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.    

Our Expanding Universe: Part One

You will frequently encounter in astronomical and cosmological texts the idea that space or space-time is a thing, a flexible membrane type of thing that can influence the motion of objects, in fact carry the flotsam and jetsam of the Universe around. This flexi-space is increasing over time, expanding, 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.

In just about any introductory textbook on astronomy or primer on cosmology, you’re bound to read that the Universe is expanding (true enough) because space itself is expanding, and like dots painted on a balloon being blown up, the flotsam and jetsam of the Universe is spreading apart, somehow ‘glued’ to that expanding space. How any astronomer or cosmologist can write such claptrap with a straight face is quite beyond me.

My basic premise here is that if space itself is expanding, then space itself is a thing. Common sense tells you that space is not a thing. You cannot see it, hear it, touch it, feel it or taste it. If you think space is a thing, well grab hold of some of it and try to stretch or expand it (but do it in private or others will doubt your sanity). Whether you talk about 3-D space (volume) or the four dimensional space-time (time being the fourth dimension), it is just the empty stage, IMHO, where the drama of real things is played out.

To my way of thinking, not-things (like space, time and dimensions* in general) can be subdivided indefinitely. They are continuous. No matter the length, area or volume, whatever you have can be divided in half and in half again and again and again and you still have a length, area or volume. Things have a built-in limit as to how far that thing in question can be divided down before you hit fundamental bedrock. Sooner or later you hit and enter the realm of the electron, those quarks, neutrinos, photons, gluons, gravitons and other force and matter particles that cannot be divided down any farther. These are things.

EXPANDING SPACE

So if space itself is expanding, well that’s nonsense because…

There’s space between your ears, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting a swelled head!

You move through existing space when going from home to the office, to the supermarket or going to a foreign city on business or vacation. When commuting to the office, the distance between home and office doesn’t increase on a daily basis.

The Moon orbits the Earth through existing space. The Moon is getting farther away of the Earth on a daily basis. Even there’s a lot of space between the Earth and the Moon, and the Moon is getting further away from the Earth, that’s not because space is expanding, but because of tidal forces.

The Earth/Moon pair orbits the Sun through existing space. There’s a lot of interplanetary space between the Earth/Moon system and the Sun, but the Earth/Moon to Sun distance hasn’t changed in thousands of millennia.

The Sun (and solar system) orbits around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy though existing space. There’s a lot of interstellar space between the Sun and the galactic center but the Sun isn’t getting any more distant from that center.

So far, so good: even astronomers and cosmologists will agree with that assessment. But all of a sudden, with a snap of their fingers, once out in intergalactic space things move apart, or rather galaxies (of which our Milky Way is one of billions and billions) move apart from other galaxies as if being carried piggyback on an expanding intergalactic space (which however is the same space as interplanetary and interstellar space).

Actually there’s an exception of every galaxy moving away from every other galaxy – clusters of galaxies that are cheek-by-jowl are bound together by their mutual gravity, and sometime in such a cluster galaxies can approach each other. A case in point has our own Milky Way Galaxy, and the Andromeda Galaxy on a collision course, but rest easy, the intersection won’t happen for another five billion years – give or take a million.

But wait, isn’t every galaxy in the observable universe bound or attracted by gravity to every other galaxy? I mean the force of gravity doesn’t extend outwards and then at some point fall off a cliff, or get shut down and off.

If space is expanding, then space is a thing with properties. What are the properties of a thing that expands?  

Most common are 2-D structures. You put extra air in your tires, it’s the rubber that expands; while blowing up a balloon, well it’s that membrane-like surface that stretches; you have stretching fabrics (like the elastic in your underwear). The oft used cosmology textbook analogy is painting dots (representing the galaxies) on the surface of an expanding balloon (representing expanding space), and as the balloon expands the ‘galactic’ dots get further apart. But the analogy fails because the balloon’s expanding surface is a something. Besides, all 2-D analogies aren’t worth the paper they’re written on since 1) the actual Universe is 3-D and 2) there are 3-D analogies available.

