Strange Science

What do you think about when you hear someone discuss the big bang? Do you think of it as a fairy tale? Divine Act of God? Do you wretch at the idea that such a random act of chaos is responsible for the vast array of laws that govern our universe? Or do you marvel at the simplicity of our origins? Well…regardless of your idea on the subject, at least most of us agree that the universe began at some point. The question of how is subject to mountains of debate. My purpose here tonight however, is to somewhat clarify a model of the big bang theory that supposes not so much chaos, but  order. Many people today misunderstand the big bang theory. They believe that in the beginning a large cloud of matter swirled around very fast and condensed to unimaginable pressures. Once this cloud of matter became unstable, it collapsed, exploding and ejecting amazing amounts of matter into “empty space”. Almost as if space was a giant empty aquarium. Almost all physicists and cosmologists today reject this notion. Stephen Hawking, in his book “A Brief History of Space and Time” asserted that space, time, AND matter originated in the form of a type of cosmic egg. This “space” expanded into an outter area called hyperspace. It’s a little tough to understand this concept, so let me give you an illustration. Imagine you have a balloon, and an aquarium. You blow the balloon up so that it exists inside the aquarium, which also has air inside of it. The air outside of the ballon, in the aquarium is hyperspace. The balloon itself is space. Let me also say that the air INSIDE the balloon is NOT space. Merely the balloon itself is space. Now, THIS concept may also be hard to understand in itself so let me provide you with another illustration. A human being exists in three dimensions. To make this simpler, let’s break it down into two dimensions, so we are like a drawing on paper. We cannot perceive the space outside of the paper, only the paper itself. We also cannot percieve the space inside or outside of the balloon, merely the balloon itself. What I’m saying here may be profound for some of you who have realized what I’m telling you. This means that as a two dimensional being, the furthest you could travel heading one direction in space, is the space directly behind you. This is true in our universe as well, according to the most recent theory and studies. Physicists theorize that if you were to fire an object into space at an unimaginable rate of speed, it will eventually arrive where it began. This is just like if you were to begin a trip on one side of the globe, heading in one direction. You would eventually end up where you began. This idea was a rough one to swallow at first, but as I’ve continued studying and reading, I’ve become increasingly more comfortable with it. Not only that, I like the model better, being that it doesn’t offend my religious beliefs. Rather, I find that it supports the idea that some manner of order was imposed upon the universe by outside sources. After all, we can only percieve what is in our dimension of space. How can we know that there is nothing outside of it? Also, this now puts to rest my irritation with the whole “matter spinning in circles” idea. It is more likely, that this universe may have organized much earlier on, and that it didn’t spend amazing amounts of time randomly ordering itself. In fact, it is feasible to say that the universe was already organized to some extent upon origination, and that it has merely expanded since the beginning. This is an easy pill to swallow if you believe in an intelligent force outside of our dimension of space, since matter would already have arrived in neatly organized packets…or galaxies. Keep in mind that I’m not saying that matter WAS already organized, rather that it could have been. With this model I see no reason why it didn’t have to be. It’s merely speculation, but I do find it interesting. Your thoughts and comments on these ideas is appreciated. The next item on my list is ether. What is ether? Well…what is space? Einstein called the space our planet inhabits, ether. One of the key points he made in his book on the theory of relativity is that we cannot live in “empty space”. Space had to be something. The other strange thing about this “ether” is that it tends to be connected to time itself. In other words, you can bend it, stretch it, and distort it. Kind of like you can bend and stretch a piece of plastic wrap. However unlike plastic wrap, when you bend space, the rate at which time elapses changes. Take for instance, this example. If you placed an atomic clock in the southern hemisphere of the Earth at sea level, and another one at 5000 feet of elevation in the northern hemisphere, the two clocks would actually run at different rates. After a year you would see an extra five microseconds on the clock at 5000 feet. This is because the elevation distorts space and creates a “gravity well” causing time to run just a slight bit faster. Our planets, and our sun, sit in this ether, distorting it, like marbles on seran wrap. They create little dents, and distort time. When you bend or stretch space, you actually slow down time. this means that a year on Earth, takes much longer than a year in the void of space. This is the interesting thing to me…let’s say that light, which travels at roughly 670,600,000 miles per hour, is careening through space. This speed is a constant. So we know that if a point of light originated 670,600,000 miles away, it would take roughly an hour to reach our eyes here on Earth. There really isn’t a way to postulate any difference in time here because this distance is literally point blank range in the arena of space distances. Now let’s pick a distance much further away, like 300 light years. That is 176,358,900,000,000,000 miles! Now, in my mind, it is feasible that if space is bent and stretched by the matter contained within it, the actual passing of time could change such that while light is still travelling that distance in a year, the speed of the year itself can fluctuate. For instance, lets say that Earth exists in a densly populated region of space. It’s year lasts 365 days. Each day lasts 24 hours, and each minute lasts 60 seconds. Well, the same would be said for a year in a void area of space, but space is not bent so time proceeds at a much quicker rate. So if you took sixty years to age here on Earth, and sixty Earth years passed in 50 seconds in a void of space, you would do sixty years worth of aging in 50 seconds in that void area of space! Let’s take this a step further and trip ourselves out. I would imagine that you wouldn’t suddenly die while passing through this sectio of space. Rather, as you passed through, you would percieve time moving along at a normal rate. However, in this area of space, as you percieved the Earth, it would appear that Earth time is moving along at an astoundingly slow rate. You would spend sixty years in that void of space, and return to Earth to see that only a minute of time has passed! This last point may not be a reality, but it certainly makes sense, and I find the possibility astounding. In summary however, this means that depending on the characteristics of space in between our planet and the stars and celestial objects we observe, it is feasible to conclude that we may not have an accurate measurement of the age or true distances of those bodies. If space is distorted at any point along the journey that light makes to reach our eyes, it may alter the reality of our data. I propose that due to this idea, we may not be looking as far back in time as we suppose…at least not OUR time. Depending on the difference in spacetime of these distant bodies, our five minutes could be their thousands of years…wow…what a trip… …Thoughts?

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