I will also include all replies, and i'm going to do it in the most efficient way possible, so it may be a bit messy. Hey, this is my first blog! Bear with me......
Scratching my itch in the pursuit of knowledge
A higher state of consciousness or the ranting of a madman?
Foreword
This was originally intended to be a relatively short piece of literature, to voice some of my thoughts and opinions and to exercise my writing skills, but it seems it has over-stimulated me and so it is going to be longer than I originally planned. A friend of mine simply told me to split it up into parts, like a magazine column (Thanks Kian) and present different aspects with each part. So that is what I will do.
You may at first think this is a scientific piece of writing. Don’t be fooled and do try to read the beginning even if it isn’t really your cup of tea. It has enormous implications which will come to light as I progress. This first entry isn’t really that controversial and may not even be new to many of you. What it is though, is my personal perspective and for that reason I will freely accept any criticism (behave people) on my opinion just as I may contribute to yours. Please, if later parts do not agree with your beliefs then I humbly ask you to be tolerant and appreciate the fact that your beliefs may not exactly go down perfectly with everyone you would like them to. We are all here together in this life and there is enough space on this rock (At the moment anyway) for all of us. If you don’t agree, well there is always free speech so you are buggered anyway. With that said, I encourage debate and any comments will be gladly accepted, as well as contributions of your own. On the other hand, if I have mis-stated any facts, feel absolutely free to correct me, as there are many of you out there more versed in certain matters I touch upon.
Last thing, if you do enjoy what you read and want to read more, be patient. I will write whenever possible but time, as we will see, is limited. Your comments and contributions may also help shape what is to come.
Enjoy.
Introduction
Well it seems to me more and more lately that there are certain people I come across with whom I develop friendships, and after having spent some time around them they begin to realize that I may not quite be what they expected, at least on the surface. So what is this all about?
This is an opportunity I have found to scratch at an itch that has been itching away for many many years now inside my head and, you could say, in my heart (although taken literally if that were the case I would be dead, an itchy heart can’t be good). It involves you and me and all the in-betweens and all-arounds, and it involves knowing who and what you are. We have been born at a time which should in all honesty be called ‘The age of reason’ but somehow the events we come across on a day to day basis seem to be more akin to ‘An age of madness’ or to put it more eloquently ‘The age of bullshit’.
Do excuse my language if it offends from time to time, the use of it may be my undoing in what I am attempting to do, but I sincerely believe that anyone of their right mind will see profanities for what they really are; That is simply another word amongst millions, with a label attached to it that states ‘Vulgar’….right. They can be, when used sensibly (oh the irony), quite effective.
Back to the point. In order to understand the current age we live in it needs to be put into its proper context amongst all the other ages that have come to pass. So, a small journey is required to illuminate the backdrop. Who will be taking you on this journey? Me. And who might I be? Well on the large scale of things, no-one of any great significance, but on the smaller scale I am one of many significant things, namely you and me and everyone.
Since this is a journey from my perspective I guess it helps to know just a touch about me. I like to say that I study science and read life and that is all you need to know for now. Without further ado, let’s get on with it.
In the beginning…
…there was a big…….round……..dense………erm
You see, we don’t really know what there was right at the beginning, that is, before the event which we now call The Big Bang. Feverish research is always being done and more and more data comes to light as time passes. There is even some sketchy evidence that the big bang wasn’t the beginning, but for our purposes let’s assume for now, that it was.
So, what was this big bang? All matter (that is ‘stuff’) in the universe (that is a hell of a lot of ‘stuff’) was once upon a time tightly packed into a tiny indiscernible point. All atoms, all space and all time…all of it. You couldn’t even imagine how small this point was and, as if to make matters worse, the theory that predicts this point also states mathematically that it is an impossible point. Too small and too dense to be anything that we can describe, even with the gibberish of complicated mathematics. Got it? Ok.
