A spark appears in the void. The spark cannot be seen because the void is a dimensionless non-place. Nothing can exist here – not the spark, not even empty space. And the spark is time.
The spark of time must be created quickly, in a brief period that cannot exceed “Plank Time”, named after the discoverer, Max Plank. This time is 10-43 seconds, or a tenth part of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second. It is theoretically impossible to measure any time shorter than this. During “Plank Time” the impossible can happen, even creation.
As we view the spark of time from our imaginary vantage point in the dimensionless void, the spark of time disappears. It is the end of Plank Time and the impossible is no longer possible. There will be more sparks appearing at the rate of 1043 per second, or 10 times a million million million million million million million sparks per second for eternity, but that is not our concern here.
Let us ignore those other sparks and return to the one that we observed to disappear.
What has happened to our spark of time? Where has it gone? To explain that, we must follow it into a new place that cannot exist in the dimensionless void. That place is a newly created universe – our universe!
How can a new place – our universe – exist where existence is impossible? We have a clue from the astronomers who are measuring the expansion of the universe.
Our universe began with a great explosion – the Big Bang – and it has been expanding ever since. The stars and galaxies are not just expanding into empty space; space itself is growing like an inflating balloon, carrying the stars with it. The expansion slows as gravity tries to pull everything back together again. How fast the expansion slows depends upon the mass of our universe. The more massive our universe, the greater will be the attraction of gravity and the faster the expansion will slow. If our universe is massive enough, the expansion will slow quickly and then begin to contract. If the mass is small, there will not be enough gravitational force to stop the expansion, and the universe will expand forever, carrying with it the corpses of burned out stars.
The astronomers have discovered a curious thing. They cannot determine if our universe will expand forever, or if it will contract back into the infinitesimally small point from which it came. The mass of our universe seems to be very near to a balance point. If it were just a tiny bit less, the speed of expansion would be so great that the universe would be far larger than it is now, the familiar stars far away and barely visible. If it were a tiny bit more, gravity would long ago have pulled our universe back into a tiny point, and life would never have had a chance to exist. If the mass is exactly on the balance point, the expansion will slow to nearly a dead stop, and just hang there forever. This perfect balance is called a “flat universe”. We are so near to the balance point that the odds of this happening by chance are estimated to be more than 100 billion to 1. This indicates to me that there was something at work here that dictated a flat universe.
I believe that we are at the exact balance point – a flat universe, down to the very last quark – and it is not by chance.
OK, so we have a flat universe. Now, let’s return to that spark of time in the void of nothingness.
Plank time has ended, and the impossible is no longer possible. Our universe must now come into existence unseen from the outside.
To exist but not be seen, our universe must have, as a minimum, five dimensions. Time is often called the fourth dimension, but I am speaking to the geometry here. Time would be a sixth dimension. A five dimensional object has been described by Stephen Hawking as a pocket with an inside but without an outside. A five dimensional universe would fold in upon itself and not be detectable from the outside; it could exist within the zero dimensional void without detection.
How can a five dimensional universe be created? Only by increasing its mass to the point where a “super black hole” is created. An object that is so massive it will not let even gravity escape.
The mass required to make the spark of time disappear is the same mass that is required to create a flat universe. This is speculation of course, but remember those odds? Once time no longer exists in the void, there would be no way – and no need – to continue the process of increasing mass.
Where, you might ask, does all the matter and energy of our universe come from? How can it be created from nothing?
A good analogy would be a bouncing rubber ball. The ball is dropped to the floor and bounces up again. If the ball were perfect, it would bounce up the same distance that it was dropped. The energy gained on the way down would be spent going back up. The net result of energy gained and lost is zero. This is a “zero energy” situation.
Likewise, our time spark, as it came to the end of Plank Time, would be squeezed violently inward by the void in which nothing can exist. The energy required to squeeze it out of existence on the outside is the same energy released in the Big Bang on the inside. This is called a “Zero Energy Universe”.
From the Big Bang onward, we are back in the realm of current mathematics and physics. I will leave it to others far more qualified than me to describe the growth of our universe.
