The Universe and its origins
Napoleon to Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, French mathematician and astronomer, sometimes referred to as the French Newton: ‘Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace drew himself up and answered bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. ("I had no need of that hypothesis.")
Recounted by W. W. Rouse Ball, British mathematician, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, 1908.
The perceived universe of a hundred years ago was vastly different to the one we know today: it was simple and unchanging, consisting of a few million visible stars. There was but one galaxy which we knew about and we were part of it: the Milky Way. This was mankind’s concept of the universe when Einstein formulated his remarkable and insightful theories between 1905 and 1915.
Today we have a far more complete and complex picture. We now know that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago in a so-called “big bang”, and that a fraction of a second later, the universe consisted of a hot, formless soup of the most elementary particles: quarks and leptons; and that, as it expanded and cooled, layers of structure developed: neutrons and protons, atomic nuclei, atoms, stars, galaxies and finally “superclusters”, so that the observable part of the universe we now know is inhabited by over 100 billion galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars and perhaps a similar number of planets. We are now aware that these galaxies are held together by a mysterious entity called “dark matter”, and that, aided by another mysterious entity described as “dark energy” the universe is continuing to expand at an ever increasing rate[1].
At a microscopic level, one hundred years ago physicists had barely come to know of the existence of the electron, the atom and the nucleus. Since then, there have appeared on this wondrous stage, a world of even smaller particles - the proton and the neutron - and exotic forces guiding them hither and yon: the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the positron, antimatter, quarks in a wondrous variety of shapes and forms, and the whole stunning panoramas of quantum theory and string theory. .
How did this remarkable transformation take place?
This requires some degree of elaboration. Presently, there are two main conceptual frameworks for understanding the universe: on the one hand, the big bang theory governing its origins, and on the other, the theory describing its most minute ingredients - quantum mechanics.
The so-called big bang theory describes the origins of the universe from almost its very beginning, and where very big things such as galaxies, stars and planets came from and how they developed. There are two versions of this theory. First, the so-called Standard Model, developed from the 1920s through to the present day, according to which the universe began when it suddenly erupted from a state of infinite compression or singularity, it being currently in the aftermath of this primeval explosion.
In a second complementary version of this theory, it is postulated that a sudden burst of inflationary expansion far greater than that described in the conventional big bang model erupted not right at the beginning but in the early stages of a universe which was already then in existence. This is the ‘inflationary cosmology’ model, sometimes described as a “front end” for the standard big bang model[2], whose basic principles were developed by theoretical physicists during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The big bang hypothesis was confirmed observationally by Hubble’s discovery in 1929 that, whichever way he observed the universe through his telescopes, the distant galaxies were and are moving away from us and from each other at a rapid rate, and the further distant the galaxy the more rapidly it is moving away. It follows that there is no centre of the universe, since there is no centre to the expansion, and the universe is not expanding from a centre into space. Rather, the whole universe is expanding and is doing so equally at all places. It is the same everywhere – well, at least as far as we can tell[3].
After a brief flirtation by some scientists with other theories, such as Hoyle, Gold and Bondi's steady state theory - which postulated that, as the universe expanded matter was being constantly created in the form of hydrogen atoms in empty space to sustain the existence of the cosmos in perpetuity, thereby resulting in a 'steady state - the big bang theory now represents the conventional and accepted wisdom among the scientific community as an explanation for the universe’s early origins, the steady state theory having met its demise with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), a now recognised relic of the big bang, by Penzias and Wilson in 1964. As to which version of he Big Bang is to be preferred depends on whom you talk to. Astronomers generally opt for the standard model, since it is based on things which can be seen or readily inferred by looking back in time at the evidence in the heavens. Theoretical physicists, or some of them at least (Alan Guth, Brian Greene, to name but two) generally opt for the inflationary cosmology model.
The Catholic Church accepted the big bang model, as it then was, back in 1951 and officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible in Pope Pius XII’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: see Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time – From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Press, London 1988, 47. However, the content of the Pope's address is contentious, and greatly upset Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), a Catholic priest, mathematical physicist and astronomer[4]. It was Lemaître who first postulated what later came to be described derisively (by Fred Hoyle) as the Big Bang theory. Lemaître was also the first to propose that the expansion of space explained the redshift of nebulae, which we now know to be galaxies, as they moved further away from us. He later concluded that an initial "creation-like" event must also have occurred. In other words, the universe had a finite beginning which existed shortly before space and time. It postulated "a day without yesterday". The theory was confirmed when Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias accidentally discovered the CMBR.