So there are pretty common 3-D analogies. An entire rock will expand, not just the surface, sitting out in the hot sun; a rising cake or soufflé or baking raisin bread are common examples in the kitchen. The analogy oft given is that of baking raisin bread, where the raisins are the galaxies and the expanding bread is akin to space, and thus the ‘galactic’ raisins get further and further apart as the bread expands. But this analogy fails too because the raisin bread is a something.

Now when something expands, it gets thinner or more dilute. As you keep putting on weight, the elastic in your underwear stretches thinner and thinner. In the case of the raisin loaf, if you start with a 500 gram mass of dough in a container of say 300 cubic centimeters, what you end up with is 500 grams in say a volume of 500 cubic centimeters. The same amount of stuff, in a larger volume, means that the stuff has been diluted.

If space is a something, and space itself is expanding or stretching, then space must be getting thinner and/or more dilute over time. If however, this space-as-a-something remains constant over time, even though it’s expanding, then you’re getting a free lunch – something from nothing. That extra space is being manufactured by forces unknown out of nothing at all. Claptrap!

*Space, a 3-D volume, is composed of a trilogy of dimensions – up/down, back/front, left/right; or latitude, longitude and altitude. Area is two dimensional (2-D); length is 1-D or just one dimension. Now, are dimensions a thing? If not, then volume (space), area and length are not things either.

To be continued…

Some Bits & Pieces That Are Out of This World

Orion’s Belt: It consists of the three bright stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintake The stars are more or less evenly spaced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as a belt. For some mysterious reason, several archaeological sites exhibit or mirror the positions of the trilogy of stars that make up the Belt of Orion. The most famous is the trilogy of those massive ancient Egyptian pyramids on the Giza plateau. The second is seen at Teotihuacán’s central pyramid complex in Mexico. The third is a trilogy of Hopi Mesas in Arizona. Okay, Orion’s Belt, that trilogy of stars, is fairly prominent in the night sky, but then too so is a lot of other star patterns. What makes these special to our ancient ancestors? A big deal of this is made by ‘ancient astronaut’ theorists. Somehow that trilogy of stars must be special, like perhaps home turf to ET. Alas, that doesn’t seem all that plausible. Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) and Mintake (Delta Orionis) are very bright stars (to the naked eye), but they are also very, very far away. That alone suggests that they are very un-Sun like. Alnitak is 736 light-years away and 100,000 times our Sun’s luminosity; Alnilam is 1340 light-years distant and 375,000 times as luminous as our Sun; and Mintake is 915 light-years away as the crow flies and is a whopping 900,000 times the Sun’s luminosity. Mintaka is also a double star system. Translated, the trio of stars that make up Orion’s Belt don’t seem to be likely candidates for extraterrestrials that would come a-calling as ‘ancient astronauts’. I very much doubt SETI scientists would target these stars as likely candidates to point their radio telescopes at.

oooooOOOOOooooo

There’s nothing too controversial about the idea that other universes in a Multiverse could have differing laws, relationships and principles of physics than our own. It’s one way of explaining why our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe. If you have billions and billions of universes each with a unique or differing set of laws, relationships and principles of physics, well probability suggests that one universe should just right for life – a Goldilocks Universe. Since we can only exist inside a Goldilocks Universe, well that explains that. But what if the laws, relationships and principles of physics in our Universe changed over time, or over space, or both! Then it’s probably time to turn out the lights, shut and lock the lab door and go home. It’s time to find a new career. But amazingly, there is (controversial) evidence that that is just that. Physical constants aren’t. 

oooooOOOOOooooo

If whatever powers-that-be are simulating our universe, then they could be simulating others as well – a simulated Multiverse! And each and every simulated universe of that Multiverse could have simulated parallel universes. That’s a simulated Megaverse!

oooooOOOOOooooo

One of the 64,000 $64,000 questions: Can you pour stuff down a Black Hole indefinitely, or does the Black Hole have a finite capacity and ultimately or eventually will have to spew stuff out the ‘other side’ (i.e. – producing a White Hole) as you keep pouring in more and more and more? I’d wager the conservation relationships and principles of physics and chemistry hold sway here. What goes in ultimately comes out. That doesn’t mean there’s not a temporary holding vessel. Or, in more human terms, you fill what’s empty; you empty what’s full, but in-between those two there’s storage in the stomach and the intestines; the lungs and the bladder.

oooooOOOOOooooo

What lies at the heart of a Black Hole? The traditional answer is a ‘singularity’ – a point of (near) infinite density and (close to) zero volume, matter crushed down to the final, ultimate limit – or maybe not.

