Alternative Models of Cosmology

"Time to face up honestly Tom, or find a flaw!"

I think you can chase your own tail without my assistance.

DARK ENERGY AND EXPANDING SPACE

The expansion rate of the cosmos is apparently accelerating which is contrary to not only common sense but what generations of cosmologists would have bet the family farm on; a decelerating cosmos is what any sane astronomer would have predicted. So something is screwy somewhere, but there are so many problems with an accelerating Universe and what drives that acceleration that cosmologists might not have to worry about losing their family farms.

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

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

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

Further, there is a quintet of really big problems with Dark Energy.

Problem One: Conservation laws - the bedrock of physics that are rammed down your throat in high school science - are violated. Apparently the density of Dark Energy remains constant while the volume of the Universe expands. Expanding space creates additional Dark Energy which further expands space which creates additional Dark Energy; round and round in an endless cycle. That's something from nothing. That's a free lunch. Of course the phrase "Dark Energy" was just tacked on to 'explain' the accelerating universe, though it explains nothing. We, to repeat my earlier observation, still haven't a clue what Dark Energy actually is, even though the concept has now entered its mid-teenage years, enough time you'd think for cosmologists to pin this anomaly down.

Problem Two: If Dark Energy is real energy, and it has to be in order to provide universal oomph, expand the universe and accelerate the cosmos; and energy can be converted to matter (Einstein's famous equation), what kind of matter can Dark Energy turn into - traditional stuff like standard matter and antimatter or something exotic?

Problem Three: Space, IMHO, is a not-thing. You can't hold it, measure it, or detect it with your senses. Space cannot clobber you over the head. It has as much reality as the concept of Wednesday. Space is not a physical something. Space has no effect on anything else. Energy is a thing. You can measure it and detect it and note the various effects it has on other things. A thing (energy) cannot be a property of a not-thing; a not-thing cannot contain properties that are things.

Problem Four: Ultimately, if space really is a thing, a thing that's a something, then space apparently has the property of elasticity. If space is expanding and carrying matter (i.e. - anything from individual atoms through entire galaxies and clusters of galaxies) along for the ride piggyback style (as opposed to individual atoms through to entire galaxies and clusters of galaxies expanding throughout existing space) then one would expect to observe our Sun-Earth distance getting greater; the Moon-Earth** distance expanding more rapidly than tidal forces allow for; our entire solar system's diameter increasing; ditto the diameter of entire galaxies. Alas, there's no such evidence. Galaxies that we see today that existed billions of years ago (because it took their light that long to reach us) have the same sort of geometrical size and structure as galaxies that are much closer (hence more recent in age) to us. Galaxies don't expand so the space within them isn't expanding either. That just leaves the voids between galaxies, or between clusters of galaxies to do the expanding. But that begs the question of why the discrimination between the space that's between Earth and the Moon (not expanding) and the space between our galaxy and Andromeda Galaxy (not expanding) or the space between our local cluster of galaxies and our nearest other cluster of galaxies (expanding). It's all nonsense. If space itself is expanding; all of space is expanding, not just select bits or areas.

Problem Five: Despite promoting expanding space via an intrinsic property of space, the Dark Energy, as the greatest thing since sliced bread, no scientist can give you the equation; the actual recipe for creating space, especially the creation of space out of absolutely nothing. Wouldn't we all like to create some extra space in the home out of absolutely nothing? Just spray some Dark Energy out of a can and you've instantly added an extra bedroom or pool-room to your abode. It's easy to say that space is constantly being created via Dark Energy, but hardcore equations speak louder than waffle-words.

Something is really screwy somewhere!

*The requirement for Dark Matter to explain gravitational anomalies goes back to the early 1930's, so cosmologists/particle physicists have had eighty years to figure this out, but without (to date), any runs on the board.

**The Moon-Earth distance can be monitored to extreme precision, as in down to inches, thanks to the mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts.

Since I have time to spare and nothing else to blog about at the moment...

"However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly 'Dark Matter'... actually are. Neither has actually been detected, either out there, or in the laboratory down here - obviously"

Not true, sir. What earth-bound matter medium do you think prevented Michelson and Morley from observing earth motion using optical phenomena in their laboratory? Just the same way an earth bound medium (air) prevents us from observing earth motion using sound.

"Problem One: Conservation laws - the bedrock of physics that are rammed down your throat in high school science - are violated"

If you were the Supreme programmer why would you prefer to create ALL your matter in ONE day? Why can you not make your program to evolve gradually such that with increasing radius the matter content increases in tandem? This avoids the flatness headache, which we are suffering by wanting to eat and have ALL our cake at once at the big bang. If you recall, inflation was invented because it is desired that all the 1052kg of matter in the universe be all present from the beginning. Were this not so, there would have been no flatness problem and therefore no need for 'inflation analgesic'.

"That's something from nothing. That's a free lunch."

Why must lunch always be on the table? Unless a something must be eternally existing, looking back in time even beyond when the 'Supreme programmer' came to be, there must have been nothing. Is this impossible? A deeper topic is what 'something' means. This has been addressed by our predecessors like Newton, etc.

