Black Holes In A Brief History by Niraj Pant (knowledgeable books to read TXT) đ
- Author: Niraj Pant
Book online «Black Holes In A Brief History by Niraj Pant (knowledgeable books to read TXT) đ». Author Niraj Pant
Stephen Hawingâs A Brief History of Time recounts that in 1929, Edwin Hubble made the
observation that wherever you look, galaxies are moving rapidly away from us, just as the
Russian physicist, Alexander Friedmann had predicted they were. Friedman took Einsteinâs then
recent theory of relativity more at face value, it seems, than even Einstein did, and accurately
described our universe as expanding evenly in every direction.
Hawking notes that, âHubbleâs observation suggests that there was a time, called the big bang,
when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense.â1
backward from a universe that is expanding in every direction, one arrives at a starting place
where it was all together before it began to expand. Conceptualize it like this: reverse an air
pump and suck the air out of a basketball and see the basketball collapse. Think of the big bang
in the same way, the universe is sucked in upon itself until gravity makes it, in Hawkingâs words,
âinfinitesimally small, infinitely dense.â If one comes upon a pool table with balls exploding
from the middle of it, he doesnât have to be familiar with pool, which I am not, to know that the
balls were originally all together in the middle and something burst them apart.
We may assume the same thing about our expanding universeâprobably it originally was tiny
and dense. Good that it began to expand, otherwise time and space would not exist and we would
not exist. But how that original spot came into existence before time and space; what it was
before time and space; and why it deployed into time and space is out of reach for anything but
speculation. Hawking says of the big bang:
At that time...the density of the universe and the curvature of space-time would have been
infinite. Because mathematics cannot really handle infinite numbers, this means that the
general theory of relativity predicts that there is a point in the universe where the theory
itself breaks down. In fact, all our theories of science are formulated on the assumption
that space-time is smooth and nearly flat, so they break down at the big bang singularity2
This singularity, this maybe-something-maybe-nothing, as a foothold, is a quandary for
cosmologists struggling to construct a ladder to the heavensâa unified theory of everything that
tells us what the universe is and perhaps what it was before time and space and why it became
the universe in time and space. Hawking says that in order to predict how the universe should
have started off, one needs laws that hold at the beginning of time. He and Roger Penrose proved
that if the classic theory of relativity is used as the model for how the universe started off, one
arrives at a point of infinite density and infinite curvature of space-time where all the known
laws of science break downâa singularity. But, by the use of quantum mechanics, Hawking says
that one may arrive at a model of how the universe started off and avoid the singularity. His own
personal model of how the universe started out has remained unproven since the nineteen-
eighties, but were it worked out, it is doubtful that it would tell us how the universe started off.
And no theory can tell us why.
Quantum mechanics, hard at work in the minutia all these years, is short sighted. It has a good
vision of the tiny, but canât see into the distance far enough to make out where the pieces go
when they explode. The general theory of relativity, however, is far sighted. It describes the big
picture but canât make out the nitty-gritty. The theories need to work together if they are to solve
the âsmallâ that began at the big bang and became the âlargeâ that is the present universe. As of
now they are involved in a family quarrel and are not compatible. Hawking believes that he can
devise a theory that will resolve their disagreement, but such a theory must meet his criteria for
what a good theory is:
In order to talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss questions as to whether it
has a beginning or an end, you have to be clear about what a scientific theory is. I shall
take the simple minded view that a theory is just a model of the universe, or a restricted
part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observation that we
make. It exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality (whatever that might
mean (his parenthesis)). A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must
accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains
only a few arbitrary elements and it must make definite predictions about the results of
future observations3
I lack the expertise to understand the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics. Given a lifetime
to study, I would lack the intellect to understand them. I must rely on scientists to tell me if and
when they resolve the differences between the general theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics. If these difficulties are resolved, Stephen Hawking probably will resolve them. If
someone else does, he has the intellect to understand how they did it. If Stephen Hawking says
the problems are resolved, I trust him to believe that they are. He knows all the theories out
there. Thus far Stephen has said nary a word about a resolution of the difficulties between
quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity.
He does say, âWe donât yet have a complete and consistent unified theory that combines
quantum mechanics and gravity. But we are fairly certain of some features that such a unified
theory should have.â For clarity and brevity, we will avoid an explanation and description of
these features and just mention that they are Feynmanâs sum over histories and Einsteinâs idea
that the gravitational field is represented by curved space-time. All attempts to combine the
general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics have, to this day, failed. Should they have
succeeded, here is what Hawking assumes will follow:
When we apply Feynmanâs sum over histories to Einsteinâs view of gravity, the analogue
of the history of a particle is now a complete curved space-time that represents the history
of the whole universe.4
He concludes on the following page:
There would be no singularities at which the laws of science break down and no edge of
space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the
boundary conditions for space-time. One could say: âThe boundary conditions of the
universe is that it has no boundary.â The universe would be completely self-contained and
not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would
just BE.5
BE what? Remember, this small dense particle is posited as existing before the big bang,
therefore before the existence of time and space and matter. Absent time, space and matter, there
are no particles to BE, and therefore no âlarge class of observationsâ upon which Hawking can
construct a model that makes âdefinite predictions about the results of future observations.â
Without those observations from which future observations can be made, Hawkingâs theory fails
as a good scientific theory.