Start with a hunk of matter. Keep on keeping on adding more and more and more matter (mass) to it. Your original hunk grows larger, ever denser; its gravity swells in proportion. Finally it’s just a fraction away from achieving Black Hole status – meaning its gravity is so strong not even light can escape from its grasp.

So you are a thimbleful of salt away from crossing the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary. You can (barely) still see your now super-sized hunk of stuff. Now toss in that final thimbleful of stuff onto the hunk. No light now reaches you – you’ve crossed the threshold or boundary and have got a Black Hole. But do you doubt that lurking on the other side of the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary, though unseen, you still have that super-sized hunk of stuff, not a singularity, but a really real solid 3-D hunk of stuff? Or, in other words, if the escape velocity of your hunk is 185,999 miles per second, no Black Hole and no singularity, but if it climbs to 186,001 miles per second you have a Black Hole and your hunk morphs into a singularity? A two mile a second difference makes that much difference? I don’t think so.

oooooOOOOOooooo

You are all no doubt well aware of the General Theory of Relativity which holds that light (in a pure vacuum) always travels at constant velocity (300,000 km/sec), no matter what frame of reference you are viewing that light in – totally contrary to experience and expectations, but true nevertheless. That translates into length and mass and rate-of-change (time) all being variables, variations depending on what frame of reference you are in. Light of course is one manifestation of the electromagnetic force. That suggests to me that magnetism must also propagate at 300,000 km/sec. Two north magnetic poles or one north and one south magnetic pole, suddenly brought into existence, 300,000 km apart, won’t feel any mutual repulsion or attraction respectfully until one-half of one second after-the-fact, when the two forces meet in the middle and start doing their thing.

But that constant speed of a force, must equally apply to gravity. If the Sun were to suddenly in a split of a split of a split second vanish, it would be eight minutes before Planet Earth would be rudderless, or rather orbitless. No matter what your frame of reference, you’d ‘see’ gravity propagate outwards at 300,000 km/sec. The same must apply to ‘dark energy’, that anti-gravity force. I imagine the same would apply to the propagation of the strong and the week nuclear force as well.

Of course one cannot turn on and turn off gravity (or the strong and weak nuclear forces) like you can a light (or radio, UV, IR, etc.) beam or magnetic field, which is a bit of a bummer in testing the relativistic properties of a gravity beam.

oooooOOOOOooooo

Gravity; it’s what holds you firmly to Terra Firma. If I ask you what holds you firmly to Terra Firma you’d answer “gravity”. But if then asked to explain exactly what it is and how it works you’d be stumped. Giving the Newtonian equations makes predictions but doesn’t give explanations.

However, there are two explanations for gravity if I read the textbooks correctly.

Gravity Is Just Another Force: Firstly, there are in this worldview four fundamental forces: the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Forces have accompanying elementary particles witch convey the force. In the case of the electromagnetic force, the particle is the photon. The particle associated with gravity has been dubbed the graviton. Unfortunately, it has never (to date) been detected. Now the central issue here is try as they might, physicists cannot unify the four forces into one whole, called a Theory of Everything or TOE*. Since everything should be related to everything else, gravity should be, if not a brother or sister to the other three force-related siblings, at least a kissing cousin. Alas, it’s an unrelated hermit that wants no ancestry with the other three.

Gravity Is Just the Geometry of Space-Time: The second is that mass ‘tells’ space-time how to warp, and warped space-time ‘tells’ mass how to move – seemingly experimentally verified more than several times over. The movement of mass in warped space-time is what we interpret as the ‘force of gravity’, but gravity is actually the actions of mass moving in space-time geometry. If gravity is just geometry and mass deviates from the straight and narrow path because lots of other mass has warped space-time from the flatland Great Plains to the peaks and valleys of the space-time Rockies, then there’s no apparent need or reason that I can see to unify gravity with the other forces and their particles. There is no graviton. If there is no causality link with the other three (quantum level) forces, there’s no need for a TOE. There’s no need to reconcile the 98 pound of weakling gravity with the Atlas physiques of electromagnetism, etc. 

