B4B4 & WHAT THE BIG BANG CAME FROM

       Viewing the universe from the “outside” can give you a feeling of being in a womb.  But the Big Bang marks the beginning of time and space. So to ask what’s “outside”, or what came “before” can have no meaning. Indeed the whole notion of cause and effect depends on the flow of time. So in a sense the universe can have no cause. And yet it must, in some sense, come from something. But what can this mean?

       We begin to get a sense of this mystery by considering how black holes bend space and slow time, thus illustrating that our universe is made from mutable stuff. If space can bend, it can also expand. And if time can be slowed, and stand still, it can also have a beginning. At the center of a black hole a whole star becomes one inscrutable point. This combining of large and small, reminiscent of the Big Bang, is a place where physical law is very different

       At the beginning of time the whole universe was compressed into a space smaller than an atomic nucleus. It’s the ultimate union of large and small and creates a place where the workings of quantum mechanics take hold. We call this “Quantum Cosmology”.

      We can see how quantum mechanics affected the Big Bang when we look at the vastly expanded effects of quantum mechanical probability waves on the distribution of galaxies. These small waves were there in the beginning. And now they leave there imprint on the biggest things we know.

       In quantum mechanics “things just happen”. According to the principles of uncertainty, microscopic particles can change location, be in two places, and even come into existence for no reason at all. God plays dice. And so we see how our birth in the context of quantum mechanics begins to show the qualities of a random event.

      Surprisingly the quantum randomness of the Big Bang can also be seen in the physics of the universe. Physicists have always wondered about the values for certain universal constants. Why is the speed of light what it is? Why is an electron as big as it is? And why are the masses and coupling constants of particles in general, so uniquely suited for the emergence of life. In ignorance we could turn to divine providence, but it seems the truth is even stranger.

       Apparently we are one of a large, possibly infinite, number of universes. Each with its own unique, quantum produced, laws of physics. From this we see that the “V” in the Octagod shows us as only one slice in the pie. But it’s a slice made tasty because there’s somebody in here to enjoy it.