Was the Big Bang the Ultimate Beginning?*

* To view footnote, click here
Original essay at this web site, posted 8/'99
(from his earlier unpublished essay) by Ken Wear,
For astronomical observations and methods, click here.

Was there ever a time when there was no time? Was there ever a time when the universe was empty?

That word 'time.' Without any thought of measuring it, all of us have a sense of the passage of time, if nothing more than awareness of the sequence of thoughts that pass through the mind. We measure it by motion - the daily rotation of our planet on its axis, the annual orbit around our sun, the decay of excited cesium atoms in the atomic clock. But motion is something that happens as time passes, something that is dependent on time but is not time itself. The passage of time and the measurement of its passage are two distinctly separate areas of thought.

Did time have a beginning? I am troubled by initial conditions, the state of things that led to the onset of the passage of time. My speculation is that time always was; it had no beginning; it will have no end. So the universe came along, and then our solar system, and provided motion; and then we came along and began to measure the passage of time using motions provided by natural phenomena that we could observe. But time continues to pass as it always has.

Was the universe initially empty? My speculation is that it was, and that the universe as we know it was an inevitable outgrowth of that emptiness. I can't call it a theory because there is no mathematics at play; so it is my speculation. But bear with me and I will describe how, from nothing, in trackless time beyond measure, all that we detect (and all that is beyond) arose, even the Supreme Being (Who must Himself have had an origin). To me it is an intensely satisfying explanation that answers the questions of initial conditions.

The underlying idea that has fueled my speculation is this: Emptiness is itself inherently unstable. I speculate that a volume without limit, an empty universe, is inherently unstable on a minutely local (or on a grandly vast) scale.^{1To view footnote, click here}

As of today, how long has time been passing? In years as we measure them, for infinity, a number too large to express. A billion years: a billion billion: more. I have trouble comprehending my own life span; but a century, even a millennium, I can grasp as history records past events. A thousand millennia: such time spans defy my imagination. Yet in the passage of time a billion years is but a flicker because time had no beginning. Time -- that intangible essence so common to our experience -- always was except that, until intelligence arose, there was no organization of life -- intellect -- concerned with assessing its passage.

Somewhere along the way there occurred an eruption of nothingness, generating, briefly, equal and opposite somethings, either physical or non-physical; but an equal and its opposite attract each other and mutually annihilate each other, leaving the same emptiness as before. But eventually two, three or four events occurred close enough together in time and space that their mutual attraction -- something perhaps akin to gravity -- hindered their rejoining and mutual annihilation, and so there was a residue from that combination of events. How long ago was that? Infinity, since we have no starting point from which to measure. But something that happens once can happen again, and so was the birth of physical matter (and possibly non-physical or spiritual essence).

On the physical side, what was that matter? Possibly a sub-sub-particle that is a building block for the sub-particles physicists have observed in their high-energy accelerators. (On the non-physical side, let us leave that question for the moment.) So with the passage of time there came into being hosts of particles, many of which eventually came together to form larger particles. And with more time, protons emerged, at least in our part of the universe, as the more stable combination of particles. It must have taken a long time indeed to give rise to enough particles that their mutual attraction could bring them together and create the "First Bang."

That First Bang likely was quite modest. But it apparently gave rise to larger, more complex, particles. As the particles flew apart, mutual attraction arrested their flight and brought them back together where, with the addition of more particles, there was another, more intense, Bang. Repeat, again and again. Thus the concept of an oscillating universe with successive Bangs: each explosion resulting in expansion until mutual attraction led to contraction and eventually another Bang. How long did it take? Infinity? Our Big Bang may well have imparted escape velocity to portions of the mass so violently flung apart, so that another still larger Bang of the same plus more newly-generated particles cannot occur.^{3 To view footnote, click here.}

Another theory of origins, the Steady State theory, suggests that the expansion of the universe requires generation of new matter at a sufficient rate, in the appropriate location, to exactly compensate for an emerging hole at the center of outward motion. This idea is obviously at odds with the notion of an oscillating universe with its generation of new matter whenever and wherever there is an appropriate combination of eruptions of nothingness.

The theory of origins put forth in the ancient Hebrew literature that culminated in the Bible is not so much at odds with other theories as might first appear.^{2 To view footnote, click here.}

There are a number of questions that necessarily are attendant to these speculations. One is why our universe is not filled solid by now, since time enough has elapsed to generate enough particles for that to occur. Evidently the phenomenon is in some way self-limiting. Likely the same sort of event as occurred initially still occurs, but now, because of the multitude of particles already in existence, annihilation more nearly equals generation.

Had there been a uniform distribution of elemental particles in the initial days of the universe, mutual attraction would not have brought them together since each particle would have been equally attracted in all directions. But I speculated that nothingness is inherently unstable so there seems no reason to ascribe to it a uniformity that compels equal generation of particles per unit volume.

Our theory tells us nothing physical can possess a velocity exceeding that of light because its energy of motion would exceed infinity, and we regard that as quite impossible. There are those who, in their zeal to overcome logical necessities and assure acceptance of the Big Bang as the ultimate beginning, set aside such limits. They argue, for instance, that initially after the Big Bang the products of that explosion receded at velocities vastly greater than the speed of light. "Inflation" they call it. Yet the physicists' particle accelerators have thoroughly confirmed that a single proton cannot be accelerated to, certainly not beyond, the speed of light because we cannot impart to it sufficient energy.

So the matter flung apart by our Big Bang should be bounded in space; our universe should have an edge or outer limit determined by the velocity of light and elapsed time since that explosion. Unless we are near the center of that explosion, we should, with increased sensitivity of telescopic equipment, be able to locate that edge. Unless our Big Bang was a local event in this infinity of space, in which case there may be other universes -- either nearby or at immense distances beyond. In fact, since astronomers have detected what they interpret as irregularities in the relative positions of galaxies in our universe, we may in fact have in our universe galaxies intruding from other universes.

And other universes may have resulted from different combinations of those primordial sub-sub-particles, since nothingness may well have split in other ways and in other combinations. So our protons may be peculiar to our universe. Or, extending my speculations beyond my willingness to speculate, our universe may coexist with other universes comprised of products of splitting that are of a wholly different nature.

The origin of a supreme being may well have been the coalescing of non-physical products of the splitting of nothingness, just as physical particles resulted from the physical products of the splitting. Origin of intelligence in such a non-physical or spirit entity, and its subsequent focus to influence events, seems a possible consequence of coalescence. So the arguments for and against deity are not influenced by my speculations. The only thing I would deny is that He could have had no origin, but has existed as long as time itself; and I cite boredom as proof enough of that.

Thus ends this chain of speculations. It has been wholly satisfying to me and has ended the dilemma of initial conditions.