To Infinity!

By TLS

I’m a science fiction fan and also seriously interested in science, particularly space and astronomy. I’m no actual scientist or professional researcher but I find few things as fascinating as the exploration of space and the cosmos.

One day while driving from point A to a distant point B my mind went down this rabbit hole, again.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Where did all this something come from? Where did it begin? Why is there a place? That a place exists at all is the mind melting question.

The current explanation is everything (space, time, matter, energy, everything) erupted at a single point, expanded outward unimaginably quickly, cooled, settled, then Starbucks started popping up all over the place. Simple.

So something from nothing, hmmm. Some current theories also suggest our something actually came from two, or more, other “universes” or “branes” as in membranes, colliding together and that collision pushed energy and matter into creating our universe.

Okaaaay, well thats a neat explanation for where our stuff came from, grossly simplified of course. But, how about where all the stuff came from that makes up those other branes? That just keeps pushing the question back a level each time. Eventually we need to reach the start right? Well, probably, wrong.

It’s probably eternal and infinite. If there is ever a start one can always ask ‘Why here? What happened before? What triggered the start?’ Then it just keeps getting pushed back. Our human brains (with an ‘i’ this time) simply can’t grasp these sorts of eternal concepts. Sure, many can grasp how numbers can go on forever, but space or all of multi-verse creation? That’s when smoke usually starts leaking out of ears or somewhere else.

These questions rightly should short circuit your brain. Everything from nothing, or everything from somewhere else, that we can never reach or touch spawned this universe. Mind blown yet?

Now, lets add this. Is our universe simply infinite? Or is it infinite in distance but finite in space such as being able to endlessly circle a sphere, or a donut type shape as some astronomers suggest? Additionally, there may be other universes with completely different physics completely hostile to this universe that may be less than the width of an atom away from us or they could be unimaginably distant.

Professor Brian Cox says something to the effect of ‘What does it mean to live a small, fragile and finite life in an infinite universe?’ The awe inspiring magnificence of where we are and how we arrived here is beyond comprehension. Take a moment and wonder at the unimaginable and colossal sequence of events that must have transpired to bring us to this moment.

Of course, had those sequences happened even slightly differently, we might not be here to marvel and wonder at all.

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<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/color-space-doodle_10837999.htm#query=Universe&position=28&from_view=search&track=sph&uuid=49375fd8-e32a-49b1-94f8-89080cfc36ba">Image by tartila</a> on Freepik