and it won’t take very much stuff that’s value added to increase the volume beyond the realm of the quantum. Once beyond that boundary, you’re in the realm of the macro, and macro means sizes above that of a pinhead.

In this case, I suggest the ultimate size was multi-billions of pinheads worth. Regardless, macro rules the Big Bang. In our reverse-the-expanding-universe film, try imaging doing that with an expanding hot air balloon. If you reverse that inflation, do you stop when the balloon is devoid of air (the sensible thing to do), or do you continue the contraction until the balloon is smaller than the full stop at the bottom of this sentence’s question mark? Of course you don’t go beyond the point of commonsense, yet that is what the standard modellers have done. Further, they insist we swallow their lack of commonsense (not of course that that is actually suggested by them), hook, line and cosmological sinker.

2) Correction number two - The Big Bang spewed out matter/energy into existing time and space:

If the Big Bang event was a ‘spew’ event, an event which must have had both pre-existing space and time coordinates (if you spew, you do so at a particular place at a particular time), and if matter/energy can neither be created or destroyed, then of necessity the Big Bang spew (of matter/energy) happened I repeat in already existing space and time. Nothing could be more obvious.

BIG BANG EVIDENCE

If the Big Bang is so apparently wrong on so many fundamental counts, then what’s the positive evidence for it? What prompts cosmologists to advocate the standard model?

1) Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR): If you have a massive hot explosion (like the Big Bang), and all that heat energy expands and expands, then you’d expect the temperature of the area occupied by that energy to drop, the temperature ever decreasing as the volume that finite amount of energy occupies increases. As the energy expands it gets diluted and thus cools, but can never reach an absolute zero temperature. And that’s just what we find on the scale of the Universe. There’s a fine microwave energy “hiss” representing a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero that’s everywhere in the cosmos. That’s the diluted heat energy of the very hot Big Bang – well it has been a long time and is now spread throughout a lot of volume. That microwave “hiss”, called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), was predicted way before it was discovered, and one bona fide way of confirming evidence for a theory is to make predictions that are born out by experimental observations.

2) Composition of the Universe: At the theoretical but expected temperatures and pressures of the Big Bang, you might expect a certain amount of some interesting nuclear chemistry to take place and generate various substances. Particle physicists used to calculating such things predicted the relative amounts and types of stuff the Big Bang event would generate, and the theory matches observations to a high degree of accuracy – nearly all hydrogen and helium will be created by a ratio of roughly three to one. All the rest of stuff (very, very minor amounts relative to hydrogen and helium) that we know and love (like oxygen and iron and gold, etc.) was synthesised via the conversion of hydrogen and helium to those heavier elements by nuclear fusion processes – cosmic alchemy – in stars and often resultant supernovae, not in the Big Bang.

3) Expansion: If you have a large explosion, a really big bang, a violent vomit event, you’d expect the bits that received the most oomph, the bits with the most energy would be expelled the fastest; other bits with less energy would lose the race (if this were a track meet). And thus the bits of spewed stuff spreads out – fastest in front, like a marathon run. A bacterium on one of these bits would see every other bit moving away from it. Some faster bits are outpacing the bacterium inhabited bit; the bacterium occupied bit is outpacing and leaving behind the slower bits. If the bacterium assumes it is standing still, then both the faster and slower moving bits appear to be receding away from it. The bacterium observes all other bits moving away from it at speeds proportional to their distance from it. The bacterium might assume from all of this that its bit was a special bit – the centre bit – but we can see that’s not so. Any bacterium on any of the bits would conclude the same thing. They too would be wrong. Does that mean there was no centre? Of course there was. Equally incorrect would be the conclusion that there was no centre – there was, the site of the original big spew.

Substitute our local gravitationally bound cluster of galaxies as the bacterium’s bit; all other external galaxies and clusters of galaxies that have no connection to our local galactic group are the other bits, and there’s your analogy. Do we observe these other galactic bits to be moving away from us at velocities proportional to their distance from us? Yes indeed; you bet we do; spot-on!

As an alternative, let’s look at a marathon analogy. We have this long distance marathon that starts off with say 1000 runners at a specific point in time and space. The finishing line is at a 150 mile radius out and the runners can run in any direction they choose. They, for the sake of this analogy, run at 15, 12, 9, 6 or 3 miles per hour. Let’s look at the relativities from the point of view of the middle runner, the one running at 9 miles per hour. After one hour he sees the 15 mph runner six miles ahead running at a relative velocity of 6 mph; the 12 mph runner 3 miles ahead with a relative velocity of 3 mph; the 6 mph runner 3 miles behind also at a relative velocity of 3 mph; and the 3 mph runner 6 miles behind with a velocity relative to our 9 mph runner of 6 mph – that’s assuming all took off and headed in one direction.