Gravity is highly anomalous. Apart from the fact that gravity is the 98 pound weakling of all the forces (you can pull a paperclip up into the air with just a tiny magnet even though the entire Planet Earth’s gravity is tugging back); and that the graviton hasn’t been spotted anywhere, anytime, anyhow; and that TOE is a no-go; but lastly there are those cosmic twin anomalies, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

We can’t see, or even detect directly, 96% of the Universe! We have no idea what 96% of the Universe is composed of. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is. Both however have revealed themselves indirectly via their gravity (in the case of Dark Matter) or their antigravity (in the case of Dark Energy). Some of that ‘missing’ part of the Universe is matter of unknown composition, but like all good matter, has gravity. It’s the gravitational effect on matter we can see that gives the game away. Some more (way more) of that ‘missing’ part of the cosmos is Dark Energy which is that unknown stuff which is accelerating the expansion rate of the Universe and if that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is since by rights the expansion rate of the Universe should be decelerating under the force of gravity. The fact that it’s accelerating suggests that Dark Energy is a form of antigravity, a repulsive force driving things apart at ever faster and faster rates. Though antigravity is really outside the accepted realm of physics (though not sci-fi), there is a symmetrical parallel with the electromagnetic force, which is both attractive like gravity (north pole to south pole) and repulsive (north pole to north pole, or south pole to south pole).

So, gravitational anomalies abound.

*The exception is that the highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) String Theory, Superstring Theory or M-Theory can produce a TOE. The downside is that it takes a whole potful of highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) extra dimensions of which we have no awareness of and can’t (yet) detect. That’s just a bit too ad hoc for me, though many a theoretical physicist goes to sleep by counting their strings instead of their sheep.

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Three

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…

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...

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Two

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…

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...

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part One

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.

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...

Variations on a Theme Cosmological: Part Two

Continued from yesterday's blog...

The question arises that if our Universe originated from another universe’s singularity, and that in our Universe singularities form the centre of Black Holes (of all sizes), then could these singularities, if they became large enough and unstable enough (via the extreme warping of space-time), ultimately form new baby universes in their own right?

Where all this differs from the standard cosmological (Big Bang) model is: 1) The Big Bang wasn’t a micro (quantum realm) event; 2) the Big Bang event occurred in existing space and time instead of creating space and time; and 3) there was therefore a ‘before the Big Bang’, but alas, a ‘before’ probably forever beyond our capabilities of directly knowing the fine print.  With respect to 2) immediately above, is there any observation that has been, or can be made, that can distinguish between space expanding (as a result of the Big Bang having created space in the first instance) and expanding space carrying matter/energy along for the ride (the standard spiel), vis-à-vis matter/energy moving through space as the result of a Big Bang explosion (or spewing event) in preexisting space? The answer is “no”.

How is this process maintained indefinitely, such that there not only was no beginning, but no end either? I mean if all universes expand forever, things ultimately come to an apparent sticky end. Well, assuming a universe doesn’t have a sufficient mass/energy density to cause the expansion to slow down, stop, reverse, and collapse back to a Big Crunch (like ours), then sooner or later, part of an ever expanding universe will intersect with part of another ever expanding universe (if Mother Nature can produce one universe, she can produce more than one universe). The resulting local increase in mass/energy density due to that intersection could be enough to trigger that area to undergo a gravitational collapse with a local Big Crunch the ultimate result, resulting in the production of a new universe – which may, or may itself expand indefinitely or may collapse into another Big Crunch scenario.

An Analogy: All analogies are a bit suspect, but this one I hope will illustrate my general idea immediately above. I’m going to substitute a supernova for the Big Bang.

Interstellar gas and dust slowly come together, contracting under their mutual gravitational attraction, ultimately forming a massive star which ignites (via thermonuclear fusion). One could think of the process as a mini Big Crunch.

