Before the Big Bang

Saturday 13th October

Two TV programmes in a row, you must think all I do is watch TV.  Not quite true, but I do love Horizon, especially when it is about Cosmology and the sort of Astro-Physics where mind-bending ideas are presented as completely plausible.  Personally while rejecting any sort of ‘Creator’ of the Universe religious claptrap, I have always been dissatisfied by ‘Big Bang’ theory.  How could all of the Universe, in its almost incomprehensible vastness have once been infinitesimally minute almost to the point of nothingness and then suddenly exploded and over 13.7 billion years have expanded to this size?   But even more astounding was the claim that before Big Bang there was nothing; that nothing existed at all.  No matter, no dimensions no laws of Physics and no time – and then for whatever unexplained reason Big Bang happened.

It is almost beyond question that Big Bang or something like it happened, though some physicists are even questioning this elegant theory upon which almost everything else rests.  The programme examined various ideas for what may have existed before Big Bang from the idea that we are but one of ’10 to the power of 7’ (an enormous number) Universes in existence, to their being about 10 different dimensions and when two of these touched the Universe was created, to string theory where observed distortions to the accepted theory such as some bits of the Universe travelling in the wrong direction, that is contracting rather than expanding are due to one of three possible other Universe coming too close to ours.

The two ideas I like best, though who knows what the truth will end up becoming, are that the universe is constantly expanding and contracting and when it gets too big and all matter is protons it all falls back on itself and then re-Big Bangs, and the other idea that our universe was created from a vast black hole in another Universe we can no longer see.

The biggest questions in the Universe are where did all this stuff come from, and how did it happen like this?  Of course scientists are very good at coming up with answers to how, when and where but the biggest unknown, which they struggle with, is WHY?

The galaxy Messier 100, or M100, shows its swirling spiral in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The arcing spiral arms of dust and gas that harbor star forming regions glow vividly when seen in the infrared.