The Hindu Business Line : Bang is not the beginning of space or time

All of us live on a planet that is lost in the multiverse, a conglomeration containing an infinite number of very different regions. And, it may be time to fasten your seatbelts. Because our rare pocket of the universe is running out of time, as Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok declare in Endless Universe ( www.landmarkonthenet.com). “Dark energy has already overtaken all other forms of matter and radiation, and has taken command of the expansion of the universe…”

The book is about “a new theory of the universe, according to which our cosmic history consists of repeating cycles of evolution.”

A common theory that has held ground for nearly half a century is the big bang idea – “that the universe emerged from a very hot, dense state 14 billion years ago and has been expanding and cooling ever since.”

In a trillion years, our home will be well on its way toward a vacuous oblivion, predict the authors. “Virtually all the galaxies we see today will still exist, but the stars will be gradually burning out. There will in all likelihood still be stars, planets, and life. But…”

But, what? “The accelerated expansion due to dark energy will have spread out the galaxies so much that nothing beyond the Andromeda Galaxy will be visible to us.”

For starters, the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way, as http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu educates. Dark energy is an invisible substance that is spread across space and that produces an anti-gravity force causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, cosmologists believe.

The ‘dark’ names are unimaginative appellations for ‘the two most surprising and enigmatic constituents of the universe,’ say Steinhardt and Turok.

“The only thing they have in common is that they do not absorb or scatter light.” Their roles in the history of the universe are completely different: “Dark matter dominated the past; dark energy will shape the future.” The reign of dark and ordinary matter (that is, the visible one, composed of atoms and subatomic components) lasted nearly 9 billion years, during which the first atoms, molecules, stars, and galaxies formed. But there is a problem with dark energy.

“Although it has nearly three times the density of dark matter today, dark energy has been much harder for astronomers to detect.”

Can someone tell us what is happening? “Something enormous is approaching fast along a dimension we cannot see,” observe the authors, rather sombrely. “The realisation will come in a flash when, suddenly, everywhere in space lights up with new matter and radiation from the collision. The temperature soars to 10 to the power 15 times the surface temperature…”

Reassuringly, however, each cycle begins with a bang, but the bang is not the beginning of space or time.

“Rather, it is an event with a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ that can be described by the laws of physics… Perhaps, space and time sprang into being many cycles ago, but it is also possible that they are literally ‘endless’.” Anant, one may say, as ancient Indian saints described.

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Bang is not the beginning of space or time