"...then one would expect to observe our Sun-Earth distance getting greater; the Moon-Earth** distance expanding ...; our entire solar system's diameter increasing; ditto the diameter of entire galaxies. Alas, there's no such evidence".

Suppose, something is obliterating the evidence when it has the opportunity to do so, (especially when within the grasp of its escape velocity)? Can gravitational (and electromagnetic) attraction neutralize such evidence? Looking at it from the 'attraction side of the accounts book', and modifying your words, "then one would expect to observe our Sun-Earth distance getting smaller; the Moon-Earth** distance reducing as it falls ...; our entire solar system's diameter reducing; ditto the diameter of entire galaxies. Alas, there's no such evidence". Why? Further, is there evidence of a tug-of-war between the two tendencies? When gravity has the upper hand objects fall to the ground. When spatial expansion has the upper hand, we see what you describe between galactic clusters. When there is a balance of forces, we see a vibration like a spring. A balance between extension and compression. At perihelion, we have maximum point of compression and at aphelion maximum point of extension. If you check the mathematics you will see a relationship resembling Hooke's law and a stiffness, s of the harmonic motion looking like s = GMm/r3 = mω2. Recall that when you have harmonic motion, at least two return forces must be operational to maintain the motion. We know gravity in the Sun-Earth orbit, we know the electromagnetic attraction force in atomic orbits, what is the unacknowledged return force?

Let me stop here before going too deep into my own simulated universe!

Regards,

Akinbo

Greetings Akinbo,

Regarding Dark Matter, I understand that there are theoretical ideas about what it might be, WIMPS and MACHOS and such, but no Dark Matter has yet to be placed on the slab in the lab and put under the microscope. I find the idea that Dark Matter still has physicists 'in the dark', some 80 years after it was first postulated or required to explain rotational anomalies in galaxies, given that it should be here on Earth too, inside you and me, and just everywhere, not just out in deep space, deeply anomalous. It can't be that difficult to find a gram or two of the damn stuff!

Of course there is the idea that the reason gravity is so weak relative to the other three forces is that it can escape our four-dimensional space and time and travel through higher dimensions - the Bulk I believe it is called. Dark Matter, or rather the gravity it apparently has, is just the gravity that surrounds us in higher dimensional space - in the Bulk. I believe this is one of those String Theory theories. Therefore, if this idea is true, there is no Dark Matter at all.

In my Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe hypothesis, there is one type of software that simulates gravity. There's other software types that simulate other aspects of classical physics, like rotation, and alas, the two (gravity and rotation) haven't been melded together on a galactic scale. It's just one of those 'oops' or anomalies that arises from trying to create a virtual universe. Such a cosmic construction is complicated and mistakes happen. Uncovering those mistakes, or anomalies, is a clue that we do live in a simulated landscape. The need for Dark Matter is just one of those 'oops'.

For another example, there's this ever ongoing quest for a Theory of Everything (TOE) otherwise known as the quest for quantum gravity. Despite thousands of the brightest minds working on the problem over many, many decades, no TOE. My solution is that there is no TOE, there never will be a TOE, because the quantum forces and the gravitational force, are two separate and apart sets of software that jointly, but apart, run the cosmos, just like you have multiple sets of software that collectively operate your PC.

As far as Dark Energy is concerned, if one opts for a really real cosmos, then I reject that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating for reasons I've already outlined. The alternative is that perhaps we just don't understand type 1A supernovae as well as we think we do, and/or perhaps the speed of light isn't constant but has changed over cosmic aeons.

But, in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, well violations of basic physics can easily be accomplished via software's 'special effects'. It's akin to explaining how Joshua commanded the Sun and the Moon to stand still in Biblical times. It's a pure violation of physics, but easily simulated. There's no need for Dark Energy because the accelerating Universe is just a special effect programmed in for reason or reasons unknown - maybe another 'oops'.

Well...have I got a universe for you! Matter time is a contracting universe and in a contracting universe, there is another term, a matter decay term, in the mass-energy equivalence and the virial theorem that explains galaxy rotation without dark matter.

It sounds like you already have a universe in mind, though. What are your axioms? Does matter exist? Time? What is your action equation? Is space still the infinitely divisible nothing that it is now?

John Prytz says, "...given that it (dark matter) should be here on Earth too, inside you and me, and just everywhere, not just out in deep space, deeply anomalous. It can't be that difficult to find a gram or two of the damn stuff!"

I agree, given the theorized abundance, but that is if you look for it in the way Galileo and Newton would have. From the modeling of our solar system's formation within a proto-galaxy, dark matter was abundant and present, along with the normal baryonic matter. Taking note that dark matter particles interact with each other and with normal matter ONLY gravitationally, while normal matter interacts by other means like electromagnetically, strong force, etc in addition to gravitational attraction, I think it is reasonable to speculate that:

1) Baryonic matter will be capable of forming more complex structures.

2) Baryonic matter can aggregate into denser particles, which given the ambient energy will therefore be slower moving than lighter particles.

3) Starting from a cloudy mixture of dark matter and normal matter, and given a programming instruction, "Go ye and aggregate into celestial bodies, like planets"! What will this cloudy mixture throw up?

