Proof of God in Five Emails

Quest to comprehend or try to understand God, the Creator, must have started with origin of Intelligence both on planet earth or any where in the cosmos. I think the logical way to understand the Creator is through understanding His myriad creations and the rules He has created for the cosmos to operate. I am lucky to have a profession in Earth Science which helps me to appreciate, if not understand, the complexities of Nature i.e. God. The following is the transcript of Five Emails I received from Perry Marshall in five installments for five days during the last week of 2007 under the heading “Where did the Universe come from?” Oh! what a way to end a year and start a new. If you wish to receive those five mails in your mail box, go to http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/

Day 1: Einstein's Big Blunder

100 years ago this year, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world. These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics. Pretty good debut for a 26 year old scientist, huh? His equations for relativity indicated that the universe was expanding. This bothered him, because if it was expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner. Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced a 'fudge factor' that ensured a 'steady state' universe, one that had no beginning or end.

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest galaxies were fleeing away from each other, just as the Big Bang model predicted. So in 1931, Einstein embraced what would later be known as the Big Bang theory, saying, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." He referred to the 'fudge factor' to achieve a steady-state universe as the biggest blunder of his career. As I'll explain during the next couple of days, Einstein's theories have been thoroughly proved and verified by experiments and measurements. But there's an even more important implication of Einstein's discovery. Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, began with the Big Bang.

That's right -- time itself does not exist before then. The very line of time begins with that creation event. Matter, energy, time and space were created in an instant by an intelligence outside of space and time. About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote in his book "The World As I See It" that the harmony of natural law "Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." He went on to write, "Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe--a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble." Pretty significant statement, wouldn't you say? Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment.

Day 2: Bird Droppings on my Telescope

The Big Bang theory was totally rejected at first. But those who supported it had predicted that the ignition of the Big Bang would have left behind a sort of 'hot flash' of radiation. If a big black wood stove produces heat that you can feel, then in a similar manner, the Big Bang should produce its own kind of heat that would echo throughout the universe.

In 1965, without looking for it, two physicists at Bell Labs in New Jersey found it. At first, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were bothered because, while trying to refine the world's most sensitive radio antenna, they couldn't eliminate a bothersome source of noise. They picked up this noise everywhere they pointed the antenna. At first they thought it was bird droppings. The antenna was so sensitive it could pick up the heat of bird droppings (which certainly are warm when they're brand new) but even after cleaning it off, they still picked up this noise. This noise had actually been predicted in detail by other astronomers, and after a year of checking and re-checking the data, they arrived at a conclusion: This crazy Big Bang theory really was correct.

In an interview, Penzias was asked why there was so much resistance to the Big Bang theory. He said, "Most physicists would rather attempt to describe the universe in ways which require no explanation. And since science can't *explain* anything - it can only*describe* things - that's perfectly sensible. If you have a universe which has always been there, you don't explain it, right? "Somebody asks you, 'How come all the secretaries in your company are women?' You can say, 'Well, it's always been that way.' That's a way of not having to explain it. So in the same way, theories which don't require explanation tend to be the ones accepted by science, which is perfectly acceptable and the best way to make science work."

But on the older theory that the universe was eternal, he explains: "It turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it. What we find - the simplest theory - is a creation out of nothing, the appearance out of nothing of the universe." Penzias and his partner, Robert Wilson, won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of this radiation. The Big Bang theory is now one of the most thoroughly validated theories in all of science. Robert Wilson was asked by journalist Fred Heeren if the Big Bang indicated a creator. Wilson said, "Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can't think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis." Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment.

Day 3: Why the Big Bang was the most precisely planned event in all of history?

In your kitchen cabinet, you've probably got a spray bottle with an adjustable nozzle. If you twist the nozzle one way, it sprays a fine mist into the air. You twist the nozzle the other way, it squirts a jet of water in a straight line. You turn that nozzle to the exact position you want, so you can wash a mirror, clean up a spill, or whatever.

