Astrogator

My reading of your “TON” speculation yields three “insights”: (paraphrasing) 1) You start with nothing; incredibly minute discontinuities develop; negative/positive interface accelerate, larger and larger structures (quarks, atoms, molecules) are built up. 2) Continuous Creation: Galaxies have formed at various time and places within the void. 3) The current Big Bang theory (BBT) doesn’t explain what happened before the beginning or how so much matter and energy could come from such a small “singularity”, no matter how hot or dense, or how the galaxies could be receding from each other at nearly the speed of light. (Please correct me if I’m wrong) Comments 1) Let me start with #2 first: No observable bursts of energy from new galaxy creation in your "continuous creation" mini-Bang (?) scenario in the TON theory seem to be happening. If TON were true, wouldn't we be observing tremendous amounts of the new precursor bits of "stuff" and energy spewing out of the new mini-Bangs that will eventually form elemental hydrogen? We aren't. It appears that the stars and galaxies all go through a fairly predictable life cycle and that they were all formed billions of years ago. When astronomers observe “new star formation” what they’re really looking at is something that happened “long ago and far away”, not last week. 2) Your "what happened before the BB?" (#1) sounds a little bit like the "perturbation theory" in Quantum Mechanics". But the circumstances before TON have to be pure speculation and in the realm of the unknowable; "my untestable hypothesis better than your untestable hypothesis"; some of this is you and I asking improper questions: "Where does the world end?" was a question from Columbus' time, but it was an improper question because the world doesn't "end" -- it's a sphere. I suspect a lot of our questions now are in the same vein, such as "what happened before the BB? Or what happened before time began?? Where did the discontinuities come from and how do they form anything? Just reducing the scale down to 10 to the minus -43 NM doesn’t solve the dilemma…HOWEVER, 3) Time did not exist before Big Bang; neither did matter; at the point of Big Bang there was apparently just pure energy: some combination of energy and "dark energy" pouring out similar to matter and anti-matter. (Universe currently composed of 4% matter (stars, heavy elements, helium, and free hydrogen), 22% "dark matter", and 74% "dark energy" -- repulsive force driving the galaxies apart) I've always thought that the categorization of energy into 2 categories, kinetic and potential, along with the 4 "Fundamental Forces of Nature" (electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak forces) was somehow inadequate: there's a lot more there to be discovered. We need an "energy physics" as well as particle physics. 4) For that matter, I feel that our science of physics, far from being "nearly complete”, as some are claiming has in fact barely started. We have identified the 4 fundamental parameters of existence: matter, energy, space, and time. Each of these may also have analogs: anti-matter, anti-energy (dark energy?); and MAYBE anti-space and even anti-time. (The 8 properties?) So of the 8, we have a handle on 3 or 3 ½? And all these may be equivalent and convertible into each other. Run the clock backwards and each of these parameters cancels itself and each other out and so you get your zero, nothingness, oblivion at “The Beginning”...so to that extent I buy into your TON hypothesis as far as a plausible process (good as any) From Wikipedia: "It is generally believed that these are manifestations of the same underlying interaction, and appear very different at the kinds of temperatures common in the universe today. For example, it is believed that the electromagnetic and weak interactions are actually two facets of one interaction, known as the electroweak interaction, and above a temperature of about a million billion Kelvin they would merge into one force again. In the same way it is believed that the electroweak and strong interactions are also likely to be two facets of one interaction, and might be indistinguishable above a certain extreme temperature as well. This is sometimes called a Grand Unified Theory." 5) Gravity, on my view, is NOT one of the fundamental properties, but merely an interaction of matter with space; (mass warps space-time) there may indeed be "anti-gravity": an interaction between anti-matter and anti-space. Anti-space and anti-time may also have manifestations that occur between them. And by the way, I'm not saying any of these could be artificially manipulated by human technology, even in the remote future, indeed, not even by the Krel (Forbidden Planet)... 6) The galaxies furthest away from us are approaching the speed of light as seen from Earth but it isn't because they have velocity themselves; it's because space itself is expanding, like a balloon being blown up, except the "balloon" is Space Time, apparently driven by "dark energy"… 7) Your explanation on the BBT (Big Bang Theory) starts with matter coming from nothing; but the matter just didn't pop out of nothing. It was an energy-to-matter conversion process that took billions of years. Particle physicists keep getting smaller and smaller bits of atoms in their research but I believe that in the end all they will find is pure energy ("Let there be light?") Matter is "frozen energy"...right? 8) E = MC2: most of the first third or half of the 13.7 billion year history of the Universe seems to be turning that elemental energy into matter and transmuting the various elements first from pure energy into hydrogen and then into heavier elements-- helium, -- by stellar transmutation. There apparently was an entire earlier cosmos made up of ancient primitive "Generation 1" stars (precursors to the current stars) which processed their hydrogen into the elements we know, and which went through their entire life cycle then exploded in supernovae blowing the elements out into space to form 2nd generation stars like our Sun and their accompanying planetary systems around 5 -10 B years ago. Now the process has reversed and the Universe is experiencing entropy where matter is being converted back into energy as Stars burn through their hydrogen. Perhaps there is a cycle that when all the matter has been "used up" and converted to energy the process will repeat itself (??) Hence, I tend to believe in one creation (Occam’s razor) instead of many, as in TON. 9) I suspect a lot if what we "observe" about the Universe using astronomy might not even be there anymore -- half or more might be completely gone and all we're "seeing" is the light that was emitted and has taken billions of years to reach us. Space Time has the characteristics of a huge optical illusion except its not physical objects but the energy we see that's being distorted by phenomena such as "tired light". 10) Finally, I suspect existence may be far older than 13.7 billion years: how long did it take for the initial energy to coalesce into even the most basic building blocks (quanta) of bosons, leptons, quarks, charm, strings, etc. eventually resulting in atoms of hydrogen??? Also time might not have been “running” at the same rate at the beginning as it is now. Incidentally I do not put much credence into “multiple universes or multiple dimensions”.