Posted on 03/28/2004 4:53:18 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The Universe was not born in one Big Bang, it has been going through cycles of creation and annihilation for eternity, according to a controversial new mathematical model1.
It's a compelling claim. The new cyclic model removes a major stumbling block common to existing theories of the Universe - namely, that physics can't explain what came before the Big Bang.
Because the model relies on new mathematics, it is having some teething problems, admit its proposers. Indeed, most cosmologists are treating the hypothesis with interested scepticism. Some are vociferously critical.
Criticism is to be expected, concedes Neil Turok of Cambridge University, UK, who developed the cyclic model with cosmologist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University in New Jersey. "We're taking on some very fundamental issues here," says Turok.
Strings attached
Steinhardt and Turok draw on the emerging science of string theory. This mathematical idea uses up to ten dimensions - instead of the usual four - to explain the weird behaviour of tiny things in physics called fundamental particles.
When applied to big things like cosmology, string theory invokes weird mathematical entities called membranes - branes for short. In the cyclic model there are two branes at any one time, one containing our Universe, the other a parallel Universe that is the mirror image of our own.
The researchers suggest that these branes regularly collide, as they did 15 billion years ago, resulting in the massive release of energy previously ascribed to the Big Bang. And just like the Big Bang, "this collision made all the radiation and matter that fills the Universe," says Turok.
The branes are then flung apart. The Universes on each brane expand outwards over billions of years, as ours is doing today.
According to the model, a fifth dimension that we can't see or travel through bridges the branes. As each Universe expands, its matter and energy spreads ever thinner and is diluted. When the spring-like fifth dimension overcomes this expansion energy it heaves the branes back together, they collide, and the whole process repeats. "It's just like reproduction in biology," says Turok.
As well as solving the problem of what came before the Big Bang, the cyclic model could explain numerous other cosmological conundrums, such as dark energy. Our Universe should contain more energy than can be measured, and there are no good theories to explain why. Turok and Steinhardt's model suggests that this is because energy, in the form of gravity, leaks across the fifth dimension between our Universe and its complementary braneworld.
No braner?
Steinhardt and Turok's idea sounds appealing, but fellow astrophysicists are not greeting it with open arms. "The community is very, very sceptical," says David Lyth, a cosmologist at the University of Lancaster, UK.
Others are more scathing. "It's a very bad idea popular only among journalists," says one of the chief critics of the cyclic model, Andrei Linde of Stanford University, California. "It's an extremely complicated theory and simply does not work," adds Linde, the originator of a rival model of the Universe.
String theory is still in its infancy, and applying it to cosmology stretches it to its limits, explains Cambridge University cosmologist George Efstathiou. "Its connection to fundamental physics is really rather weak," he says, so until string theory matures, models that use it will be flawed and misunderstood. But on the whole, he says, "the cyclic model is a cute idea and some elements of it may survive."
Steinhardt and Turok agree that problems with the mathematics could be their undoing. "There may be disasters waiting for us at higher levels of calculation," says Turok. But, if it does add up, their theory overturns many ideas about the Universe, they say - like time and space being created in a Big Bang.
Footnote 1: Steinhardt, P. J. & Turok, N. A. Cyclic model of the Universe.Science, published online April 25 (2002). |Link to Science online.|
I thought it was the Pope who told Hawkings that it was permissible to study the Big Bang as far back as the moment of creation but not before. That's what I recall hearing Hawking say in a documentary years ago.
This necessarily means determinism; i.e., every current action, down to those of the smallest subatomic particles, was predetermined 16 billion years ago.
Emotions are just predetermined chemical reactions. There is no free will.
I find this as difficult to accept as idea of God. What a quagmire.
Both men presented the case for Panspermia so well that it is a very popular theory today.
I have sometimes thought that there might be an infinite number of universes that contain every possibility that you can think of.
For example (and I realize I'm getting a bit silly here), there may be a universe which is an exact replica of ours except that all the fire hydrants are painted blue instead of read. And that is the only difference. That the fire hydrants are painted blue instead of red. And of course, the people in that universe are probably wondering why we paint fire hydrants red in our universe.
But I digress.