If the universe had expanded a little faster, the matter would have sprayed out into space like fine mist from a water bottle - so fast that a gazillion particles of dust would speed into infinity and never even form a single star. If the universe had expanded just a little slower, the material would have dribbled out like big drops of water, then collapsed back where it came from by the force of gravity. A little too fast, and you get a meaningless spray of fine dust. A little too slow, and the whole universe collapses back into one big black hole. The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference is. To strike the perfect balance between too fast and too slow, the force, something that physicists call "the Dark Energy Term" had to be accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros. If you wrote this as a decimal, the number would look like this:

0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001.

In their paper "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant" two atheist scientists from Stanford University stated that the existence of this dark energy term "Would have required a miracle....An external agent, external to space and time, intervened in cosmic history for reasons of its own." Just for comparison, the best human engineering example is the Gravity Wave Telescope, which was built with a precision of 23 zeros. The Designer, the 'external agent' that caused our universe must possess an intellect, knowledge, creativity and power trillions and trillions of times greater than we humans have. Absolutely amazing.

Now a person who doesn't believe in God has to find some way to explain this. One of the more common explanations seems to be "There was an infinite number of universes, so it was inevitable that things would have turned out right in at least one of them. "The "infinite universes" theory is truly an amazing theory. Just think about it, if there is an infinite number of universes, then absolutely everything is not only possible...It's actually happened! It means that somewhere, in some dimension, there is a universe where the Chicago Cubs won the World Series last year. There's a universe where Jimmy Hoffa doesn't get cement shoes; instead he marries Joan Rivers and becomes President of the United States. There's even a universe where Elvis kicks his drug habit and still resides at Graceland and sings at concerts. Imagine the possibilities! I might sound like I'm joking, but actually I'm dead serious. To believe an infinite number of universes made life possible by random chance is to believe everythingelse I just said, too. Some people believe in God with a capital G. And some folks believe in Chance with a Capital C. Tomorrow's installment: "If you can read this email, I can prove to you that God exists." Sound a little bold? Tune in tomorrow - same time, same station.

Day 4: If you can read this sentence, I can prove to you that God exists

See this email I just sent you, that you're reading right now? This email is proof of the existence of God. Yeah, I know, that sounds crazy. But I'm not asking you to believe anything just yet, until you see the evidence for yourself. All I ask is that you refrain from disbelieving while I show you my proof. It only takes a minute to convey, but it speaks to one of the most important questions of all time.

So how is this email proof of the existence of God?: This email you're reading contains letters, words and sentences. It contains a message that means something. As long as you can read English, you can understand what I'm saying. You can do all kinds of things with this email. You can read it on your computer screen. You can print it out on your printer. You can read it out loud to a friend who's in the same room as you are. You can call your friend and read it to her over the telephone. You can save it as a Microsoft WORD document. You can forward it to someone via email, or you can post it on a website.

Regardless of how you copy it or where you send it, the information remains the same. My email contains a message. It contains information in the form of language. The message is independent of the medium it is sent in. Messages are not matter, even though they can be carried by matter (like printing this email on a piece of paper). Messages are not energy even though they can be carried by energy (like the sound of my voice.) Messages are immaterial. Information is itself a unique kind of entity. It can be stored and transmitted and copied in many forms, but the meaning still stays the same. Messages can be in English, French or Chinese. Or Morse Code. Or mating calls of birds. Or the Internet. Or radio or television. Or computer programs or architect blueprints or stone carvings. Every cell in your body contains a message encoded in DNA, representing a complete plan for you. OK, so what does this have to do with God?

It's very simple. Messages, languages, and coded information ONLY come from a mind. A mind that agrees on an alphabet and a meaning of words and sentences. A mind that expresses both desire and intent. Whether I use the simplest possible explanation, such as the one I'm giving you here, or if we analyze language with advanced mathematics and engineering communication theory, we can say this with total confidence: "Messages, languages and coded information never, ever come from anything else besides a mind. No one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind." Nature can create fascinating patterns - snow flakes, sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalactites. Tornados and turbulence and cloud formations. But non-living things cannot create language. They*cannot* create codes. Rocks cannot think and they cannot talk. And they cannot create information.

It is believed by some that life on planet earth arose accidentally from the "primordial soup," the early ocean which produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells. But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to answer the question, 'Where did the information come from?' DNA is not merely a molecule. Nor is it simply a "pattern."Yes, it contains chemicals and proteins, but those chemicals are arranged to form an intricate language, in the exact same way that English and Chinese and HTML are languages. DNA has a four-letter alphabet, and structures very similar to words, sentences and paragraphs. With very precise instructions and systems that check for errors and correct them.

