In part 1 of the journey, we saw the leading observations that needed explanation. Explanations that we want to do through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. No technical and expert knowledge in these theories yet, only scratches of its implications. So let us continue.
THE RELATIVITY THEORY
Deducing from the Hubble expansion, the galaxies were close in the distant past but certainly not in this current form as the telescopes now see them receding. In fact, if they were receding it also means they were expanding.
Therefore, when we reverse the receding galaxies into the far distant past they should end up at a point somewhere sometime with the smallest imaginable extension, if that extension is conceivable at all. Scientists call it the singularity, a mathematical deduction from the relativity theory. How did this immeasurable Universe made of clusters of galaxies we now see ever existed in that point called singularity?
Let us illustrate the likely form in which the immeasurable Universe could fit into that point with analogy. Analogies are always helpful in bringing out the picture of what is likely going on in there. Just that they do not necessarily explain anything. Starting with ice water as a solid substance, you got to a liquid state via increment in temperature. Similarly, from the liquid state we got to the gaseous state via temperature increment. In all these three states, water still existed as water though in different forms at different temperatures.
Now imagine increasing the temperature further. The gaseous water will be broken into its constituent elements. Similarly, when the temperatures increases, the constituent elements will also break into their subatomic particles, starting with the orbiting electrons knocked off for formation of ions. Plasma state is the name given to these collections of ions and photons. As the temperature increases finitely long enough, all the sub-atomic particles will equally be broken down into their further and finer sub-sub-particle particles. Here is the solid ice existing as the smallest imaginable constituent that has no resemblance to it at all.
A rough check in descending order of size of Matter is as follows; galaxy, solar system, star, planet, baobab tree, blue whale, elephant, human being, amoeba, bacterium, virus, compound, molecule, atom, and subatomic particles. The subatomic particles equally have further and finer sub-sub-sub-particles. So clearly, the immeasurable Universe could exist as the unimaginably smallest elementary particle in this mathematically deducible point with the smallest imaginable extension. It exists simply as not any form of Matter that you and I know of today.
What is also clear from the analogy is that the ultimate state of the smallest imaginable constituent of the ice as solid water has an unimaginably ultrahigh temperature. This analogously means that the point singularity is even of an extremely ultra-ultrahigh temperature. Therefore, it was an extremely hot mathematically deducible point as a site of energy, pure energy and not Matter. If it was all energy, where cometh Matter? Again, the relativity theory provides the answer via that beautiful equation, E = mc2. Are you there as a poet or logician? As a logician, has your head split yet?
E = MC2; THE EQUATION OF CREATION
After reading them in books years back, I had the chance to watch the documentary of the devastations of the dropped bombs just this year. Men were literally melting to death. The effects are still been felt psychologically and biologically in those cities. This is the equation of explosion, destruction and death. So what does the equation of destruction has to do with creation? Well, it turns out that it is also the equation of creation. How, you may ask? We will soon reach the site. Just do not forget the background question, is the Big Bang the familiar explosion we all know.
For simplicity sake, let us say mass is Matter. The equation says energy and matter are inter-convertible. It actually says Matter is a compressed energy. No wonder a small amount of uranium or plutonium could release enough energy to obliterate those two cities and literally melt the inhabitants to death. Nuclear bombs and nuclear energy as well as the shinning of the stars are manifestations of matter (mass) been converted into energy. So what of the other side of the equation converting energy into matter? Has that, ever been done and observed?
Yes. All over the world, there are specifically designed mega laboratories converting energy into matter at the smallest particle level yet. These mega laboratories are been called Particle Accelerators, occupying vast stretches of hundreds of miles of landmass underground in mostly a ring pattern. Some of them are European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland and France border, DESY Laboratory in Germany, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan, Large Hadrons Collider (LHC) in Geneva, FermiLab in USA, Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Russia and many others.
They operate at extremely ultra-high energy ranging from at least 10GeV to 14000GeV. (GeV is a unit of energy that is 1000,000, 000eV). As unfamiliar as they are, the smallest particle accelerators in the world are the TVs and computer monitors in our homes. They use roughly 35000eV energy from the created electric field to accelerate electrons to hit the coated screen that eventually glow before the channels take over.
Particle accelerators are been used to study the behaviour of Matter at highest energy and highest speed attainable yet in each device. They use powerful electromagnets that create electric fields to accelerate the vanishingly smallest particles to collide to produce energy. The same ultra ultra-high energy is also been used to produce further finer elementary particles in agreement with the matter-energy equation. This is what particles physicists do.
To enter the particle accelerator is essentially like arriving at the site of creation or watching from a safe distance. This is where the mimicking of what went on in the extremely ultrahigh temperature condition of the actual Universe in the form of the singularity takes place. In fact, particle physicists are essentially recreating or simulating the earliest conditions of the Universe as Cosmologists understood it in the light of the Big Bang theory. So what went on?
THE SINGULARITY ITSELF
Misleadingly, you will not be far from the truth to label the singularity as nothingness. Yet, this seemingly nothingness is not emptiness. It merges space and time with no distinction whatsoever between them. Hey, this seemingly nothingness was full of collection of photons constituting pure energy at an extremely highest unimaginable temperature. In short, the energy content of this seemingly nothingness expanded, transforming some into Matter during its expansion.
That is the Big Bang theory, the creation story of our generation. Nothing ever existed. Something always exists in an unimaginable infinitesimal point accessible via only mathematics. I told you earlier on that in the journey and especially nearing the site of creation, intelligence takes on the gamut of stupidity, pure stupidity. Nevertheless, it is not stupidity. David Brooke once said that, to explain the unknown with the known is a logical procedure; but to explain the known with the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.
And to add, it is a form of religious lunacy to use the unknown to explain the unknown. In that regard, what is sounding like stupidity at the site of creation as men arrived via the theories and models of science is not really that at all. It just follows from the fact that here is a mystery. Yet, our refined logic born of the very theories and models that got us there in the first is overwhelmingly inadequate. Science does not deny mystery. There is that recognition. Just that it simply adds nothing to knowledge to explain mystery with mystery as the others do.
So, clearly, this is not the "explosion" we are familiar with at all. This is energy coalescing into the vanishingly small elementary particles in an outward expansion as demonstrated in the particle accelerators in accordance with energy-matter equation. Later, the dissipated energy of this outward expansion appears as relics of "explosion", constituting the cosmic microwave background radiations observed by Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson.
And the continuing expansion observed by Edwin Hubble as the red-shift phenomenon. However, into what is the outward expansion? After all, we are familiar with things expanding into something or empty space. So are these galaxies, receding or expanding to fill an empty space? No, says the relativity theory. Space (spacetime) itself is what is outwardly expanding. It is carrying within it everything no matter the distances separating them as observed in Hubble expansion. We have arrived at the site and moment of creation. The singularity is the mystery, not the subsequent evolution to the present outcome.
One more road to cross, stay tuned. It is a long journey.............
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