The star, being massive, rapidly exhausts its fuel supply, and the resulting imbalance between gravity (inward pressure) and radiation pressure (outward pressure), a balance of pressures that normally keeps a star’s size constant, results in a massive implosion hence explosion – a supernova. The supernova spews its stuff, most of it anyway, back into interstellar space. That’s a mini Big Bang.

Now supernovae occur in existing space-time; they don’t create space-time. They don’t create matter/energy; rather recycle it – from interstellar gas and dust, back to interstellar gas and dust. However, the intense energies and pressures can create new forms of matter (heavier elements) from their supply of lighter elements. This is ultimately necessary for the origin and development of carbon-based life.

So we have a micro system of mini Big Crunches (stellar formation) leading to mini Big Bangs (supernovae – stellar death) - a sort of cyclic universe in miniature.

Now we note that supernovae happen at specific coordinates. They happen at a point in space and time, like I suspect the real Big Bang did. A supernova is also not a quantum event, much like I suspect the actual Big Bang wasn’t.

It is claimed that our Big Bang had no point of origin, no specific coordinates in space-time. The Big Bang happened everywhere, since it created space-time in the first place. Thus, our telescopes can’t find or pinpoint where it happened.  In our supernova explosion, all the bits and pieces will, over the eons, become so spread out, and/or incorporated into other stellar/planetary bodies, as to be no longer detectable or associated with the supernova event. The core of the supernova might remain for a while as a neutron star or Black Hole, but they too will eventually radiate away – in the latter case via Hawking radiation. Thus, exactly where the supernova event happened, ultimately, over the eons, will no longer be identifiable on the cosmic map. I suspect the same for the real Big Bang.

Using another analogy, imaging a closed room with a fireplace and light the fireplace for, say an hour. Then put out the fire, and leave the room for a half hour. When reentering the room, it should be obvious, especially using an infrared detector, the exact point of origin for the heat – the fireplace. Now instead of reentering the room after a half an hour, delay reentry for a half year. By that time the fireplace will be equal in temperature to the rest of the room, and thus won’t stand out, infrared detector or no. Substitute the Big Bang for the fireplace; the Universe for the room. Too much time has elapsed for the Big Bang’s coordinates to be located. 

We note that the bits and pieces that are explosively emitted by supernovae are expanding throughout existing space, just like a mini Big Bang event and mirroring the real Big Bang event. Further, every bit ‘sees’ every other bit moving away from it at a velocity proportional to its distance away. The further away, the faster it’s going, just like a real Big Bang.

We note that a supernova has a cause. Supernovae don’t happen for no reason at all. That also mirrors what I feel must be the case for our own actual Big Bang.

One other word to make the analogy more complete – our Universe may have originated in a Big Bang, but it's unlikely to end in a Big Crunch. Well, that’s okay in our supernova analogy. A star doesn’t go supernova, spew out gas and dust, which then contracts in total to reform the star when then eventually explodes as a supernova, etc. Its explosive oomph is greater than the gravity needed to gather the gas and dust back together again.

So in our Universe we have local areas of gas and dust contraction – mini Big Crunches – stellar formation; local areas of expansion – mini Big Bangs – supernovae. Now expand the picture to the level of real large scale Big Crunches and real large scale Big Bangs, all inside a super-sized universe. This super-sized universe really is super-sized. It’s infinite in time and in space. It’s not a closed system in that there’s nothing outside of it. You can’t get any bigger than infinite volume.

This infinite cosmos contains lots of embedded universes, maybe even an infinite number of them. Some universes are expanding then contracting; some universes (like ours) are expanding, forever and ever expanding; some areas of ever expanding expansion can intersect with other universe’s ever expanding expansions, as in the case of two or more supernovae, causing local pockets of contraction, or Big Crunches.

As I said, analogies are not the actual same as what they are meant to represent, but, I think the supernova substitute for the Big Bang more exactly illustrates reality than some of the claptrap offered up by the professionals. 