To the person who says that life arose naturally, you need only ask: "Where did the information come from? Show me just ONE example of a language that didn't come from a mind." As simple as this question is, I've personally presented it in public presentations and Internet discussion forums for more than two years. I've addressed more than fifty thousand people, including hostile, skeptical audiences who insist that life arose without the assistance of God. But to a person, none of them have ever been able to explain where the information came from. This riddle is "So simple any child can understand; so complex, no atheist can solve." You can hear or read my full presentation on this topic at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm For a high-school level, layman's version, go here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/information.htm

Matter and energy have to come from somewhere. Everyone can agree on that. But information has to come from somewhere, too! Information is separate entity, fully on par with matter and energy. And information can only come from a mind. If books and poems and TV shows come from human intelligence, then all living things inevitably came from a super intelligence. Every word you hear, every sentence you speak, every dog that barks, every song you sing, every email you read, every packet of information that zings across the Internet, is proof of the existence of God. Because information and language always originate in a mind. In the beginning were words and language. In the Beginning was Information. When we consider the mystery of life - where it came from and how this miracle is possible - do we not at the same time ask the question where it is going, and what its purpose is?

Day 5: Where Did the Universe Come From?

Today I introduce to you one of the most powerful science presentations I have ever heard. I listened to Hugh Ross give this presentation on a tape while I was driving down Interstate 88 in Chicago one night. As I listened, light bulbs were firing off in my head all over the place. So what's the big deal about this? Here's what you'll discover as you listen:

• The delicate balance of vast forces in the universe, necessary for life to exist
• Why planet earth is so extremely special in its ability to support life
• The very measurement of the entire universe in all its magnificence, made possible only within the last 15 years
• A fascinating place where science and theology come together in perfect agreement

Now there's one more thing I want to tell you about this talk: It was recorded in 1994. Now why would I give you something called "New Scientific Evidence" if it's 11 years old? Here's why: Because unlike most things 11 years old--with only a couple of exceptions, the information Hugh Ross shares here has been shown to be even *more* accurate today than it was back then. One of the hallmarks of a successful scientific model is that it holds up for years and even decades, even while scholars debate it. I've been following Dr. Ross and his work, and virtually every fact he discusses here has been further strengthened and validated by all the physics and astronomy discoveries in the years since.

On this link you'll find both the audio recording and the printed transcript. You can read it online, print it out, listen on your computer, burn it to a CD, or download this to your MP3 player. Go here now: http://www.CosmicFingerprints.com/audio/newevidence.htm . Enjoy.

Perry Marshall

Nature vs. Nurture in the Cosmos by Jeanna Bryner

I have always believed the ‘fractal nature’ of Nature i.e. Self-Repeating Properties of Nature in different scales. Thus, it was interesting to go through this simple article published in www.space.com. The article reports recent findings of different aging-stages of galaxies vis-à-vis their productivity like human beings and other life species.

The discovery of "teenage" galaxies is giving scientists a better handle on how galaxies transform from sexy, spiral star factories to shapeless retirement homes for old stars. In the early 1900s Edwin Hubble discovered that the Milky Way galaxy is not alone. Our galaxy is just one of many "island universes," as Hubble dubbed them, swimming in the vast sea of space. Now that astronomers can measure the age of each galaxy, its star-making activity and other related data, they are piecing together an understanding that galaxies grow gradually like children, gliding through their visibly different teen years before reaching adulthood.

Results published in December, 2007 issue of the Astrophysical Journal provide the strongest evidence yet for this thinking, called nurture theory, in which the elegant spirals (young galaxies) and blob-like ellipticals (old galaxies) are evolutionarily linked.

Gerontology through Color Coding:
Scientists have long thought that young galaxies grow up into old ones, referred to as blue and red galaxies, respectively. The color indicates how actively the galaxy is churning out new stars. Younger stars shine in ultraviolet or blue light, and so galaxies bustling with star-making activity appear blue. Older stars emit infrared or red light. In aging galaxies, their "stellar reproductive" capacity has begun to shut down and so the remaining stars are just hanging out for the remainder of their lives.
About half of all galaxies are blue and half are red. It had been postulated that the two are linked, with the blue young ones running out of star-making material and maturing into passive red galaxies.

