The Nature of the Universe

I was just reading an article over at the NPR website,  about the origins of the universe.  Well, scanning it.  After I read “The expansion is measured by studying light (visible and in other wavelengths, such as infrared and radio) emitted by distant galaxies. This light is ‘stretched,’ or

In the beginning....

Doppler shifted, into longer wavelengths like the folds of a pair of bellows. The amount of stretching indicates the recession velocity of the galaxies,” my eyes kind of lost focus and my brain went a little bit numb.

The paradox is fascinating, though.  Because everything has to have a beginning, and nothing can be created from nothing, there had to be something pre-universe, because things DO exist.  We can start with DesCartes, cogito ergo sum, I can feel the keys beneath my fingers, therefore I know that both my fingers and the keyboard exist.

Logically, they shouldn’t.  Logically, non-existence, never ending nothingness expanding forever in space and time with no one there to perceive it, should be the state of things but it’s obviously  not and I’m real happy about that.

But, I’ve got a theory.  I’ve always got a theory.

Let’s start with time.  Whatever else it is (light currents moving through space or whatever), it is also a measurement.  Our hearts beat x number of times in a day, a hummingbird’s wings flap x number of times per second, Julius Caesar lived 2,000 years ago, dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago, etc…The big bang happened some 13.7 billion years ago and, whether something happened a billion years before that or there was just empty, matter free space stretching on forever, the billion years was still a billion years.

So, time is infinite…eternal.  Space is infinite as well.  Even if the universe was created by a big bang and all of the matter and energy in the universe was contained in a big ball and is now moving outward, as they say, so the matter in the universe is finite, then the question is raised – what is beyond that?  Because space, like time, doesn’t end just because the universe does.  Whatever else space is, it is the way we measure distance.  And somewhere across all that great emptiness, gazillions of “light years” (for we are talking about a place where there is no light) away, another big bang might be happening.  There are probably more universes than there are galaxies, just as there are more galaxies than there are stars in this one.

Part 3 of my theory has to do with the laws of physics.  As Scotty on Star Trek was fond of saying, ye cannae change them.  Perhaps that’s because, like time and space, they do not need any reference points.  Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade because that is the temperature that water boils at.  An object in motion remains in motion because that is just what they do.  Even if there were no water, even if there were no objects, those laws would still be laws because that’s just the way the universe works.

Time, Space and the Laws of Physics.  Now we come to the crazy theory part.  What if matter and energy are as eternal and naturally a part of things as time, space and the laws of physics.  What if this saying that “Everything has to have a beginning” is just bullshit and some things just ARE.  And by some things, I guess I mean all things, just in a constantly changing state.

It’s a mind-boggling thought but, then again, so are all the other theories.