The Mind-Expanding Universe

The further we look, the bigger it gets ...

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen portrayed himself as a child who stopped doing his homework when he heard that the universe was expanding. "What's the point?" he asked. Then his mother told him it was none of his business, because, "Brooklyn is not expanding!"

Regardless of the relative stability of our local environment here in our hometown Milky Way galaxy, we have every right to be concerned about the size and shape and age of the universe as a whole. After all, its origin is the origin of all of us, and its fate will be ours as well. Who would not want to know the answer to the question, "is the universe infinite, or just very very big?" Or the related one -- "does it have a beginning and an end, or does it last forever?"

Last year I wrote about how the universe has aged during my own lifetime -- meaning, of course, that our knowledge of it has grown, and our estimates of its age have been continually refined in the light of new observations from both astronomers and quantum physicists. Fascinatingly enough, the contributions from those who study the very large and the very small have contributed equally to the latest theories of how the universe began and where it is going. But sometimes it seems as if it keeps getting bigger every time we think we've seen the end of it.

Since the first half of the 20th century it has been known that the universe, however big it is now, is getting bigger. All the galaxies are apparently rushing apart from each other as the space between them stretches like a balloon -- a process that has been going on since the Beginning.

When I was very young, there were two contending theories: the Steady State universe favored by Einstein, in which new matter and energy were continually created to replace those that are lost, and the Big Bang universe, in which everything was created in a single explosion. Since the 1970's, when it was discovered that we could directly observe the background radiation left over from the Big Bang, that theory has been generally accepted. But as scientists have continued to refine the theory and explore its consequences, some serious problems and implications have come up which have cast doubt on it.

In their new book, Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have taken time out from their serious work on the subject to write an explanation for laymen of their alternative theory, which they call the Cyclic Model -- actually a new variant of an older idea. (They even have a website at endlessuniverse.net with animations.)

They begin by leading us through the development of the Big Bang model, and showing how it has been added to and modified in an attempt to incorporate the latest, often contradictory, findings. One of the key issues is about expansion, and whether it will end or just keep going forever. It used to be thought that this was just a question of how much matter there was in the universe, and whether the gravitational force of it would be enough to slow the expansion down. In this case we could eventually expect a "Big Crunch" where everything converges into a single point again and creates a new Bang.

I confess this picture always appealed to me. It was so similar to the Vedantic idea of a cosmos that "breathes in and out," and is repeatedly created and destroyed. But measurements showed there was not enough matter to explain why the galaxies were not rushing apart even faster than they are. Then "dark matter" was postulated and proved to exist -- in fact, it was eventually shown that as much as 95% of the matter in the universe is of the "dark" variety: not visible, but deducible by its gravitational effect on the kind we can see. It was concentrations of dark matter that caused the galaxies to form.

For a time it looked like dark matter would keep the universe from flying apart, and would be enough to bring it back together for another round of Bang and expansion. But new measurements have shown that not only is the expansion not slowing down, it is actually accelerating in spite of all the dark matter. So now "dark energy" has been assumed to be present also -- an anti-gravity force that inevitably comes to dominate the universe when it gets dispersed enough, and appears to make expansion continue forever.

There was another hope for a finite universe: the idea that space and time might be curved, as predicted by Einstein's theory. In this model the expansion might continue, but space might be curved like the surface of a sphere, or some more complex shape, so that it would turn back on itself eventually. I picture this like a Big Bang starting at the north pole and expanding all the way to the equator, at which point it would contract to the south pole and create a new Bang there.

But these hopes, too, have been dashed by further observations that have shown that the universe, regardless of the possibility of curvature, is in fact "flat," though no one can explain why. The disturbing result is a universe that achieves a livable condition for only a short time, cosmically speaking, during which stars and planets like ours can exist, but which then continues to spread out and dissipate until all the matter and energy has wasted away to nothing, leaving only an endless and perfect vacuum of non-being.

