Origin and Fate of the Universe

COSMOLOGY

Our own universe could be one of many

I'm updating this blog, because today Sir Roger Penrose has been awarded the Nobel prize. So my Twitter feed is full of stuff about him. In amongst all the well deserved congratulations I found this which has greatly encouraged me in my Big Universe theory.

From Philip Ball's profile on Penrose for Prospect Magazine Feb 2017

"Penrose was able to show that the conditions for the formation of a black hole were much less unlikely than previously thought—they could be real. When Hawking saw this work in the early 1960s, they began collaborating on gravitational singularities. The pair realised that you could think of the Big Bang as a collapse to a singularity in reverse: you start with a point of infinite density and then let it expand. In this way, they married ideas about black holes with the cosmological theory of the universe. The ramifications are tremendous: for one thing, it becomes possible to imagine entire new universes forming from black holes—so that our own universe could be just one among many."

This is the first time I've seen that in print "our own universe could be just one among many."

The science of cosmology is in interesting times. So much is known. So much is not. As a breed, cosmologists are described by Catherine Heymans as either smug, we know so much, or embarrassed, we know so little.

As a true amateur, I cannot be included in either group. If I could then I would prefer to be in the latter. Not because I wish to be embarrassed, but because the opportunities that this outlook offers are so much greater.

Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) explains a great deal about the structure of the universe. But how much does it tell us about the big questions of cosmology?

Cosmology:

“the scientific study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe” Wikipedia.

1. Origin - It tells us nothing about where all the stuff of the universe came from.

2. Evolution - It leaves 95% of our universe unexplained.

3. Fate - It tells us little about how the universe will end.

Dan Hooper in his book ‘The Edge of Time’ says in his introduction “When it comes to understanding our universe and it's origin, incredible progress has been made...it is undeniable that we are facing many formidable questions and vexing problems. Perhaps these issues are just a series of loose ends.... But more and more often these days, I find myself wondering whether these problems might represent more than loose ends. Perhaps they are symptoms of a deeper problem with the lens through which we see the world.”

In his concluding chapter he talks about the failure to understand dark matter and dark energy, the 95% which is unexplained. How atoms survived the heat of the early universe and how the era of cosmic inflation may have played out. “ Perhaps these puzzles are not as unrelated as they might seem, but are pointing us to a very different picture of our universe’s earliest moments. When it comes to understanding our universe’s origin, I sometimes find myself wondering: Is a revolution coming?”

What does the current paradigm tell us about the origin of the universe? Absolutely nothing. A search of the usual sources moves quickly through Inflation to the redoubtable Big Bang theory. As to Inflation, even Sean Carroll only gives it a 50% chance of survival.The next argument is that it is useless to speculate about what happened before the Big Bang. Information about this prior state can never be available, “there is nothing south of the South Pole”. The twin of this argument is that it is useless to speculate about what is beyond our observable universe. Put simply this approach assumes that if we can’t see it there is no point looking for it.

I know it is difficult, but just because we can’t see it does not mean it's not there. I like simple analogies. Remember when you were a child at Xmas with parcels wrapped up and placed tantalisingly round the tree. We were on very strict instructions not to open them. What did we do? We picked them up, weighed them in our hands, felt them, squeezed them. We got a pretty good idea what was inside, or what was not inside. So maybe we can do something similar with the universe.

So what does LCDM and the Big Bang tell us about where all this stuff, this baryonic matter come from? Where is the anti-matter? Most will admit the truth - we know absolutely nothing about the origin of the universe. Apart from careers, reputation and funding what is to be lost by looking elsewhere?

Initial Conditions

As we are searching for the origins of the universe let's start by checking our assumptions about our initial conditions. If we can hit upon some different assumptions which better explain what we know about the universe that might help to reduce the embarrassment.

So we don't know where all this stuff came from. We can't explain the matter/antimatter problem. The explanation could be simple - it was there already.

One version of this idea has some big names behind it. The Big Bounce model is a clever alternative theory, not my opinion, Sean Carroll’s. It's very well summarised in Natalie Wolchover’s article in Quanta magazine, Jan 31st 2019.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/big-bounce-models-reignite-big-bang-debate-20180131/

I refer to this only to make the point that there are some serious people out there theorising that all this stuff was already there before the Big Bang.

