A Big Bang, Our Big Bang

(- Copyright ? 2016 by Mike Stewart -)

Planck's Length is the shortest distance that has any meaning in our physics. The quantum effects of uncertainty wipe out any meaning to distances less than one Planck's Length.

Planck's Time is the interval of time needed for light to travel a Planck's Length. Since no length can be shorter than a Planck's Length, no interval of time can be less than a Planck's Time.

The above is Gospel to Quantum Physicists. If this view is wrong, the foundations of science will quiver.

According to Gospel, Time sprang into existence, along with our universe, in what is called the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.

According to Gospel, Time can only advance by quantum leaping forward by units of Planck's Time - there is no interval of time less than a unit. In the first second of our universe's existence, Time had to quantum leap more than a quintillion quintillion times.

After a gazillion quantum leaps, Time has reached Now. Main Stream Science expects Time and our Universe to continue for quite awhile.

If Time started when our universe was born, it may be reasonable to conclude that Time will stop when our Universe dies.

Our universe will continue to expand and cool. Someday, it is theorized, all matter, even protons, will decay into simpler elementary particles (experiments have not found any proton decay - if protons do decay, it is going to take a very long time for all protons to vanish). Once all protons have decayed, quantum effects will dominate and we will no longer know the exact location of any sub-atomic particle. We will no longer be able to find a particular point, a Point A or a Point B. Our definition of Time as a duration, that is, how long it takes for something, like light, to travel from Point A to Point B, will become meaningless. Time will have died. We will be left with a timeless something that sound like what I have been calling Never Never Land.

Not to worry: For all practical purposes, we can view Time as lasting forever.

Until now, when we have been exploring Strings as things in Never Never Land. We have recognized that, without Time, there could be no size. Nevertheless, we viewed Reality as possibly many super-microscopic dimensions entangled together. We got there by going from the microscopic level, to the quantum level, and then on down to the string level.

It is interesting, at least to me, that we may have arrived at the same place by viewing the giant expanding cosmos around us and imagining what it might be like at the end of Time.

Has main stream science made any discoveries that might support our view of reality, that might support a Large/Small Never Never Land?

As background to answering this question, let me note that Einstein once said that Time is relative. By this he meant we would think that Time was passing more slowly for someone we observed traveling at a high rate of speed. What if we imagined that Time was really like Einstein's time on super-steroids - that to one observer a universe could last forever, for another, it could last for less than Planck's Time.

Suppose we define a graviton as the smallest unit of mass possible and as a creature existing on the scale of strings - different than the quantum particle of main stream science which is massless and mediates gravity. Our graviton is not that different, just smaller with very little mass, not none at all.

In our universe, when two black holes collide, a gazillion gravitons are produced and fly through space. Together they form a giant gravity wave that can and has been detected. What this means is that out of a gazillion (quantum level, massless) gravitons, one has been noticed by our detectors. Yet, if this quantum level graviton is truly massless, it could travel forever and never affect anything, never be detected.

How does a string level graviton better describe what we observe? Again, when two black holes collide, a gravity wave is formed made up of many gazillions of our string level gravitons. We could imagine a gazillion of these passing through our detectors. Each graviton has almost no mass - the key word being "almost". The mass of the graviton is so small that out of a gazillion passing through the detectors, only one does something that we can notice (detect). Let's look more closely at this graviton.

This graviton is a string level creature. To deal with it, as I have said before, our scientists need a drastically new math, a "new" calculus. By analogy, we could think of this graviton being subject to probability. We don't know exactly where the small quantum of mass is - this mass being either what makes up the graviton or is contained in the graviton. We only know that there is a possibility we will find the graviton at a particular place. If the probability is 50 - 50, it would be like we flipped a coin many times - we would not know the results of any one flip, but we would expect about half the time we would get heads, half the time we would get tails - half the time we would find the graviton, half the time we would not.

To work with our graviton, we may need a timeless probability. Our graviton cannot have a 50% chance of being Here and a 50% chance of being Somewhere Else, if there is no Here and no Somewhere Else.

I visualize our graviton as being one of a gazillion mass particles in Never Never Land. Each has a number of properties. One of these properties is, that under the right circumstances, the particle becomes, what we call, real. At that point, it is affected by a quintillion forces and we can make statistical based assertions.

Being small and having only a potential to exist, our graviton can "travel" a long way without affecting anything or being affected by anything. To see why small is important, consider this: To pass through the earth, our graviton would have to, in a very graviton-like way, pass through many atoms. Atoms, however, are mainly empty space. I read somewhere that if an atom was the size of the earth, the center of the atom, the proton, would be about the size of a football stadium. Our graviton would transverse many atoms before encountering a proton. Even then, it would pass through, drifting between the quarks that make up the proton. Only one of a gazillion gravitons, our graviton, would hit "something".

What if this "something" is a string level time particle. Like gravitons, there are a gazillion, gazillion time particles in Never Never Land. We could think of these time particles as small, but in the large Never Never Land we see in the cold, dark, barren universe at the end of our Time, each time particle could be the size of the earth. Each particle contains the essence of time, the potential to replace the Time that has died. All it needs is a graviton.

If a time particle could be the size of the earth, so could a graviton. Each could have a complex structure. Just as a sperm and egg cell are necessary for an eventual baby, a time particle and a graviton could have to combine before a new universe could be born.

We can imagine Never Never Land as being swarms of gravitons and time particles intermingled and rotating forever. We can envision gravitons and time particles colliding. We do not, however, understand probability at the string level, so we can not say when, where, and how often this happens.

Maybe collisions happen a lot. Quantum Physicists recognize, at the quantum level, concepts like virtual particles, quantum foam, and quantum bubbles. These bubbles are small and a bunch of them make up quantum foam. By small, I mean each bubble may be a Planck's Length in diameter. Yet our entire universe is made up of this foam. Lots of bubbles.

Has main stream science made any discoveries that might support our view of reality, that might support a Large/Small Never Never Land? Virtual Particles may be one example.

Each bubble is, according to Quantum Physicists, a virtual particle that springs into existence because of a temporary change in the amount of energy at a point in space. The bubble forms, expands, and pops. The virtual particle comes and goes in Planck's Time (very quickly). In our universe, gazillions of bubbles form and pop every second.

What if, fifteen billion years ago (as we measure time), a graviton and a time particle, subject to string level probability, found themselves together. Suddenly, mass existed, energy which is the same as mass existed, everything we know existed, and our Time started. It would last forever. A Planck's time later, our Big Bang Started.

What if, NOW (as we measure time), another graviton and another time particle, find themselves together. Suddenly, mass and energy exist. A Big Bang starts. A new universe starts and everything that the citizens of this universe knows about is created at this moment. A Time starts and to the citizens of this universe, it will last forever. To us, this Time may last long enough for one of our detectors to catch an energy fluctuation - then the bubble burst.

Maybe someone should THINK LONGER AND HARDER about this.

Note to Science Fiction Writers: The first step to successfully hopping to another universe and visiting the citizens there may be to change the speed of our time and synchronize it with their time.