Looking to the sky

In awe of the strangeness of the Universe

Keck telescopes 1 and 2  Currently still the world's largest telescopes, each with an aperture of 10 meters (32.8 feet)--twice the diameter of Palomar (and 4 times the light collecting area).  You can see the framework of the telescope through the open slit.  For scale, there is a car just to the right of the left-most dome.  It is dwarfed by the telescopes.

 

I am standing on the Nysmyth deck of the first of the Keck Telescopes.  It is 1998 and we are commissioning the LWS (Long Wavelength Spectrometer), an imaging, long wavelength infrared spectrometer, built by myself and my colleague, Dr. Barbara Jones.  The dome slit is open.  The telescope is huge, dwarfing us mere mortals.  It is a monster, and ours to command.  The sky above the dome is clear, a perfect night.  With this telescope we can look to the edge of the Universe.  It is the most powerful optical / infrared telescope ever built!  We are uniquely blessed to have this opportunity.

  

Looking to the sky, what comes to mind?  First there is peace and inner awe of the majesty of all of creation.  Tears well up in your eyes and your heart jumps to your throat.  Then reflection starts.  Your previous awe is replaced by a new one, one that is even more powerful. It is awe of how alien the world is.  Day-to-day life fools you into thinking that the Universe is familiar, but it is not.  Human intuition is much too limited to grasp the world's possibilities.  Thinking about the origin of the Universe, we first confront the limitations of our experience.  Imagine an event so unlike anything we know in which all of the mass of the Universe is packed into a volume that is dwarfed by a grain of sand--the Big Bang.  All of matter and energy created in a flash.  From what was the Universe created?  It was created from nothing!  Is this science?  Yes, it is, as we shall see.  And then follows a horrific expansion.  The Universe expands 50 or so orders of magnitude in less than a blink of an eye.  And this Big Bang is not like any explosion we know.  It’s not like a stick of dynamite blowing up and throwing debris everywhere into an empty room, oh no!  That is because the Big Bang created the space (and time!) along with the matter and energy.  Before the Big Bang there was no space or time.  So asking what was around before the beginning is an improper question.  How do we know this?  The evidence is plainly evident from observations.  Everything is expanding away from us uniformly in every direction.  In a stick-of-dynamite-like explosion this could only be true if we were sitting in the dead center of the explosion.  This is highly unlikely.  Fortunately, the equations of General Relativity offer an explanation.  The Big Bang is not mass flying into a void, it is the space between the matter that is stretching and getting bigger.  It is as if the galaxies were the dots of a magic marker on the surface of a balloon, and space itself was the fabric of the balloon.  As the balloon is blown up, the balloon gets bigger (space expands) and the galaxies recede from each other.

 

But the Universe is stranger still.  We now have good evidence that there was much more matter in the Universe than we see today, but that most of this matter is gone, having expanded beyond the edge of our Universe.  It has long since receded beyond where the Universe is expanding away from us faster than the speed of light.  How much matter was there originally?  We do not know, but the evidence suggests that what is left in our Universe is a very tiny fraction.  This is astonishing.  We have a name for everything in existence, and that is the word “Universe”.  Now we know that there once was much, much more than everything we can see now or ever know.

There are many things about the Universe to upset the psyche.  When I was a boy I remember learning to my amazement that the sun was a common, run-of-the-mill star.  I knew, and would tell anyone that would listen, that the sun was 5 billion years old, and that it had another 5 billion years to live before it would swell up into a red giant, at which time the earth’s orbit would be inside the star, vaporizing the world and all of its creatures.  Now we know that before this will happen, the other massive galaxy in our local group of galaxies, Andromeda, will collide with the Milky Way, churning up the mass and orbits of stars in both galaxies, finally coalescing into an even bigger super-galaxy that will form from the ashes.