If this theory holds true, you'd expect to see a population of "teenage" galaxies in the process of transitioning from young to old. Finding these teens is tricky though, because the cosmic change occurs over billions of years. "The nurture theory of galaxy evolution predicted that there would be galaxies in transition," said lead author Christopher Martin, principal investigator for NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission at Caltech in California. "Finding these galaxies required ultraviolet light, because they really stand out at this wavelength."

Cosmic History:
Data from GALEX, launched in 2003, allowed Martin and his colleagues to observe galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history. The researchers' analysis of tens of thousands of images taken by GALEX has revealed that young, spiral galaxies do in fact first mature into "teens" before winding down into their elderly ellipses. The details of the picture now emerging suggest that a spiral galaxy might merge with another spiral or perhaps an irregularly shaped galaxy before churning out a few bursts of newly minted stars. Eventually, the galaxy begins to exhaust its star production and settles into later life as an elliptical.

"Our data confirm that all galaxies begin life forming stars," Martin said. "Then through a combination of mergers, fuel exhaustion and perhaps suppression by black holes, the galaxies eventually stop producing stars." The findings also suggest that some young galaxies walk into old age quickly, while others leisurely stroll into their golden years.

For the original article, click:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071119-mm-galaxy-growth.html

What Drives Evolution?

During the last 31 years of my geoscience association - five years of geoscience education during 1976-81 and the rest as a professional petroleum geologist - I distinctingly remember asking all Palaeontologists, I have met, this simple question “What drives evolution?” Or to put it in a different format “Why evolution goes only in a forward direction (parellel to time-axis) i.e. from simple to complex forms, not in the reverse direction?”. I still brood over this question and was very happy to see two articles published in www.livescience.com. The article by Jeanna Bryner with some editing is reproduced below.

From bizarre butterfly spots to rainbow-colored lizards to adaptations that allow squirrels and even snakes to "fly," physical innovations in the natural world can be mind-boggling. Natural selection is accepted by scientists as the main engine driving the array of organisms and their complex features. But is evolution via natural selection the only explanation for complex organisms? "I think one of the greatest mysteries in biology at the moment is whether natural selection is the only process capable of generating organismal complexity," said Massimo Pigliucci of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, "or whether there are other properties of matter that also come into play. I suspect the latter will turn out to be true."

Forces of Evolution:
The developing research area on how the vast biodiversity on Earth evolves accepts natural selection and three other established forces of evolution as its basis. These include: mutation, random genetic drift and gene flow.

• Natural selection is the process by which the best-adapted individuals produce the most offspring, which in turn carry forward to their offspring the genes that gave their parents the upper edge.
• Genetic drift is a random process in which chance plays a role in deciding which gene variants (alleles) survive.
• Gene flow occurs when genes are carried from one population to another. Also called migration, an example of gene is when pollen gets blown to a region where it previously did not exist, transporting new genetic material to that population.
• Mutations are also random. Changes to an organism's DNA can impact all aspects of its life, from how it looks and behaves to its basic physiology.

Flexible Genes:
Some scientists are proposing additions to the above list of evolutionary forces.
"Over the past decade or two, scientists have begun to suspect that there are other properties of complex systems (such as living organisms) that may help, together with natural selection, explain how things such as eyes, bacterial flagella, wings and turtle shells evolve," Pigliucci told LiveScience.

One idea is that organisms are equipped with the flexibility to change their physical or other features during development to accommodate environmental changes, a phenomenon called phenotypic plasticity. The change typically doesn't show up in the genes. For instance, in social bees, both the workers and guards have the same genomes but different genes get activated to give them distinct behaviors and appearances. Environmental factors, such as temperature and embryonic diet, prompt genetic activity that ends up casting one bee a worker and the other a guard. If beneficial, this flexibility could be passed on to offspring and so can lead to the evolution of new features in a species. "This plasticity is heritable, and natural selection can favor different kinds of plasticity, depending on the range of environmental conditions the organism encounters," Pigliucci said.