Even worse, the theory has been found to imply that there may be an infinite number of "pocket" universes lost in an infinite sea of nothingness -- and furthermore, most of them may be lifeless ones in which the balance of natural laws are not conducive to stars and galaxies, or even matter as we know it, let alone anything resembling a human being. Ours could be the only one of its kind, produced by a random fluke, and once it burns out like a dying flame it will be gone forever.


Help! Are we doomed? Is this terminal nothingness all we can look forward to, regardless of how long it takes to get there? Can you see why Woody Allen might give up doing his homework?

The Cyclic Model is a possible salvation from this dismal picture. Though it may not be proved conclusively for some years yet, it apparently resolves many of the mathematical and theoretical problems of the Big Bang model, while completely agreeing with it as far as the current state of things as we can observe them. The difference is that it supposes an endless series of creations and expansions, and offers a mechanism to explain how they work-- and even why space becomes flat. In this view, the universe still ends up nearly void, but that is part of a process that brings it into collision with a parallel universe, a kind of doppelganger with which it is intimately bound, and this collision generates the energy for a new beginning.

I cannot pretend to understand the process that has led them to this conclusion. That would require an ability to do the math--though the authors do a commendable job of presenting it in a way that can be logically followed. But for me it is enough to be able once again to believe in a universe that comes and goes, but continues; one that has been here before, and will be here again.

Don't we all yearn to be immortal? As individuals, we may never be. But as parts of this endless and expanding series of universes, perhaps we already are.

The Sum of All Knowledge

We are all born with a thirst for learning. Will we drown in the new sea of plenty, or will we learn how to swim?

I would be the first to admit that I'm not an average person. (Some would say "not normal" is a better description.) I'm cursed with a variety of interests that are all over the map. Why else would it be so hard to categorize this blog? One week it's politics, then religion, then movies, then books, then astronomy, then music, then technology. If anyone asks me what it's about, I have to say, "Well, pretty much everything."

It all goes back to the earliest awakenings of my intellectual curiosity--the time when my mind first got a taste for that forbidden fruit and I started plucking it from every tree I could find. I can't say my experience was typical, but I do think it illustrates something about a universal need we have to learn as we grow, to enhance ourselves to the limits of our abilities--in the words of the US Army slogan, "to be all we can be."

This hunger to know and understand things can be encouraged by a good school, but it can also flower in spite of a bad or indifferent one. I was lucky enough to have several excellent teachers in public school, though the overall institution left much to be desired. For years after I graduated I had dreams about school as a prison. Nevertheless my need to know took precedence, and found its own way if signposts were missing.

The year I turned fifteen and was in my sophomore year, I started a collection of small spiral-bound notebooks in which to record my thoughts on a variety of subjects. These notebooks were strictly extracurricular, and only incidentally overlapped with my classroom studies.

As best I can recall, my official subjects that year were American History, English, Biology, Algebra, Art, and Physical Education. By contrast, the little notebooks were titled Science, Philosophy, Politics, Music, Literature ... and maybe another one or two that have slipped my mind. I can only account for this behavior by saying that I must have felt the need to divide knowledge into categories of my own choosing, rather than those selected for me by the school, and to make room for things that were omitted from the curriculum altogether.

At that age I was beginning to feel that I'd absorbed a lot of facts, and I wanted to start doing something with them, to organize them and try to make sense of it all. My reading extended past the limits of single subjects, so ...

• I couldn't focus on biology to the exclusion of the rest of science, especially with my imagination being piqued by the great quantity of science fiction I was consuming, and with the country in the midst of the "space race."
  

• The course titled "English" was too bogged down in remedial grammar and had not enough room for great books in it. So I supplemented it by submitting writing assignments to another teacher who was receptive to them, and by adopting his classes' challenge to read as many books as possible by an author of our choice (mine was Faulkner).
  

• American History--in which the world began in 1776, or at any rate no earlier than 1492, and which emphasized propaganda against Communism--excluded too much of interest, such as ancient Egypt, the Roman empire, Celtic Europe, and the entire Orient.
  

