Orion over Arredondo trailer park, Gainesville, Florida.
WARNING: Nerd Alert! I am about to expound on a pet interest:. the origin of the universe, life and time itself. As this is outside of my expertise (I am in no way a mathematician or a physicist) I apologize in advance for any mistakes.
I recently started reading a book by Thomas Hertog entitled On the Origin of Time about his work with Steven Hawking, which has raised a number of interesting questions for me. I already had become suspicious of String Theory (which implies that matter at some level is formed of strings that are so infinitesimally small we cannot see them) after reading The Trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin, where he argues that because String Theory is not currently testable and cannot be proven or disproven, it is sidelining true progress in modern physics. Besides String theory, the other cosmological ideas that do not make sense to me are: The Strong Anthropic Principle (Which implies that the universe has to allow the development of human-like intelligence), the Multiverse (Which postulates the existence of unlimited universes with different physical laws) and the Steady State Universe (Postulating that the universe has no beginning or end.) I say that, with the caveat that I am not a theoretical physicist, and what follows is my understanding of these issues based on my background as a scientist and my close reading of books on these topics.
That said, I am totally committed to at least reasonably testable theories, such as those of Newton, Kepler, Einstein and Darwin, and dislike untestable speculation that doesn’t even rise to the level of a hypothesis (which by definition, has to be falsifiable, i.e. it has to be able to be subjected to tests that could prove it false in the Popperian sense - as proposed by Karl Popper, the British philosopher of science.) One tests a hypothesis. A theory is a hypothesis that has been tested, has past some tests, and is thus accepted to a degree, but is still open to more testing, especially if new data is found that may contradict it.
The solution to the origin of time, as envisioned by Hawking and Hertog, depends on a new insight on the Big Bang, the basic idea of which was initially suggested by Georges Lemaître and rejected by Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington, but accepted and expanded on by George Gamow, who developed the “hot Big Bang” theory. This model was basically confirmed by the discovery of the cosmic background radiation by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965. That there was an actual beginning to the universe was a bitter pill for both Einstein and Eddington because it seemed to be too close to a creation story, but as Hertog points out, the universe does what it wants, unimpressed with our beautiful stories either way. Fred Hoyle was even more bitter about Lemaître’s ideas and stuck to the concept of a steady state universe to the end. I heard Hoyle speak once at the University of Arizona, but I got bored with his presentation and walked out on it (the only time I’ve ever done that!). The problem with the steady state universe is that there is little to zero evidence that it is real, whereas Vesto Slipher at Lowell Observatory showed that there was solid evidence instead for an expanding universe and this was confirmed by Edwin Hubble of Mount Wilson Observatory. This evidence — receding galaxies that were traveling faster away from us (or any other point in the universe) the further they were from us (or any point.) The only exceptions are in the local cluster, where the Andromeda Galaxy is moving toward our Milky Way Galaxy and will eventually collide with it.
Back when I was observing the night sky with my friend Dick as a teenager, I tried to point out to him that if you made a diagram of the universe as we see it, the further you go back in time the more area you cover and so a representation of that through time would be a cone, with the earth (or any point in the universe) at its apex. He thought the idea very strange and, laughable, and indeed it is, but I cannot see any way out of a cone-like construction for the concept. Obviously the cone is not real, but it is, with some modification, the best representation of our situation, from our vantage point, keeping in mind that it is limited by the fact that we are actually looking backward in time. On the other hand the universe is expanding so extrapolating from the Big Bang should put us at a point on a wide cone base with the apex at the start of the universe (i.e. the Big Bang).
One of the main ideas of Hawking and Hertog’s work is that time may itself be a construct of the Big Bang and the question, “What was there before the Big Bang” may be meaningless because there was no time before. Can we even imagine a time when there was no time, matter or energy? The answer to this is not available at present, but we are also constricted in our attempts to understand the universe by several problems. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle indicates that there are limits to how precisely certain pairs of physical properties can be known at the same time. We cannot know, for example, both the position and speed of a particle at the same time. In addition, entanglement, which involves the connection of two photons or electrons that once entangled will be essentially identical in their actions even if removed from each other over light years of space means that there are forces of which we don’t have any understanding. As he studied them Hawking became more and more sceptical of the multiverse, strong Anthropic Principle and the associated String Theory, as they have never fit with a Popperian falsifiable hypothesis. In other words, none of this can be tested in any normal sense and is thus not scientific concepts at all, but mere speculation. The Steady State Theory had obviously failed completely and seemed to fit nowhere anyway, but at least it was falsifiable. All the evidence points to an expanding universe. But, as Hawking pointed out, perhaps there was really no original singularity and thus not an exact beginning that we can quantify. Perhaps the Universe looks purposeful accidentally and we simply will never be able to construct a model that fits its origin exactly.
