Singularity

From ancient days the stars of the heavens were thought to be fixed and unchanging, except for wanderers called planets. Year in and year out the same stars were in the same place, like a giant clock-works. Isaac Newton invented the branch of mathematics called calculus and with his discovery of gravity and the calculus he invented celestial mechanics. Even in the times of antiquity the movement of the heavens was considered to be so precise that it could be used to predict the future. One only had to accept a Celestial Mechanic who knew the why and the wherefore of all things to invent astrology, the science of predicting human behavior from the movements of the stars.

The Expanding Universe

The American astronomer Edwin Hubble, through some clever observations in the 1930s, discovered that the universe is expanding. All the stars and galaxies of the universe are rushing away from each other at great speed. The further away the stars, the faster they seem to be moving.

Think of a child's rubber balloon. On the surface of the uninflated balloon some dots are made with ink. As the balloon is blown up the dots move away from each other. The more the balloon is inflated the further apart are the dots are moving away from each other. The surface of the balloon expands at an increasing rate the bigger it gets because the surface expands as the square of the radius. The stars of the universe are like the dots on that balloon.

If all the stars are moving away from each other now, were they once closer together? Can one think of the process in reverse and imagine that, by going back in time, instead of them moving apart the stars are moving back toward each other? Will they all converge in a point? The conventional wisdom says, yes. As we go back in time, the stars must have been closer and closer to each other and at some time way back at the beginning of time they must have all been together. All the matter of the universe clumped in one spot is called a singularity.

A Thing of the Mind

A singularity, the point of origin of our universe, is an imaginary thing. Nobody ever saw a singularity and nobody ever will, but it seems likely that a singularity was the beginning of our universe and the beginning, consequently, of us since we are fruits of this universe. As you can see, the singularity that was the origin of our universe is a logical conclusion from Hubble's observations of the expanding universe.

When the background of the universe was discovered to have an afterglow of microwave radiation, it was considered evidence that the reason the stars are moving away from each other is that a gigantic explosion caused them to fly apart. What exploded in the big bang was the singularity. The matter of the universe clumped together would be different—different from the ordinary matter we know, either here on earth or in the stars. When all the matter of the universe was dumped together, gravity was the dominant force.

Apples

Gravity on Earth is so weak that it can easily be overcome. A child riding a bicycle has difficulty in the early stages of learning because of the desire to play it safe and ride the bike at slow speed. At slow speed, gravity very much plays a part in the dynamic and the danger of bike and child falling to the ground is good. At higher speeds, the force of gravity is overcome and the forward momentum of the bike (and child) produces a stable ride. Motorcyclists take advantage of this condition and ride their motorcycles on circular, vertical walls.

Gravity holds the Earth together and it holds the Earth in orbit around the Sun. Gravity keeps our two feet on the ground. When It works alone and at very short distances, it crushes molecules and atoms and reduces matter to black holes. Objects the size of our Sun could be crushed, under the force of gravity, to the size of a grapefruit, with attractive forces so great that not even light could escape from its surface—hence a black hole. Gravity is the ultimate force governing the size and shape of our universe. The other forces modify its effect but do not nullify it.

How could this happen to an object like the Sun? Only the Sun's hydrogen furnace has to go out. Once the Sun's hydrogen fuel is expended the Sun will cool. The temperature needed to keep it at its expanded state will decrease and, as it does, the Sun will collapse on itself. The collapse will cause the pressure and consequently the temperature to increase and the sun may explode in a supernova, or the sun may expand to the size of a red giant only to collapse again. The collapse will end when the particles of matter are packed as closely together as they can be packed. Electrons will have been stripped away and the distances between atoms will be shortened thousands of times. Some collapsed stars are made only of neutrons—even the atoms have collapsed.

The Shrinking Universe

If one can imagine the universe shrinking instead of expanding, the smaller it got the greater would be the force of gravity and the smaller it would get. The exact size of the unexpanded universe is unimportant. It would be small. Contained in the singularity would be all the matter and antimatter of the universe. The only space there would be is the space inside the singularity—the volume of a grapefruit or a pinhead, take your pick. All of space, measured in light years of distance, would be condensed to that small size. The energy of the universe would be also be condensed into the matter of the singularity. The matter of the singularity would be unlike anything we know because it would exist in a condition where all matter and energy would be condensed into one substance and since there would be only one thing there would be no time. Without time nothing can be known.

Urstoff

As the density of the matter of the shrinking universe increased, the various particles of matter would melt into each other. Electrons and protons would congeal into neutrons and, together with the other neutrons, would form very dense matter. As the gravity activated collapse continued, all the subatomic particles, the quarks, muons, and gluons would also melt into each other. Finally there would be an ultimate substance—the primal urstoff. As the condensing universe got smaller and smaller, its temperature and pressure would increase greatly. Temperature and pressures unheard of would build up. Then the density would be so great that all activity would cease and temperature and pressure would disappear. There would be no subatomic motion since there would be no particles. There would be no light or other radiation, since light and radiation are the result of the motion of particles. There would be no time. The singularity would contain within it all the matter, antimatter, energy, anti-energy, space, and information of the universe; only time would be absent. All the forces of the universe would be reduced to gravity or some force that included gravity and all the other forces.

