Successional Universe Theory
For years cosmologists and physicists alike have been trying to understand and explain how the “Big Bang” occurred. There are a few interesting theories that have been developed over time that attempt to explain how the Universe came into existence. Fortunately for scientists of many denominations, people like Albert Einstein, Sir Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking have proposed very interesting and largely accepted theories about physics both large and quantum. These theories have given physicists and cosmologists a strong foundation with which to build new and more evolved theories in an attempt
to solve the most asked question in physics and cosmology…How did the Universe as we know and understand it today arise?
So far, the most widely accepted theory in cosmology is that all we know about the Universe and all that is in it is a result of the Big Bang. The Big Bang Model postulates that roughly 13.7 billion years ago, the Universe was much different
from what we can see with powerful telescopes today. Basically there was nothing to see. Around this time of 13.7 billion years ago, the Universe was immensely hot and dense. The heat was such that this infinitesimally small, dense and extremely hot point in space expanded in what would be considered an explosion. This expansion is what created the space between all this superheated matter which allowed it to cool into a much more stable state of existence.
Scientists have developed the means to test this theory with startling results. A spacecraft called WMAP, which stands for Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, was put into space to measure the radiation left over from the Big Bang. The WMAP probe was stunningly successful. Edwin Hubble’s discovery that distant galaxies were apparently moving away from the Milky Way at a much higher velocity than galaxies closer to the Milky Way as observed from our vantage point along with the WMAP results proved that the Universe was expanding. What this means is, if all observable galaxies are moving away from each other respectively, then all observable galaxies were at one time billions of years ago much more densely clustered. So by going back in Universal history everything in the Universe must have began its’ expansion from a single point in space-time.
Now that the Big Bang is accepted as the beginning of our Universe in mainstream cosmology a new theory is emerging. This new theory postulates that the Universe as we know it today is the result of a preexisting Universe that eventually stopped expanding and began to contract like a balloon when the air escapes. Once this preexisting Universe contracted into a point as dense and hot as our Universe was before the Big Bang, it exploded. Essentially, our Universe is the result of a Big Bang that was the culmination of a preexisting contracting Universe. This expanding and contracting of Universes, each one beginning with its own Big Bang, is an infinite cycle.
So scientists are still left trying to visualize how these Big Bangs looked and how exactly the mechanics of these bangs worked. The problem, it seems, is not the science behind their experiments, but rather trying to explain all of this by combining the world of Quantum Mechanics (the branch of physics that explains the very small) and Astrophysics (the branch that explains the very large).
Fortunately for scientists, the Large Hadron Collider or LHC in Switzerland is giving scientists insight into how the Big Bang looked in its earliest moments. The LHC works by sending particles in opposite directions through a ring of
superconducting magnets 27km long. These magnets accelerate the particles to near light-speed until eventually they collide. When this happens, scientists observe what is so far the closest they have come to recreating the Big Bang. The problem is that these collisions do not have enough matter or mass to feed their existence. They disappear.
If this theory of successional Universes proves true, I believe the answer to why the particles being sent on collision courses in the LHC disappear so quickly becomes apparent. They don’t have enough matter and mass to feed their own resulting expansion. If all the matter and mass in our Universe is the same matter and mass that ultimately contracted into an infinitesimally small point from a previous Universe, then our own Big Bang contained all the matter and mass it needed to feed its expansion. In essence the ultimate reusable energy source. On the other hand, if this is true, and our Universe only exists because of the energy reused from the previous Universe, then the basic Big Bang Model appears to have a flaw…where did our Universe get the energy to feed its expansion if there was no previous Universe? So in a way, our
Universe and the ones that preceded it eventually contracted into a Universal Black Hole that became so dense and so hot that they became so unstable as to break the choke-hold that their own gravity held them together with, resulting in Big Bang after Big Bang. A Successional Universe Theory.