Made to Order:
Self-organization is another evolutionary force that some experts say whips up complex features or behaviors spontaneously in living and non-living matter, and these traits are passed on to offspring through the generations. "A classic example outside of biology are hurricanes: These are not random air movements at all, but highly organized atmospheric structures that arise spontaneously given the appropriate environmental conditions," Pigliucci said. "There is increasing evidence that living organisms generate some of their complexity during development in an analogous manner."

A biological illustration of self-organization is protein-folding. A lengthy necklace of amino acids bends, twists and folds into a three-dimensional protein, whose shape determines the protein's function. A protein made up of just 100 amino acids could take on an endless number (billions upon billions) of shapes. While this shape-shifting takes on the order of seconds to minutes in nature, the fastest computers don't have the muscle yet to pull off the feat. The mechanism that triggers the final form could be a chemical signal, for instance.

Novelties in Nature:
The environment also could drive changes in an animal's appearance or phenotype, a phenomenon that intrigues many biologists. For instance, Sean Carroll, a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discovered butterflies in East Africa have different colorings depending on when they hatch. Those hatching during the wet season emerge with brightly colored eyespots while their dry-season relatives wear neutral cryptic coats.

Biology has a pretty good understanding of how animals develop from a fertilized egg to a fully formed organism. "We just don't understand how ... the environment and [the] genetic blueprint interact during development," said Theunis Piersma of the Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Piersma's research on shorebirds called red knots has revealed the birds can morph their phenotypes depending on their migration routes. When brought into captivity and placed in colder temperature environments, the shorebirds' flight muscles and organs shrink to reduce heat loss. The birds pass on to offspring the capacity to make these changes.

So the mystery is starting to clear around how diverse species with an array of features evolve. The field, which had relied in the past mostly on fossil records, got a boost with the development of genetic techniques and the integration of diverse sectors of science, connecting genetics, biology, ecology and computer science.

While scientists are shedding light on natural mechanisms that work to shape species, many questions in the field are brewing on the lab-bench. And the original question examined by Charles Darwin - what is the mechanism that causes new species to evolve - has yet to be fully explained. And another related question looms: How important are chance events, as opposed to natural selection, to shaping organisms?

For the original article, click the link below:

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070816_gm_evolution.html

Where is the Rest of the Universe?

The following article by Dave Mosher is available at

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070820_mm_dark_forces.html

Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem--the vast majority of it is missing. "I call it the dark side of the universe," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, referring to the great mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe has been found. The other 96 percent remains elusive, but scientists are looking in the farthest reaches of space and deepest depths of Earth to solve the two dark riddles.

Missing Matter:
Einstein's famous equation "E=mc^2" describes energy and matter (or mass) as one and the same and maps of the cosmos refer to the energy-matter combination as energy density, for short. The problem with detecting dark matter, thought to make up 22 percent of the universe's mass/energy pie, is that light doesn't interact with it. But it does exhibit the tug of gravity.

Initial evidence for the mysterious matter was discovered 75 years ago when astrophysicists noticed an anomaly in a jumble of galaxies: The galactic cluster had hundreds of times more gravitational pull than it should have, far outweighing its visible mass of stars.

"We can predict the motions of the sun and planets very accurately, but when we measure distant things we see anomalies," said Scott Dodelson, an astrophysicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. "Dark matter is currently the best possible solution, even though we've never seen any of it."

Another hallmark of dark matter is gravitational lensing, similar to the effect of light passing through a piece of polished glass. Massive objects like the sun can bend light, but colossal clouds of dark matter create "bubbles" in the cosmos that magnify, distort and duplicate the light of galaxies or stars behind them.

Particle Hunt:
In spite of the ghostly evidence, pieces of dark matter have yet to be pinned down by researchers. "Until we actually discover particles, we're not home yet," Dodelson said. Particle physicists have detected neutrinos, which are extremely lightweight particles that pour out of the sun and hardly interact into ordinary matter, but Turner said they make up an extremely small fraction of dark matter in the universe. "We arrested one of the members of the gang, but not the leader of the gang," Turner said of neutrinos. He thinks the leader is actually a WIMP (Weakly Interactive Massive Particle). Unfortunately, WIMPS are just a theory so far.

