Just as professional theoretical and practical physicists try to understand the nature and origin of the universe so do ordinary folk gleaning what they can from New Scientist, Scientific American, the ordinary press, TV etc. Dissatisfaction with some of the theories as explained by the professionals leads us to make our own hypotheses. There also seems to be some sort of minor ‘turf war’ between the string theorists and others, string theory opponents say that the theory is unprovable and that the string theorists get too much publicity and university funding. What is going on?
We are told that space can be distorted or warped; that space is involved in the force of gravity, perhaps space is altered by the presence of a large mass such that smaller masses are attracted to, or fall towards the larger mass.
Elementary observation tells us that space, throughout the universe, is perfused with all sorts of electromagnetic radiation including light, radio, and other waves of various wavelengths, they criss-cross the universe in every possible direction, presumably at times causing interference patterns. Also atomic and sub-atomic particles, either in isolation or in small or larger groups are in constant swirls of motion around and across the universe, gravitational forces seem to pervade all space.
It is plain that if space can become warped, let alone all other issues, then it must follow that space is ‘something’ and not ‘nothing’. It would appear that in order to understand the universe then we need to not only understand matter and energy but also their relationships with space. The constant velocity of light also indicates, to a naive observer, that perhaps it is not merely propagated through space but propagated by space, the nature of space determining the velocity .
Perhaps a better understanding of space would lead to a better understanding of matter, energy, ‘dark matter’, gravity and the birth of the universe. Perhaps matter [or energy] is a subset of space, ie it is space in busy whirl?
Students are taught in subjects like, ‘The History of Science’, of the old, comprehensively discredited, theory of the ‘ether’ as the pervasive structure of the universe. Whilst the particularities of this theory are now untenable, may it be possible that it needs a partial resurrection? Perhaps it is fear of the possibility of mockery which prevents physicists from studying the ‘ether’ of space more vigorously?
It appears that all matter is in fact forms of energy as photons or various particles, the particles in turn being packets of waves, in complex bundles of compressed energy. Is it not reasonable to conclude that they have no identity without the space in which they exist, in other words they may be forms of space in confined and energetic motion? Just as we have had to learn that matter, mass and energy are the same thing, the different words being used for convenience and by custom only, so we may need to learn that ‘space’ and ‘matter’, are different forms of the same thing or, if they are truly separate they must be mutually dependent, neither can have existence without the other.
If these ideas have only a partial truth then we need to look again at theories as to the origin of the universe. I doubt if I am the only one who believes that there is a lack of beauty in the idea that all of the mass/energy of the universe was at one time confined in a primordial ball which for some reason exploded to fill our present known universe. Almost all other leaps forward in our understanding of the true nature of things have possessed great beauty.
If it is accepted that universes achieve senescence and death as well as birth then it is possible to imagine our universe becoming completely amorphous where nothing changes and nothing moves and thus time does not exist [Time being taken to mean the rate of change of an observed set of changes compared to a reference set] Amorphous states are notoriously unstable; accepting the universality of the conservation of energy means that a truly amorphous state is a condition waiting to explode. Comparison might be made with the formation of powerful weather systems from large masses of air whereby these quiet masses of air gradually become swirling storms,[ the ‘butterfly’s wing’ theory; a very minor semi- random movement sets of a massive weather system into violent action]. There may also be analogy with thin plates of splat cooled pure iron [manufactured for large transformers to reduce eddy currents] if these have been cooled so quickly that the iron has not formed a crystalline structure, it is virtually amorphous, if it is struck a light blow with a pointed instrument a wave of crystallisation passes through the material releasing heat.
The analogy intended to show here is that perhaps the ‘singularity’ which fired off the universe may not have been very powerful at all, the quiet mass of the ‘dead’ universe just needed a jolt, a ‘seed’ to set it off. How about a squirt of energy from some distant giant black hole belonging to quite another universe? The matter thus would not have to be ‘created’ simply changed from one form to another by a wave of Crystallisation. If anyone, in possession of the data, cares to comment on these thoughts it might be interesting to others.
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