As Paul Davies points out, the big-bang scenario bears only the most superficial resemblance to Genesis, and about the best that can be said is that both accounts demand an abrupt, rather than a gradual, beginning or no beginning at all[5]. In 2014, Pope Francis said, also in a address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that there was no contradiction between believing in God as well as the prevailing scientific theories regarding the expansion of our universe, and so far as Genesis was concerned, that God was not a divine being or magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve”[6].
Quantum Graphity[7]
Comparatively recently a new theory of the origins of the Universe has emerged following funded research by a team of theoretical physicists at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University led by the Melbourne University theoretical physics researcher David Quach. This new theory, which goes by the name of Quantum Graphity, challenges the primacy of the Big Bang model and zeros in on its main weakness, the bang itself. The principle tenet of Quantum Graphity is that space itself is composed of indivisible building blocks, like tiny atoms, that can be thought of as similar to pixels that make up images on a computer screen. The challenge has been along the lines that these individual building blocks of space are very small and so impossible to see directly. However, the researchers say that it may be possible to see them indirectly.
"Think of the early universe as being like a liquid," says Quach. "Then as the universe cools, it ‘crystallises' into the three spatial and one time dimension that we see today. Theorised in this way, as the Universe cools we would expect that cracks should form, similar to the way cracks are formed when water freezes into ice." RMIT University research team member Associate Professor Andrew Greentree says some of these defects might be visible. “Light and other particles would bend or reflect off such defects, and therefore in theory we should be able to detect these effects,” he says. The team has calculated some of these effects and if their predictions are experimentally verified, the question as to whether space is smooth or constructed out of tiny indivisible parts may be solved once and for all. The results of the team’s research and findings have recently been published in the latest edition of the journal Physical Review D.
The basic problem with the Big Bang, say the new theory’s proponents, is the bang itself, because at the bang, physics breaks down, and the model can’t make any predictions about what occurred at the big bang, whereas Quantum Graphity starts from the premise that in the beginning there wasn't even space. Space did not exist because there was no form, and the reason water is used as an analogy – and it is only an analogy - is that water is without form. In other words, Quach and his associates have suggested that by investigating the cracks and crevices common to all crystals, including ice, our understanding of the nature of the Universe could be revolutionised.
Because Quantum Graphity is presently in its infancy so far as its theoretical and experimental parameters are concerned, the remainder of this site will deal exclusively with the Big Bang model which has been around significantly longer.
and on the other hand .....
Quantum mechanics is a conceptual framework for understanding the microscopic properties of the universe: atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks and other subnuclear particles. Its laws govern the minutiae of matter, light and energy and their components in a frenzied world whose laws do not accord with those governing the grander components of the universe on a larger scale. In their search for a deeper understanding of the universe’s origins and workings, some scientists have been seeking a grand unified theory of everything - a “GUT” or a “TOE” - embodying both conceptual frameworks. Since the 1980s, a theory is being developed which purports to do just that: string theory, which postulates a world of 10 or 11 spacetime dimensions, instead of the four we currently have (3 space and one time), parallel universes and a world made out of pulsating filaments - strings: much more about which later.
[1] See Michael S Turner, “Origin of the Universe”, Scientific American: Special Collector’s Edition, Extreme Physics – Probing the Mysteries of the Cosmos, August 2013, 36 at 38.
[2] Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, Penguin Books, London, 2005, 273
[3] Philip Gibbs 1997 (Version 2013): http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html
[4] John Farrell, The Day Without Yesterday - Lemaître, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology, Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2005. 196, where a rather florid excerpt from the Pope's address is set out.
[5] The Mind of God, Penguin, 2010, 47.
[6] Ashaan Tharoor, “Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis”, SMH, 29 October 2014, (Washington Post, AP).