Postscript: Can one however now logically ask whether or not our Universe arose directly from the vacuum energy 13.7 billion years ago and bypass all this Big Crunch, Singularity, space warping nonsense? While that’s of course a possibility - see references below - that specific scenario, as opposed to universes in general being so formed, hasn’t been considered as serious an option vis-à-vis the death of one universe giving rise, Phoenix-like, to the birth of another, as in ours. My gut feeling says that you wouldn’t have the same sort of observational evidence that we have to currently account for (i.e. – cosmic microwave background radiation, etc.) in an origin via the vacuum energy. Regardless, a vacuum energy origin still differs from the standard Big Bang model in that the vacuum energy, (time and space, matter and energy), preexisted the Big Bang – and that’s not on according to traditionalists.

References

Cole, K.C.; ‘The ultimate free lunch’ (in) The Hole in the Universe; Harcourt, San Diego; 2001; p.168-171:

Tryon, E.P.; ‘Is the universe a vacuum fluctuation?’ (in) Nature, Vol.246, 1973; p.396-397:

Vilenkin, A.; ‘The universe as a quantum fluctuation’ (in) Many Worlds in One: The Search for other Universes; Hill and Wang, New York; 2006; p.183-186:

John’s Cosmology - Supernovae Analogy

1) Contraction of a universe                                1) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust

2) Big Crunch   (Black Hole)                              2) Massive star forms

3) Transition to                                                  3) Stellar life span

4) Big Bang (White Hole)                                  4) Supernovae

 

5) Expanding Universe                                      5) Expulsion of gas/dust

6) Intersection with another expanding universe 6) Interaction with other gas/dust

7) Gravity rules                                                 7) Gravity rules

8) Contraction of new universe                          8) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust

Are Black Holes Really So Weird? Part Two

Black Holes have a certain aura about them. They are associated, in the minds of the general populace, with a certain mystique or ultra-mystery about them – terrifying objects that gobble up everything within range – the ultimate devourer, doomsday machine, berserker and weapon of mass destruction (if you could figure out how to manipulate one of course) all rolled into one. But Black Holes have other aspects about them that are equally fascinating, and not really all that weird, though some bits are weirder than others. But you don’t have to be a geek to come to terms with these concepts. 

Now the common perception about Black Holes is that nothing gets out past the event horizon once it finds itself beneath it. That’s not quite the case. In theory, as discovered by cosmologist/physicist Stephen Hawking, radiation can escape – sort of – and this radiation is now called Hawking radiation. Macro objects, objects we associate with classical physics, can not get from inside an event horizon to outside an event horizon without traveling faster than the speed of light, which unfortunately, should you find yourself below and event horizon, is the ultimate cosmic speed limit. There’s no ‘get out of jail’ card. Traveling faster than light speed is not allowed.

But, any elementary particles, in the micro size realm and subject to quantum phenomena, can escape – again in theory; this hasn’t be verified by direct observation (which is currently in the too hard basket). It you are a fundamental particle, just below the event horizon, you might, just might, due to quantum fluctuations or jitters / the vacuum energy / the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, quantum tunnel your way, the tiniest fraction of a distance imaginable, past the mathematical event horizon boundary, to outside and potential freedom. Of course most particles might get sucked right back in again, but a tiny fraction gets away, carrying with it energy (thus the Black Hole has a temperature) and therefore mass, so the Black Hole loses a bit of mass and shrinks a bit. This quantum tunneling, crossing an energy barrier without having in theory sufficient energy to do so, is sort of like how a radioactive atom goes ‘poof’ and decays to a more stable state. Something in the nucleus, not having enough energy to break out, nevertheless quantum tunnels its way out – ‘poof’.   

Very much like a human being, from the very moment a Black Hole is born, say out of the gravitational collapse of a super-massive star that’s run out of nuclear fuel and stellar puff, it will start to die, to evaporate via Hawking radiation. However, in a Universe still very much dominated by matter and energy (including the all pervasive cosmic microwave background radiation), way more stuff finds its way into a Black Hole than gets out – by many orders of magnitude. For every bit (particle) that escapes, millions of bits (particles) get trapped inside. But (and here I assume an ever expanding Universe that never results in a Big Crunch), what happens when all the available matter and energy (all those particle bits) has been consumed and Black Holes can’t grow anymore (and here I assume that individual Black Holes are so far apart and expanding away from each other that they don’t consume each other). Then, evaporation – Hawking radiation output – exceeds input, and slowly, ever so slowly, and I do mean extremely slowly (as in measured over trillions of years), Black Holes get smaller and smaller until there’s nothing left. But our now ever more vastly expanded and immensely larger than it currently is Universe is filled (albeit to a much rarified extent) with just particles – particles adrift in the eternal cold of near absolute zero temperature (zero degrees Kelvin, the absolute theoretical minimum temperature possible).

