The Big Bang Paradox.

The spectrums of the light from distant objects, stars within galaxies, are stretched and shifted towards the red end.  This occurs when an object is moving away from us.  Certainly, there is nothing to contradict this interpretation.  Further, the farther away the object the more red shifted its spectrum tends to be.  In fact, the speeds of recession producing these shifts are almost exactly directly proportional to the distances of the objects and this is true of objects in every direction.  Consequently, any observer at any point in the universe will see this same omni-directional recession of matter on the large scale.   

It appears then that, on the large scale, all the matter of the universe is spreading out and that effectively the universe itself is expanding uniformly in all directions.  The rate of this expansion with distance is the Hubble constant, after the astronomer who first discovered this relationship.  All the matter in the universe resembles nothing so much as the remnant of a gigantic explosion, the Big Bang.   

Obviously, it follows that in the past all the matter was closer together than it is now and that at some point in the past it was all very much closer.  Extrapolating this to the simplest scenario results in all the matter at some point in time being at the same place, a point of infinite density, the ultimate singularity.  This exploding mono-block set into motion the universe we now observe. 

There are several problems with this model of the origin of the universe.  From GR theory we know that nothing can escape from its Schwartzchild radius and an infinitely dense mass equal to the universe is most definitely well within its Schwartzchild radius.  In fact, simply rewinding the expanding model back beyond the point at which all the matter reaches the size of its event horizon under GR is plainly an absurdity and this is the very process that leads to hypothesis of an infinitely dense singularity that gives rise to the Big Bang theory     

Thermodynamic, information theory also sets a lower limit to space required for a given mass.  Not at all coincidently, this too corresponds to the on object the size of a black hole. 

So the very fundamental laws that allow us to reverse the timeline of the universe and predict the big bang also prevents it happening.  Therein lies the intrinsic paradox of the Big Bang.  Essentially, we cannot wind the picture back beyond the point were the universe is smaller than its Schwartzchild surface. 

There is also the intrinsic problem of an infinitely small, infinitely dense initial state of mass-energy.  Infinities are a mathematical convenience, the inverse of zero.  If there is one thing nature appears to abhor more than anything else it is infinities.  When they occur in our theories they have invariably meant we have made a fairly fundamental mistake or pushed a simplified mathematical model way beyond its valid bounds.

We will put this aside for the moment and look at what we know about the early universe.  Besides the red shifts of receding galaxies there is the microwave background. 

Microwave Background.

In the middle of the 20^th century scientists and engineers began building telescopes that could investigate more than the very narrow optical range of em spectrum.  When they started investigating the microwave range they came across a phenomenon that was initially very irritating and one that they did their utmost to eliminate.  Besides the usual point sources that were stars there was a background ‘noise’ from all directions the source of which was a mystery.  When, in the words of Holmes, they had eliminated the impossible they were left with the highly improbable result that this was a genuine signal.  But what could produce a signal from all directions?

The answer was that this is the remnant of the energy from the beginning of the universe.  Now in the beginning, the earliest time about which we have any observational evidence, the mass-energy confined to a very small volume of space.  From the basic laws of thermodynamics with all this energy confined to a small volume implies that it must have been very hot.  As the universe expanded it would naturally cool, until now when, with a few notable exceptions, the stars and the planets etcetera, it is at about three degrees above absolute zero (-268⁰ Celsius).

This energy has been stretched and thinned by the expanding universe until now it exists in the microwave range.  This irritating background noise provides us a picture of the earliest times of our universe.  Considerable effort has subsequently been invested in mapping the distribution of this microwave background radiation in increasing detail.  With the result that we now have a thermal map of the early universe, which periodically increases in resolution as our measuring techniques improve. 

One, highly significant, result of this is that the early universe was remarkably uniform, in that it was in almost perfect thermal equilibrium.  Now this is common when a system has had sufficient time to reach equilibrium, such as the interior of a star.  Naturally, this thermal map is of a universe that is already outside its Schwartzchild surface, an estimated a diameter of 3 x 10³⁰m; a fairly considerable size. 

Now the speed of light imposes a fundamental limitation to the rate at which equilibrium can be established.  For example, our galaxy is 100 million light years across, yet after over thirteen billion years it is still not in equilibrium.  How then can a universe at the moment of conception have had time to reach thermal equilibrium? 

The assumption is that the mass energy of the universe must have been in close thermal proximity up until a very short time, very much less than a second, before the time of the observed in the microwave background. 

Inflation theory is an attempt to account for both the initial thermal equilibrium and how the mass-energy of the universe escaped from within its own event horizon.  In essence, it selectively suspends the known laws of physics for a very brief period (of the order of 10^-37sec) at the beginning of time. Under inflation, the universe grew exponentially during this time, doubling in size in tiny fractions of a second unaffected by such trifling things as the limitation of the speed of light.  

Unfortunately, there is a problem with inflation, once its starts it should carry on and on and on.  Yet at just the right point it stopped and all laws of the universe we now know took over.  So a further modification was proposed, the universe underwent a phase transition, similar to that which occurs when water freezes.  Conveniently, this occurred when the universe was outside its Schwartzchild with the matter moving apart sufficiently swiftly not to halt under the action of mutual gravitational attraction and collapse back into a universal black hole; luckily for us and everything else.       

