Evolutionary Magic II
This is my second article on evolutionary magic. In my first article I focused on the slight asymmetry in the creation and destruction of pairs matter and anti-matter particles in the early universe.
I explained how the creation of one extra particle of matter for every billion particles of anti-matter was the critical amount needed for the unfolding of the universe story after the particle pairs had destroyed each other.
To learn more about this magical moment, please read my earlier article, “Evolutionary Magic”.
We Take Our Origins For Granted
We often take our origin or universe story for granted. We have a general idea of how it occurred. On the surface, it seems pretty mundane with particles of dead matter moving about and combining with other particles of dead matter. Pretty bland.
But if we look more closely at it, we can detect the magic inherent in our creation story. We discover that we didn’t come from mundane beginnings to live mundane lives, but rather from magical beginnings to live magical lives. Understanding this is critical to our survival and quality of life on this planet.
In this article I want to explore the magic of the Big Bang and the subsequent inflationary period that followed.
The Magic of the Big Bang and the Singularity
So let’s start off with the creation of matter in the Big Bang itself. Some 13.8 billion years ago something was created out of nothing. Just that is pretty magical, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, only there is no hat. How did it occur? No one knows.
Everything we know about the known and unknown universe is that it was created out of what is called a “singularity,” a spaceless, timeless, dimensionless point. How small is this singularity? Let’s compare it to an atom, which is much larger. How small is an atom? A million atoms can fit inside the period at the end of this sentence. A singularity is much, much smaller than that.
It is in the singularity that all known laws of mathematics and physics break down, and it is out of this infinitesimally small point that the universe emerged and continues to emerge. Scientists now tell us that, rather than slowing down as was once thought, the universe’s expansion is actually speeding up and nobody knows why.
Now let’s just think about this tiny spaceless, timeless, dimensionless point. Bill Bryson in his book, The Short History of Nearly Everything, described the miraculous nature of the singularity.
“…you will need to gather up everything there is—every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation—and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that is has no dimension at all. It is known as the singularity.” P.9
Doesn’t that just blow your mind right there? The idea that this expanding universe emerged from a point so small that it lacks space and time, is difficult to wrap our heads around.
Scientists say that 96 percent of the universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter and they have no idea what either of those are, meaning we only know about 4 percent of the make-up of the universe. How crazy is that? There is so much we don’t know.
Where Did the Big Bang Occur?
When people ask where this Big Bang occurred, all that can be answered is everywhere and nowhere. Cynthia Stokes Brown in her award winning book, Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present, says this:
“Where did the eruption take place? Everywhere, including where each of us is right now. In the beginning all locations that we see as separate were the same location.” P.4.
Bill Bryson had a similar comment,
“Just as there is no place where you can find the edge of the universe, so there is no place where you can stand at the center and say: ‘This is where it all began. This is the centermost point of it all.’ We are all at the center of it all.” P.17.
What caused something to emerge from nothing is a mystery, and since the origin is a mystery that makes the whole universe a mystery. So that’s the first miracle—the creation of something out of nothing. Let’s now move to the second miracle.
The Second Miracle: Inflation
The funny thing about the Big Bang is that in its initial phase it is too small to have been seen by any interstellar observer, had there been one. Initially, the first Big Bang exploded into the subatomic realm, but no farther.
This is why theoretical physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth proposed what he calls an inflationary period or what others call a second Big Bang that occurred 10-34 seconds after the original Big Bang. To clarify, that time period can be illustrated as a fraction with a one over a one with 34 zeroes following it.
This second Big Bang only lasted only from 10-34 seconds to 10-32 which is an incredibly short amount of time. It is so short I don’t even know how to figure out how short it is.
But so much happened during that inflationary interval. As mentioned in my last article, the universe went from a trillionth the size of a proton to ten times the size of a beach ball. Using astronomer Ken Croswell’s analogy, in a split second a one-inch-sized universe expanded to the observable universe we have today, but that is not all.
Faster Than the Speed of Light with Infinite Precision
It accomplished this at a speed much faster than the speed of light, something that is supposedly impossible since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. However, astronomer James Lidsey in his book, The Bigger Bang explains it this way,
“The key part is that Einstein’s theory actually says no form of matter or radiation can travel faster than light through space. His theory says nothing about the speed in which space itself expands.”
Remember, the Big Bang is not expanding into space, but is creating space in its expansion. Lidsey goes on to say,
“The speed of the expansion of space is limited only by the amount of energy that is available to drive the expansion.”
Swimme Explains the Precision
Cosmologist Brian Swimme couples the unbelievable speed of the expansion of the universe with the ultimate precision required to ensure the continuing development of a universe that will lead eventually to us. For not only did the universe expand at an inconceivable speed, but that speed had to be at exactly the precise rate or we would not be here today.
Swimme states,
“The rate of spatial emergence reveals a primordial elegance. Had space unfurled in a more retarded fashion, the expanding universe would have collapsed back into the quantum foam billions of years ago. Such a collapse would have taken place even if space had unfurled one trillionth of a percent more slowly. (Italics mine). If space had emerged more rapidly, equally disastrous results would have followed. The constituents of the universe would have been too widely separated for anything truly interesting to happen.”
I italicized the particular part of the quote to show how finely tuned this inflationary expansion was. Imagine the precision required to expand at such an exact rate. Only the smallest variation and we would not be here today. Was this fine-tuning just a random accident? If it was, then we are one mighty lucky species.
So those are two more miracles to wrap your head around. As Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you and all around you.” We just have to learn to see it.
To learn more about the magic of the universe: Click this link: The Magical Universe.
Photo by Lucas Kapla on Unsplash