But if the 9 mph runner looks at those running in the exact opposite direction, the anti 3 mph runner is 12 miles behind with a relative velocity between them of 12 mph; the anti 6 mph runner is 15 miles away with, you guessed it a relative velocity difference of 15 mph; the anti 9 mph runner is 18 miles distant, relative velocity 18 mph; the anti 12 mph runner is 21 miles away at 21 mph relative velocity; the anti 15 mph runner is 24 miles away and moving away at 24 mph. Translated, there is a direct correlation between how far away the various runners are, and how fast they are running, which you can graph for verification. After two hours the distances between any two runners moving at different velocities will have doubled; after three hours trebled; after four hours quadrupled, and so on, though each runner is maintaining their respective velocities. Again, the relationship holds for each runner; each runner might think themselves in the centre as all other runners appear to be moving away from that runner’s point of view, yet it’s not the case that any runner is the centre – yet there was a centre when the starting gun went off.

Now kindly note that there is nothing in that trilogy of evidence for the Big Bang that requires that event to have: 1) created time; 2) created space; and 3) to have been a quantum-sized happening.

WHERE’S THE RECIPE BOOK?

The ultimate recipe book that would support the Big Bang event’s causality with the creation of time and space; the origin of matter and energy, has yet to be written by those advocating that very point of view.

There’s no recipe to the best of my knowledge for how to cook up a batch of time!

Equally there’s no recipe for how to bake a cake of space!

How do you mix up a quark salad or a neutrino soup when there’s nothing in the pantry to start off with? Can anyone please give me the recipe?

From an equally empty supermarket you apparently can produce a kinetic energy pie. I want to see the recipe for that!

The Universe, it has been said, is the ultimate free lunch. But a lunch still needs a recipe book. When physicists, astrophysicists and cosmologists can actually write and publish such a cookbook, well then its Nobel Prizes all around. Till then, I think they should veer away from statements about the creation of time, space, matter and energy from nothing. Till then, my mantra remains “there is no such thing as a free lunch”.

To be continued...

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part One

When anyone ponders the origin and evolution of our Universe, the science of cosmology, one is confronted with the Big Bang theory – the Big Bang event. So, what did the Big Bang do, or didn’t do; what was it, or wasn’t? And, most importantly, should you put any credibility into the Big Bang scenario seeing as how 1) nobody was around to witness the event, and 2) the scenario, as given by the standard model, is grossly in violation of the very laws, principles and relationships of physics that you’d expect cosmologists to support. Are their any solutions that are out-of-the-box that can reconcile the Big Bang event without violating what scientists should hold most dear? I can think of two!

For those of you unacquainted with the Big Bang scenario, in the beginning (13.7 billion years ago) the Big Bang event created our Universe – all of space and time; all of matter and energy; all from a volume less than a standard pinhead! Now for the objections!

THE BIG BANG VIOLATES BASIC PHYSICS

1) Standard Big Bang violation number one - the Big Bang didn’t create time:

The concept of time is nothing more than a measurement of rate-of-change. If nothing ever changed, the concept of time would be meaningless. Now change suggests there must be at least two events. Event One happens; Event Two happens. The change is that difference between the state of play identified with Event One and the state of play identified with Event Two. That change equates into a time differential. Event One happens at a time separate and apart from that of Event Two. Event One if it’s the cause of Event Two, must have happened prior to Event Two. Event Two in turn, can act as the cause of Event Three, and so on. Translated, there was no first event; there was no first cause. There was no first event because there had to be a prior cause that caused that event. There was no first cause because there had to have been an earlier event that caused that cause.

Now the Big Bang event was both a cause and an effect. As a cause, the Big Bang caused the subsequent event, the kick-starting of the evolution of our Universe. As an effect, well something prior to the Big Bang must have acted as a cause of the Big Bang effect. Translated, that cause must have been prior in time to the Big Bang; therefore there is such a thing as a before the Big Bang and therefore the Big Bang event could NOT have created time. Taken to its logical conclusion, there could never have been a first cause; there could never be a first effect, therefore time is infinite since the chicken (cause) and egg (effect) paradox is only solvable by postulating infinity.