My idea goes further. Not only was the stuff of the universe always there, but there is a lot more stuff out there in the cosmos.

We humans have always been convinced that we are the only show in town. First we were the centre of the universe. The sun and stars revolved around us. Then the Milky Way was the universe until Hubble proved this a nebulous concept. So now we assume that our universe is all there is in the cosmos.

The Big Universe Theory changes the initial conditions and assumes that there is much more in the cosmos than our universe. If there is, it's reasonable to assume also that it's been around since well before the Big Bang.

The universe has always been much bigger than we thought.

Big Universe Theory)

In my first two papers I argued that what we call Dark Energy, the accelerating expansion of the universe is just the gravitational pull of the cosmos. It's a simple explanation requiring no new physics or convoluted mathematics. But there are a couple of problems. The rate of acceleration would increase over time and the expansion would not be isotropic. There would be a dipole in the sky.

Paper 2, Further Evidence that Dark Energy is Cosmic Gravity, explains and provides references to recent peer reviewed papers which support the view that the rate of expansion is increasing with time. Papers from Prof Sarkar and Kostas Migkas also challenge the long held assumption that the universe is isotropic. The evidence is growing in support of cosmic gravity.

BUT it's not enough to explain Dark Energy, you have to explain it all.

The Origin of the Universe

It wasn't a bounce. The Big Bounce could explain where all the stuff came from but what Dark Energy? How does it get turned off allowing the universe to collapse into itself, over and over again?

No, if we assume that we are not alone in the cosmos. Assume that the cosmos is full of stuff, not just stars, galaxies, radiation and Dark Matter. Assume that there is a lot of stuff out there. If our universe is 10^54kgs then multiply that big number by another big number to visualise the scale.

Compare the cosmos to a galaxy where the ‘stars’ weigh as much as our universe. It is this mass which provides the gravitational field which has been accelerating our galaxies out into space for the last 5 or 6 billion years.

This assumption can explain Dark Energy and it easily explains where all the stuff of our universe came from?

One these big units went bang.

Smug alert: “The Big Bang was not an explosion!” Oh really? Where did all the energy needed to overcome the gravitational pull of the stuff in our universe come from? Inflation?

After a period of fast expansion/explosion the rate slowed down under the gravitational pull of our universe. Then about 6 billion years ago it started to increase. Now it's getting faster all the time as we are pulled out into the big old cosmos. No new physics. It's just gravity.

No challenge to the Big Bang theory. It tells the story perfectly well from bang until now. Perhaps the Lithium abundance problem can be resolved. Certainly the matter/antimatter problem is. Easy to explain where all the atoms came from. No need for a 10 billion to 1 chance. As for inflation, I’ll leave that to the professionals, but in my cosmos only real things happen.

It is a great gedankenexperiment to imagine what this cosmos would be like. The only light is coming from our little universe and possibly others in the same condition. You could feel it though. The only thing that escapes from a black hole is gravity and the cosmic ones are enormous. Big enough to make some powerful gravitational waves as they move through space. Even more powerful waves if they crash together. Unfortunately, the wavelengths are much too long for us to detect with LIGO style equipment. We'll find a way. If quasars can be used to detect supermassive black holes, the range can be extended, but only if we look.

The Fate of the Universe

It has always seemed strange to me that the universe is only 14 billion years old but will exist for another 10 ^googol years.

So many commentators focus on the 'death' of the universe, often the heat death. I prefer to consider that the energy and mass changes over time. For those who do worry about a long slow heat death, I've good news.

BUT predicts a different and possibly happier result, depending on how much you care about what happens in trillions of years from now. The rate of acceleration continues to increase as you get further out and closer to the big stuff out there. Not a Big Rip though. In a big cosmos our little universe is just recycled. That's how it started and that's how it will end. Eventually everything in our universe will gravitate to the stuff in the cosmos. In the meantime it will all happen again as it has in the past. A new 'universe', just like ours will explode into existence. An enormous and beautiful firework in space.

Eventually some of those atoms will learn how to structure themselves so they can make sense of it all. Could even happen here one day.