As well as there being an infinite number of parallel universes, an infinite amount of parallel universes continue to branch off from our universe (as well as every other) every single moment. For example, as I am typing this reply, I made a spelling error and I had to backspace to correct it. Well a parellel universe just broke off from this one in which I did not make that spelling error and thus I finished this reply three seconds earlier. Over the course of time, the entire fate of that universe was altered as a direct result of that spelling error! Think about it. In that (now parallel) universe in which I did not make that spelling error, I finished this reply three seconds earlier. As a result, the rest of my life was forever altered and through my interactions with others in that parallel universe, their lives were forever altered as well all because of that three second difference. As time in that parallel universe goes on, everything ends up changing more and more due to that one three-second difference in making this reply. At some point, some tragic auto accident was either prevented or caused as a result of those three seconds! And who knows what else.
I'm sure that everybody on this thread can remember a near miss (auto accident) in their lives. Now think about that near miss. You probably thought to yourself "had I left my driveway just a few seconds sooner (or later as the case may be), I would have been in that accident instead of just missing it."
Well that's what I'm talking about! That three seconds can make all the difference in the world. Now think about that near-miss auto crash again. Even though you missed it in this universe, you didn't miss it in some other parallel universe. In that universe, you happened to be killed in that crash. Aren't you glad you are living in this universe and not that one?
Thinking about parallel universes just boggles the mind. Imagine a parallel universe in which "Imagine" by John Lennon is our national anthem. Now you might be thinking, "that's crazy, how could that be?" Well I'll tell you how that could be. Let's imagine that we lost the Revolutionary War to the Brits and thus remained a collection of British colonies for 200 more years. Now let's imagine that around 1970, we finally get our revolutionizing act together and overthrow those darned Brits. Now due to lower taxes, John Lennon comes to America to live and we are so pleased with that decision that we make one of his songs our national anthem. In this case, "Imagine." Of course, there is another parallel universe in which John Lennon's "Mind Games" is our national anthem instead. And so on and so on.
It sure is strange contemplating all these parallel universes.
LOL. But, remember, the whole world is heading toward entropy.
The STEADY STATE theory is an old one and not much discussed anymore. The modern equivalent would be the quantum appearance of a particle and anti-particle in our 'Universe' (bubbling up from no where), except on a Universe-scale. The philosophical meaning, of course, is that there was/is no DISTINCT and SINGLE point of Creation.
"....Alan Guth has a concept...."
I would disagree with this (JMHO)..........
1) If Universe's are bubbling up all the time into this one then, just as we see eccentric galaxies forming with the Hubble Telescope 10 Billion years ago, we would also see (from a distance) areas of the sky where this is/has happening(-ed). We don't.
2) I just can't rationalize different sets of constants occupying the same space/time. It makes no physical and intuitive sense to me whatsoever. To analogize: I CAN rationalize a random throwing of the dice over and over (Hindu version) but NOT the throwing of an infinite number of dice all at the same time and place.
(BTW, I'm a Molecular Biologist, NOT a Physicist {LOL})
Lastly, from my Post #9....................
"...I wonder how many of..."
See Post #7 {LOL}.
Neither am I, I am an interested layman. However, I can recommend a fantastic book or two that approaches the concept in pretty down-to-earth language:
Dr. Michio Kaku's excellent book "Hyperspace". I have also heard him on the radio from time to time. He was a grunt in Vietnam, BTW.
This one won't cost a dime, it's a classic reprinted on the Net. The point of the tale is to illustrate the way we would appear from the vantage point of a fourth spatial dimension by looking at and interacting with mythical flat creatures that inhabit two dimensions.
Thanks. The name escaped me.
See my post # 28. Gotta run.
Either that, or the equivalent of "Hold ma beer and watch THIS!"
Well, if entropy reverses, it ought to make the free energy folks happy.
Interestingly, it is always the invincibly ignorant who do not even know the correct spelling of the name of the scientist they "despise."
Lyndon LaRouche once wrote an hilarious "paper" full of mathematical howlers and mumbo-jumbo entitled, "Why I Must Attack Albert Einstein".
For you, it's a must read.
--Boris
Mathematical model = GIGO
= Garbage In, Garbage Out...
My intuition and religious leanings go with this newer explanation.
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