February 20, 2008
endless universe
In our picture, there was a universe before the Big Bang, very much like our universe today: a low density of matter and some stuff called dark energy. If you postulate a universe like this, but the dark energy within is actually unstable, then the decay of this dark energy drives the two branes together. These two branes clash and then, having filled with radiation, separate and expand to form galaxies and stars. Then the dark energy takes over again. It’s the energy of attraction between the two branes: It pulls them back together. You have bang followed by bang followed by bang. You have no beginning of time. It’s always been there.
comments
Leave a Reply
if this is true, does it imply that the past and future are fixed incontrovertibly?
in reference to the notion in the article that at some point time flows forward then it shifts and flows backward.
Good question. Seems like a problem arises from calling it an “It,” at the same time that it is regarded as boundless. And it’s difficult to see how the description of this mechanism leads with necessity to the notion that it has always been that way. My lungs will collapse and fill for as long as I live, creating new “time” for me as I go–but does that mean I am immortal? It’s tempting to assert that when something happens 1,2,3…times, we may safely say: And so on to infinity. But this is often simply a begging of the question by way of gradualism.
But about the fixity of time: Is any event unique? If the answer is yes, then it can’t happen again or it wouldn’t be a unique event. But we are only able to make it through our lives by way of the sense that things constantly do happen again and again. Fixity is a need more than it is, or ever can be, a fact.