It is a question that has vexed science for many years. It is, simply put;
Why is the universe that we live in always ‘just right’ for us to live in?
In the 1960’s and 70’s a new discipline came into being, it began with the gradual blending of astrophysics and cosmology, and it led us closer and closer to the moment of – dare I say it – the creation of our Universe.
It is precisely what happens right at, and immediately after that moment of creation that scientists yearn to determine. There are two main obstacles to overcome in the quest to get to that defining moment:
Power requirements
The strange things that begin to happen the closer you get to it
First of all, the power requirements. It would take a particle accelerator with the ability to generate a temperature of 1027 degrees (Abs). If I was to write down that number it would look like this;
10000000000000000000000000000o ,
So, I won’t do that again.
As this is impossible to achieve without (makes sense really, because that’s what happened here anyway) using all of the power left in the universe, we are just going to have to make do with the latest Hadron Collider at Cern which will achieve a total collision energy of 14 TeV. [TerraEVolts.]
– (One Tev = 1.60217646 10-7 joules) –
And in certain conditions, much more.
Scientist at Cern hope to get to within billionths of a second after the moment of the big bang.
Anyway, I’m not going to do any more of that because it is the second obstacle that really interests me.
It’s the region of Cosmology and Astrophysics which can only be approached with the power of thought.
Before I go on with this I have to say that what I am writing is now just an incomplete remembrance of an experience I had some time back, when I was capable, for a short time, of much greater concentration and contemplation than I am at most times now in my life.
This is the region of our universe which will be forever out of bounds to us. It is the [place/time] where all of our physical laws were created. Before they were created our universe was a very strange place. We don’t really have the words to describe this place, we have mathematics, depending on which discipline you agree with, but words fall short so I will have to use words like ‘place’ and ‘time’, as I have no wish, nor do I have the ability, to place the Maths in front of you.
In this place impossible things happened. Gravity danced with electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces crowded close by, making sure everything fitted together just right.
This was the place which could have spawned dragons, elves, trolls, teleportation, and tachyon beams for Geordi La Forge. If God needed a sitting room, this would be it.
Why then, didn’t dragons result from this place? Why does every action produce an opposite and equal reaction?
Why then, doesn’t E=Mc2 + 2 ?
Or better still, why aren’t the stars fixed to transparent celestial spheres? or planetary orbits perfectly circular?
As the four forces broke up and fell apart our universe was suddenly fixed, just the way we like it, forever.
Well, that’s the standard thinking anyway.
The trouble with this is that it doesn’t completely take quantum fluctuation into account, you know, that thing about cats and boxes and cyanide and radioactivity.
The thing is, it really didn’t have to be this way. It could have been so different. It could still be different, that’s what the guy who said we could have changed the age of the universe by looking at it meant. I mean, that could never happen, could it?
Let’s see.
One of the many things I have contemplated is a strange phenomenon called ‘Observational Genesis’. Put simply it means that the universe conforms to our needs because we need it to be that way.
It goes like this:
As we get closer to the singularity, the moment of creation, we learn how the physical laws of our universe came into being. Some time immediately after the moment of the big bang those laws were all in a quantum flux, waiting to be born, or being born into this universe then jumping back out of it, (into one of an infinite number of ‘other’ potential universes waiting for a big bang to come along).
To fix a particular law into our very own universe, someone had to ‘observe’ it. This ‘observation would then pull the law from it’s quantum flux state and ‘pin’ it into reality.
So, as we tunnel down into the depths of the creation event, we discover more and more about the ‘reality’ of our own universe, and in doing so, fix it even more firmly than it was before.
We tunnel using telescopes, LHC’s, Proton smashers and experimentation. The power of thought almost always comes first, then the experimenters and the observers make or break the theories by fixing them with close scrutiny.
Here is the craziest part.
In the future, scientists, experimenters, theologists, astronomers and all, will still be fixing our laws for us. In fact they will have firmly fixed any ‘new’ phenomenon long before we get to explore it thoroughly. They are busy sending us clues down from the future so that we can assist them in their further endeavours.
No wonder all of the dragons and elves and transparent crystalline heavenly spheres disappeared from the world so long ago.