I suspect that in an aggregating clump under this programming instruction, the denser and slower moving particles will aggregate to form the core and mantle because they have additional attraction forces between them, while the lighter and faster moving particles will form the atmosphere. The atmosphere will therefore be composed of the faster moving normal matter (in gaseous form) and the dark matter particles.

So likely contrary to your speculation, IMHO dark matter will significantly not be inside you and me, and just everywhere. It will be in the Earth's atmosphere.

Finally, in the simulated universe scenario, what prevented Michelson and Morley from observing earth motion using optical phenomena in their laboratory? Is it Lorentz invariance, and can this be simulated and how?

Steve,

You questioned fermion density in dark plasma coupling. An important new paper carries an interesting proof consistent with that model, extending it to be consistent in general terms with the full DFM hypothesis with 'dark fermions'. It's an MNRAS paper but also web archived;

Dark matter in the SO(5) ﾃ-- U(1) gauge-Higgs unification. I'd be interested in your views on it.

On the compatible helical dynamic interactions, this short Stanford report on findings follows up e+/e- pair production from high energy light and photon-photon interactions varying with relative helicity. Fascinating stuff! They both do show my foundations are quite solid, if certainly not familiar to most.

Helcity relation in GAMMA-GAMMA COLLIDERS.

Best wishes

Peter

Akinbo,

Regarding Michelson and Morley and the Lorentz invariance, well I have to resort to the equivalent of the theological cop-out phrase "God works in mysterious ways" by noting that anything that can be imagined can be simulated.

I like to think of the simulation hypothesis not as a video game but akin to a 'what if' experiment. Our Supreme Programmer constructs various software programs (a gravity program, a quantum program, a this bit, a that bit), enters them together, hits "run scenario", then sits back to watch what happens.

What happens is pretty much what history records.

A PARALLEL ANALOGY BETWEEN SUPERNOVAE & COSMOLOGY

Parts of the current standard model of the origin of our Universe (the Big Bang event) violate nearly every principle of physics there is - from causality to the conservation laws. There's got to be a better answer. Fortunately there are cosmological alternatives (not detailed here) including perhaps my own variation on the theme (which is detailed here). Supernovae gave me a possible clue to a cyclic Multiverse.

Cosmology is the study of the evolution of our Universe as a whole - from birth to death, or maybe birth to death to rebirth. Stellar objects and events, like nova and supernovae are in the cosmic scheme of things almost insignificant in comparison. It's like comparing the life and times of an individual insect to the life and times of Planet Earth. Still, there might be a lot to be gleamed from comparing the life and death of our Universe to the life and death of the stars within that Universe.

A cyclic universe - one with birth, death, rebirth, death, rebirth, death, etc. is a far more philosophically satisfying universe than a one-off born, live, and fade-away universe, which is what our Universe appears to be. A cyclic universe is probably more pleasing because such a concept more closely mirrors nearly all local reality - the cyclic four seasons endlessly repeating; day-night-day-night; New Moon - Full Moon - New Moon - Full Moon; evaporation - rainfall - evaporation - rainfall; the carbon cycle; the nitrogen cycle; you name it, it recycles. Okay, maybe you don't. You maybe are like our Universe - born, live yet doomed to fade-away. But the broader human species continues to recycle - birth, death, birth, death, etc. The names and the faces change, but the human cycle continues. Actually all of your stuff will recycle too. Part of you today might be part of a cockroach 100 years down the track! That aside, the Big Question is how can you generate a cyclic universe, one which eventually goes from initial Big Bang expansion to one which contracts into a Big Crunch then rebounds again? How do you generate that from a Big Bang universe that's apparently doomed to keep expanding, ever expanding, forever, and ever, amen?

The standard model of cosmology suggests that our Universe had a one-off moment of creation (the Big Bang) and will over trillions of years surrender to entropy (the evolution of a state of order to ultimate disorder) and die an eventual "heat death" (where the temperature - heat energy, the ultimate end product of all other forms of energy conversion - is exactly uniform throughout). So we go from Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning through to Cosmic Evolution through to The End. But that's the narrow view. What if there were many universes, and they could interact? Then there might not be an overall Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning and ultimately The End. The parallel analogy with supernovae explains all.

THE STORY OF THE SUPERNOVAE: We've all heard of supernovae, and while quite rare, there has been one visible to the naked eye recently that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud (SN 1987A), a nearby companion mini-galaxy to our own visible from the Southern Hemisphere. It was first witnessed on Planet Earth after the light flash travelled thousands upon thousands of years, traversing intergalactic and interstellar space, to arrive locally on the 23rd of February 1987. It was the first visible naked eye supernovae event since 1604 - rare indeed.

Their cosmic story and cosmic significance is fairly straight forward. Stars form out of interstellar gas, dust and perhaps larger debris. This mix of stuff slowly but surely contracts, all under the mutual attraction of their individual gravities that eventually brings it all together in a lump sum - if massive enough an embryo star forms. The intense pressures heat up the interior, and if the embryo star is indeed massive enough, the heat and pressure will be enough to cause the gas, etc. to start to fuse, usually starting with hydrogen fusing to helium and releasing [solar] energy in that conversion - nuclear fusion is what powers the stars.