[7] “Melbourne researchers rewrite Big Bang theory”, SMH, 21 August 2012; cf Michael Moyer, “Is space digital”, Scientific American, February 2012, 21.
Recounted by W. W. Rouse Ball, British mathematician, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, 1908.
The perceived universe of a hundred years ago was vastly different to the one we know today: it was simple and unchanging, consisting of a few million visible stars. There was but one galaxy which we knew about and we were part of it: the Milky Way. This was mankind’s concept of the universe when Einstein formulated his remarkable and insightful theories between 1905 and 1915.
Today we have a far more complete and complex picture. We now know that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago in a so-called “big bang”, and that a fraction of a second later, the universe consisted of a hot, formless soup of the most elementary particles: quarks and leptons; and that, as it expanded and cooled, layers of structure developed: neutrons and protons, atomic nuclei, atoms, stars, galaxies and finally “superclusters”, so that the observable part of the universe we now know is inhabited by over 100 billion galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars and perhaps a similar number of planets. We are now aware that these galaxies are held together by a mysterious entity called “dark matter”, and that, aided by another mysterious entity described as “dark energy” the universe is continuing to expand at an ever increasing rate[1].
At a microscopic level, one hundred years ago physicists had barely come to know of the existence of the electron, the atom and the nucleus. Since then, there have appeared on this wondrous stage, a world of even smaller particles - the proton and the neutron - and exotic forces guiding them hither and yon: the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the positron, antimatter, quarks in a wondrous variety of shapes and forms, and the whole stunning panoramas of quantum theory and string theory. .
How did this remarkable transformation take place?
This requires some degree of elaboration. Presently, there are two main conceptual frameworks for understanding the universe: on the one hand, the big bang theory governing its origins, and on the other, the theory describing its most minute ingredients - quantum mechanics.
The so-called big bang theory describes the origins of the universe from almost its very beginning, and where very big things such as galaxies, stars and planets came from and how they developed. There are two versions of this theory. First, the so-called Standard Model, developed from the 1920s through to the present day, according to which the universe began when it suddenly erupted from a state of infinite compression or singularity, it being currently in the aftermath of this primeval explosion.
In a second complementary version of this theory, it is postulated that a sudden burst of inflationary expansion far greater than that described in the conventional big bang model erupted not right at the beginning but in the early stages of a universe which was already then in existence. This is the ‘inflationary cosmology’ model, sometimes described as a “front end” for the standard big bang model[2], whose basic principles were developed by theoretical physicists during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The big bang hypothesis was confirmed observationally by Hubble’s discovery in 1929 that, whichever way he observed the universe through his telescopes, the distant galaxies were and are moving away from us and from each other at a rapid rate, and the further distant the galaxy the more rapidly it is moving away. It follows that there is no centre of the universe, since there is no centre to the expansion, and the universe is not expanding from a centre into space. Rather, the whole universe is expanding and is doing so equally at all places. It is the same everywhere – well, at least as far as we can tell[3].
After a brief flirtation by some scientists with other theories, such as Hoyle, Gold and Bondi's steady state theory - which postulated that, as the universe expanded matter was being constantly created in the form of hydrogen atoms in empty space to sustain the existence of the cosmos in perpetuity, thereby resulting in a 'steady state - the big bang theory now represents the conventional and accepted wisdom among the scientific community as an explanation for the universe’s early origins, the steady state theory having met its demise with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), a now recognised relic of the big bang, by Penzias and Wilson in 1964. As to which version of he Big Bang is to be preferred depends on whom you talk to. Astronomers generally opt for the standard model, since it is based on things which can be seen or readily inferred by looking back in time at the evidence in the heavens. Theoretical physicists, or some of them at least (Alan Guth, Brian Greene, to name but two) generally opt for the inflationary cosmology model.
The Catholic Church accepted the big bang model, as it then was, back in 1951 and officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible in Pope Pius XII’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: see Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time – From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Press, London 1988, 47. However, the content of the Pope's address is contentious, and greatly upset Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), a Catholic priest, mathematical physicist and astronomer[4]. It was Lemaître who first postulated what later came to be described derisively (by Fred Hoyle) as the Big Bang theory. Lemaître was also the first to propose that the expansion of space explained the redshift of nebulae, which we now know to be galaxies, as they moved further away from us. He later concluded that an initial "creation-like" event must also have occurred. In other words, the universe had a finite beginning which existed shortly before space and time. It postulated "a day without yesterday". The theory was confirmed when Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias accidentally discovered the CMBR.