 

Is this strange enough yet?  Today, we also know that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.  So when all of the local group of galaxies coalesce into a final, massive super-galaxy 100 billion years from now, the Universe will have expanded so much that besides this super-galaxy the sky will be empty.  All of the multitudes of galaxies we see today filling the Universe will be gone.  The other billions and billions of galaxies will have expanded beyond the edge of the Universe and will be receding from us faster than the speed of light.  The newly formed super-galaxy will be alone.  But as far as we know the Universe’s expansion will not stop there.  Will it expand until it contains only a single star, only a single planet, only a single proton?  This may be so!  But then what happens when that single proton decays?  Yes, that is right; Grand Unified Field theories of subatomic particles suggest that protons decay in a time somewhat longer than 10³⁵ years (thats a 1 followed by 35 zeroes).  Will the Universe then be empty and stretching out forever to no purpose?

 

So what are we?  How did this strange place happen?  Do you want to accompany Alice down the rabbit hole?  Do you really want to know?  Well, physicists do not really know the full story yet, but at this point they would turn to string theory.  They would say that the Universe (all of it, not just what we can see now), might be a 10 or 11 dimensional hyper-surface that spontaneously sprang into being, embedded in a larger dimensional space.  In fact they would go on to say that in the Big Bang not all of the spatial dimensions got bigger.  It was only the 3 spatial dimensions that we know that expanded, and that the other dimensions remained tiny.  In fact, it is loops in these tiny dimensions that give rise to the matter, i.e., electrons, protons, etc.  They would say that creation was a random fluctuation.  (These happen all the time randomly--we have direct evidence.)  But creations of large amounts of matter and energy are not stable, and disappear again rapidly.  But physics had a twist up its sleeve.  The Big Bang fluctuation was a little bit more stable than normal fluctuations (physicists call this a meta-stable state).  So it hung around a little bit longer.  By the time it was ready to decay back into nothingness, the Universe had expanded so much that conditions changed (this is called a phase change, like ice melting), and the created matter got stuck and could not disappear anymore.  Viola!  The Universe!  One way this trick might be possible is if there exists a specific particle called the Higgs boson.  The search for the Higgs boson was what the now aborted Super-conducting Super-collider was all about.  While that project was cancelled, new colliders are being built and will be ready soon to continue the search for the Higgs boson.  Imagine, in our lifetime we may be able to confirm how the Universe was created! [News flash from July 2012--The Higgs boson has most likely been detected at CERN and the experiment confirmed in September 2012.  So this is likely to be science fact, now, and not conjecture.  There are still a few loose ends to tie up, but this is almost certainly Noble Prize material.  So, we think we know how the Universe formed!  Amazing!]

 

Could things be stranger?  Well they are.  There are many other strange aspects already known about the Universe, but the whole story is yet to be understood, and physicists are spending all of their energies trying to unravel this strange world in which we live.

 

My tale of a bizarre Universe ends here.  But let me leave you with some food for thought.  When you try to think about the Universe, say you’re having a debate about religion, remember, the Universe is very strange.  So even statements like “God existed for all time and created the universe…”, must be painted in a new light.  Remember, time itself was created in the Big Bang.  Before this, time did not exist.  To some, this makes the Universe all the more wonderful and exciting.  It strengthens belief in God.  To others, it has the opposite effect.  But the caution is this; the common mental tools you use to reason about reality may be suspect.  If your ideas are based on intuition that has been honed by day-to-day experience, you are more than likely on unsteady ground.  This is a chilling thought!  How do we dare to think about these things anymore?  Physicists are in a similar situation.  While it is true they know a lot about the nature of reality, there is so much more to learn.  Like everyone, scientists come at understanding of the Universe with all of their preconceptions and beliefs.  Einstein never believed in quantum mechanics because he had preconceptions on the way God would have created the Universe.  That was his biggest blinder.  What blinders must we shed today to increase our understanding?

 

 

©2008, Richard Puetter

Author's Note

Dear readers,

I feel at this point I must respond to Mark, a very dear friend, and LSS, whom I've only had brief exchanges with. You, dear readers, ultimately, must be the judge of your point of view and whether you agree with me or Mark and/or LSS.

First, let me say that I think both of you are at disadvantage here. This is not being egotistical (I hope) on my part, but because it has been my profession for the past 35 years to think about these topics daily, and because this is a serious, on-going discussion in physics for as long as I can remember.