Now interstellar gas and dust clouds are not all uniform in size. So, some stars fire up with the bare minimum of stuff, other stars fire up with a lot of stuff in their core bellies, but not too much. These are sort-of like Goldilocks stars; stars like our Sun. A few stars formed from such a thick region of gas and dust that they were 'born' obese.

How massive newborn stars are will determine their lifespan and their fate. The relationship tends to be that the thinner you are at birth, the longer you'll live. Very skinny stars are very frugal with their fuel. These misers have stellar life-spans perhaps measured in roughly a trillion or so years. When their fuel finally runs out, they just slowly, ever so slowly, fade away into a white dwarf then finally as a dark and cold black dwarf cinder. Average stars, like our Sun, are less thrifty, but even so manage a lifespan of roughly ten billion years. Average stars will go through a more complex evolution, but ultimately they too will settle down to a long retirement, cooling, ever cooling when the fuel is exhausted. They too will go out not with a bang but with a whimper.

However, some stars are born just plain fat! Some stars can also put on weight after-the-fact by stealing mass from a nearby companion star via their stronger gravity and close proximity. However the star gets fat, fat in a stellar sense (lots and lots of mass), the more massive a star is, the greater the temperatures and pressures in that star's core, and the faster nuclear fusion reactions go. Really massive stars live life in the fast lane; they live fast; they die young. And they don't go out with a whimper, but with a bang - sometimes endlessly hiccuping or burping or vomiting - novas; sometimes imploding due to massive gravity when their core fuel gets close to empty (leaving a bit of a void) which causes a massive rebound and a super-ultra-violent explosion called a supernovae. That really does spew their stellar guts back into the interstellar winds. While there are several different types of supernovae that have ultimately different origins, that's of no concern in this context. The important bit is that stuff gets spewed back into space and eventually recycled.

Exploding stars, the novae but especially the supernovae return not only gas and dust and debris back to the interstellar medium, but enriched gas, dust and debris since the enormous temperatures and pressures cook up the heavier elements (elements more complex than helium), elements that are essential for life to ultimately grace the cosmos with its presence.

Gas and dust from one star's 'burp' intersect with gas and dust from another star's 'hiccup' and maybe intermingle with the 'spewing vomit' from a supernovae, all ultimately contracting again under mutual gravity to form a second, even third generation star and stellar planetary system. Our Sun is at least a third generation star and is made up of former spewed stuff, some of which is now heavier than just hydrogen and helium; ditto the Sun's family of planets, including Planet Earth. If it weren't for supernovae, we wouldn't be here. The late astronomer, Carl Sagan, said it best when he stated that we are indeed the end product of "star-stuff".

So the basic cosmic cycle is stars form from interstellar gas and dust; stars live; some stars spew their guts of gas and dust back out into interstellar space, providing the raw materials for the next generation of stars. You get creation - destruction - creation - destruction, over and over again, albeit at different times in different places.

THE PARALLEL COSMOLOGY ANALOGY: So what the hell does the above have to do with cosmology? There's lots of stars; only one Universe - or is that really the case?

One set of assumptions has to be made from the get-go. I postulate that the cosmos, all that is and ever will be, is infinite in both space and in time. This assumption is more philosophical than scientific. If you ever postulate a finite cosmos, a cosmos with a boundary, a fixed volume, you must, of necessity, deal with that maverick who asks, "Well, what exists beyond that boundary?" If you postulate a beginning and/or an end, that same maverick will annoy you with, "Well, what happened before that or after that?" It's just easier to wrap your head around a cosmos that is infinite; a cosmos that had no beginning and will have no end. Unfortunate, the standard model of cosmology postulates a beginning, and a fade-away ending and a finite amount of stuff and space to stuff it into.

We all know the standard scientific spiel to the creation of our Universe - no, not the Biblical Book of Genesis, but the Big Bang event. Well, already we have a parallel analogy - supernovae are mini big bang events.

Now the Big Bang and other associated real time events like an additional oomph of an in the beginning "inflation" have resulted in our Universe expanding, ever expanding. There's lots of observational evidence for the Big Bang and the expansion. So, lots of stuff has been vomited out into the cosmos from a unique point in time - 13.7 billion years ago. But if there was a finite Big Bang, then there must also have been a finite amount of space to stuff that vomit into. That violates my philosophical ideals of not only no boundary in time, but no bounds in space for our Universe to strut its stuff in.

Anyway, we have expansion of stuff spreading out through space. Well, that's a parallel analogy with the spewing out of gas and dust via stars going nova and supernovae. Now common-sense might suggest that the original oomph of the Big Bang would eventually run out of puff as the one-way attraction of gravity would slow the expansion down, and down, and down and eventually cause the expansion to come to a grinding halt - then reverse, as gravity would cause everything to contract once again back into the configuration from which the Big Bang arose from. In other words, the expected fate of our Universe was to be born from a Big Bang, live and evolve, and die in a Big Crunch.