The thinking goes that WIMPs are very heavy, yet like neutrinos they rarely bump into matter to produce a detectable signal. But the idea that WIMPS--such as theoretical axion or neutralino particles--can bump into visible matter at all gives scientists hope. "This is a story that may soon be at its end," Turner said, noting that the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search in the Soudan mine of Minnesota and other experiments below the ground should be sensitive enough to detect a WIMP.

The Anti-Gravity:
Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is dark matter's big cousin, dark energy. The invisible force is thought to be a large-scale "anti-gravity," pushing apart galactic clusters and causing the unexplainable, accelerating expansion of the universe. Turner thinks dark energy is the biggest mystery of them all--and quite literally, since physicists predict that it makes up 74 percent of energy density in the universe.

"So far, the greatest achievement with dark energy is giving it a name," Turner said of the elusive force. "We are really at the very beginning of this puzzle." Turner described dark energy as "really weird stuff," best thought of as an elastic, repulsive gravity that can't be broken down into particles. "We know what it does, but we don't know what it is," Turner said.

While astrophysicists look deep into space to gather more details about dark energy's effects, Turner noted that theoretical physicists are focusing on explaining how the force actually works. And at this point, he joked, any physicist's explanation for dark energy is probably good enough to consider. "We're at this very early stage, at the crime scene of dark energy's existence, if you will," Turner said. "It's a highly creative period, and now is the time for ideas."

Origin of Universe

Excerpts from "The Endless Universe: Introduction to the Cyclic Universe"
By Paul J. Steinhardt

The Big Bang/Inflationary Model:

Over the last century, cosmologists have converged on a highly successful theory of the evolution of the Universe -- the big bang/inflationary picture. According to this picture:

• space and time sprung into being 15 billion years ago in a 'big bang'
• when the Universe emerged, it was filled with particles and radiation of nearly infinite temperature and density
• instants later, the Universe underwent a period of extraordinarily rapid, superluminal expansion ('inflation') which made the Universe homogeneous and flat and which created fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies and large-scale structure

In the last decades, cosmological observations have supported the predictions of the big bang and inflationary theory in exquisite detail. They have also provided one major surprise. It appears that, billions of years after the big bang, following the formation of galaxies, the Universe was overtaken by some form of dark energy that is causing the expansion rate to accelerate. Although dark energy was unanticipated and has no particular role in the big bang/inflationary picture, the general view has been that it can simply be added by fiat to the initial make-up of the Universe. There is no compelling reason for a new theoretical approach. Quite the contrary, many cosmologists regard the basic cosmic story as being settled.

The Cyclic Universe Model:

In this context, a new paradigm has been recently proposed by Paul Steinhardt (Princeton) and Neil Turok (Cambridge) -- the cyclic universe -- that turns the conventional picture topsy-turvy. In this picture:

• space and time exist forever
• the big bang is not the beginning of time; rather, it is a bridge to a pre-existing contracting era
• the Universe undergoes an endless sequence of cycles in which it contracts in a big crunch and re-emerges in an expanding big bang, with trillions of years of evolution in between
• the temperature and density of the universe do not become infinite at any point in the cycle; indeed, they never exceed a finite bound (about a trillion trillion degrees)
• no inflation has taken place since the big bang; the current homogeneity and flatness were created by events that occurred before the most recent big bang
• the seeds for galaxy formation were created by instabilities arising as the Universe was collapsing towards a big crunch, prior to our big bang

The prospects for an alternative cosmology that is so different from the well-established convention would seem extremely dim. Yet, the cyclic model recoups all of the successful predictions of the big bang/inflationary theory and has sufficient additional predictive power to address many questions which the big bang/inflationary model does not address at all:

• What occurred at the initial singularity?
• What is the ultimate fate of the Universe?
• What is the role of dark energy and the recently observed cosmic acceleration?
• Does time, and the arrow of time, exist before the big bang? or after the big crunch?