First to Mark. Yes, Mark, I would never believe that you would disparage me. That is understood. Our conversations are only cordial, with the highest respect for each other's opinions. But there are a number things of which I think you are unaware. First and foremost is the assumption your part (and I don't really know if this is true or just a casual statement) that scientists deal with supposition. If any scientist thought another dealt with supposition only, that person would be ridden out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered. For a scientist, this is the most horrendous of offenses.

And I agree wholeheartedly that current Man will be very different than we will be in the far future. (Your idea, however that 25,000 years ago Man used arms for locomotion is vastly in error. The common ancestor of Man and other primates lived 6 million year ago. So you have the times scale off by factors of 1000, if not much more.) However, there are real and surviving truths to the Universe and existence. Those will remain as constants. We may not pass this knowledge forward. But if we could, that would be valuable.

Now I answered you privately, showing you, I hope, how pure science, i.e., the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, has proven itself over time as being tremendously rewarding and practical to the everyday life of man. Your idea that pure science is not directly beneficial is a common thread, and because of this NASA has been keeping lists of direct, practical benefits so that they can say these things in front of Congress and maintain funding. I have told you my own story, how my pure scientific research lead me to start a company that is dramatically improving imagery for national defense, homeland security, missile defense, transmission of images and movies over cell phones and the internet, artificial intelligence, etc. These are down-to-earth practical benefits. And this is not surprising. Whenever one understands the Universe around them better, the benefits are substantial. We simply can make better use of our resources and plan productively for the future.

Now to LSS. Dear LSS, I understand what you are trying to say. And again, I think I have you at disadvantage. This is not of my chosing, but results from long education in modern physics. Unfortunately the world is vastly different than what most people think. I tried to make that a main point of my essay. However, I am not at all surprised that this was not understood. It is extremely complicated, unexpected, and directly against everyone's intuition. It takes a lot of schooling to understand this. It is not a matter of intelligence. It is a matter of coming to grips with facts that most people are unaware of. Now that might sound like clever weasling out of people's objections, but I assure you it's not. These questions are very important to me and I refuse to dodge any bullets. If you want to discuss anything I say here, please e-mail me.

Okay, I think the guist of what you are saying is that what is the difference between what I am saying and, say, the Bible. First of all, you have a misconception of the void. There is no such thing. Even if you took a piece of space and took all matter and energy out of it, it still would not be empty. Strange, huh! And unexpected. Is this true? Yes, we know it is. If this were not the case, then even light bulbs wouldn't work. This is not a clever statement. Quite the contrary, it is very profound. I literally mean that if this were not the case, we know that light bulbs won't work. Now this is a VERY long story. And it is nearly impossible for me to explain this to you in a brief note and you'd need many years of training in physics, but this is absolutely true. So there is no void. I'm sorry, but most of the concepts you have for understanding the nature of reality are simply wrong. One of the most profound ways of descibing this to you is to point out that time, itself, was created with the Big Bang. Before that, there was no time. So asking what existed before the Big Bang with the limited understanding of us humans, is inappropriate. Do we know this to me true, or is this idle speculation? The immediate reaction of people untrained in physics would be to dismiss this as nonsense. And remember, I was once like you. I dismissed this too. This was total nonsense to me 35 years ago. Then with long training and VERY hard thinking and VERY hard confronting of my preconceived beliefs I reluctantly, with great resistance, gave up one preconception after the other. Each one of my beliefs could be demonstrated to be wrong in a way that is inescapable. Yes, there was no time (as we know it) before the Big Bang.

So what can I do for you to make you see what I have seen. Unfortunately, there is practically nothing. I would need so much time that this simply can't happen. Am I a fool to believe and think that I understand what I think I do? Well that is for you to decide. But you can read lots of the literature on these topics written for the non-scientist and see what you think. Unfortantly, I have you at disadvantage. This is my profession. I think about this daily. I was trained to think about this. We professionals argue about this all the time. Weak arguements don't last long. There are lots of us, so our story is pretty strong. There are demonstrable reasons for everything we say, and we'd be the first to jump on someone if what they said something that couldn't be proved and the results reproduced by anyone that tried.