However, the ultimate death of Black Holes has posed a significant problem to some physicists, causing quite a bit of controversy in the process.

What happens to the information content that a Black Hole can gobble up? Say you toss a book, or a CD, or a fully loaded human brain into a Black Hole. Is the information contained in that book (or whatever) lost to the Universe forever? [Perhaps given the state of information overload we suffer from that might be a blessing!]

You can not have macro stuff spew out of a Black Hole without violating basic physics. Macro stuff, say in the form of a book or a CD or a human, stuff full of information, falls in – that identical macro stuff, stuff full of information, does not, can not, come back out again. It is not only an improbable event, but an impossible one and a violation of the law of physics. But we have seen that in theory at least, Hawking radiation can get back out, because radiation isn’t macro, its micro, or in the realm of the quantum.

Note that it wasn’t Hawking radiation that was tossed into the Black Hole in the first place, but a book or CD or a human being or a whatever macro object, so escaping Hawking radiation isn’t that book or that CD or that whatever, but a bit of this and a bit of that and there’s no way of distinguishing the this from the that. Though there is apparently no way to reassemble the bits into all its separate meaningful messages; one-on-one, all the bits are nevertheless there.

If you were somehow able to reassemble bits of Hawking radiation emitted from all the bits and pieces which the Black Hole swallowed – which can escape – into a meaningful message(s), how would you know that message was something part and parcel of some information that went down the Black Hole gurgler in the first place? You’re more likely to have assembled one letter from one book, another letter from another book, yet a third letter from a third book, etc. The information (say sentence) you have assembled never entered the Black Hole in that form at all!

Still, a Black Hole, in theory, eventually spews out all the information it absorbed over its existence, ultimately via Hawking radiation. Some scientists insist there is, there must be, a way to reassemble the bits into all its separate meaningful messages; one-on-one.

So therein lies the controversy – macro stuff does go in; macro stuff does come out. Macro stuff ultimately escapes as micro stuff – Hawking radiation. Some scientists will say you can’t in theory reassemble and separate out the signal from the noise; others say you can, in fact it must be possible.

As indicated above, some physicists make a big deal over the loss of information via a Black Hole relative to any other way – probably because of the non-reversibility factor already described. Methinks personally it’s a non-event. Why? The fundamental question this all boils down to be that information – in any form – is a composite of elementary particles. A book, or a CD, or Morse code ink drops, or a human brain is a composite of particles. An electron, all on its own, isn’t telling you very much (for that matter, either is any individual letter in a book – by itself). Loss of information seems to be another example of dust-to-dust, ashes-to-ashes; only it’s a more fundamental case of elementary particles to elementary particles. It’s how the Universe began and its how the Universe will end up if the current observational astronomical trends continue into the indefinite future.

There’s one other solution to the ‘is information lost forever or is it not’ paradox. It’s considered a possibility that a Black Hole, because is so distorts time and space – in the extreme - ultimately buds off from our Universe and starts or enters another universe, or a baby universe (part of a Multiverse). In such a case, any information is budded off with it and lost to our Universe forever. Of course our loss is the other universe’s gain; maybe a Black Hole(s) in some other universe has dumped its information load (or overload) onto our Universe! 

There’s one further spin-off from the Black Holes make baby universes idea. In a Multiverse, different universes may have different laws of physics. There’s no reason why the laws of physics in our Universe need be identical in another universe. Thus, there might be some universes where the local physics favor the formation of Black Holes, and some universes where local physics can’t make Black Holes. Those universes that can easily make Black Holes will ‘breed’ and produce baby universes. Those universes that can’t readily make Black Holes will ‘breed’ less. Those universes that can’t produce Black Holes will be sterile. Do you see the connection with Darwinian ideas? Some universes are more ‘fit’ to reproduce than others!

