Wednesday 22 March 2000

Pic of the day: This computer enhanced photography illustrates the emotionally neutral, relaxed awareness that so often is associated with a cosmic consciousness. Ahem. Or perhaps I have just had my chocolate fix for the day.

To bed ten past one, and up ten to six. That is not good. And even so, I only come to work at half past eight. There was a diary to finish, and some stuff and stuff. Some of it intellectual in nature, and some gastro-intestinal. Apart from being quite tired, I seem reasonably OK. And I have been thinking. Then again, I do that almost automatically. (And look what happens.)

If we trace the history of the universe back through time, the prevailing view now is that there was a "big bang", from which the universe exploded until it reached its current size and shape. We do not know what was before this big bang.

A few years ago, it was modern to think that there was another - or the same - universe before this. That the universe eventually collapsed from gravitation, and imploded in a "big crunch". Then, when all was compressed into a singularity, gravity fused with the other primary forces and stopped being gravity, and the universe exploded again, and repeated itself in an eternal pulse beat of many billion years. As a myth it is beautiful (and indeed it is strikingly similar to a Hindu creation myth). But right now, there is no sign that the universe is slowing down fast enough to ever stop, so scientists are deserting in droves from the oscillating universe view.

Another idea is even harder to disprove and equally fascinating: That our universe is born in a greater universe. In fact, some scientists now believe that it lies in the nature of universes to spawn new universes. As each universe gets its own bubble of spacetime, there need not be any conflict between them. The baby universes may be visible from outside or invisible, but they are all self-contained from inside: There is no way of seeing out of them, nor back to before they came into being.

It has even been speculated that a sufficiently advanced civilization may be able to initiate the spawning of new universes. But it would certainly be a herculean effort, and there is no obvious reward to be had from it, as the resulting universe would forever be beyond its "creators" reach. And even if such a blasphemous project should eventually be undertaken, the event horizon around the singularity would prevent any access by the intelligent designers, such as to tamper with the natural laws of the new universe.

There is a strange property within the realm of quantum physics. You can divide a particle, such as a photon, and have two new photons with half the frequency (and thus half the energy) of the old. You may divert these two in different directions, but somehow they still stay connected. What you do to one of these small particles, you also do to another, even if it is far away.

The funny thing is that once upon a time - or rather, the dawn of time - all matter and all energy was concentrated in a point smaller than an atomic nucleus; smaller indeed than any space we can think of, because space was not yet come into existence, neither was time. They came into being along with the universe, exploding onto the scene that was not just empty but non existent.

And not only were all the cosmos at the same place and at the same time: It was also of the same kind. For it had not yet diversified into matter and energy, much less into protons and electrons, gravity and electromagnetism. They were all of the same nature. There was no difference between the tree that falls in the forest and every ear around the world: They were all one. The Andromeda galaxy was no different from the eye of a child: It was neither larger nor different in quality, nor was it in a different place. All were one.

And still are. For of the at least ten different dimensions that modern cosmology presume, only three are spatial (and time, which is linked to three-dimensional space). In most ways, we are still one with all that is and all that ever was.

Now for the $64000 question, which every philosopher must ask himself first thing in the morning: If I am one with all of the universe, do I really need to get up and go to work?