Alas, life isn't that simple - Mother Nature is a baseball pitcher with a wicked curveball or knuckleball. Mother Nature's a real Hall-of-Fame bitch. A bunch of astronomical party-poopers discovered that the expansion of the Universe isn't slowing down; it bloody well accelerating! Thus, no Big Crunch is on the horizon in the far future, only a "Heat Death" as entropy ends up ruling the roost. So runs the standard spiel. So how are you going to eventually generate a second or third or one-hundredth generation universe out of that mess? But that's the limited view. Let's climb the cosmic mountain for the grander picture.

What comes now to the rescue is that there is more than one Big Bang (maxi nova or supernovae) universe; more than one expansion event, because, there's more than one universe, more than just our Universe, within that infinite (in space and time) cosmos referred to above.

And so, while from our limited point of view there is our Universe, and thus we assume the one-and-only-Universe, in fact there is more - much, much more. If you have a lot of universes in the infinite cosmos, all of which started off with a supernovae-like Big Bang, then, sooner or later, the spew of one (or more) will intersect with the spew of another (or more).

Thus, a lot of expanding regions of individual universes will intersect, eventually. That intersect region will, under combined gravities, start to slow things down. That region will slowly, but surely, start to contract. That contraction will eventually collapse into a Big Crunch. It seems something cyclic has happened. Lots of Big Bangs have generated a Big Crunch - actually a lot of Big Crunches when you look at the total 3-D picture. Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions B, C, and D in one direction, say left. Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions E, F and G in the opposite direction. Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions H, I, J and K in the up direction; Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with the L, and M Big Bangs in the downward direction, and so on and so forth. The Big Crunches (resulting in the Mother of all Black Holes) will be symmetrical, turning inside out into newly vomiting Big Bangs, or White Holes.

And so the endlessly cycling of stellar nova/supernova (expansion) to intersecting clouds of interstellar gas/dust (contractions) thus forming new stellar objects, some of which will in turn vomit up their quota of interstellar gas/dust has a parallel though many orders of magnitude on up the line. Endlessly cycling Big Bang expansions intersect to form high gravity regions which contract (in Big Crunches) to form new regions where conditions are ripe for a new Big Bang event. And so we have an overall cyclic cosmos or Multiverse (because there is more than one universe). There's not just one expanding universe slowing down and contracting to ultimate reform that one expanding universe again, but a whole pot-pourri of universes that are all just expanding, intersecting and contracting, comings and goings at different times and places - night and day; Full Moon to New Moon; evaporation to rainfall; etc.

In fact, if you think about it, the idea that there are many expanding and contracting universes is but the next logical step in what was already proven to be a natural progression. Once upon a time Terra Firma (Earth) was the centre of the Universe. Now we know better. Then the Sun and solar system were elevated to that centre. Now we know better because there are lots of suns and planets that have eliminated our uniqueness. Once upon a time our galaxy was considered to be the be-all-and-end-all of the Universe. Today we know better. There are billions and billions of other galaxies out there and our galaxy occupies no special place in space or time and has no special appearance. So, I suggest that our Universe is now not the centre of the universe (or cosmos to avoid confusion). We have a Multiverse! And we have a cyclic Multiverse that should satisfy that philosophical idealistic need referred to at the start.

Now it could already be the case that part of our expanding Universe has recently (even as in multi-millions of years ago) intersected part of another expanding universe. However, we wouldn't be aware of that because it's going to take billions of years for the visuals and the gravitational effects to reach us from such vast distances.

There is at least one interesting consequence inherent in this cyclic Multiverse. Even if there is only a finite amount of mass and energy in this infinite volume (and that doesn't have to be the case since you can fit an infinite amount of mass and energy into an infinite volume), that finite mass and energy has been recycled an infinite number of times in the unending past and will be recycled an infinite number of times in the unending future. The upshot of that is that anything and everything that can happen, everything that is not forbidden by the laws, principles and relationships inherent in nature, has happened an infinite number of times and will happen again an infinite number of times. Translated, you have and will exist again, and again, and again in all possible permutations. Although the 'you' that is reading this in the 'now' will fade away (that sounds nicer than kicking-the-bucket), take comfort in that another 'you', somewhere and somewhen else, will carry on carrying on the 'you' tradition.

JOHN'S COSMOLOGY-SUPERNOVAE ANALOGY IN SUMMARY FORM

Cosmology 1) Contracting Universe

Cosmology 2) Big Crunch (Black Hole forms)

Cosmology 3) Transition to...

Cosmology 4) Big Bang (White Hole spews)

Cosmology 5) Expanding Universe

Cosmology 6) Intersection with another expanding universe

Cosmology 7) Gravity rules, brings stuff together

Cosmology 8) New universe forms

Cosmology 9) New Universe contracts

Supernovae 1) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust

Supernovae 2) Massive star forms

Supernovae 3) Star undergoes normal stellar life span

Supernovae 4) Supernovae happens

Supernovae 5) Expulsion of supernovae gas/dust into interstellar space

Supernovae 6) Interaction with other interstellar gas/dust

Supernovae 7) Gravity rules, brings stuff together

Supernovae 8) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT: Now your standard run-of-the-mill, everyday professor of cosmology at your local leading university will tell you if you show her this scenario that it is all total nonsense and I should be consigned to the pseudoscientific rubbish bin. The Big Bang event was a one-off; it was unique; a one-of-a-kind; a fluke; just one of those interesting things that happen for no apparent reason at all. The Big Bang event created time and space, therefore time and space cannot be infinite.

