Once Upon a Time, the Universe Was Really Weird

Today, looking out across a seemingly boundless cosmos filled with an unimaginable variety of exotic objects, it's easy to forget that the Universe we currently admire is the product of a violent event that occurred 13.75 billion years ago.

As we know, the leading theory for universal birth is the Big Bang, where everything came from nothing, in a single energetic burst of inexplicable creation. So, if we turn back the clock back 13.75 billion years, what would we see?

My instinct would be to say "energy, the Universe was filled with pure, violent energy," but according to some mind-bending work by Jonas Mureika from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Calif., and Dejan Stojkovic from SUNY at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, the answer may be a little more complicated than that. In fact, it may be so weird that we can't even imagine what it would have been like.

According to an interview with PhysOrg.com, Mureika and Stojkovic have calculated that the early universe didn't only possess a hot, energetic primordial state of matter, but it also had a primordial state of dimensions.

If they're correct, the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time that make the four-dimensional spacetime we live in today isn't how it's always been -- the Universe may have existed in a lower dimensional state in the past.

The thinking goes like this: Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe possessed only one dimension of space and one dimension of time. It was basically a straight line. As the Universe began to cool, and expanded, this one dimension of space became "wrapped up" in such a way to create two dimensions of space and one of time -- a plane, like a sheet of flat paper.

The transition from one to two dimensions of space was calculated by the researchers to occur when the Universe "cooled" to an energy level of 100 TeV (tera-electron volts, a measurement of energy commonly used in particle physics). A period of time after that, the Universe continued to expand and cool until it reached an energy of 1 TeV. At this point, the Universe got promoted to a higher dimension; three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, i.e., the Universe we live in today.

Mureika and Stojkovic think the Universe will eventually be promoted again, to a five-dimensional state, at some point in the future.

This is all well and good, but isn't it just a fanciful notion that our universal dimensions are evolving to higher and higher states? Even though string theory predicts there could be many dimensions and those weird hypothetical Higgs singlets (yes, the ones that kill grandfathers) need to travel through a fifth dimension for their time-traveling shenanigans, what's the evidence for the Universe existing at lower dimensional states?

It turns out that Mureika and Stojkovic may have found some of that much needed evidence: When measuring cosmic ray particles with energies above 1 TeV, they appear to align themselves to a two-dimensional plane. "This means that, above a certain energy level, particles propagate in two dimensions rather than three dimensions," the PhysOrg.com article clarifies.

This effect would suggest these very high energy cosmic rays originated from a period of time before the Universe acquired three spatial dimensions.

It gets better. As gravity cannot exist in 1- or 2-dimensional space, if we ever detect a gravitational wave signal, there should be a very strong cut-off in gravitational wave frequency. This cut-off could represent the transition of when space changed from a 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional state. Gravitational waves can only exist in three-dimensional space!

Also, the particle physicists' Swiss Army Knife of particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), may be able to probe this 1 TeV transition when colliding particles beyond these energies -- if a two-dimensional signal is received, perhaps that is evidence of this dimension-energy relationship.

Apart from trying to prove the early Universe was a very weird one-dimensional straight line, how else would this research be useful?

There are a huge number of cosmological conundrums that don't seem to "fit" with our current knowledge of the Universe (hint: dark energy and dark matter), so the dimensional "evolution" of our Universe might be able to help.

But how could we even begin to comprehend what a "lower-dimensional" Universe would have been like? Well, that would be like trying to describe a three-dimensional object to a two-dimensional lifeform, in reverse, but I'll let Carl Sagan explain that bit:

So let’s expand. IF you could travel to the very point at which this universe came into being, what you would find is an almost impenetrable wall because the force that got through it from some other universe was so small, so heavy, so compact, and so strong, and the point of entry so minute, that you could never get back through it. The shockwave from THAT is still moving, expanding outward, expanding this universe. ONE tiny thing that contained the entire set of building blocks for this universe blew a hole in that wall, pushing something before it and pulling something more after it and the wall closed behind it.

It was quite like shooting a bullet from a handgun into ice. When the bullet hits the ice, it spins rapidly giving it a spiral effect. The bullet spins. So whatever came through did not enter a heated or superheated space. It, itself, was superheated. It hit extreme cold and blew up sending anything around it into a circular explosive motion creating a spiral. Everything in this cosmos has a spiral effect. I am saying that the universe itself is a spiral, not just the galaxies it spawns. Super hot into icy cold.
It can, and will be, done again with something LIKE the Hadron collider...though I don’t think we have even come close to making something powerful enough to have that effect.
ONE eensy-weensy superheated something will blow through the edge of this universe into an icy cold void and begin a new one. You won’t see it. You won’t hear it. You won’t even know it. It might have already been done many times by someones/somethings we can only imagine.
And whatever goes there, will be on the same order as this because this contains all that there is from the previous universe and the next will contain exactly the same thing. The only difference will be what form life takes.
I believe in G-d and there is no heresy or blasphemy in what I am saying. If you would like to try an experiment, grab a sheet of paper and a ton of black lead pencils. Put a dot on the sheet of paper. THAT is the first universe.Then continue dotting the paper until it is completely covered. Do it again to the same sheet of paper over and over until you run out of pencils. You could conceivably do that in YOUR forever until all the pencils in the world were used up...but the point is, after you have run out of pencils, can you possibly find that ONE dot that you started with?
Then try to imagine infinity.
The mind that controls the hand that holds he pencil that makes the first dot is G-d, and it isn’t a matter to me of if, but when, and that will always be the question. The mystery of eternity.
Yep. Call me crazy. It’s okay. I have been called worse.

>> Mureika and Stojkovic think the Universe will eventually be promoted again, to a five-dimensional state, at some point in the future. <<

So the multi-dimensional universes of Hawkins and string theorists is now out of vogue? Or are they not saying that the universe is “gaining” dimensions, so much as its dimensions are permitting intercourse between positions?

And yes I know “intercourse...positions” , har dee har har, probe uranis, whatever.

>> Mureika and Stojkovic think the Universe will eventually be promoted again, to a five-dimensional state, at some point in the future. <<

And yes I know “intercourse...positions” , har dee har har, probe uranis, whatever.

>> Mureika and Stojkovic think the Universe will eventually be promoted again, to a five-dimensional state, at some point in the future. <<

And yes I know “intercourse...positions” , har dee har har, probe uranis, whatever.

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