• Philosophy being entirely absent from school, along with religion, I had to fend for myself. But this I was quite prepared to do. Unitarian church school had already acquainted me with comparative religion, and I was a staunch fan of Alan Watts' weekly TV program about Zen and other Eastern traditions. The summer after tenth grade I absorbed The Story of Philosophy by the Durants, Will and Ariel, which gave me an overview of everyone from Socrates to the forbidding Germans of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This led me to read a book by Spinoza and to discover the French Existentialists, which led me back to literature again--the wonderful novels of Albert Camus in particular.

And so it went. I suppose the omission of any sort of mathematics from my own categories speaks for itself ... though I did have a fondness for plane geometry, and even learned how to use a slide rule (again, after school). Come to think of it, I picked up typing one summer by working my way through an old textbook that my mom had from when she was in college. And my study of music history--classical, jazz, and folk--was mostly a matter of reading the backs of record albums while I listened to them. (For an account of how I also learned to play music you can refer to this earlier article.)

Looking back, I'm a bit astounded that I actually did all this, especially because I never felt that I had a particular genius for any of these separate areas. In fact, my dad once warned me against becoming a "dilettante" with a smattering of everything and excellence in nothing. But I couldn't help it. Even on the creative side I used to agonize over whether I should devote myself to writing, painting, or music--and if music, should it be classical or folk? and if writing should it be poetry or prose? and maybe drawing or sculpture instead of painting ...

Few of us can be the kind of Renaissance man that Leonardo was, but why should we have to exclude from our lives anything that is of interest? I long ago gave up any idea of becoming a scientist or an engineer, but that doesn't mean I can't keep up with technology and the latest theories of cosmology, especially when the information is now so freely available.

I've described what I was able to do with the resources I had back in high school. With music I was already benefiting from the technology that let me hear much that would have been unavailable in the past when we only had live performances to listen to. Now the Internet has made such a wealth of information available in all areas that it must have an effect on us greater than the advent of the printing press.

MIT, for example, has made much of their course work available online at no charge (see ocw.mit.edu). All you need is the inclination and the willingness to work at it. These obstacles are daunting enough, and will certainly limit the numbers who might otherwise clog up the university's servers. But isn't it reassuring, even inspiring, to know the resources are there when we need them? There are, at last, no limits to what we can know, and no reason to close the door on anything.

The hackneyed phrase at the end of a lecture is, "let's sum up what we've learned." It seems to me that is also a good place to start. My impulse to commit to paper everything I thought I already knew was really a way of finding out what I did not yet know, and where to go from there. It's an impulse that has served me well as I have continued to learn and grow without being necessarily limited by my education, profession, or circumstances. What I'm doing now on this blog is really a new form of the same activity. I'm learning what I know, so I will know what to learn.

Now, I wonder what's next ...

Déjà Vu All Over Again

This is what the back of my minivan looks like – what you might have seen if you were tailgating me on I-95 over the holidays as I made my pilgrimage from Miami to the area south of Orlando to visit family. It's a drive I've been making at least once or twice a year for decades. But this time for some reason – maybe just because my A/C was broken and I had to roll down the windows – I found myself having a serious experience of déjà vu.

Back around 1970 I owned a similar though larger van. It was even the same color, white. In fact it was big enough that I lived in it, or out of it, for a couple of years. I built a pair of wooden bookcases into the sides and made myself a little desk of mahogany (which I still own). Some square cushions served as seats during the day, and at night, along with a sleeping bag, as a mattress. A propane stove allowed me to heat canned food and make tea.

In those days air-conditioning was still something of a luxury in a vehicle, like an automatic transmission. So naturally I had a three-speed stick shift and no air. Then, as now, the hot Florida wind rumbled in through the windows and blew my (then longer and less gray) hair. Then, as now, something about the van testified to my objection to war. And then, as now, the country was mired in a conflict that seemed to have no end.

