| A Layperson's Open Questions to Professionals | ||||||||||||||||||||
Quantum theory led to a hypothesis in which every two-way decision represents a fork in spacetime giving birth to an alternate universe, where both possibilites are represented.
What makes this theory so disturbing is the thought that in particle physics there would be countless such forkings taking place every microsecond.
A solution to Schödinger's undead cat problem is often proposed as two cats, one dead, the other alive, continuing in two different universes, .
But Schödinger's cat is only an almost infinitely small fraction of all the quantum events taking place every instant of time.
The number of universes thus born would be - in want of a better word - staggering indeed.
I could live with a few parallel universes, but an infinite number seems hard to conceive of. Where would all the required mass come from - the false vacuum?
Some proponents of the "multiverse" hypothesis supect there may be an infinite number of universes parallel to our own.
Personally, I shy away from the notion of anything "infinite" in the real world, including infinite space.
To me, nature abhors infinity, except in the sense of something that is closed in itself.
If, by following space-time expansion backwards in time, we find all matter to converge at one point, then:
As terrestrial and space telescope resolutions improve, we can see objects at ever greater distances, taking us closer to the time of the big bang.
Proto-galaxies in the form of extremely bright, black hole-powered quasars may have populated the universe 2 billion years after time zero.
At an infinite redshift, however, we should see the very moment of creation itself, were it not for the cosmic censorship of redshift, resulting in what is called the "horizon".
Is this interpretation of redshift correct?
Having digested the work of cosmologists in their popular books and articles, there is still one major question open to me:
Why is the arrow of time taken to be linear when we approach the big bang?
As Einstein pointed out, time is affected by gravity.
When a body is nearing the event horizon of a black hole, relativistic time runs slow to an outside observer.
Nearing the big bang, where the mass of the universe is "the size of a grapefruit" time must slow as well.
So how can we speak of the First Three Minutes, or of 10-35 seconds after the big bang?
If spacetime is bent near the moment of creation, so is time.
Should we perhaps plot the time axis as exponential or as imaginary?
Your help of elucidation would be highly appreciated.
The fundamental differences between the relativistic world and the world of quanta is complicated (at least to my understanding) by another set of circumstances:
Based on Relativity, Edwin Hubble's findings show that space is expanding rather than galaxies are receding!
However, particles also occupy space.
If the atoms that make up galaxies (and us) were also expanding:
- would we still be able to observe the expansion?
So the empty space within the atom does not expand? Why?
Olbers Phenomenon continues to puzzle me.
How could you ever expect to see a blazingly lit night sky if stellar light intensity diminishes with the square of the distance?
Can a finitely sized object, such as a star, a galaxy or a quasar be visible when its distance approaches "infinite", or even the "horizon".?