2) Standard Big Bang violation number two - the Big Bang didn’t create space:

This supposition is easily disposed of. Can any handyman reading this think of any possibility of how they could create something, anything, be it building something from scratch, or writing words on paper, or even thinking those words or thinking about building something, without there being pre-existing space, be it space in your garage, space that exists in your exercise book, or the space that exists between your ears that conceives of building X or writing Y? No? Nothing, but nothing, springs into reality, even if only a nebulous mental reality, without there being pre-existing space. The Big Bang is a reality. It had to have been created in a reality. Any reality has a space or volume component. Therefore, the Big Bang (creation of our Universe) event happened in pre-existing space or volume; therefore the Big Bang event did not, could not, have created space. You can not create your own space, the space you yourself exist in. It’s sort of like giving birth to your own self. It’s a paradox.

3) Standard Big Bang violation number three - the Big Bang didn’t create matter/energy:

One of the most cherished conservation principles, drummed into every science student, from junior high through university, is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but only changed in form. Also, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only changed in form. Post Einstein, the two have been combined, since matter can be turned into energy and vice versa. However, the central bit is creation. Creation from nothing (or destruction into nothing) is not allowed – except for some unfashionable reason at the Big Bang according the standard model of cosmology. Why this should be the sole exception to the rule is quite beyond me.

Now there is such a thing as creation of virtual particles from the vacuum energy (quantum fluctuations). However that’s not a free lunch (something created from nothing). It’s the conversion of energy to mass (as per Einstein’s famous equation) and the virtual particles can annihilate each other and return back into energy. I just thought I’d better mention that in case some bright spark considered that process a mini version of the Big Bang. It’s not as in this case the creation (and annihilation) of virtual particles would be just a very, very tiny bang that violates nothing in terms of the conservation of matter and energy.

4) Standard Big Bang violation number four - the Big Bang wasn’t a pinhead event:

The Big Bang wasn’t a quantum event: The Universe is expanding, ever expanding. That’s not in doubt (see below). Standard model cosmologists now play that expanding Universe ‘film’ in reverse. Travel back in time and the Universe is contracting, ever contacting. Alas, where do you stop that contraction? Well the standard model says when the Universe achieves a volume tinier than the tiniest subatomic particle! When (according to some texts) the Universe has achieved infinite density in zero volume – okay, maybe as close to infinite density and as close to zero volume as makes no odds. Translated, in the beginning the Universe was something within the realm of quantum physics!

Now just because you can run the clock backwards to such extremes, doesn’t mean that that reflects reality. How any scientist can say with a straight face that you can cram the entirety of not only the observable Universe, but the entire Universe (which is quite a bit larger yet again) into the volume smaller than the most fundamental of elementary particles is beyond me. Either I’m nuts for not comprehending the bloody obvious, or the standard modellers are collectively out of their stark raving minds. Actually I suspect the latter because they are caught out in a Catch-22. They are between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Now if cosmologists really believe the entire contents of our Universe was crammed into a small space, even one larger than quantum-sized, then of necessity you have our embryo Universe nicely, and tightly, confined within a Black Hole! Nothing can escape from a Black Hole (except Hawking radiation, but that leakage is so slow it’s like having just one drop of water come through your roof over the duration of a category five hurricane). So you can’t have a Big Bang that releases our Universe from its Black Hole prison. So there! The Big Bang had to have been of such a size that a Black Hole was not part of the picture.

To be continued...

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Cosmic Fun: Random Ramblings in Modern Cosmology: Conclusions: Part Two

The following ideas are primarily mine alone, the good, the bad and the ugly, albeit based on and influenced by reading multi volumes of tomes in modern cosmology. However, I’m also quite sure that numerous others have quite independently thought somewhat similar, if not exact, thoughts as well. Therefore, I’ll take no credit for being right, if I don’t get blamed for being wrong!

CONCLUSIONS (Part Two)

Okay, here are the answers (well, my answers anyway)!

4) The Origin and Fate of Our Universe - Is Our Universe Open or Closed? – Heat Death or Big Crunch? I opt for death by Big Crunch despite all the evidence currently against it! I reason as follows – we know matter can create energy. The reverse is also possible – energy can create matter. And thus the all pervasive, all surrounding, vacuum energy, seething with quantum uncertainty (albeit certain activity), will now and again produce particles, thus reducing the overall energy of the vacuum. This energy debt must eventually be repaid, so said particles usually decay (annihilate actually) back into pure energy and rejoin the vacuum pretty quick-smart. But, it’s possible that those particles, could, by chance, evolve into an entire universe. Particles, if they exist long enough, will be subjected to all manner of quantum effects and thus evolve into a universe instead of being immediately reabsorbed back into the energy vacuum. The energy debt however still must be eventually repaid, but who’s to say how quickly that is required? So, ultimately, in order to repay that energy debt, our Universe will need to ultimately collapse (undergo Big Crunch) back into the Superverse energy vacuum from which it originally came and pay the energy debt. The Universe (our Universe) begins and ends as pure energy – energy borrowed from the vacuum; energy returned to the vacuum. How exactly that Big Crunch is going to come about I know not, I’m just convinced it will happen.