Zero Time

Since nothing can happen in zero time, nothing happens in a singularity. It just is. The singularity has no pressure, either internal or external. Internal pressure is caused by moving particles bombarding a boundary. There are no moving particles in a singularity. External pressure could not exist since there is no outside of a singularity, only an inside. Temperature like pressure is caused by moving particles. Since nothing is moving in a singularity there is no temperature. Since there is no outside there is no outside temperature. The only attributes that can be attributed to the matter of a singularity are density and gravity. To contain so much matter in such a small space the density of the singularity must be near infinite. The force of gravity also would be near infinite. Neither can be infinite since the universe itself is not infinite.

Work

What the universe does is work. Work is matter or energy moving through space in time. Work is not possible without motion and motion is something, matter or energy, moving through space in time. The singularity has space and matter and, by definition, energy, but it cannot be doing anything since the clock of the universe contained in the singularity has not started. The singularity does not work. It does nothing except exist. How long a singularity exists as a singularity is a nonsense question since there is no time. Time questions don't have answers as far as singularities are concerned.

What then is a singularity? It is a protouniverse. It is everything the universe and we are in primordial form. From where did our singularity come? Good question. No answer. The singularity is unknowable, without a scintilla of self-realization because without time nothing happens. If nothing happens, nothing can be known.

What caused the "big bang"? Again good question. No answer. It would be nice to know what caused the big bang, but it is not necessary to our existence to know, nor is it fundamental to our understanding of our universe. Knowing how a singularity proceeds to a big bang might be useful to know if one is interested in the range of probable universes that could be produced by a given singularity. Since our universe is in progress, all those decisions have been made for us and it is up to us now to deduce how the universe works.

Edwin Hubble discovered the expanding universe. It was natural to project the universe back to some point of origin, the singularity. Nuclear physics, the science born of the discovery of radioactivity, and subsequently of atomic and hydrogen bombs, gave rise to a great quest to find all the subatomic particles of the universe. The cyclotrons and atom smashers provided the detailed evidence of decay products and collision products of matter. This research sheds light on what might possibly go on in a nearly infinite dense mass of matter that might begin to resemble a singularity. On a micro-scale, as more is discovered about the behavior of the smallest particles, one can conjecture about the force that would be necessary for all of them to melt into a single mass which freezes in time.

What Future?

Another simpler problem presents itself from Hubble's observations. Will the universe continue to expand forever or will the universe expand to a certain point and then begin to collapse back on itself? The answer to this problem is not terribly important to us as individuals and may not be important even in the long run to the human race, since the time scales are so long that the human race, or life itself for that matter, may not survive to find out. But the question does have an emotional component. If the universe were to expand forever, it would mean that it was a single non-reversible process and that we just occurred along some phase of it. It is not a very satisfactory answer from the standpoint of probability. The universe would expand to oblivion. On the other hand, if the universe were to expand to a certain point and then reverse, this gives rise to the thought of a cyclical process.

Singularity to big bang to universe, to collapse to singularity to big bang etc. again forever, but not to oblivion. We know about our expanding universe. Somewhere along its time line, life began. In a forever expanding universe, that life will die out never to be formed again. In an expanding and contracting universe, present life, here and elsewhere in the universe, could be destroyed but with the possibility of being created during the contraction or during the next expansion. Time involved billions of years. Which scenario it is depends on how much matter is in the universe and the force of gravity. Talk about waiting for Godot!

The Probable Universe

We live in a probable universe, where events are random and normally distributed, otherwise they would not be knowable. Every thing we know and know about is contained in the process of the universe. The singularity was a passive decision system. It did nothing. In the immediate instance of the big bang, matter was created first, with antimatter hard on its heels. In that instant the physical constants of the universe were set. The rest is history. Decisions followed decisions. Systems were created de novo that were decision systems. By definition they were self-generating, self-regulating decision systems. All the universe is self-generating, self-regulating decision systems.

Cosmic Wisdon

The universe is the product of cosmic ecology, the information it contains is cosmic wisdom. In the wisdom of the cosmos, our galaxy, star, and planet were created. Life was created on our planet Earth, and we are direct descendants of that process. We began not with the creation of life on Earth, but in the cosmic wisdom of the singularity that created our universe. Everything we know anything about, including ourselves, still contains that cosmic wisdom, and will continue to do so as long as it is part of this universe.

We began as a singularity. Where we will end heaven knows. The answer lies hidden in the wisdom of the cosmos.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1990
Institute for domestic Tranquility