As Paul Davies points out, the big-bang scenario bears only the most superficial resemblance to Genesis, and about the best that can be said is that both accounts demand an abrupt, rather than a gradual, beginning or no beginning at all[5]. In 2014, Pope Francis said, also in a address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that there was no contradiction between believing in God as well as the prevailing scientific theories regarding the expansion of our universe, and so far as Genesis was concerned, that God was not a divine being or magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve”[6].
Quantum Graphity[7]
Comparatively recently a new theory of the origins of the Universe has emerged following funded research by a team of theoretical physicists at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University led by the Melbourne University theoretical physics researcher David Quach. This new theory, which goes by the name of Quantum Graphity, challenges the primacy of the Big Bang model and zeros in on its main weakness, the bang itself. The principle tenet of Quantum Graphity is that space itself is composed of indivisible building blocks, like tiny atoms, that can be thought of as similar to pixels that make up images on a computer screen. The challenge has been along the lines that these individual building blocks of space are very small and so impossible to see directly. However, the researchers say that it may be possible to see them indirectly.
"Think of the early universe as being like a liquid," says Quach. "Then as the universe cools, it ‘crystallises' into the three spatial and one time dimension that we see today. Theorised in this way, as the Universe cools we would expect that cracks should form, similar to the way cracks are formed when water freezes into ice." RMIT University research team member Associate Professor Andrew Greentree says some of these defects might be visible. “Light and other particles would bend or reflect off such defects, and therefore in theory we should be able to detect these effects,” he says. The team has calculated some of these effects and if their predictions are experimentally verified, the question as to whether space is smooth or constructed out of tiny indivisible parts may be solved once and for all. The results of the team’s research and findings have recently been published in the latest edition of the journal Physical Review D.
The basic problem with the Big Bang, say the new theory’s proponents, is the bang itself, because at the bang, physics breaks down, and the model can’t make any predictions about what occurred at the big bang, whereas Quantum Graphity starts from the premise that in the beginning there wasn't even space. Space did not exist because there was no form, and the reason water is used as an analogy – and it is only an analogy - is that water is without form. In other words, Quach and his associates have suggested that by investigating the cracks and crevices common to all crystals, including ice, our understanding of the nature of the Universe could be revolutionised.
Because Quantum Graphity is presently in its infancy so far as its theoretical and experimental parameters are concerned, the remainder of this site will deal exclusively with the Big Bang model which has been around significantly longer.
and on the other hand .....
Quantum mechanics is a conceptual framework for understanding the microscopic properties of the universe: atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks and other subnuclear particles. Its laws govern the minutiae of matter, light and energy and their components in a frenzied world whose laws do not accord with those governing the grander components of the universe on a larger scale. In their search for a deeper understanding of the universe’s origins and workings, some scientists have been seeking a grand unified theory of everything - a “GUT” or a “TOE” - embodying both conceptual frameworks. Since the 1980s, a theory is being developed which purports to do just that: string theory, which postulates a world of 10 or 11 spacetime dimensions, instead of the four we currently have (3 space and one time), parallel universes and a world made out of pulsating filaments - strings: much more about which later.
[1] See Michael S Turner, “Origin of the Universe”, Scientific American: Special Collector’s Edition, Extreme Physics – Probing the Mysteries of the Cosmos, August 2013, 36 at 38.
[2] Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, Penguin Books, London, 2005, 273
[3] Philip Gibbs 1997 (Version 2013): http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html
[4] John Farrell, The Day Without Yesterday - Lemaître, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology, Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2005. 196, where a rather florid excerpt from the Pope's address is set out.
[5] The Mind of God, Penguin, 2010, 47.
[6] Ashaan Tharoor, “Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis”, SMH, 29 October 2014, (Washington Post, AP).
[7] “Melbourne researchers rewrite Big Bang theory”, SMH, 21 August 2012; cf Michael Moyer, “Is space digital”, Scientific American, February 2012, 21.