So to summarize, no. "...wouldn't you be left with still the same original void. And then with this same void, wouldn't you be able to once again fill it with just words with out fact, and end up with another incomplete view of what 'we believe' happened." No, what you are suggesting is not how the world works. First of all, there is no "void". Second of all what ever existed "before"--an inproper term, because there is no "before" in the human understanding of the term--is very different than anything we see in our existence. Physicists have ideas (and speculations) on this. (Speculations are always suspect!) But these ideas are guided by current understanding and testable physics. The untestable things are always held at arms length with suspicion until they are testable.

So Mark and LSS, my greatest respects to you. Mark, from direct conversations, I know you are a man of intellect. LSS, from our brief exchanges on WC, I suspect and believe you are also a man of intellect and a thinker and have spent significant time with pondering and searching your soul on such things. What can I say? If I said again (which is what I believe), that I have you at disadvantage, it would not further my arguments. This is something for each of us (me included) to continue to ponder, study, and wonder.

My greatest respect to both of you. Thank you for your comments. Your points of view are greatly respected and not dismissed. I only write my response since my point of view was not expressed regarding the points you raised. Every thinking individual must decide for himself/herself regarding the merits of our arguments. And I hope people with try to grow (me too) to increase their understanding.

Very best regards,

Rick

Now a comment to Tony:

Dear Tony,

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful review. Let me take the opportunity here to reply to some of your comments.

Yes, I agree with you that the very existence of a missile defense program is an indication that Man is less than he should be. But that should be evident to any student of history. Violence and war is a trademark of the human condition. There is no period in history in which these horrors didn't exist. Our weapons of war have simply gotten more deadly with each generation and perhaps our weapons will finally see the end to us. However, what should one do in such a world? Some have professed non-violence above all, and this is certainly a philosophical position that has tremendous intellectual merit. However in the real world this is simply not practical. In a survival of the fittest world, the pacifists are simply exterminated by the violent and then the violent breed more violence. So a good defense seems the most rational approach. Sometimes, however, even the best intentions cause additional problems. There simply is no getting around this. We live in a dangerous world, and it will remain dangerous so long as Man as a species doesn't evolve significantly beyond his current state.

Now I am not a religious man and I do not believe in God. However your statements concerning God and the nobler aspirations of Man are indeed beautiful and indeed such aspirations and hope are meritorious whether or not God exists. I think eventually and slowly we will move as a species toward these goals. The reason is obvious. These are rational and desirable goals. However as long as we have base desires, greed and fear being the most devastating, we will fall short of these goals. We are a work in progress.

My best regards,

Rick

Reviews

[Tim H]

While I might be a kindred spirit in your position and base my own views of the world on scientific discovery, I want to focus on the writing. You have a definite story to tell and a definite expertise in to tell the story with authority. The mechanics of the writing bog things down. The piece employs passive voice throughout. By switching to active voice you can state things with far more impact and much more concisely. For example: "The dome slit is open. The telescope is huge, dwarfing us mere mortals." changed to The huge open dome's slit dwarfs us mere mortals. the piece also changes tens from present continuous to the past tense. You may consider settling on the past tense since the present continuous gets tedious after a time.

[Great Aunt Astri]

Yes, it is all so interesting, and I believe probably beyond human comprehension! When I was at school I was in a debate THE BIG BANG VERSUS THE STEADY STATE THEORY. I was arguing for the latter (Less acceptable) but do you know what, I managed to convince myself that it was the most likely contingency!
I can't remember what my arguments were, something to do with other dimensional views, 'folds' and things 'growing into their templates, then decaying' and the physical universe being something completely different to what our eyes or instruments perceive!!!!! Well I now know it is all beyond my comprehension and so I settled for just enjoying life as we know it. But, like you I have retained my awe and admiration, and open mindedness.

[BLBrown]

Rick - all very fascinating. I so enjoyed reading this. What a great accomplishment you made. I'm confounded by the idea that there is an "edge" to the Universe, rather than just a combining with others...also the idea of fabric is interesting...read something recently that said this is not an analogy but rather fact. Expanding at more than the speed of light...wow...that's actually pretty scary. And the collision with the Milky Way and Andromeda, billions of years from now seems too soon.