In the new paradigm, each cycle proceeds through a period of radiation and matter domination consistent with standard cosmology, producing the observed primordial abundance of elements, the cosmic microwave background, the expansion of galaxies, etc. For the next trillion years or more, the Universe undergoes a period of slow cosmic acceleration (as detected in recent observations1), which ultimately empties the Universe of all of the entropy and black holes produced in the preceding cycle and triggers the events that lead to contraction and a big crunch. Note that dark energy is not simply added on -- it plays an essential role. The transition from big crunch to big bang automatically replenishes the Universe by creating new matter and radiation. Gravity and the transition from big crunch to big bang keep the cycles going forever. In fact, as will be discussed, the cyclic behavior is a strong attractor. That is, even if the Universe were disrupted from its periodic behavior, it would rapidly reconverge to the cyclic solution.

Superstring Theory and the Cyclic Universe:

The linchpin to the new paradigm is the transition from big crunch to big bang. The transition was thought to be an impossible passage in which the laws of physics blow up. However, recent developments in superstring theory suggest that the cosmic singularity is otherwise. Superstring theory relies on the idea that the Universe contains nine or ten spatial dimensions, depending on the formulation, all but three of which are curled up in a compact manifold of microscopic size. In this framework, the big bang and big crunch may be an illusion. Expressed in the usual variables of general relativity, it may appear that our usual space and time are disappearing. However, viewed with the proper variables, our usual space dimensions actually remain infinite and time runs continuously. The transition from big crunch to big bang is due, instead, to the collapse, bounce and re-expansion of one of the extra dimensions. For example, in a variant known as M theory:

• the Universe consists of two branes (surfaces; short for membranes) bounding an extra dimension, and the singularity corresponds to a collision and bounce of the two branes
• the temperature and density of ordinary radiation and matter remain finite at the bounce, and particles move continuously in a natural and intuitive way

New Cosmological Possibilities:

If superstring theory is proven to dispel the myth that the big bang is the beginning of time, then it opens up new possibilities for the cosmological history of the Universe. The "ekpyrotic model” has recently been proposed by Khoury, Ovrut, Steinhardt and Turok as one new possibility based on the idea of making a universe from a single collapse of the extra dimension. The cyclic model builds on lessons learned from the ekpyrotic example to produce a picture with remarkable predictive and explanatory power.

Ref. http://www.physics.princeton.edu/www/jh/research/steinhardt_paul.html/jh/research/steinhardt_paul.html

What is Time?

Unlike Matter, Energy and Space, Time is not an independent entity. It is merely a concept that emerges out of the status of evolution of any system including the universe as a whole. If there are no changes in the state of a system in any form whatsoever, the concept of Time is bound to lose its meaning altogether.

In nature, we find systems evolving spontaneously and we characterize their evolution by an abstract parameter called Time. Keeping pace with such self-induced evolutionary manifestations, this parameter runs without stop, while the concept of “present” remains eternally frozen. The measure of Time is nothing but the coordinate of this ever-running “present”. Every instant that elapses, the present moves a bit ahead, engulfs the future and merges with the past. And in course of such evolution, every system passes through a definite sequence of states. The connecting thread, being apparently ensured by causal relations, leads to the apparent flow of Time in a particular direction, namely from the past to the future.

Discontinuous Matter

Each time we have extended our observations to smaller length scales and higher energies, we have discovered new layers of structure. At the beginning of the century, the discovery of Brownian motion with a typical energy particle of 3 X 10 ^-2 eV showed that matter is not continuous, but is made up of atoms. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that these supposedly indivisible atoms are made up of electrons revolving around a nucleus with energies of the order of a few electron volts. The nucleus, in turn, was found to be composed of so-called elementary particles, protons and neutrons, held together by nuclear bonds of the order of 10^6 eV. The latest episode in this story is the discovery that the proton and electron are made up of quarks held together by bonds of the order of 10^9 eV.

Our past experience might suggest that there is an infinite sequence of layers of structure at higher and higher energies. However, it seems that gravity should provide a limit, but only at the very short length scale of 10^-33 cm or the very high energy of 10^28 eV. On length scales shorter than this, one would expect that space-time would cease to behave like a smooth continuum and it would acquire a foam-like structure because of quantum fluctuations of gravitational field.

There is a very large unexplored region between our present experimental limit of about 10^10 eV and the gravitational cut-off at 10^28 eV.