A THEORY
OF THE UNIVERSE
Frank Rubin
February 17, 2000
(Represents less than 20% of the original)
INTRODUCTION
Since the 1880's, scientists have observed that light coming from distant stars has a red shift, indicating that those stars are moving away from us at high speeds. In the 1920's Belgian astronomer Georges LeMaître proposed the theory that the universe was created by a huge explosion, and that all the matter in the universe is still flying away from that explosion at enormous speeds. This idea was dubbed the Big Bang Theory by George Gamow circa 1930.
THE MANY BANG THEORY
The new Many Bang Theory holds that explosions on all scales occur continually. Under the influence of gravity, matter collects at many points throughout the universe, and explodes when certain triggering events occur. Such events may be collisions with other objects, or reaching certain densities where state changes occur. The Big Bang is just one of many explosions. Simply because it happened relatively close to us, people tend to think it was the single great formative event of all matter and energy.
Under this new theory, the universe has always existed, and space extends outward forever. Matter is distributed throughout the universe, far beyond what we can now observe. The points where matter collects may be comparable in mass to stars, like neutron stars, to galaxies, like the largest black holes, or much heavier, like the mass that caused the Big Bang. There is a continuous cycle of gas condensing into stars, which explode leaving neutron stars, which continue to collect matter, becoming black holes.
There is a continuum of masses, from gas to dust, rocks, planets, stars, up to supermassive black holes. These objects change state as they coalesce under the influence of gravity. For example, when a planet becomes large and dense enough, it may heat up and change from a solid to a liquid sate, and then to a gaseous state. If these changes are sudden the result may be an explosion.
WHY A NEW THEORY?
The newest telescopes have allowed us to glimpse galactic clusters more than 13 billion light years from earth. The apparent distance of such objects is one of the primary indicators of the age of the universe. The universe must be at least as old as the amount of time it took light from these objects to reach us.
Each time an extemely distant object is sighted, we need to revise the age of the universe upwards. For example, suppose we observe a galactic cluster 13 billion light years away, and receding at a speed of 0.75 times the speed of light. If that object had been created by the Big Bang, then we know that the object took a bit over 17 billion years to reach that position, so the universe must be at least 17 billion years old.
However, since the light from that object took 13 billion years to reach us, we know that 13 billion years ago the object was 13 billion light-years away, hence 17 billion years old, so it is now 30 billion years old.
BUBBLE DISTRIBUTION
There is additional strong evidence for the Many Bang theory. This evidence comes from the distribution of matter in the universe. Two aspects of this distribution favor the Many Bang Theory. First, much of the matter we can see appears to be concentrated in spherical shells, or bubbles. This distribution is precisely what would be expected from many bangs. Second, the very unevenness of the distribution can best be explained by the Many Bang Theory.
LUMPINESS
Under the Many Bang Theory, the nucleus for each explosion is built up from many objects, such as stars, gas clouds, perhaps entire galaxies, that are captured by gravity. As these objects are gathered, it takes time for them to be absorbed and converted into the superdense state of the nucleus. Eventually, gravity would return the nucleus to a perfectly spherical shape (or, perhaps ovoid, if it is spinning rapidly) and symmetric distribution, but such extremely dense matter may flow very slowly, so that the nucleus is always in a lumpy unbalanced state.
When the explosion occurs, the unevenness of the distribution will result in uneven spreading of the force, and an uneven distribution of the resulting matter. After that, gravity will form the remnants into the various disks, strings and clusters that we observe.
PULSARS
Another phenomenon that gives credence to the Many Bang theory is pulsars. These are objects that give off pulses of light at regular intervals. The conventional explanation of pulsars is that they are neutron stars spinning rapidly and giving off a pulse of energy on each rotation, typically a few milliseconds up to a few days. However, there is a big hole in this theory.
The Many Bang theory offers several much better explanation for pulsars. Over the past few decades thousands of objects called "black holes" have been detected. These are objects so extremely dense and massive that their gravity prevents anything, even light or other electromagnetic radiation from escaping. Although black holes do not emit light, an object being captured by a black hole may be ripped apart by its gravity, and therefore give off bursts of radiation. Many such bursts have been detected, so we know that black holes must be very numerous. (The latest estimate is that there at least 300 billion.) It is theorized that there is a massive black hole near the center of every galaxy, but black holes have also been detected far from the galactic centers.
BLACK HOLES
If the Many Bang Theory were true, then we would expect a continuous range of very dense objects, from neutron stars about as heavy as our sun to black holes as massive as a galaxy. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has now confirmed this. It has detected a class of mid-sized black holes, between the small black holes formed from collapsed stars, weighing only a dozen times our sun, and the super-massive black holes at the centers of galaxies, weighing millions of times the sun's weight.
WHAT'S NEXT?
There are several consequences of the Many Bang theory that need to be considered. The first is the relationship between red shift and the age and distance of various objects. The current equation relating red shift and distance is based on the premise that all such objects arose from a single Big Bang at the gravitational center of the observable universe. Since Earth is fairly close to the center, distance from Earth and distance from the center are close enough to consider the same for this purpose.
If an object arose from a different bang, at a location far from the center, however, this approximation would not hold. An object with a small red shift could actually be very far away because it originated from an explosion far away.
OTHER UNIVERSES
If there have been many bangs at many locations, it is possible that some of them are comparable in size, or even much larger, than our own local Big Bang. This means that there may be other clusters of matter even bigger than what we currently call the universe. Although we could not expect to see individual galaxies, or even galactic clusters, within such a distant object, we might be able to see the entire object. An object of that size could rightfully be called another universe.
ANTI-MATTER
One of the most fundamental laws of physics is that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. If you assume all of the matter in the universe came from from a single Big Bang, then this presents a problem. How did the Big Bang create all of the matter that we observe? The traditional theory is that no matter was created, rather the Big Bang created exactly equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, so that the total amount of matter in the universe was 0 before the Big Bang, and is still 0. Nothing was created or destroyed.
ENERGY The conventional answer is that this kinetic energy is exactly balanced by the potential energy of this same matter, should it all be pulled back by gravity to the center. Thus the total energy in the universe would be zero.
This is an inadequate explanation. Obviously all of this kinetic energy originated from the Big Bang. So, where did the energy for the Big Bang originate? It cannot be from the conversion of matter into energy, since there was no matter before the Big Bang.
This problem does not occur in the Many Bang theory. In this view of the universe there has always been both matter and energy, and the conversion of one into the other can take place freely.
MISSING MASS
One of the puzzles that has engaged astrophysicists lately is the problem of the missing mass. This problem occurs if you assume an oscillating universe. There must be enough mass to pull all the matter in the universe back to the center for the next bang. The amount of matter that we can currently detect is only about one-tenth enough to do this.
Once again, the problem does not occur for the Many Bang theory. Bangs can occur anywhere that there is enough mass to pull together the nucleus for an explosion of any size. It is widely believed that every galaxy has a black hole at its center, and this has the potential to pull in the required material for another blast, of super-nova size or larger.
CONCLUSIONS
The universe is a far larger and more complex system than the Big Bang Theory predicts. Matter is distributed throughout the cosmos, and traveling in every direction. Red shift alone cannot determine the age and distance of every visible object.