I couldn't disagree with Mark more. Physics sets us on the path to that future and this knowledge is anything but futile. By better understanding the Universe, we better understand ourselves which helps us to take the more knowledgeable path in evolution. Yes, in millions of years we will have either died out as a species or evolved into something unrecognizable...perhaps walking on our toes and covered in translucent skin through which can be seen our veins and organs...but still with a quest for knowledge which sets us apart...which makes our time on earth as a species both grand and elegant.

Also, I have read that humans as we know them today as a species, began walking upright some 250,000 years ago...give or take a few thousand years...but of course, our ancestors are ancient into the millions as Rick points out. Also, the value of pervading our lives with knowledge derived from pure science is true I think, Rick as you say so eloquently, "Whenever one understands the Universe around them better, the benefits are substantial. We simply can make better use of our resources and plan productively for the future."

Finally, I would just like to make (or repeat) the point that it is our quest for knowledge that makes us unique as a species on Earth. I understand the need to keep showing how this knowledge helps in our every day life, a short term view, to secure funding. But the fact is that once we stop seeking an understanding of who we are as grains of sand in the Universe, we begin an evolutionary decline. Knowledge IS power.

[Hapless Tiki]

Thank you sir for your submission to my little contest. I'll toss a few comments and questions here, but I might write a message to you personally as well as regards a philosophy of science issue...

The Writing:
"It is a monster, and ours to command." I don't know that this line has as much intended analogy as I read into it, but this brings a Frankensteinian flavor to the opening of this piece, for me. It made me expect one of its themes to be the stereotypical humanistic interpretation of scientists as arrogant, dangerous, and ripe for comeuppance. However, unless I misunderstood the body of the work, its message is the opposite. My point is, the opening paragraph was misleading to me. One might do well to set the reader's expectations up properly in this sort of work, unless part of the purpose is to frustrate their expectations to make some sort of meta- point. Since it does not appear you are trying to pull that off, I would change the way it begins.

Likewise, the shift from explicit 1st person to 2nd person address between the first and second paragraph felt awkward to me. I had a reaction of "Oh yeah? Maybe that's what happens in YOUR head, but not mine!" Again, this might be part of the purpose in some papers, but I don't think that's the effect you want to elicit.

The prevalence of rhetorical questions was also not to my taste, and again makes me sympathetic to the cultural construction of the "professorial scientist" who is "talking down" to the "mere mortals" in need of their particular peculiar materialistic mathematical metaphysical theory. I make these suggestions because I just want to let you know what your style does in the brain of one monkey. I might be misunderstanding the intent of the piece, but I don't think you want your reader to feel that way.

The content:
"With this telescope we can look to the edge of the Universe.", is that strictly correct? What do you mean by this?

I am more or less convinced by this paper that you are in possession of, and capable of relating the current scientific paradigm/consensus cosmological views. But I was not convinced that you are well versed (or even interested in?) in philosophical issues. There are scientists (just finished re-reading EO Wilson's 'Consilience', for example) who explicitly decry the activities we call "philosophy", and greedily await the day when more of it has been gobbled up into the activities we call "science".

Your common use of the "is of identity" and classical "know" are both philosophically questionable, and would benefit from some philosophical exposition, were this essay to be viewed in a philosophical light, I understand that it was written for a different purpose and audience, I'm just sayin'.

For example: "...remember, the Universe is very strange." Now as a reader who remains agnostic towards all positions, yours included: this can be translated as something like, "My metaphysical picture of the universe, as spelled out above, probably seems very strange to you, it even seems very strange to me most of the time!" It remains an open possibility to me, and as far as I understand the attitude of many great scientists and philosophers of science, that the putative 'strangeness' of some of your claims and hypotheses, if considered in the light of certain values ('elegance', 'simplicity', etc.) might actually argue against its plausibility.

You appear to take the attitude that at least some of these matters are settled ("We now know...") and that we all just better get used to these ideas. I think that many readers, who are less familiar with evolutionary psychology than others, will be turned off by this. I am not sure if a discussion of that belongs in this paper...