Hawking posits this infinitesimally small, infinitely dense particle from whence all other
particles â an infinite number of them perhaps â derived, as an analogue of the universe, an
analogy. But nowhere does his tiny ball stop being a tiny ball and become an analogy. He even
gives physical properties to this tiny ball:
Using the no boundary condition, we find that the universe must in fact have started off
with just the minimum possible nonuniformity allowed by the uncertainty principle...
This would lead to the formation of galaxies, stars , and eventually even insignificant
creatures like ourselves.6
Later in this book we shall see how fine tuned this minimum nonuniformity had to be in the first
billionth of a second into the big bang for there ever to be a universe like the one we experience,
but that is not the point of this chapter. Nor is âInsignificant creatures like ourselves.â Weâll
disregard the snub for now, noting only that intelligence is the most marvelous thing in creation,
and Hawkingâs theory canât be a theory that explains everything if it dismisses intelligence as
insignificant.
The point here is that Hawking is describing an analogy as if it were not an analogy at all, but a
thing the analogy was supposed to be like. Given such detailed characteristics of the ball, this is
no analogy, this is what Hawking thinks that infinitely tiny ball really was.
Granting that the non-uniformity necessarily existed in the infinitely small, infinitely dense
analogue of a universe and the analogue was ready to explode into the big bang, what was this
analogue? Stephen Hawking describes it as âfinite in size but (does) not have any boundary or
edge.â Of course it is a contradiction to describe something as âinfinitesimally smallâ and
âfiniteâ in size. It canât be both infinitely small and finitely small at the same time. This is not to
quibble, it is only to ask what Hawking means.
Disregarding this seeming contradiction, we blow up this small particle to see what it looks like:
Itâs a sphere, a basketball. That is, an immortal ant could walk forever around a basketball and
come to no boundary or singularity--he would not fall off. This is the example that Hawking
gives of his infinitely small, infinitely dense ball, but instead of a basketball, he describes it as
being like the earth, which he says he traveled round without ever having run into a singularity or
an edge. One cannot conclude from such an analogy that the earth is infinite. I know personally
that basketballs are not, and they fit the same analogy.
Moreover, until this âinfinitesimally small, infinitely denseâ ball explodes, it does not exist, the
universe does not exist, space and time or space-time does not exist (a note here: âexplodeâ is
inaccurate if one is made to think of bombs and firecrackers. Even though the big bangâs first
three second enlargement makes a detonation of TNT look as if it were in slow motion, its
deployment was near perfect in symmetry). Obviously the ball has not become the universe at
this point, has not deployed in the big bang. The universe that we know exists only in time and
spaceâit is time and space! But time and space did not come to exist until after the big bang, and
so the universe did not come to exist until after the big bang. Until the big bang, nothing exists.
To talk about any configuration that fits Hawkingâs description of âfinite in extent...(with no)
boundary or edge,â as if it existed before time and space, is to talk about it as if it existed before
existence, which makes as much sense as to say that because an immortal bug could crawl
around a basketball for eternity, basketballs are infinite.
It is unimportant what precisely the configuration was that Hawking uses the shape of the world
as an analogy of, but it is of utmost importance that it had a configuration. Things have
configuration, non-things donât. When Hawking talks about that infinitely small, dense particle,
he is talking about something rather than nothing. It makes no sense for an analogue to be
analogous of nothing; no sense for a theory to be a theory about nothing. Keep in mind the
criteria Stephen Hawking says a good theory must conform to: It must describe a few arbitrary
elements, and from those observations, make predictions. âInfinitesimally small, infinitely
denseâ describes something that exists. There was a time, he says, when all the galaxies were
together at the same place. What place did they exist in before space; what time before time?
We laymen are not limited by the limits that Hawking places on himself. His science canât
describe something beyond time and space, and time and space did not exist beyond fourteen
billion years ago. His mathematics meets with a paradox, and mathematics does not deal well
with paradoxes.
But we laymen know how to handle paradoxes without resorting to mathematics. We simply
point to what we see must have happened in reality, and draw logical conclusions. Mathematics
is an indispensable tool, but it canât explain how something came from nothing or describe how
something can exist forever. Hawking canât describe this infinitely small dense ball as existing
forever, because forever began fourteen billion years ago for Hawkingâs science.
If we are not careful, Hawking will roll that particle into an infinitesimally small, infinitely dense
ball and sneak it by us without
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