So, why aren’t new universes being created from scratch in our backyards (where the energy vacuum holds sway as it does everywhere)? Because, for any given tiny area (like your backyard), under the relatively low probabilities of the exact circumstances coming together just so, it’s going to take trillions of years for it to happen. But, given the vast acreage of the Superverse, new universes probably pop into (and out of) existence on a fairly regular basis. It’s like you are fairly unlikely to have a meteor land in your backyard tomorrow, but somewhere tomorrow a meteor is likely to hit our planet.

Now, what if the vacuum energy (Superverse) can not produce a universe? Well, the next best (second) option I suggest is the black hole as universal mum idea. That is, the extreme conditions that produce a black hole in one universe ends up producing a new universe in a different place (obviously), maybe in a different time. Our black hole connects us to that new universe, but no physicist would advise you to make the trip! At least this origin-of-a-universe doesn’t rely on a Big Crunch ending.

The third best option is the Big Crunch of one universe producing the Big Bang of the next, but from observations, the prospect of a Big Crunch is dicey at best. But, I like to give the prospect of a Big Crunch the benefit of the doubt. Further, there’s nothing to say that option two, black holes, couldn’t produce a baby universe that would end up cyclic – Big Bang – expansion – contraction – Big Crunch – Big Bang, etc. Reproduction and reincarnation!

Lastly, albeit unlikely in the extreme yet I’ve sure sci-fi writers have a ball with this idea, is that advanced E.T. could manufacture a universe using the laws of physics, especially quantum physics, to do so. If nature can manufacture a universe, could not intelligence also manufacture a universe? Call it the mother of all engineering achievements. Now this differs from God creating universes, in that presumably God knows He/She/It can do so and knows the outcome to the Nth degree, but to E.T., this is just a scientific experiment. Whether an E.T. created universe would take on a life and evolution of its own, who knows? Now you’d think that creating a rapidly expanding universe in the laboratory would end up destroying said lab and surroundings. Of course maybe the physics of baby universe creation dictates that the universe forms elsewhere and/or elsewhen! One other scenario is that once universe creation becomes so routine as to end up being part and parcel of the science lab curricula at E.T. Junior High School, then it’s going to be universes galore – maybe that why we have a Multiverse!

5) Our Universe/Multiverse – Finite or Infinite in Time? The philosophical answer here is ‘infinite’. One can never get away from the question “Well that’s fine, but what happened before that?”

6) To Quantum or Not to Quantum the Big Bang? Here I opt for the Big Bang as a non-quantum event. I just can’t figure out how you can cram the entire contents of our Universe into a space smaller than an atom. In any event, if the point of origin of the Big Bang were a singularity, then because singularities can’t have zero dimensions and infinite density – that just makes no sense at all – then said singularity could have been large enough to exceed the volumes commonly associated with quantum physics.

7) Are the Laws of Physics the Same or Different in Various Universes? The answer here is unknown and probably unknowable. However, I suspect that there is only one type of physics possible – as Einstein is quoted, ‘did God have any choice in the matter?’ – or maybe not. Anyway, my reasoning is that assuming that all universes arise from a common cause, say the Superverse vacuum energy or via Lee Smolin’s black holes as universe generators, or the budding off of universes via chaotic/eternal inflation, with no evidence to the contrary, it’s probably more logical to suspect that only one type of physics exists, and each universe will be the same – physics wise. But, what if you introduce extraterrestrial intelligence into the picture? Maybe, just maybe, intelligence advanced enough to create universes, may be intelligent enough to tweak the laws of physics and alter them. That certainly would be easy enough to do if you created computer software that simulated universes, each software package having different physics programmed in! So, maybe it’s just as well to fence sit on this issue.

8) Is our Universe real or simulated? The odds overwhelmingly favor our reality as being a simulated one. If that could be proved, it would also be proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. If all terrestrial life is simulated, who else is left to simulate us but extraterrestrials? I just bet we’re some alien’s Ph D thesis. Of course this is a fairly unpalatable theory, so I’ll just conclude here that the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of my being wrong.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Cosmic Fun: Random Ramblings in Modern Cosmology: The Hidden Agenda

THE HIDDEN AGENDA

Is there any preordained point or preconceived purpose to the Universe? That is do we have any implication that the ever evolving Universe has a goal or seeks to achieve something? Does the Universe possess some sort of special (undefined but natural) force or quality such that its origin and evolution has an ultimate unique meaning? Or does it just exist with no more purpose than say a cosmic ray has? This question is probably somewhat outside the realm of physics and cosmology, but that sure hasn’t stopped physicists and cosmologists from putting in their two cents worth! Anyway, here’s my two cents.