I suggest a little more Eddington and Bridgman and a little less Weinberg and Sagan. But that's for another time. I'll message you. Thanks!

[Greg Close]

Both your essay and your well-considered and elegant response are very inspiring for me and I am once again incredibly grateful to have made your acquaintance here on the Cafe. Too many times I see the hard work and carefully tested work of science reduced and compared to "faith." I don't mean that in a disparaging way to the concept of faith, but I find the pursuit of scientific knowledge through rational thought, exploration and verifiable testing to be a very different concept from the rote acceptance of holy words from a divine being (where there is and can be no "test"). They are not comparable concepts, in my mind. As I'm fond of saying, and would like to slap on a bumper sticker one day: "Faith is irrational certainty. Science is rational uncertainty." The most fascinating thing about science, and the exploration of this very strange Universe that we dwell, is that the more we understand through physics and scientific discipline, the more wonder and awe it opens for us, and the more we see waiting there at the boundary of our knowledge for us to understand. Our truth, like the universe, ever expanding.

[Ruth]

This is deep!lol
Its great to dwell on things like this hon!
Trouble is, there are a lot of theories aren't there? The Big Bang Theory being one of them, what if that was not the case? lol What if the world we know, or Universe was created by higher intelligence, sounds silly to a lot of people I know, but I can't help but wonder these things:)

It is suffocating to think that people don't agree there is so much more out there! Its interesting you say time, itself did not exist! I have often wondered what importance time is, if only to rule us in a structured existence:)

This kind of subject is fascinating and you sure know a lot sweet, always good to get different sides to issues such as this:)

As for God creating the world, well, lets just say, I disagree lol
Energy/matter/substance/nature, call it whatever was here long before us and will continue to be here when we are long gone, so in that respect, I disagree anything such as awesome as that could have been created! I certainly do not know the answers lol But its great to meditate upon!

Love and Light

Poppy

xx

[Tony]

I wanted to thank you for posting this illuminating piece.
I salute your obvious intelligence and focus.
I am not a formally educated man, but I have come to understand key points about the cosmos because of my fascination.
I am guilty of standing out staring at the constellations, and knowing a little of the vastness of it all I am awestruck.
That something so insignificant as me can stand on this globe and be aware of it humbles me.
I love the new electric model and firmly believe that as we come to understand more we will realize our true connection to the universe and be able to rid ourselves of the things that degrade our species.
Note:
In your authors note you have a part where you...have told your own story of science and research and your company....
Words like Missile Defense, Homeland Security, Artificial Intelligence in my opinion are clear evidence of how far astray we really are as a society. Upon study they expose the demons, as it were, and their long term goals of extinguishing the light.
These words imply fear, and ignorance of the highest order considering how few of histories lessons are employed by humans. We can blow the s**t out of our 'enemies', but we are poisoned from defecating in our water supply. How 'intelligent' is that?
Does the universe approve? I don't know. Ask the bees and the frogs, they do.
Our enemies are not who we think they are.
Claiming progress, we make huge explosions to carry us into space and to destroy our brethren, we have aircraft that fly against the grain of nature instead of moving through the air freely via energy that is EVERYWHERE. Amazingly, we easily rationalize the same, often proclaiming Scientific Discovery while standing on bodies. This seems painfully obvious.
We will learn to move with the universal power in one or another incarnation of our species, but we will likely blow ourselves up. Again. But I'll bet that this plasma universe concept is going to enlighten us again as to how powerful and weak we are.
Thereby giving more credence to Creation Theory.
Not the one attached to church steeples, the other one. The Light that lives inside us and moves through us, that cannot be seen through any type of lens. And cannot be found in man made temples. Or on the wings of killing machines. Nor will it ever be extinguished.
God, if you like.
Perhaps spiritual power is more likely than we would be made to believe by arrogant fools who love only power and destruction. Who most of the time parade around as if they were human, using the cloak of Religion to fool the people into slavery.
This is nothing new....

