February 22, 2018
Before The Big Bang by Ernest J. Sternglass1
“Continuous creation…can be represented by precise mathematical equations whose consequences can be worked out and compared with observation. On philosophical grounds I cannot see any good reason for preferring the big bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation.”2 – Fred Hoyle.
While meeting up with my daughter in Fairfield, IL (population 5029), I went to the local library and purchased this book almost in passing. I had not opened it until I noticed the February 2019 issue of Sky and Telescope with the cover line, “What came before the Big Bang?” I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to think through scientific thoughts on the origin of the universe.
In the Sky and Telescope article by Faye Flam, she notes that traditionally it was thought impossible to determine the origin of the Big Bang. But now cosmologists posit that it occurred in existing space, another universe, or a multiverse. Specific proposals on the setting of the Big Bang include:
1) a sea of rapidly expanding space,
2) a bland expanse of empty space,
3) a comeback of a contracting universe (Big Bounce), or
4) a collision of two existing universes in a higher-dimensional space.
Many cosmologists accept Alan Guth’s theory of inflation whereby shortly after the Big Bang, the universe expanded extremely fast and extremely briefly due to a peculiar and perhaps inexplicable repulsive force. But increasingly cosmologists consider the possibility that inflation preceded the Big Bang. Some cosmologists, for example Andrei Linde, see patches of inflating space emerging from an existing chaotic universe creating a ‘pocket universe.’
Meanwhile two other theories are developing. First the bouncing universe of Paul Steinhardt offers a solution without the inexplicable inflation or need for a multiverse. Another is Sean Carroll’s theory that empty space at the highest level of entropy (disorder) contains formless ‘vacuum energy’ which can generate an occasional baby universe based on the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.
Of course untestable speculations of this type border on metaphysics rather than science though Flam concludes by discussing some recent attempts to sort through these possibilities using observable data.
(continued next post)
