Ryan's Ramblings

Mmmmm, Donuts

The universe as we know it has an end, little debate exsists about that. The means to this end, however, is not as certain.

There are proponents of an oscilating universe which would state that while the universe is expanding right now, one day that expansion will stop, and all the matter will collide back together into a single lump. This super massive lump would then explode out again, repeating the process of the big bang. While that certainly doesn’t address the more fundimental aspect of what created us all in the first place, it certainly puts a tiddy explination of why our universe was once a small little dot. Previously it was a universe, maybe even it was just like ours. But after billions of years, it collapsed upon itself, just as ours will fall back in on itself eventually.
Problems with this theory is there is not enough matter in this universe and gravity is not strong enough. To make these calculations work, we need more then twice the matter we can account for in this universe. Thus begins the theory of dark matter, which we have no real proof other then interpreted observation. If there is dark matter, and there is enough of it, there should be enough substance in this universe to stop the expansion of everything and start pulling it back together.
This is all starting to sound rather improbable. I can’t imagine forces so great that it stops the motion of a galaxy dead in it’s tracks and starts pulling it backward. The the thought of everything shooting out, then just pulling back to that same center would be like a firework exloading, then crushing back in on itself. The only way for that to happen is for some outside force to push it back together, and we have seen no evidence of this in the observable universe.

So the next conclusion it that the big bang was a singularity. Perhaps a collision of multi-dimentional forces coverging into our universe creating a spark. This injection of matter into the void if space expaded rapidly, and will continue to expand. There might be some other big bangs, at some other part of space. Perhaps there were bangs before our bang too that have expanded out of view. We are destined to endlessly drift apart in eternal expansions.

While that may be the truth, there is a certain bleakness to a universe spreading itself out as all solar fuel is slowely burned and all atoms slowing down to no vibration. Further more, there is no descernable evidence of any other bangs, or past universes. Surely in the billions of years since our act if creation there should have been another one nearby or an older universe we can study. Yet every particle in this universe has the same birthday. It is possible that other acts of creation are occuring, but in different dimentions, so we can’t see or measure them. Yet, there is no way to describe the plethora of different creation events without invoking the term multi-verse, something that sounds like an adolesent fantasy game more then a reputable scientific theory.

So in one theory, our univese expands and then contracts in an endless cycle of creation then distruction. This solves the what caused the big bang problem, but doesn’t address the fact that there is not enough energy available to stop the expansion. Another theory suggest that we will drift apart forever, but gives no clues on how this super dense dot of everything came into out universe.

I wonder if we are trying to give a 3 dimentional solution to multi-dimentional problem. Pehaps our entire universe is curved around a fourth physical dimention, and if we ininately travel in a single direction, we will wind up back at the start.