He who hath an ear, let him hear: To him that overcometh I will give some of the hidden manna. And I will give him a white stone, and on that stone, a new name, known only to the bearer.
Rev 2.17
I sense something awesome here. And I don't even go to church........
Thanks again for sharing, I really enjoyed reading this.

[Richard Longbow]

Add this essay to the list of reasons why I want a telescope. This stuff is absolutely fascinating. Your description of the Big Bang is one of the clearer descriptions I've read. This stuff is so counter-intuitive that it's hard to grasp, which is why so many people vehemently deny it. They're the ones missing out. This is interesting stuff. Your essay hits on a lot of points covered in Death By Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson. That book is another reason why I've been saving up for a nice 8 or 10 inch telescope. Nice essay!

[R J Askew]

I went looking for your poem but was distracted and went for this piece instead. it is a fascinating read as most intelligent folk will at some point wonder what about the universe in some vaguely awed way before getting on with toasting their cheese. But you spend much of your time pondering the thing. Your own enthusiam for the subject is clearly still alive and you communicate it really well. Actually the read is more than fascinating, it is compelling and thrilling. The scale of 'it' and the drama of its progress is overwhelming, as is the way we humans have learnt what we have about it. Our curiosity and capacity to learn is all part of the story. it is such a puzzling, exciting and even daunting subject to dwell on. I found the piece learned, intelligent and thought provoking for all kinds of reasons. There are endless angles the mind could pursue. As for the writing I esp enjoyed, 'There are many things about the Universe to upse the psyche.' ... 'The newly formed superr-galaxy will be alone.' and ... 'They would say that creation was a random creation.' ... a bit like a poem? Even the word universe fascinates: one verse?

[Legion]

A 1 with 35 0's or 36?

I found the point about time being created by the big bang interesting. Time (as we know it) is a construct of man. We define it and in doing so, we create limits for it. That doesn't mean time didn't exist before we gave it its power (pre-big bang or not), but our view of it is skewed by our definition of it. All that you speak of within this piece may or may not be true and I find it all fascinating and thought provoking. It is what we (as a species) perceive it to be at the moment, but those perceptions change quite often. An example: If we were alive two hundred years ago and I explained to you the basic principles of a television set, you would probably think that I was insane. Over time, those perceptions would have changed as television became closer to a reality and then those perceptions would have come in line with what I was originally trying to explain 200 years ago once television actually became a reality. That is a loose way of looking at it, but I think you will get the idea. Another problem we have because of our perceptions (be it with Time or anything else) is that we design hypotheses, theories, and even on how we test those perceptions based on our limited view of said perceptions. We must move past that or we will constantly be mired within our self-centeredness. Another way of saying that is "to think outside the box". Even that is incorrect. We, must not only think outside the box, but through the box, with the box, and all that encompasses the box (i.e. time, space, and/or purpose). Even my discussion here is limited to our perceptions (in this case "words" and "ideas"). I hope this is making sense.
Something about the studies with the colliders. I have often wondered if the studies with the colliders will be the end of earth as we know it. Once the results within the testing occur, what may happen afterwards? Wouldn't it be interesting if the Mayans were correct about 2012 and it occurred because of our quest for knowledge? I don't necessarily believe in all that, but I do keep an open mind about it (also about many other things that can't seem to be explained at the moment). I once read a story which I can not remember the name of at the moment that touched on this. Supposedly, one of these experiments with a collider inadvertantly created a small black hole here on the earth that slowly began to devour the planet. Very interesting piece.
Something you should know about me (after reading your author's note especially about the void). I once was asked by a professor of mine (he asked the whole class) the old question of is the cup half full or half empty. He went around the whold class with the usual two answers: half full to half empty. When he came to me I told him it was completely full. He asked how I came to that conclusion. I told him that nothing was a perfect void as we know it to be. The glass (as we could see it) was half full of water and the molecules within the water and half full of air and the molecules within the air. I also told him the molecules in the glass also took up space. I think I threw him off a bit. He was a psychology professor. So, that might give you a perspective (there's that defining word) on the way I think.
Anyway, I think I've rambled on enough and I really love these topics. Kudos to you on an interesting piece. Keep up the good work as well as the search.