But - and you'll read that non-observation (since there was no one around including any lady cosmologists to observe at the Big Bang's ground zero) in any standard book on the subject - it's nonsense, a scientific fabrication if you really stop and think about it. You cannot create something, anything, without having the space already available to create it into. That applies to the creation of our Universe as much as it applies to creating widgets in a factory! To claim otherwise is to suggest all of ultimate creation was kick-started in no space at all! How absurd is that! Consider the reverse: how can you cram everything into nothing?

Now if the Big Bang event did not, could not, create space way back then, then space is not undergoing continuous creation today contrary to the standard spiel. Translated, space is not expanding into some non-space region of non-existence. Expanding space either means that space is getting thinner and thinner (less dense) like an expanding balloon skin stretching (and that's nonsense - how can space decrease in density?), or new space is being created out of nothing to fill the void as space expands. You can't create something out of pure nothing; not then (at the Big Bang); not now. That's a violation of all the basic conservation laws that are the bedrock of physics.

So, the obvious alternative is that what's expanding is the stuff vomited out by the Big Bang event into pre-existing space and the vomit just keeps thinning out as it expands throughout an ever wider volume of that pre-existing space. Now fortunately for me, and unfortunately for those cosmology professors, there's no actual observational test or experiment that can be done to distinguish between the two possibilities and settle the matter. If there were such observational evidence that proved that space itself was expanding (and thus being continuously created even as I type this) that evidence would be given in the textbooks. But it's not there. All you get is just the standard scenario: "the Big Bang created space; space is expanding and therefore space is still being created today". The unwritten sentence is "just take my word for it" because I can't back it up with any evidence, far less proof. The only evidence is that something is expanding. That something could equally be Big Bang stuff spewing out into pre-existing space like an exploding firecracker will spew its contents outward bound and ever expanding.

It's the unanswered question that remains in fact unasked in the standard textbooks - what exactly is our Universe's expanding space expanding into? What is our expanding space shoving out of the way as it expands, ever expands? It can't be pre-existing space according to the standard model since the Big Bang event created all of space; the entirety of space in the beginning 13.7 billion years ago. Perhaps space is pushing into a theoretical higher dimension (whatever that really means), but that would be an ad hoc pull of the rabbit out of the proverbial hat where nobody advocating that could provide any evidence that either the rabbit or the hat exists at all. Besides, all those extra dimensions predicted by the purely mathematical and hypothetical string theory (if string theory is to work) are compactified; curled up into super-ultra microscopic foetal positions; they are tiny. They aren't the sort of higher dimension you can expand a universe of space into. So it's back to the drawing board for our standard lady (and gentlemen) cosmologists.

The other bit, the creation of time, is equally absurd. The Big Bang was an event. It was an effect. If causality has any meaning at all, and it's one of the foundations upon which all of science rests on, then an effect has a cause. Causes must precede effects when cause and effect are intimately related (there are of course lots of causes and lots of effects that have no connection). Therefore, whatever caused the Big Bang event (or effect), must of necessity have happened before (preceded) the Big Bang event. Therefore, there must have been an already existing time prior to the Big Bang event and therefore the Big Bang event did not, could not, create time. Since there was a before the Big Bang, since cause always precedes effect, then again time could not have been created - time has always been, is, and always will be.

Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for those professors of cosmology ramming down the standard 'creation of time and space' scenario to their students, all equations (that which usually substitutes for lack of ways and means to do actual observations) that try to describe the Big Bang event; ground zero when space allegedly equals zero and time allegedly also equals zero, totally break down. So the standard 'create time and space' model is pure extrapolation (running the film backwards from today's data) and ultimately a best guess. So while I've no doubt the Big Bang scenario is correct in the broad-brush generalities, there is a lot of observational evidence that something really big happened 13.7 billion years ago that kick-started our Universe off on its evolutionary path, when it comes to some of the nitty-gritty details, like that 'create time and space' detail, well I just think that is plain wrong - pure and simple.

So why is that 'Big Bang created time and space' the only accepted scenario? It is beyond me, except it probably has a lot to do, not with science, but the sociology and the office politics of science - peer pressure. Science, like the church and other formal institutions does not approve of mavericks that go against the grain. So if you want a Ph D., a job, research funding, a career with promotions, publications, etc. you don't rock the boat. Science, and that includes cosmology, for all its self-correcting ways and means and methods and ideals is still, ultimately, a human endeavour. As such, you tow the party line; go with the flow; parrot to your students what your professors parroted to you.

Now there are a few bold cosmologists who do acknowledge that the Big Bang event still has some kinks to be ironed out and that there was a "before the Big Bang". That's not to say they would endorse my scenario. They probably wouldn't in a pink fit!

Heading back on track, even if my supernovae analogy is wrong, there still had to have been an existence both of time and space prior to the creation of our Universe via the Big Bang event, and that alone suggests that all things are still cyclic or re-cyclic in the cosmos.

THE BIG BANG'S METAPHYSICAL BAGGAGE

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.