Well I think we can all agree that the fundamental particles (electrons, quarks, etc.) that make up all the matter and transmit all the forces, and the atoms they in turn make up, and the molecules that atoms can link up/bond to form, even the most complex of them, merely obey various natural physical ‘laws’ (they are very law abiding), having no choice in the matter given that they have no independent free will or decision making abilities or the ways and means of emitting emotions. They have no intellect, cannot comprehend themselves, far less anything else.

We’d all probably agree that all the macro non-organic things that particles/forces, atoms and molecules make up, like stars (and groups of stars like galaxies) and planets and associated debris likewise obey natural ‘laws’ and also have no intellect or ability to emote. In other words, the Sun and the Moon don’t know you, have no means of knowing you, they can’t deduce you exist and therefore can hardly care that you exist (or don’t exist or cease to exist for that matter). Since there was an era in the history of the Universe when only that sort of stuff existed, the sort of stuff we agree was never intellectual and emotive, one can hardly imagine the Universe then, all this collection of stuff, pre-life era, having any purpose or objective or goal, or agenda (or whatever other synonymous word you have in mind).

At this point, one question raises its head and requires an answer, and that is where did all the natural ‘laws’ that rule the Universe (and all that it contains) come from? Well, the way I see it, there are X number of fundamental particles – the ultimate building blocks from which all else flows – like quarks and electrons. Each type of fundamental particle has an intrinsic value to a number of properties, values unique to it and it alone. These properties are mass, and spin and charge, and the like. All of these fundamental particles, the bits and pieces of the Universe, interact with other bits and pieces. Anytime bit A interacts with piece B, you’ll get a result, AB. You’ll always get AB. If bit A interacts with particle C, you’ll get result AC and not, say, AB. And so on and so on. We interpret AB and AC, etc. as ‘laws’ because specific results occur in a consistent manner whenever specific bits and pieces interact. And so on up the scale it goes. Two atoms of hydrogen interact with one atom of oxygen, giving water – not, say table salt now and then. If the reverse were true, if two atoms of hydrogen plus one atom of oxygen sometimes yielded table salt, or if A + B sometimes gave AC, or BC or XYZ, then the stuff of the Universe would be unstable at best and hence we’d have a Universe no exactly conducive to life, and so we wouldn’t be around to ask the question in the first place.

At some stage however, by the laws of probability, sheer chance, by accident (no preconceived purpose or goal involved) a small part of our stuff, under the general natural ‘laws’ inherent in physics and chemistry, became organized enough, complex enough, to qualify as something we’d all agree on as ‘life’. Say a proto-cell, even a microbe. The question now is, does a microbe emote or have an intellect. No. It has however achieved purpose – survival and reproduction and things of that ilk. So, now a tiny part of the Universe has a purpose, but the microbe certainly didn’t absorb or learn this concept of purpose from the wider outside Universe since the wider outside Universe doesn’t have this concept as part of it’s makeup in the first place.

Ultimately microbes evolve and life got even more complex, complex enough that traits such as intellect and emotion took on some form of reality. But again, it was inherited from what came before. So, does the Universe have a purpose? No. Do some parts of the Universe express a purpose, or intellect or ability to emote? Yes. But it’s not a universe one as different bits have (to a greater or lesser degree) somewhat different purposes, intellects and emotions. An electron is an electron is an electron, but an octopus (having a purpose, intellect and ability to emote) isn’t a cockatoo which isn’t a human both of which also have purposes, intellects and emotions. Even one human obviously differs from another human with respect to these traits. Question: does the fact that terrestrial life in general or humans in particular, exist, impart some sort of higher meaning or purpose to the Universe at large? Not on your Nellie!

Let’s take a simple case and assume that life is confined to Planet Earth (although the argument holds even if extraterrestrial life exists). Let’s further assume that an uncaring, un-intellectual, asteroid, with no goal or purpose to its existence apart from the fact that it just is, slams into our planet and all life goes kaput! Or perhaps our uncaring Sun goes nova, achieving the same result. Then the Universe is totally back to square one – an assorted collection of primitive stuff with no laudable purpose, no intellect, no ability to emote – no agenda, hidden or otherwise. My conclusion is that life (high or low) is an unplanned for occurrence in a Universe that has no purpose – the Universe just is in all its uncaring glory.