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Founded January 1970
Julian Date: 2459298.18
2020-2021: C
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Exploratorium XXXI: *A Manufactured Universe?*
*Today, we decided to drive a Sherman tank over a half-inch thick layer of
splintering lake ice and discuss the notion of creation. Honestly, most
people tend to avoid this topic, because very few people tend to regard it
lightly. One cannot broach the issue of creation without inciting ire
on one side and offending religious sensibilities on the other. We'll
preface this article with a sincere assurance that we intend no offense
whatsoever. Then again, neither did Victor Frankenstein.*
What or who created the Universe? This most fundamental of all
metaphysical inquiries remains unanswered. Even cosmology, the branch of
science dealing with formation and development of the Universe, cannot
provide much insight into the creation event, itself. Indeed, cosmology
has produced the Big Bang Model, in which the cosmos took form out of an
infinitesimal kernel about 13.8 billion years ago. However, the Big Bang
model breaks down at the very first moment of creation. The conditions
that prevailed before 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 sec after
the creation event is unknown. Some theorists even suggest that it will
remain forever unknowable. Cosmologists will have to be content with
studying the cosmos as it appeared after this first mysterious moment,
known as "Planck time,."
*"The Cosmic Web" An artistic depiction of the observable Universe.
Each point within the illuminated filaments are galaxy clusters. Our own
Milky Way Galaxy is reduced to a flicker within this structure. How did
this magnificent Univ**erse come to be? Some cosmologists wonder if the
entire cosmos might have been manufactured by beings similar to us.
Perhaps the Universe took form in a super collider in another Universe or,
perhaps, as a high school student's lab assignment. *
Our inability to explain creation has not dissuaded scientists,
theologians, and philosophers from offering possible explanations.
Lately, some scientists are seriously discussing the possibility that the
cosmic creator might be neither a god nor a natural process. Instead, it
could have been, well, a scientist in another Universe. While we can
well understand how the prospect of God as a scientist could be rather
appealing to scientists, they do cite some scientific evidence to support
this idea. The most compelling evidence is the Large Hadron Collider in
Switzerland. Such super colliders could have the potential to create
teeny black holes: "teeny," in this sense meaning atomic sized or smaller.
Black holes are regions in space-time where the gravity is too
powerful to permit anything to escape, apart from Hawking radiation, which,
being a quantum mechanical effect, we can cheerfully ignore at present.
Black holes could serve as passageways to other Universe, through
hypothetical conduits called "Einstein-Rosen" bridges. Physicists Albert
Einstein and Nathan Rosen determined that black hole could produce such
bridges to other Universes. Of course, they would likely prove highly
unstable. However, a black hole could also, in theory, spawn another
Universe: a space-time system wholly independent of that in which it was
originally produced. A strong objection to this theory would seem to
involve energy. We're aware of the "no free lunch" adage. One cannot
just conjure energy out of nothingness. Even the energy you expended to
go to the coffee machine this morning originated in the Big Bang.
Energy doesn't vanish. It merely changes form. It would seem,
therefore, absurd that a teeny black hole could create a Universe abounding
in energy. That objection is quite valid, but only in our Universe,
which contains a set amount of energy* Gravity has "negative" energy
so, ironically, no extra energy is needed to create an offshoot Universe.
Even a small black hole, such as one that a super collider could create,
would be capable of forming a Universe.
*The Large Hadron Collider. Could a highly complex collider in
another **Universe
have generated our own **Universe? Such devices could conceivably create
black holes that might form an off-shoot Universe that is both immensely
large and abundant in energy. Image LHC, Geneva *
This offshoot Universe could undergo a birth and then a rapid inflationary
event, as many cosmologists believed occurred in our own Universe. In
this scenario, the creator would exert no control over their creation. The
cosmos would form and promptly snap off from our own Universe. Think of
birth without any subsequent rearing. On the other hand, perhaps a
Universe creator might have developed the ability to alter the conditions
of this manufactured Universe. For instance, by setting the relative
strengths of the fundamental forces. These forces are gravity,
electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. All physical
phenomena are manifestations of these forces. These forces are not
equally strong, nor do they act over the same range. For instance, gravity
and electromagnetism are infinite in range, while the nuclear forces act
only over an atomic diameter. Also, electromagnetism is immensely stronger
than gravity** and the strong nuclear force is more powerful than
electromagnetism.
Cosmologists are often troubled by how profoundly these fundamental forces
vary in magnitude and influence. Were these forces to have differed
even slightly in comparative strengths, the cosmos would be dramatically
different. If gravity had been a bit weaker, galaxies and stars would not
have congealed out of the primordial matter rising out of the radiant
energy that pervaded the infant Universe. If gravity had been slightly
stronger, the Universe would have imploded back in itself rapidly after
formation. In both cases, life wouldn't have formed in the cosmos. As
another example, if electromagnetism were stronger than the strong nuclear
force, fusion would be impossible. Thermonuclear fusion reactions occur
because positively charged atomic nuclei fuse together when they draw close
enough together. At this point, the strong nuclear force binds them
together. They fuse through a series of reactions to form another element
and in the process some of the initial matter is transmuted into energy.
Electrostatic repulsion keeps lie charges separate when they are outside
the strong nuclear force range. If electromagnetism were stronger than
the nuclear force, nuclei would never be able to fuse together. Without
fusion, we'd have no active stars.
Our Universe seems precisely set for life's development. We don't know
if it was deliberately set or, as some insist, we just happen to inhabit a
Universe that generates life. There might be myriad Universes in which
these forces differ. Or, there might be entirely different forces within
these universes. We just happen to be in a life bearing Universe.
Presumably, any Universe creator would know how to adjust the settings to
give rise to life in their own private Universe.
Of course, the notion that our Universe could have been created in a super
collider, or, as part of a high school laboratory experiment or, as some
suggest, really is a Matrix-like simulation, disturbs our minds without
improving them. It is a hypothesis: a possibility that cannot be
investigated, at least not with the equipment we have at our disposal.
Even if we did establish that our entire Universe has been manufactured,
that leaves open the question of how the first Universe came to be.
Surprisingly, we didn't solve the matter in today's article. That we
so ardent desire to know how the Universe came about is miraculous, in and
of itself. Science cannot tell us why the Universe exists or, to be
honest, how it truly came to exist. We do know we're here, as a
negligibly small fraction of an unfathomably enormous Universe we've only
started to comprehend. As they say, existence is the greatest enigma of
them all.
*** Nuclear reactions do generate energy from matter. Realize, though,
that matter is crystallized energy. Nuclear reactions do not
violate thermodynamical
laws by transmuting material into energy. Instead, they extract some of
the innate energy within matter.
**It seems difficult to believe that gravity is a lot weaker than
electromagnetism. However, look at your refrigerator. See the magnets?
The electromagnetic force generated by a single magnet is easily
overwhelming the gravitational pull of an entire planet.
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