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 common-sense, yet that is what the standard modellers have done. Further, they insist we swallow their lack of common-sense (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".

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?

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".

Akinbo,

The above links for Steve may also help alleviate your own expressed doubts about some aspects I described.

If you're still low on electricity apparently it's really only magnetism! But the suggestion that Doppler shift is the same as rigid body contraction is nonsense!

Video

Fermilab staff web post.

Wikipedia.

Best wishes

Peter

Peter,

I visited the links you posted. Too full of equations, so I got lost...

I also read the post and the Wikipedia entry you linked. Those were more familiar territory.

I asked you a question about Lorentz factor and you said you were too busy to answer. However, when you became less busy you still didn't answer.

What is your equation for Lorentz factor?

What is the 'v' if it is also present in your equation?

I am happy at least that you deny rigid body contraction. But that same factor is what determines time dilation and mass increase with velocity, which you seem to agree to (from our recent electron mass increase discussion). If Lorentz factor is in your Doppler equation, can you write it out?

If the thread can still be found, it would seem better if we can continue from where we were discussing.

Regards,

Akinbo

Akinbo,

Sorry, 'v' is relative velocity between inertial systems which are constituted by any matter which can be assigned a 'centre of mass' rest frame. That takes in about everything, but we can define the spatial limits of each as Maxwell's near/far field transition zone, (TZ) physically formed by the '2-fluid plasma' around all matter 'moving' in it's surrounds, which we know as 'surface charge', 'astrophysical shocks' and haloes.

As speed and background medium density increase shock density and frequency increases as wavelength blue shifts to the limit gamma. It predicts that if we throw a large rock or Shuttle at Earth it will form a dense hot shock and eventually even radio waves won't pass through. That's why the LT is 'gamma'. The plasma density limit of around 10^23/cm^-3 occurs at gamma (no more room to oscillate!) The e+/e- cancel each other out quickly as they pop up and crash into each other en mass. They have to! But each re-emits any light at it's own 'c' first. The 2 fluids form, and are each side of, the TZ. Quite like the 'torque converter' of your automatic gearbox really.

I expect the Lorentz Factor equation and curve describe the process quite adequately, except they give us no hint of 'process', and completely lack any coherent 'interpretation'. There are too many stochastic variables to worry about precision!

As it's wavelength lambda that changes a Doppler shift equation for lambda/lambda should be used in theory to more closely model the mechanism as it does in astronomy for redshift.

Don't ask me to play Poker, Tarot cards or manipulate ancient Arabic symbols to try to predict the future. I learnt the latter long ago (they called it 'mathametrics' or something) but I prefer studying nature so gave it up. If you can find a combination that works some magic do let me know!

I hope that helps a little? The new model of cosmology emerges, but do re-post this wherever you wish.

Best wishes

Peter

OUR EXPANDING UNIVERSE: IN SPACE OR BY SPACE?

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 centre of the Milky Way Galaxy though existing space. There's a lot of interstellar space between the Sun and the galactic centre but the Sun isn't getting any more distant from that centre.

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 centimetres, what you end up with is 500 grams in say a volume of 500 cubic centimetres. 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-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 left on the lunar surface by the Apollo moon-walkers 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 common-sense 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 travelled 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.

*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.

ADDENDUM

BINGO!

In an effort to explain about the concept of expanding space, astronomer Philip Plait inadvertently presented the exact opposite argument which is that space can't be expanding (and therefore the expanding universe must be expanding throughout existing space), a point of view I've been advocating seemingly forever. Here's Plait's extract.

"Space expands, but this expansion can be countered by gravity. You might expect that, say, two stars orbiting each other will get farther apart as space expands between them. However, that's not the case. Since the two objects have gravity, and they are bound to each other - that is, their gravity holds them together - space doesn't expand between them." [Plait's emphasis.]*

*Plait, Philip; Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the World Will End...; Viking, New York; 2008; p.278:

So, taken to its logical conclusion, space is not expanding between the Earth and the Moon. Space is not expanding between the Earth and the Sun. Space is not expanding between the Sun's solar system and the triple star Centauri system. Space is not expanding between the Sun and the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, space is not expanding between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy, space is not expanding between the local group of cluster of galaxies (containing the Milky Way and Andromeda) and the nearby Virgo Cluster of galaxies, etc. Any two bits of matter have mutual gravity and so therefore there can be no expanding space anywhere, since gravity is everywhere.

"Unfortunately, space is not a thing..."

Says who? A simulation called John Prytz? I challenge you to prove your statement. IMHO, Sir Newton and I should be able to convince you otherwise.

"My basic premise here is that if space itself is expanding, then space itself is a thing". Correct. It is expanding. IMHO, Edwin Hubble and I should be able to convince you.

"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".

Correct. In other words, IF there is a limit to the divisibility of space, then it is a 'thing'. IMHO, Euclid, Proclus, Aristotle, Zeno of Elea and my humble self can formulate paradoxes, the headache which you will suffer may then allow you to accept that space is not infinitely divisible.

"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."

No, the force of gravity diminishes as the inverse square of the distance according to Sir Newton. Then you have escape velocity to think about at each distance.