When you think of it, time is a very strange dimension. It only goes in one direction, at least in our universe. If you would be able to travel in time, you would produce a paradox that might alter history and would thus be very dangerous. However, time travel, transporters, faster than light drives and food replicators (we have developed 3D printers, but as far as I know they cannot produce a cup of Earl Gray tea yet- sorry Captain Picard!) are the life’s blood of science fiction and while I doubt that they will ever be perfected, so much has altered in my lifetime that I can’t say that they are totally impossible. By the same token, it is possible that String Theory, the Multiverse and the Strong Anthropic Principle may be resurrected, but for the present they are at best speculation. Still, never say never is probably a wise choice.
One part of the book that surprised me was a chapter which started with the mentioning of Hannah Arendt. I usually don’t think of her in regard to cosmology, but apparently she wrote a critique of science in an essay, The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man, in 1963. She said that modern science and the technology it engendered had separated humans from the world, robbing them of their connection to their humanity. Hertog argues that Hawking’s theory answers Arendt’s criticism. Hawking’s thought is that there was indeed a beginning to time and that there is also no final ultimate theory that unifies everything under one roof. In his view cosmology is evolutionary in the Darwinian sense, with stars, galaxies and life becoming more and more complex until you have humans, which are not the pinnacle of creation, but one expression of it.
The truth is that we are, amazingly, living in a universe apparently both accidental and wonderous, as near as we can tell. As I see it, we jumped up savannah apes should embrace the time we have on this remarkable planet, stop worrying which gods we should worship (this should be up to the individual, not the government anyway), at the same time avoiding the politics of self-centered individualism, and simply try to be the best version of our imperfect selves, while intending to leave the world a little better place than when we entered it. Aspiring to greater heights of domination is both dangerous to ourselves and others, and destructive to our home planet, which is, after all, a very microscopic part of the universe, but very important to us. Leadership on our dust mote implies responsibility, not license. Now if we can only get people to agree on that! The consequences of ignoring our best cooperative human nature may in the end be dire, as the destruction of our home world prevents us from ever reaching very far into the cosmos, even if we could do so. Perhaps “advanced” life forms, such as ourselves, tend to destroy themselves and are thus not easily observable.
This essay was not easy to write and I am probably reasoning above my intellectual capabilities, but I find Hertog’s book to be intriguing and perhaps vital to a new understanding of the universe and our place in it. If Hawking is right, we should be resigned to the fact that because of our very existence, we actually alter what we are observing at a quantum level and can thus never know total objective reality.
References:
Hertog, Thomas, 2023. On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory. Bantam Books, New York.
Smolin, Lee, 2007. The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Mariner Books, Boston.
![Galaxy IC 5332 was observed as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, a large project that includes observations from several space- and ground-based telescopes of many galaxies to help researchers study all phases of the star formation cycle, from the formation of stars within dusty gas clouds to the energy released in the process that creates the intricate structures revealed by Webb’s new images. IC 5332 is 30 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. Learn more about what can be seen in this vast collection of Webb images here. [Image description: Webb’s image of IC 5332 shows a densely populated face-on spiral galaxy anchored by a central region that has a light blue haze. Spine-like spiral orange arms extend to the edges and rotate clockwise.]](https://cdn.prod.dailykos.com/images/1268882/large/IC_5332_pillars.jpg?1706626199 "Galaxy IC 5332 was observed as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, a large project that includes observations from several space- and ground-based telescopes of many galaxies to help researchers study all phases of the star formation cycle, from the formation of stars within dusty gas clouds to the energy released in the process that creates the intricate structures revealed by Webb’s new images. IC 5332 is 30 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. Learn more about what can be seen in this vast collection of Webb images here. [Image description: Webb’s image of IC 5332 shows a densely populated face-on spiral galaxy anchored by a central region that has a light blue haze. Spine-like spiral orange arms extend to the edges and rotate clockwise.]")