Was there really a “Big Bang”?

 

The current theory is that our universe “started” 1.38 * 10¹³  years ago.

(That’s 13,800,000,000,000 years ago.) And everything came from a single point (a singularity).

This theory is based upon the observation that every object we can see in the universe seems to be moving away from each other. This is largely based on the fact that light travels at a constant velocity (186,000 miles per second), and carries information indicating its source.

Light consists of a collection of waves, each of which has a unique (and measurable) magnitude and frequency. If a source of light is moving toward us, these waves will appear to be at a higher frequency, and if moving away from us,..at a lower frequency.

This is the Doppler effect…

Hubble observed that celestial bodies had “red shifts”, indicating that the body was moving away from us, and that the further away the object was, the faster it seemed to be moving.

Using that observation and extrapolating backward in time indicated that there was a particular time at which all objects would have to have been in the same place…Hence came the big bang theory of the creation of the universe.

I would suggest however that the “red shift” effect can be explained in a more comforting way.

First.. the assumptions:

Einstein’s equation is correct  Energy=Mass * (Speed of Light)².

The Speed of Light (C) is constant (186,000 miles/second).

Nothing can exceed the Speed of Light.

Hubbles observations were correct.

 

Then the speculations:

The Speed of Light (C) is a ratio of two quantities… (Distance traveled) / (Time).

If Time itself was a variable, C could still be assumed constant as long as the Distance Traveled (D), varied along with time.

 

Stephen Hawking, goes into this topic in great detail in his book A Brief History of Time.

He makes good use of diagrams in the book to explain complex subjects. I will borrow freely from them.

When I see an object…I am seeing the object as it “was” rather than as it “is”. I am forever limited by the time it takes for the image to pass from the object to myself.

For most instances, this time difference is minutely small and we ignore it. But if the distances become large, this time delay becomes significant.. For example, the Sun is about 93,000,000 miles from the Earth. If we observe a Solar Flare… we know that it happened 93,000,000/186,000  = 500 seconds previously.. or about 8.3 minutes.

If we observe a distant galaxy (say Andromeda), we can do the same calculation but our unit of measurement (the mile) is far too small to be of any use. So we invented a new unit of distance… The Light Year. This is the distance that it takes a particle of light traveling at 186,000 miles per second for 1 Year. (186,000 * 60 *60* 24 * 365) =

5,721,062,400,000 miles (approximately).

Andromeda, our nearest galaxy is 2.5 million Light Years away, (or 15,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away). The advantage of using the Light Year as a measurement is that it is also used as an indicator of time. Since Andromeda is 2.5 million Light Years away.. when we view Andromeda, we are seeing it as it was 2.5 million years in the past.

This is the normal explanation for the describing the distance of extremely distant objects, but it suffers a serious flaw… While the speed of light is constant, there is no reason to believe that the rate of passage of time is. What if the rate of time “slowed” as it travelled further away from us… ?

The Big Bang Theory (BBT) is also unsettling because it assumes that the rate of time passing is a constant. This is for the observer; the theory of relativity allows for different time rates depending upon the viewpoint of the observer (time dilation). But the BBT also implies that time (and matter) started at this instant… also very unsettling because we observe time as a continuous stream of events that apparently had no beginning nor will have no end, or more correctly stated… time started at minus infiniti (-∞), not at 1.38 * 10¹³  years ago. And will extend to plus infinity (+∞).

 Einstein theorizes also that space it self is curved and time doesn’t end at +∞, but simply starts over at -∞. While we can’t deal with ∞, we deal with the concept of a number called zero (0) everyday.

The concept for 0 and for ∞ are handled in mathematics as special cases.. For example:

1/0 = ∞ ; and (any  positive number)/0 = ∞, and (any negative number)/0 = -∞.

0/(any number) = 0. However if we evaluate 0 as having a very small value, we can obtain a real number which is approaching 0 for either the negative side or the positive side. So for zero, we simply treat our number system as continuous, passing from negative to positive numbers without a gap.

The same concept can be applied to infinity.. by applying large finite values, we can tell if a number is approaching infinity from the negative or positive direction.

The easiest way to visualize this is to construct our number system in a circular framework.

 

 

 

Time itself can be considered to behave in a circular framework, with the present defined as zero, and it passes by us traveling from the future (-∞) and proceeding to the past (+∞). Time can be considered to have no beginning nor no end.

Perhaps the Catholics said it best…”... As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”.

 

But how can we visualize time… We stand in a river of time (the present), only being allowed to look downstream (the past), without the means to turn around and view upstream (the future).

Can we create a graphic representation of time passing? I believe that a Torus is a good possibility.

 

In this model, we are positioned at the center of the torus and time is the surface of the torus. It is moving.

 

 

This model is similar to Hawkings cone and can be interpreted as he does, but there is a significant difference...with a torus model, time no longer has to be constant (as observed by us), rather than being cone shaped, it is “horn” shaped.

 

With the torus model, the rate of time can be considered constant, but it travels in a circular path as the torus continuously turns inside out. Time moves in this way which can be considered to occur in a 5^th dimension, one which we cannot fully see. But we can see a component of the time vector, that which is along the axis of the torus.

While the rate of time has a constant circular velocity, we can only see a component of it.

At the zero point (the present), we experience the maximum rate of tume change, but as view the past, we see that the apparent time rate is  decreasing sinusoidally to zero. This would imply that there was no big bang, but instead a misinterpretation of the red shift…