So inflation, a patch to make the big bang theory work, itself requires a patch to make it work.  This is somewhat reminiscent of Newtonian physics at the end of the nineteenth century when Michelson and Morley attempted to determine the earth’s absolute velocity relative to space by measuring the difference in the speed of light between beams sent in orthogonal directions.  It was believed that light travelled in some stationary medium and therefore the light beams would move at different velocities depending on the direction of absolute motion of the earth.  When all the beams travelled at the same speed, they tried accounting for it by assuming that space was filled with an insubstantial aether and that this was being carried along with the earth.  Unfortunately, this would have created a whole plethora of blatantly obvious visual effects, none of which had ever been observed.  Eventually, it was necessary to throw out the theory of an absolute space and time and replace it with Einstein’s Special Relativity one.   

There are actually several variations on the inflation theory.  This is hardly surprising since we are free to hypothesise any set of laws that start with an infinitely small and dense point and end with a universe that is outside its Schwartzchild surface in a form that corresponds with one that is in almost perfect equilibrium. 

There is also the matter of the selectivity, for while the known laws of time and space from SR and GR are conveniently suspended those of thermodynamics, also intimately entwined with the nature space-time, appear to remain unaffected.  In order that a state of thermal equilibrium could be established.  Additionally, if energy not restricted to the moving at the speed of light then thermal equilibrium will be attained instantaneously.  . 

There is an unconscious intrinsic assumption in the reasoning that leads to an infinitely small, infinitely dense origin for the universe.  There are alternative scenarios that can account for the present state of affairs and it might be worth exploring these before turning to theories that require selectively abandoning the very laws that led to the big bang theory

Now not all matter is hurtling away from all other matter.  For example, the atoms in our bodies are not moving away from one another.  Neither are we hurtling away from the earth, the earth hurtling away from the sun nor the sun from the galaxy of which it is a member.  Even the local galaxies are not moving away from ours.  Indeed, we are actually scheduled for a collision with our nearest neighbour the Andromeda galaxy.  Fortuitously for us, it will not happen for approximately four billion years time.  So we are spared any, albeit improbable, disastrous consequences.  . 

So it is only at the large scale of distant galaxies on a universal scale that this expansion in occurring.  There are errors associated with any measurement and those with distant objects are correspondingly large.  Motion perpendicular to our line of sight will also produce a red shift and we cannot distinguish how much of the observed red shift of distant galaxies is the result of a lateral rather than recessional motion relative to us.

Imagine you are standing into the middle of a wide road.  In the far distance two cars are hurtling in perfect straight lines away from you in opposite directions.  Where did they start from?  Unfortunately, you were not there at that time.  So did they start with their bumpers touching at the exact spot of where you are now standing or side by side?  The latter would actually give them a small lateral velocity relative to you.  Unfortunately, by the time you got there you would need incredibly sensitive equipment to be able to distinguish the tiny remaining lateral movement from the vastly predominant motion away from you. 

Now add a few billion more cars going in as many directions and try to sort out where everything was after 13.7 billion years.  That’s the problem facing scientists with the real universe. 

Even were it possible to make measurements with the most perfect measuring devices possible the Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle places a simultaneous limit on the accuracy with which you could determine both their position and velocity.  If that was not bad enough we have the added complication that the trajectory of each of these objects has been influenced by the gravitational distortions to space-time produced by every other object in the universe. 

From our measurements then, the best we can say is that at some distant time in the past everything was very much closer together than it is now and the universe was very much smaller. 

Paradoxes arise when some erroneous, commonly unconscious, assumption is made.  There no doubt that all matter, on the large scale, in the observable universe is moving apart and consequently, that in the past it was much closer together.  There is nothing in this evidence that says that the trajectories of everything intersected at a single point in space and time. 

Consider a grenade exploding in space.  All the fragments are moving away from each other.  Measuring the positions and velocities of a large number of these and plotting them backwards in time we would be able to conclude that they were once in very close proximity.  The simplest conclusion would be that they originated from an infinitely dense single point at a particular moment.  We know this is wrong, for we know that it was a grenade, a finite object with finite density.  The mistake is extrapolating the model backwards in time beyond the moment of the grenade exploded. 

It is the unconscious assumption that the matter in the universe can be extrapolated back in time to a single point that has given rise to the Big Bang Theory and all the Inflation theories.  There is nothing in our observations that supports this assumption. 

The universe certainly looks like the remnant of an explosion; the problem is determining the distribution of the original components of that explosion. In the case of the universe we do have a few other important facts besides it being relatively small, indeed close to its Schwartzchild limit, 13.7 billion years ago.  It was also very energetic, hot, and very uniform. 

Thermodynamics

Now these two conditions are usually not seen together.  The atoms of solid matter exist in a fixed lattice structure. They move relatively sluggishly.  This condition is highly ordered, very uniform and consequently in a state of relatively high entropy.  Heat it and its energy increases.  The individual atoms vibrate more and some of the uniformity is lost; the disorder, entropy, increases.  Heat it sufficiently and the atoms become sufficiently energetic to break the intermolecular bonds that hold them in the lattice and the matter becomes liquid.  The entropy has increased still further.  Continue heating it and eventually the atoms escape the surface tension between the molecules and the substance boils and evaporates into a gaseous form.  Here the molecules hurtle off in all directions in a very disordered state of very high entropy.