Posts tagged Astronomy and the Universe

  Anyone who has known me or read this website knows that I’m constantly attempting to decode for myself just how the universe reached the point it has currently reached. With each passing year there is new information that gets gathered into my tiny tiny brain (well I suppose compared to body size its not too shabby). So the following is, to the best of my current knowledge, how I think the universe has come to be. I’ll also discuss personal philosophies on how I feel it is best to examine the universe.

  First we need to establish my views on time. Without them it makes it somewhat difficult to grasp just where everything begins (which will soon look like the wrong term to use). To do this we introduce an item that you can replicate with a strip of paper and a strip or two of tape. It’s nice because it is easy to make a personal one for examination.

 
  A Möbius strip is a one sided object in a three dimensional world. We could argue that it does indeed have a small almost inconsequential side on its edge however that doesn’t change the point of the example. You have an object that appears to have two definitive sides and yet in actuality it only has one. If you happen to feel creative take a strip of paper and twist one of the ends a single time. Tape that end to the other end and you should have in your hands a Möbius strip. If you take a pen and press it in the middle of either side and run it along you will find that by the time your pen reaches the point you started at that you have a line on both sides of the paper and yet never had to lift the pen. You have essentially taken something that cognitively and visually appears to have two sides and proven with the wonders of a pen (or pencil) that it is merely an illusion where instead a one sided object actually stands.

  So this is important (as I imagine you hoped it would be) because essentially this is how I view two separate real world issues. The first is that of time and the second is of the origin of the Universe. Now time is a wonderful thing, without it (or at least without the phenomena we call time) most events wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. In fact no events would be interesting named because there would be absolutely no events. It would just be a paused screen for all eternity, sort of like running Crysis on the average Jo’s PC (Nerd Joke).

  I’m willing to argue that time itself has no beginning and just may end up never having an end. While with current knowledge of the Universe it does appear that eventually the Universe will stretch to such an extreme point that absolutely nothing will be moving any longer. Technically with the absence of all movement there is no longer time. Though there is a vast majority of the Universe that hasn’t currently been examined. The two prevailing arguments I have seen is that either we have goofed our calculations of Gravitation OR there is a matter that is not reactive to light. It is known as Dark Matter for a very good reason, it is literally absent of light. As far as I know nobody knows how Dark Matter reacts with all things around it or when presented with high levels of torsion. If we assume that the vast majority of the Universe is indeed Dark Matter it may indeed have a reactive property to that of a rubber band.

  Which to me seems more likely. Why? Well it would seem extremely unlikely given the nature of everything that this process would only happen once. It is entirely possible that of the infinitely many times that this has gone on through its process that we just happen to be the ones that ended up in the ever expanding and eventually final universe. I’m skeptical but I won’t rule it out.

  Time, like the Möbius strip, are examined as if they are two sided objects. In fact however I feel that Time is indeed one sided much like the adorable paper strip shown above. Time has and always will, by necessity, exist. There is little reason to believe otherwise, while this may seem naive (and I’m willing to agree it might be) it does however clear up some larger issues such as the origin of the Universe.

  As you may have surmised the previous lecture essentially explains my understanding of the Universe as of now. Unless we get into the Quantum Level (and well outside of my realm of understanding at this time) the general rule of thumb is that matter is neither created nor destroyed at any time. Even a black hole doesn’t destroy matter, it merely crushes it to a near 0 point and flicks off fantastically small bits of itself until the black hole ceases to exist. Stephen Hawkins has some wonderful literature on this topic if you get interested.

  With this fact in place it seems illogical to think that the Universe is any different (or time for that matter). Why would there be a special exception that serves absolutely no purpose. Indeed adding the special exception seems to do nothing more but support extraneous and entirely unhelpful theories about environments that the living human can never interact with (without the aid of some strong narcotics that is).

  So I think this will do it for the first part of this series. What we’ve hopefully established is that something can give the illusion of multiple dimensions while instead being a single dimensional object. Time is one of those things, it never truly began and will likely never end. At best we could argue at the zero points (when all the matter in the Universe comes as close to 0 as it possibly can just before exploding) time temporarily ceases but that is purely speculation. Secondly somewhat necessarily of the previous statement the Universe is something that has for all intents and purposes always existed, indeed there is no reason to think that it didn’t.

  Hope to see you all here for part 2 (and beyond).