16 Dec 2005 @ 13:22, by Shreepal Singh
Let's go further to find what we know and have an inkling of what lays ahead beyond our frontiers of knowledge.
Let us look at our universe. The most distant objects in universe we know are more than 13 billion light years away from Earth, that is, light take~ 13 billion years to reach them moving with its speed of about 300,000 kilometres per second. It is a huge distance. Astronomers have found that all galaxies, comprising stars and their associated orbiting planets, are running away from one another. This makes us to come to the conclusion that at some point of time in past they all were close together. How much close together were they? Physicists tell us that at the initial stage they all were converged on a single point in the form of a superdense clump of matter, a condition of matter that is named Black Hole. At that stage, this superdense clumped matter was contained within narrow radius. This combined matter of the whole universe, pulled by its own gravity, further squeezed into a very small space that is determined by the scientific principle known as the Chandrashekhar Limit. The mass of this matter produced a huge gravitational force that did not allow anything, not even light, to escape its surface, and hence it is named Black Hole. This collapsing of matter into itself under the force of its own gravity produced an internal pressure that tried to push Black Hole's matter outward. In this process, the first stage was when the gravitational force was more than the internal pressure, the second one was when both the forces became equal and balanced each other, and the third one was reached when the force of internal pressure exceeded the gravitational force. At that point there came a Big Bang exploding the massive clump. This happened in a split second, and with this our universe came into existence and its time began.
Since then, estimated by scientists to have taken place 15 billion years ago, clusters of chunks of matter, that we call galaxies of stars and planets, are rushing outward away from the centre of explosion. This is the model of expanding universe, which is familiarly explained as clusters of galaxies being dots on an expanding balloon.
Alexander Friedmann and Abbe Georges Lemaitre originally proposed this model of expanding universe in 1920s and George Gamow and colleagues developed its modern version in the 1940s. One of the current problems of Cosmogony being studied by scientists is the amount of matter in the universe. They have based their calculations on such things as the rate of the motion of galaxies and came to realise that there is some 90% more matter in the universe than can be seen. The matter that can be observed is termed as 'bright matter' and the other remaining 90% matter is termed as 'dark matter' by them. Whether or not this dark matter is of a kind different from the one of which our world is constituted, we do not know.
With the explosion of Big Bang, was the entire amount of matter contained in Black Hole was thrown out and set on an outward journey of expanding universe? Or was there some amount of matter still left, which, with the internal pressure now released and gone, was captured back by the left out remnants of the erstwhile Black Hole?
Let us come to our familiar model of expanding balloon with dots on its surface. In this balloon, there is an outward expansion of its surface, and of dots lying on this surface. If we observe these dots from the centre of the balloon, all of them are moving away not only from the centre but also from each other. If they go on expanding in this manner, they would be distancing forever from each other and be destined never to meet again. Suppose these dots are able to crawl towards each other on the surface of this expanding balloon (under the force of gravitational attraction) and, as they come cioser to each other, they rush to meet each other headlong with a velocity more than that of expansion. How would they look if observed from the centre of the balloon? To us they would still look running away from each other. And, how would they look if we change our location from the centre of the balloon to that of a dot and, while sitting inside it, observe the surrounding dots? Then, the nearby dots would be approaching us. However, in the case of a balloon we can change our position as we like, but in the case of universe we cannot do so. Obviously, the difference in results of our two observations has been caused by the change of our frame of reference.
Today, it is possible to conceive that Nature is an ocean of universal unifiedfield of fundamental energy wherein wave-particle structures are formed inside it as a result of some disturbance in its equilibrium state. This inside within the ocean is creation and this creation is self-contained world that may behave as the surface of a balloon. On the surface of this balloon, galaxies may seem running away from each other, if seen from somewhere in its centre and they may seem coming closer to each other, if seen from somewhere near the periphery of the balloon.
If such a thing exists there in the real Nature, how our universe would look like? Then, all the galaxies in universe, which are receding from each other from our point of view, would come together and meet at single point, though they would not descend back to the original point of Black Hole where Big Bang had occurred. Then, all the matter of universe coming together at some new point of space and time, a new Black Hole and new Big Bang would take place. Would it not look like planting a new seedling every time at a new place and time in universe, by the force that is? There is no repetition of anything here, the concept of eternity is raised to still higher level and freshness is imparted to the whole process.
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