This ‘singularity’ as it has been named, had been there for ever, or for an instant. That is irrelevant anyway because all of a sudden for reasons we can’t quite confidently say (you may say God did it, but don’t be too hasty, more on that later) it started to expand, and not just expansion of the kind that a balloon undergoes when inflated, but the mother of all expansions. This thing grew so quickly, that it invented its own scale; from the impossibly small to the impossibly big in the time it takes you and me to type a letter on a keyboard. Time and space stretched to infinite proportions and the heat released as energy was so great that our early universe was probably white hot, much unlike today’s dark and empty appearance. This immense heat was infinite in magnitude at first but as the universe expanded and energy could spread more freely the temperatures dropped to mere billions of degrees. Now, this was still too hot for anything to take shape. It might help to imagine a solid material of your choice, and heating it up so much that it eventually melts and as you continue to heat it turns into a gas and the solid isn’t really there anymore in any noticeable form. In all reality the small bits that make up the solid are there, you just can’t see them due to their size.
There are many bits in the recipe of the universe and they are all essentially different forms of energy. Some bits are called Quarks, others are called Leptons and others are called Gluons. I won’t bore you with the details now (It might bore me too) but what you need to know is that these bits were all whizzing around at unbelievably insane speeds because of their energy resulting from the heat, but as temperatures gradually dropped different forces ‘kicked in’ that acted upon the bits (enough with the bits, we are adults, we can now call them particles).
These forces aren’t magic, they are the result of the different flavor that all these particles came with. Some have electric charge, others have color charge, others no kind of charge at all but when they slowed down (ever so slightly) these forces could overcome the speeds of the particles and pull some of them together, while keeping others apart.
Just after the beginning…..
At a certain temperature, a certain force kicked in (yes, these forces all have names, this one is the ‘Strong Nuclear force’ and if you think gravity is strong, boy are you mistaken) and some quarks came together to form protons and neutrons which joined the crazy particle party. Other particles delivered the forces between particles and yet others just ignored the rest, ignorantly zooming around in the biggest playground ever. At another lower temperature, another force (electromagnetism) could be allowed to express itself and this one allowed for a type of lepton, known to us as electrons, to come close to the newly arrived protons. Close, but never close enough. If they get too close they speed up too much and would rather take it a bit easier. If they stray too far they slow down and the attractive force pulls them closer again. Being lonely types, they settle for a comfortable compromise around the proton. Another force also helps keep electrons in place and also has some other strange effects on them. This is the weak nuclear force and it can cause radioactive decay (radiation for you and me) in some heavier atoms, which incidentally haven’t appeared at the time I am describing.
These forces are immensely strong going from stronger to weaker in the order I presented them, but only have an effect over extremely small distances, none of these distances being larger than the diameter of an atom. So the first basic atoms were born with one proton and one electron. This is the first element or as it is more commonly known ‘Hydrogen’. There is a variation of Hydrogen which also has a neutron bound to the proton and due to the still very high speeds of particles in the universe some of these Hydrogen atoms could get close to others, smash into them with great force, and fuse into another element called helium with two protons and two neutrons at its center and two electrons happily zooming around nearby. Other slightly heavier elements supposedly formed during this process too, lithium (3 protons) and beryllium (4 protons) but they were in far smaller quantity than the two lighter ones. The strong nuclear force was responsible for keeping the protons (which have a like charge and naturally want to push each other away) and the neutrons together. Everything up to this point, from the moment that expansion occurred in the singularity, has taken place in approximately 3-5 minutes. Yes, you read that correctly…that is about 300 seconds. Coffee anyone?
And so this was much the state of things for hundreds of thousands of years while expansion continued and temperatures dropped. No politics, no democracy, no love, no emotion and certainly no purpose. Just particles, forces and a slowly dwindling party occupied by atoms with no dance partners. It seems hydrogen almost had the monopoly on the universe, with helium having a small share. But as particles had come together and formed larger particles so too did their masses increase. Infinitely small masses became slightly less infinitely small and things had also slowed down a lot compared to things at the beginning. Slow on the cosmic scale yes, still unimaginable for you and me.
A mysterious guest….
So, the universe is by now a huge seemingly empty space with only tiny hydrogen and helium atoms evenly spread out across it. But these atoms have mass and mass is the domain of the fourth force in existence. This is the one you are almost certainly familiar with, gravity. It helps to see gravity like an attractive force with only one direction. It always attracts and it acts on mass. The more massive an object the stronger the pull and the time was now ripe for this force to begin to act upon the newly found mass now relatively abundant in the universe.
Now if, and only if, the universe was not uniform all around would gravity ever have an effect and luckily for us this was the case. You see if the universe was uniform then all masses (in this case, all hydrogen and helium atoms, for that is more or less all there was) would act equally upon all other masses and there would be no net effect. But, it so happens that under the laws of probability a seemingly uniform area may , under closer scrutiny, not be so uniform and so a number of these atoms had strayed just a bit too close in certain regions of space and so gravity found its opportunity to take control. And control it took, luckily for every single creature that has ever lived and will live. As gravity pulled these odd patches of matter together the mass in these regions increased and in turn pulled even more matter to it. It isn’t difficult to see where this goes as more matter just pulls more matter towards it, and as the atoms get closer and closer, forced together by gravity, they strike each other with increasing frequency and become more energetic until the heat and energy becomes so much that two particular hydrogen atoms fuse together into helium causing a chain reaction which releases more energy and causes two other hydrogen atoms to fuse…………and so on until a giant ball of fire, blazing hot, is formed. Yes, just like that. Every time you are awoken in the morning by sun light creeping through your window, may you constantly be reminded that the light you see is the result of the Nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, and helium into heavier elements, a process going on in the heart of our beloved sun and the countless trillions of stars scattered across our universe.
Backtracking ever so slightly, the non-uniform areas of hydrogen in the very young universe, under the influence of gravitational forces which took hold because of the chance of the odd atom being slightly too close to another, eventually resulted in areas which we today call galaxies. In other words, vast accumulations of the fuel (Hydrogen) needed to form stars which set the scene for the next great development in our cosmos. From an immense expanse of gas, into nurseries which churned out (and are still doing so today) baby stars which would ultimately create all the heavier elements which we see around us everywhere -yes I mean it, everywhere- around us today.
Our teething universe….
So, gigantic areas of matter, called stars and galaxies have been formed from the tiniest of tiny building blocks (an important concept we shall use later to show that nothing complicated arises from scratch…it is a long, tedious, cumulative process) and have assembled into something much like the universe we see today anytime we gaze up at the night sky. Nebulae (collections of gases) are giving birth to the first stars which in turn are synthesizing via fusion, many of the heavier elements we now come across. From Carbon all the way to Calcium….many of the elements which make up anything, including you and me, are being formed from the simplest of beginnings in the bellies of giant, sizzling hot furnaces.
Take a breath for a moment and chew on this: The four fundamental forces described above all have a precise magnitude determined at the beginning of the big bang. If any of the four had a slightly different value, you probably wouldn’t be here reading my mumbo jumbo and I probably wouldn’t be here writing it. If the strong force were any weaker than it is, protons would fly apart just as quickly as they came together. If the electromagnetic force were any stronger, electrons would crash into the nuclei of an atom. If gravity were any stronger stars may have collapsed under their masses and never had time to create heavier elements….any weaker and matter would never had come together to begin fusion. This point alone should spark your mind into understanding what the odds against us being here are and how improbable (never take that to mean impossible) we really are. Yet…you are here reading and I am writing.
Am I done with the universe? Almost…hang in there just a little longer. Stars have a limited amount of Hydrogen to burn as fuel and as this runs out the star, depending on its mass, will be victim to one of a few ends. Some stars as they bid the universe farewell, will cool and phase out leaving a small solid core after throwing their outer layers away. Other, massive stars will collapse under gravity into black holes, areas where time and space come to an end. Some of these massive stars and some smaller ones may, during the process of their death, explode into a supernova. As the star collapses the release of gravitational potential energy throws away the outer layers with such tremendous force and such incomprehensible heat that the heavier elements, from Scandium upwards to the heavy radioactive ones are synthesized and flung out to the far reaches of space in the largest and most violent explosions the universe will ever conceive.
These Supernovae are in fact the most immense release of energy, second only to the big bang itself (which, if you want to nit-pick, doesn’t even qualify as an explosion but rather an expansion). Imagine if you will, being seated in a comfortable sofa, situated some two to three million light years away (for safety of course!) from an occurring supernova, with a remote in your hand. Now, the moment the explosion begins you speed up the rate by a small amount so as to be able to appreciate things the way our human minds have developed to. What you see is, in all likelihood, the most beautiful and grandiose event your eyes will ever have seen. An outrush of light, engulfing everything in its path, in full vivid color displaying all the colors of the spectrum, eventually outshining its parent galaxy for weeks at a time. Supernovas from galaxies millions of light years away from us have frequently been seen with the naked eye. They occur in our own galaxy approximately every 50 years. They also trigger new nebulae to form and thus new stars to be born. Relax, our sun is still quite young and not in danger of going psycho quite yet.
The only thing remaining in this recipe for the universe is for the heavier elements to coalesce under gravity to form solid objects, some almost spherical, some more ellipsoid in shape, just like the one we live on. Voilla! You have your universe.
Well, that should be some food for your brain to ponder for a while. You may wonder what the hell I am on about, and why I am writing all this. It will become clear as I reveal more and the subject is very relevant to all of us. Remember, this is the backdrop, the canvas if you like, for the material that is to follow. Life needs to fit in here somewhere, as well as evolution and that is where you and me come into the picture. If anything at all, I would like to convey to you the insignificance of our existence in this great span of emptiness. For the universe is predominantly empty with matter congregating in fixed regions surrounded by space and then more space. The processes described so far have all been totally void of all consciousness and the players, ranging from the quarks all the way up to stars and planets did not ‘arrange’ themselves to come together in this fashion. They did so under the governance of forces, innate to the universe itself. In other words, the universe has a neutral attitude towards our existence, it neither encourages it or tries to hinder it and doesn’t have a hand to play in its direction.
But life hasn’t appeared yet and our planet has only just cooled down after being peppered by collisions from rogue chunks of rock being pulled towards stars by their gravity. The earth has only just begun to settle into a comfortable state, pulling gases toward it to form an atmosphere. Another stage, a smaller but more personal one, is forming. Cold, emotionless, thoughtless, inanimate matter, created in the hearts of stars is about to be imbued with something very rare and something oh so precious. Thanks for reading so far.
The replies so far:
Kian Sharifi wrote
at 7:13pm on November 24th, 2008
at 7:13pm on November 24th, 2008
Very well written, great literature, enlightening. Really like how u started the beginning of this article with the beginning of us. Keep it up, looking forward to the second part.
Well done!
Well done!
Photos Hajigeorgiou wrote
at 1:22pm on November 27th, 2008
at 1:22pm on November 27th, 2008
It made for interesting lunch-time reading. In your future outings, you may wish to consider the following:
(1) The possibility that the Universe was created ex nihilo (out of nothing).
(2) At the time of the Big Bang and later, both matter and antimatter formed. You did not talk about the latter. And if matter and antimatter formed in equal amounts (but were distributed in different areas) then this leads to the possibility of (1) above.
(3) What set the (crucial) magnitudes of the various forces? Chance or design?
(4) Why did this happen? Or is our pre-occupation with the "why" just a psychological trap?
(5) Currently the universe is still expanding. It is expected that gravity will make this stop and reverse, leading to the Big Crunch. When all matter and antimatter coalesce together what will be the result? (Nothing, possibly?)
That's all for now, I will continue to read and comment...
Dr. P.
(1) The possibility that the Universe was created ex nihilo (out of nothing).
(2) At the time of the Big Bang and later, both matter and antimatter formed. You did not talk about the latter. And if matter and antimatter formed in equal amounts (but were distributed in different areas) then this leads to the possibility of (1) above.
(3) What set the (crucial) magnitudes of the various forces? Chance or design?
(4) Why did this happen? Or is our pre-occupation with the "why" just a psychological trap?
(5) Currently the universe is still expanding. It is expected that gravity will make this stop and reverse, leading to the Big Crunch. When all matter and antimatter coalesce together what will be the result? (Nothing, possibly?)
That's all for now, I will continue to read and comment...
Dr. P.
George D Georgiou wrote
at 5:52pm on November 28th, 2008
at 5:52pm on November 28th, 2008
Thanks for the most excellent questions Dr.P!
I have already thought of a way to incorporate them into future entries.
I didn't want to make this too complicated and deep as then it may have been way over some people's heads (I have already had some feedback and apparently it was a bit complicated:P)....
SO...i will tackle the questions in due course because they are fundamentally important to understanding our origins and our place in this Cosmos. And if i can't find a place in my writing to tackle them all, i will make a list and make a special article addressing the unanswered questions.
Good stuff:)
I have already thought of a way to incorporate them into future entries.
I didn't want to make this too complicated and deep as then it may have been way over some people's heads (I have already had some feedback and apparently it was a bit complicated:P)....
SO...i will tackle the questions in due course because they are fundamentally important to understanding our origins and our place in this Cosmos. And if i can't find a place in my writing to tackle them all, i will make a list and make a special article addressing the unanswered questions.
Good stuff:)
Anastis Anastasiou wrote
at 7:07am on December 1st, 2008
at 7:07am on December 1st, 2008
Re George, you know the story about the atheist and the bear enne? ;-P
Kian Sharifi wrote
at 8:16am on December 1st, 2008
at 8:16am on December 1st, 2008
hehe I must admit that is a funny joke :p
George D Georgiou wrote
at 6:06pm on December 1st, 2008
Ok here's a quick response for Dr.Photos comments, and like i said previously i will try to address them more fully in a later outing. But for now:at 6:06pm on December 1st, 2008
1) You must define nothing. What it is (or isn't). Now if we take nothing to mean the abscence of absolutely everything, including any form of energy, then in order to even be able to say that the universe was created from nothing requires a complete redefining of what we take nothing to mean. In our traditional meaning it is impossible. But for practical purposes even if the universe was created ex nihilo it doesn't bear any impact on the fact that we are here....are we?:P
2) See 1) above. Also, it seems to be that you mean nothing to mean the lack of matter. Energy doesn't qualify as something in this usage so again, if everything formed from energy...it wasn't 'nothing', it was something and we are back to square 1. Where did the energy come from? anyway, more on that later.
3)The crucial magnitudes..are they innate to the universe or defined?
Tough one, but if string theorists are correct then the crucial magnitudes we observe belong to this particular universe. Other universes (a disgustingly large number as predicted by string theory) could have different magnitudes, differing for each universe. And from what i recall (might be a bit off) there are in the order of 10^500 possible solutions to string theory, and thus that many different possibilities for the magnitudes of the forces.
4) Why..i don't think it is a psychological trap, it is a driving force in our maturing as a species. But obsession can be a dangerous trap. My answer to why? Don't have the foggiest:)
5) I don't know how sure we are that the universe is expected to reverse its expansion and lead to a crunch. I think we lack observable evidence of there being enough matter for gravity to be able to take a hold. On the contrary, there seems to be a large amount of dark energy in the universe that is accelarating the expansion. Entropy death anyone?
M.wael Alkel wrote
at 10:35pm on December 8th, 2008
Great work except for not giving a brief explanation for the available theories that explains the origins of the big bang and why it happened there are many great theories such asat 10:35pm on December 8th, 2008
-the cosmic inflation theory
-the new ekpyrotic theory
But that’s not all Roger Penrose and Stephen hawking have some very daring theories that solves most of the cosmic problems but These 2 examples with a certain understanding of the string theory are some of the hottest theories in the scientific market these days (just for the love of debate lol).
The first is very common and you could find a lot of resources about it on the web while the second one is based on the idea of a collision of 2 branes, you can find info about it at http://www.physics.princet
George D Georgiou wrote
at 10:45pm on December 8th, 2008
at 10:45pm on December 8th, 2008
Thanks for showign interest and reading Wael:)
I am fully aware of the multitude of theories proposed for the universe, but for the same reasons i gave Dr.P above, i didn't want to weigh the text down with too many technical explanations, It is supposed to be accessible to people who 'Aren't' very familiar with these concepts:P
You will see why as it leads to its goal.
I am fully aware of the multitude of theories proposed for the universe, but for the same reasons i gave Dr.P above, i didn't want to weigh the text down with too many technical explanations, It is supposed to be accessible to people who 'Aren't' very familiar with these concepts:P
You will see why as it leads to its goal.
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