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.

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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. I also enjoyed your openness.

[Dorchadas]

Wow this is an amazingly passionate and thought provoking piece and obviously a subject matter that you feel very impassioned about.
For me it was refreshing and educational but also intriguing.
I carry a deep love for "sky" the "darkness" it's my sanctuary... the "moon" all that the "sky" holds... the immensity of it... the anonimity of it... it's almost comforting.
But until now I've never really taken this love any further and explored or educated myself more on the universe... your writing is powerful and triggers the desire in me for more knowledge.
Really beautiful write.
I believe that as a race we are so commonly restricted by confines of our own making... bound by nonsensical "common sence" thoughts suffocated by the accepted norms and values of our society.
I like that you connect the two... and ask to me what is the ultimate question, where would we be now... how much more evolved would we be as a race if we were not completely blinded... biased and restricted by all our preconceptions.