"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 you listen well, the Great Simulator would have told you, "in my cosmological model, there is more where that thing is coming from"! And at the end of the program, everything will disappear to nothingness. Get your cosmology right.

"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."

You have not been listening to the Great Simulator. Nothing, not even the Great Simulator was existing before the Big Bang. I can understand your difficulty in appreciating this. Many sighted people find it difficult to appreciate what blindness is. Blindness is not 'everywhere appearing dark'. Blindness is seeing Nothing, not even darkness. Similarly, a complete absence of space can be difficult to contemplate or imagine by those who have experienced what space is.

"That space is not a thing was demonstrated back in the late 1880's by the famous Albert Michelson and Edward Morley experiment."

Sir, that is my territory. Please don't say what you don't know. A null and void result does not lead to your conclusion. Replace light with sound and you also get a null and void result.

"Since the two objects have gravity, and they are bound to each other - that is, their gravity holds them together - space doesn't expand between them - Philip Plait".

Sir Isaac says to tell you: "...instead of you and Philip to thank space for preventing the relentless tendency of the Moon to crash on your heads, like the apple that crashed on my head while I was pondering the Principia at Cambridge in 1687, you have not been extremely ungrateful to space. Space has been doing a difficult job preventing the earth vs. sun from crashing into each other, same for earth vs. moon. Indeed, even right up to the atomic level. Who do you think has been preventing the proton and the electron from sealing their romance with a wedding? You truly think a principle (Pauli's) is enough to have done that? Perhaps, if space had sent you a bill to pay for keeping all those attractive forces at bay, a bill to pay for transmitting light waves to you from distant light sources without any matter-based wiring, you may have been more appreciative. You simulated humans rate strength based on how much noise or disturbance caused. But you see, when you are truly powerful (omnipotent) and all pervasive (omnipresent) you don't need to make noise. As the saying goes, empty barrels make the loudest noise. Space is silent but if you want to "see" it, you will. One of the areas you will see my the tug of war between gravity and I is the nature of the harmonic motion in orbits. You may recall that Hooke (of Hooke's law fame), with whom I had some disagreement about priority, showed that where such a motion exists, two forces at least must be at play. That is why, one restoring force preventing escape comes to play at aphelion (gravity) and another force who is unacknowledged by you comes to play at perihelion to prevent collapse. All this I have calculated, although I can't readily lay my hands on where I wrote the calculations"

Regards,

Akinbo

There is certainly a great deal of evidence to support the notion of an expanding universe, a la, the red shift.

There are other cosmologies, however.

A contracting universe is also consistent with these observations. However, a contractin universe is completely different from an expanding universe...actually, not so different as just oppostite.

Contraction as a means of universal force makes much more sense...and so I like contraction.

Akinbo,

http://www.aip.de/~lie/Lectures/Michelsonkeller.e.html may tell you that Albert Abraham Michelson performed the decisive experiment already in 1881 in Potsdam near Berlin (because Berlin was too noisy).

A. Abraham M. was not just born in the Prussian province Posen where the language was German but he also visited Berlin, Heidelberg, and Paris during his sabbatical.

When he didn't agree with Einstein's SR, he did perhaps not agree with the given argument about observed aberration.

You wrote: "Replace light with sound and you also get a null and void result."

Is this correct?

Eckard

Akinbo,

Space is a not-thing, just an abstract mental concept that we deem useful as a sort of container in which we place real things, like stars and galaxies.

I call space a not-thing because space has no structure and it has no substance. You cannot detect space with any of your sensory apparatus - you cannot see space; you cannot hear space; you cannot touch space; you cannot taste space; you cannot smell space. Space has no properties like mass and colour and associated things that you associate with things.

Not even instrumentation that augments your senses can detect with any greater accuracy or in any greater detail any properties that space could potentially have.

You cannot create space. There isn't even a theoretical equation that could tell you how, in principle, to create space. That makes sense if space is a not-thing.

It is stated that space has a property we call "dark energy". Space expands because of the anti-gravity or repulsive nature of dark energy which creates more space which in turn creates more dark energy which creates more space which creates more dark energy, and so on and so on until infinity. It should be clear that this scenario is in total violation to those conservation laws you had to learn in high school. If space is a thing and space is expanding then you are getting a free lunch - something for nothing.

Finally, there is no observational test that can distinguish between matter (like galaxies) expanding in space, being carried piggyback style by space, or expanding through the nothingness of existing space.

Thus I conclude that space has all the reality of Wednesday.

John Prytz

John,

Your description of space rather pre-dates space travel and present physics. Sure it's not visible to spectroscopy and can't 'change' EM propagation speed (so is NOT the old 'ether', and is OK with SR), but we now have far more sophisticated methods!

Concepts like dark energy, the ISM, IGM, QV, pair production, the Higg's Field etc etc are all there because there's good evidence for some sub 'matter' condensate, and we find effects not otherwise rationalizable.

You're right in that its' not 'condensed' matter of course, but claiming more than that is now less well supported than otherwise. It's 'existence' rationalises many findings. A more detailed rationalisation is in my 2012 finalist essay. Do ask if you feel the need for any more references.

Much Ado About Nothing.

Best wishes.

Peter