I know a little about a lot of things and a lot about a few things but I know less about some things than I used to think I did. The more I learn the less I know. So, does that mean things get simpler? Not hardly. One thing I have learned the hard way several times is that I don’t know enough about hardly anything to take sides.
Religions postulate a Creator up above somewhere that manifests reality out of nothingness. Scientists postulate a Big Bang that does the same thing. Both ideas are the result of learned men devoting lifetimes to thinking about how all of this got here. Both ideas claim to tell us how it all happened. Both ideas are pretty far out. Some people believe in both, well, maybe not believe in, but maybe set aside parts of one when thinking about the other. The Creator is mysterious and all powerful, the beginning and total source of everything, ditto the Big Bang. The Creator has helpmates, Angels and Archangels and other spooky beings. The Big Bang has Protons and Photons and other spooky beings. Religions don’t talk about before the beginning, ditto the Big Bang. Truth being anything someone believes in, both are true, but is either idea factual?
The Creator idea is defended with circular logic. You can’t prove it isn’t factual, therefore, it is. Large numbers of believers may be numerically factual, but prove only that the idea is a common belief. Hearsay mythology is presented as fact. The Big Bang seems to be a logical conclusion from a great many observed and verifiable facts.
Astronomers find all observable objects in the universe are receding away from us at speeds increasing with distance. If you reverse the path of the objects they will converge at a single point the scientists call the “singularity“. This seems to be true wherever the observer is on the planet and wherever the planet is in the galaxy or the galaxy in the universe. Therefore, the singularity seems to be located in the brain of the observer, ditto the Creator idea. We are told that the singularity included everywhere, and, the Big Bang didn’t happen in a physical location.
As the universe seems to be getting bigger it also seems to be cooling off. If you reverse the cooling you get infinite heat at the singularity. Everything from nothing with a Big Bang or everything from a contracting previous universe with a Big Bounce, all the factual evidence seems to confirm that something like that happened way back there.
The scientific trail from the computer keyboard under my fingers to the singularity is pretty convincing. If you give the Creator credit for the Big Bang all you’re doing is adding another label to the unknown.
The idea of singularity is a mathematical requirement. Equations must balance. Numbers don’t lie, but numbers can mislead and confuse. The original singularity is predicted by theories, observations, and mathematics. No one questions the observations or the mathematics, but there are other theories that don’t require the singularity and Big Bang as a conclusion. The idea of original singularity and Big Bang may be debated by some, but the mathematical necessity of the singularity is common in our present universe.
The numbers tell us that when a very massive star is running out of fuel the outward pressure from fusion doesn’t balance the gravity from the core and the star begins to contract. As the core becomes denser gravitational collapse becomes unstoppable. All of the matter is compressed to an infinitesimal point until it doesn’t exist anymore, a singularity. The gravity is so great that nothing can escape and the star becomes a Black Hole. As the matter enters the singularity it is said to be crushed to a single point, no more elements, no more sub atomic particles. But, if the particles carrying mass are annihilated, so is gravity. Can gravity exist without mass? If all the matter in the star is condensed to the singularity does the black hole disappear? The singularity is said to be shielded from view by an “event horizon” where “gravity becomes so great that even photons cannot escape“ . Photons have no mass so they can’t be subjects of gravity. They always travel in a straight line. I guess what they mean is that gravity becomes so great that spacetime becomes so distorted that the photons become trapped traveling in a straight line on their crushed piece of reality.
No use looking for a singularity, the event horizon at the black hole hides it. But what if there is one without a black hole, a naked singularity? You can’t see a dimensionless point, so it’s still hidden. What could you see? Scientist hope to see events clarifying the process. The theory of General Relativity predicts the singularity but they say it doesn’t apply there. But what if it only changes to fit the circumstances? Energy equals Mass times Constant squared until it creates the singularity, then, no more mass, no more space. The constant that is squared is usually said to be the speed of photons. Speed is distance in time, but, no more distance at the singularity, so only photons and time are left, is the energy equal to photons squared? All of the components of mass can jump from particle to photon in much less violent conditions than the singularity, so why not there? Lots and lots of photons is lots and lots of energy in no space in this universe. That sounds like a big bang in another universe to me.
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