Iraq is different from Vietnam, of course, as it is different from Afghanistan, and as Vietnam was different from Korea and World War II. But the disease of war is ever the same, a malady that afflicts the aggressor and defender alike, both the strong and the weak, the victors and the vanquished, and those who only stand innocently by.

Then, as now, I had reason to fear hostility from some of my countrymen for my opposition to war. Sad to say, it is still far from a universal view. The early 70's were still the era of “America, Love It or Leave It” and “Better Dead than Red.” My long hair and mustache were all it took to identify me as one who believed that love of country might manifest as hatred of its policies and a desire for change, and that “reds” might be interesting partners in a political discussion. Had I got caught in a backwater town full of John Birch Society members and cornered in a dark alley, my appearance alone would have been all that was necessary to insure I was beaten up and ridden out of town, maybe even murdered like the unfortunate bikers in Easy Rider.

But I was younger then, perhaps more threatening because of my refusal to serve in the military. Those were the days of the draft, and this is now the time of the “professional” army (something the Founding Fathers tried hard to avoid) that supplements itself with professional mercenaries. Now I'm of an age where I'm not expected to serve, only to cheer the troops along and to pay my share of the staggering cost--now estimated at some 400 million dollars a day.

I no longer look out of place in a crowd. My beliefs would be invisible were it not for those telltale stickers on the rear door of the van. Some drivers have actually complimented me on them, and once a woman even rolled down her window to ask where she could get some. One comes from FCNL, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker-funded political lobby. Another comes from a local group called Miami for Peace. And the old reliable peace sign was clipped off the end of a longer strip that originally contained the phrase “Back by Popular Demand.” (Speaking of déjà vu!) But all that was too involved to yell out to someone in traffic, so I answered with a single word, “Quakers!”--trusting that she could track them down online.

Not everyone is so sanguine toward these sentiments, however. Back when we still hoped the invasion of Iraq could be stopped, I attended a protest rally at Bayfront Park. Two young men of military age--not in uniform, but possibly already in the army to judge from the cut of their hair --approached the crowd with such obviously hostile intent that a police officer intervened to explain things to them and direct them to the far side of the street. Not to be easily deterred, the pair got in a taxi and cruised past us shouting, “WAR! WAR! GO TO WAR!” in voices suitable for a parade ground.

So the hostility is still there in some, and I still wonder how to confront it if challenged. After a protest in 1968 where everyone wore black armbands, I was accosted by a belligerent drunk who demanded to know, “What's that on your arm?” This was a purely rhetorical question, as he clearly knew what it meant, and only wanted me to admit outright that I was one of those commie-pinko-hippies threatening to destroy American life as he knew it. Tongue-tied by the futility of discussion, I simply said, “I'm in mourning,” and went on my way.

Could I do any better now? What would I say if my flagrant bumper stickers caused me to be challenged at a rest-stop by some irate neo-fascist who was upset that my opinions seemed to demean either his own military service or that of his friends and relatives, or simply to run counter to his rage at “those people” in far corners of the world?

I've thought about it, and I think I could say, “I believe that since the time of the Old Testament we have been commanded not to kill. And I believe that when Jesus told us to love one another, even our enemies, that it was a piece of advice we were supposed to follow.”

My imagined adversary might not be a religious person himself, but I can pretend that he grew up in a rural town surrounded by such people, and that long experience would have taught him to defer to the weight of their collective opinion whenever the name of Jesus was invoked. So I imagine him falling silent in the face of this simple statement of principle.

Would this be cowardly of me? Would I then be taking refuge behind this long gone but still powerful figure, like someone jumping behind a stronger friend in the face of a bully? Maybe. But I'd rather think I was following the example of a revolutionary, one whose fondest aim might have been to give us the courage of our convictions.

“If anyone questions you,” I can hear him say, like an older and wiser brother, “this is what you can tell him. And tell him I said so.”

Or, in the simple words of 1970, “Peace, man.”