Now that’s weird!  There’s one other bit of weirdness I like about Black Holes, and that is that what’s inside them may well be a new form of matter. Ordinary matter goes into a Black Hole, but the conditions inside them are so extreme that there’s some sort of phase transition (like when ice goes to water goes to steam or vice-versa) and while it’s still matter, it’s matter but not as we know it. The theoretical evidence for that idea is that if you have a matter star, and an antimatter star, and you introduce them to each other, what you get is one almighty Ka-Boom! But, if your matter star compresses into a Black Hole, and your antimatter star compresses into a Black Hole, and you combine the two, what you get is just a larger Black Hole!

Some more weirdness: It’s suggested that information going into a Black Hole is actually ‘stored’ in the event horizon, that two dimensional ‘surface’ marking the point of no return that surrounds the Black Hole’s singularity – whatever that actually is. The event horizon concept isn’t difficult to envision – Earth’s crust and oceans are a two dimensional surface surrounding the spherical three dimensional planet.

Now as more and more stuff enters a Black Hole, the event horizon expands accordingly – obviously - just like our crust (area) would get bigger if Earth’s volume increased. The event horizon is also the area where Hawking radiation is emitted from.

Now say you are inside a Black Hole’s event horizon – that’s the wrong side to be on, but this is just a thought experiment and I’ll assume you haven’t been crushed into a tiny pinprick of stuff, stuff that could equally be rusted automobiles or stuff formally made from gold, silver and diamonds. There’s lots of trapped radiation (photons) in there with you because light can enter a Black Hole. Those photons can struggle up, losing energy with each unit of distance gained, to reach the event horizon, but no farther. Their energy has exhausted itself. I gather they can just barely touch and ‘reflect’ off the underside of the event horizon and come back down again (in a direction towards the singularity), picking up the energy again that they expended in their futile gesture of escape. So, you, being also beneath the event horizon can see the event horizon from the inside via these trapped photons. You can also see beyond the event horizon via new photons entering the Black Hole from outside the event horizon – photons that will join their trapped or prisoner kin. It’s like a half-way mirror. If you are inside a Black Hole, you can see out, because light can pass through the Black Hole’s event horizon to you, but people on the good side or outside of the event horizon can’t see you because light reflecting off you can’t make it past that event horizon barrier.

One further question, could we actually be living within a Black Hole, or translated, is our Universe actually a Black Hole? Now one could (and people have) suggested that one could consider the entire Universe as being the inside of a Black Hole – after all, nothing can escape from the Universe. Well, if you can’t escape from inside a Black Hole, and assuming there’s no escape from our Universe (you are trapped in this Universe, like it or lump it), then a rose by any other name…

However, our Universe doesn’t exactly mirror a real Black Hole unless there is an outside to our Universe – a beyond the boundary or horizon that allows stuff to get into our Universe, our Universe ultimately trapping it.

So, Black Holes residing inside a Black Hole Universe, which maybe residing inside…

Russian dolls within Russian dolls within Russian dolls within Russian dolls.

Saving the best for last, could you become a Black Hole? Well, the short answer is presumably, ‘yes’. The reasoning goes as follows. If you travel at ever increasing velocities, under special relativity, your mass gets correspondingly greater and greater, and your length gets shorter and shorter. Translated, your density gets greater and greater; your own gravity gets higher and higher. At light speed (impossible to achieve), your mass would be infinite; your volume zero; your density and gravity infinite. Well, that’s not on. But, before even approaching that limit, your mass would be theoretically great enough; your volume low enough, your density and gravity great enough, that you’d warp space-time sufficiently enough to turn into a Black Hole! As noted above, what actually comprises a Black Hole is irrelevant. Any stuff will do – gold, silver and diamonds; rusted automobiles; or flesh-and-blood (i.e. – you).

Here are a few further recommended readings:

Begelman, Mitchell & Rees, Martin; Gravity’s Fatal Attraction: Black Holes in the Universe;  [2^nd Edition]; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2010:

Susskind, Leonard; The Black Hole War: My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics; Back Bay Books, New York; 2008:

Thorne, Kip S.; Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy; W.W. Norton & Company, New York; 1994: