From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch and Everything In Between

PA. Vlad Van Rosenthal MD.

• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781647532390
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

In our passionate curiosity to unravel the mysteries of the world, life, and the universe, humans have contrived numerous theories, both scientific and religious, with each claiming more relevance than the last. Despite all of these influential postulates, however, the real truth remains obscured to us, as it likely will until the moment of our eventual extinction. In From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch and Everything in Between: A Simplified Look at a Not-So-Simple Universe, Dr. Vlad Van Rosenthal explores the subjects made complex by science and religion-those concerning our planet, our solar system, and our civilization.Van Rosenthal's compelling and accessible style introduces us to the fundamental explanations of the origin and future of our universe and of human life. From the cataclysmic explosion at the beginning to the one at the end-either from asteroids colliding with the earth, the nuclear explosion of nearby stars, or the fatal swelling of our own sun-we are a unique species on an unique planet that has most likely seen numerous civilizations and will hopefully see many more. We are all invited to form and debate our own perspectives on the earth, time, and space, for we are truly beholden to no one's mind but our own.

Part I

THE PAST

What’s past is prologue.

William Shakespeare

Chapter 1

The Big Bang

God, before creating the world, took off all the directions and started the all world from the tiny dot by spreading light all over.

The Kabbalah

We do not know who created the world, but according to the presently dominant idea, it indeed started from the “tiny dot.” A cataclysmic explosion, called the Big Bang, is presently accepted as the single scientific explanation for the creation of our universe.

The question about a scientific origin of everything became a subject for widespread discussion and interpretation less than a century ago. Prior to that, there was no such question. If someone did ask about origins, the answer was simple: the world was created in six days; the Earth was the center of the universe, and so on. Even with the invention of telescopes, when we realized that the universe is much larger than we thought, its origin still was not questioned, and millennia-long ideas were not challenged.

Everything we see and know as existing in our universe was a product of a single event about 14.5 billion years ago called the Big Bang. At the present time, the Big Bang is the best and perhaps the only explanation for the origin of our universe.

The Big Bang occurred at the moment of zero time, when the universe was at zero sizes and when laws of physics did not exist.

To understand how small space was at zero sizes, let’s imagine the tip of a needle and then decrease this size a billion times. Even if we can call this size infinitely small, it is still many billions times larger than a zero size.

To describe time, which did not exist before the Big Bang, the term absolute minimum time was invented.

Since time did not exist before the Big Bang, that means nothing happened before it. This was a time before the beginning of time, as we know it, and it is called a singularity. Singularity is a state of infinite density, gravity, and curvature surrounded by empty space. There are no laws of physics, as we presently know that can explain exactly what it was because singularity represents an unphysical state when gravity becomes infinitely strong and all matter and energy were concentrated at one point, at which all laws of physics would break down. Time and space were created at the singularity. Actually, according to quantum physics, the density of the singularity has a limit: its size would be 10(-33), which is smaller than an atomic nucleus. At the singularity, all laws of physics were invalid, because all quantities become infinite values.

Singularity really is a mathematical term representing a region of space. The characteristics of singularity are the curvature, which is infinite, and the radius, which is zero. As an example, let’s try to squeeze a football into a tennis ball, then into the size of a Ping-Pong ball, then into the size of an atom, then into the nucleus of an atom, and finally into the size of a subatomic particle or even smaller. Each time we decrease the size of the object, its radius decreases, but its curvature increases. Eventually, it reaches the stage of singularity.

At the stage of singularity, everything is broken into the smallest denominators or ingredients, meaning there is no more division that can take place. In this state, the mass has no volume; space is so small that it can be considered as nonexistent. Singularity is what was before the beginning of everything, and it is the ultimate end of everything.

If we were able to go back to the beginning of everything, we could only go back as far as a singularity, since there was nothing before the singularity. Usually, the singularity is located in the center of a black hole; but in the case of the beginning of everything. It started from a so-called naked singularity, which is a space-time singularity that is not surrounded by a black hole.

This singularity would be visible to an outside observer if there were one to observe it.

Regular singularity differs from the naked singularity by being always surrounded by a horizon that hides the singularity from view. In regular singularity, space bends around the object so much that it prevents anything, including light and information about the singularity, from leaving it. The famous physicist Penrose called this phenomenon the “conjecture of cosmic censorship,” but the no-less-famous physicist Stephen Hawking defines this generally accepted opinion and suggests that it is not entirely correct. According to him, information other than about the singularity itself may “leak” from the singularity.

Our existence started with a singularity and will end with a singularity. What happens to matter at the point of singularity is still unknown. It is also unknown what set the Big Bang in motion, so the question of “creation” is still in the air.

The first person who came up with an idea that the universe had a beginning was a Belgian astronomer, Monsignor Georges Le Maitre, in 1927. Le Maitre, using Einstein’s conclusion that the universe is expanding, logically assumed that in this case, the universe must start from some point, meaning it had to have a beginning.

In 1929, using his studies of the shift of color in distant galaxies toward the red end of the spectrum, which is called the “redshift,” Edwin Hubble confirmed that the universe indeed is expanding and all galaxies are flying apart from each other in all directions and at great speed. The farther away a galaxy is, the greater would be its redshift.

The term the Big Bang was first used by English astronomer Fred Hoyle in 1948. He meant it as a negative term because he was a major opponent of this theory.

However, it is now generally accepted that all energy and matter currently in our universe were created at the time of the Big Bang and the total amount of all energy and matter created hasn’t changed since that moment.

The Big Bang idea rests on two main theoretical giants: Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and Isaac Newton’s Theory of Gravity.

Technically, the Big Bang was a manifestation of an eruption of matter and radiation, which created everything from nothing, but what is more difficult to comprehend is that it happened everywhere and happened instantly. Matter, energy, space, and time were created in an instant from a volume smaller than an atomic nucleus. The products of this explosion began to fly away in all directions 14.5 billion years ago, and they will continue to fly until the end of the universe.

At the time of the Big Bang, time and the entire universe began from the point of infinite density and infinitely hot matter.

The smallest amount of time scientists have ever measured was termed attosecond, which is a billionth of a second. But when we are talking about the time of the Big Bang, even this extremely small amount of time is too large.

Time, as we know it, began with the first calculable time, which is called the first chronon. This is an extremely small amount of time. The chronon is the billionth part of one second. It is hard to imagine that the entire Big Bang was over during the first chronon.

Fred Hoyle introduced a “steady state” theory. According to his theory, the universe is not only much older than astronomers indicate, but it has always existed that way and always will. Einstein, initially, also supported the idea that the universe is static; and in order to preserve his concept of a static universe, he even added an equation, called the cosmological constant. He introduced a repulsive force, which is supposed to balance gravitational force, which is trying to collapse the universe back to a singularity. This cosmological constant theoretically is supposed to keep the universe in a state of equilibrium. When Edwin Hubble discovered that our universe was constantly expanding, Einstein’s cosmological constant was no longer useful, and at that time Einstein considered this constant as the biggest blunder of his life and the worst mistake he had ever made. Apparently, Einstein did not make a mistake: this cosmological constant was a real thing, but...

Table of contents

• From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch and Everything in Between
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Part I: The Past
• Part II: The Present
• Part III: The Beyond
• Part IV: The Future
• Epilogue
• Bibliography