Chapter 1

1. In the beginning, there was a bang. And it was a big bang** --- one that was filled with implications for all that would follow. The first consequence was time; the second was space.

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** However one may feel uncomfortable with the notion undertaking a substantial revision to this revision after only four short years of being posted on this website, it is especially annoying to be confronted with the prospect of having to revise Verse 1 of Chapter 1 on the grounds that it may actually be wrong! But anyway, here goes: The concept of a "big bang," although temptingly elegant, may itself be a vast oversimplification. There is no evidence that there ever was an expanding three-dimensional spherical shockwave of stars exploding away from a single point of origin in which the expansion gradually slows down, as the initial kinetic energy of the explosion dissipates. Indeed, it may have been better to start out with, " In the beginning, there was a singular event..." It may be more consistent with emerging cosmological data to call this an event that triggered an "avalanche on a snow-packed mountain on a dark and moonless night" in which we are part of the snow tumbling down a mysterious grade whose dimensions are still unknown to us. Speaking metaphorically, the galaxies of stars may be like a luminous fog that precipitated out of the darkness and is sinking into a dark box canyon whose shape may be either smooth or sharp, and we're not sure which, resulting in extremely turbulent edge effects. The fog may not even be falling but rather simply expanding through a lattice of holes (a syncytium of connected holes in a giant block of Swiss cheese) whose dimensions are virtually unknowable from our present vantage point. The presence of a "dark mountain" may correspond to the so-called " dark matter" (90 percent of the calculated mass or eight times that of visible matter) that is causing the expansion to accelerate through its own gravitational influence. Anyway, the luminous part of the universe may soon be extinguished as the wispy strands of galaxies where stars are born are further disbursed and collectively run out of fuel to keep their fires burning. The visible universe may bear the same relationship to the non-visible universe as foam on the crests of the waves does to the ocean, as waves relentlessly crash on the beach. At night, walking along the seashore, one can see the foam without being able to distinguish the dark sky from the dark ocean, but we know they're there, since we can easily see the difference in the day time.

Prof. Kip Thorne, in his book Black Holes and Time Warps [B35], wrote,

"Throughout this book, I shall adopt, without apology, the view that there does exist an ultimate set of physical laws [or standard model] (which we do not as yet know, but which might be called quantum gravity [sometimes referred to as the "Theory of Everything (ToE)," a phrase now favored by string theorists]), and that those laws truly do govern the universe around us, everywhere [and for all time in a coordinate-system independent manner]. These laws force [or cause] the universe to behave in the way it does."

This standard model must embrace not only the here-and-now of particle physics and astronomy but also provide a consistent cosmological explanation for the origin of everything we see and can deduce from the scientific data acquired by our various telescopes and other instruments.

After the Big Bang, symmetry-breaking must have occurred at some point in order to explain the large production of matter over antimatter, the mass difference between the Proton and the Neutron, a short-range rather than a long-range Weak Force, and generally, particles with non- zero mass [like the Neutrino]. In recent years, it has become fashionable to speak of the different physical parameters of the universe as if they were preselected to lead to the evolution of life on Earth. The fact that life as we know it depends on the exact values of these parameters, "fine- tuned" to high precision, is regarded as evidence that the universe was designed with that purpose in mind. Philosophers term this notion the Anthropic Principle (AP) which posits that a model of our universe that does not allow for the existence of life as we know it cannot possibly be valid. {Proof by contradiction.} Nevertheless, all the parameters in our standard model that can be determined by experiment are believed to be derivable from some minimum set of principles. It seems highly unlikely that any purely natural set of principles would be intimately connected to the biological systems that happen to have evolved on our particular planet. A more likely scenario is that life evolved in response to a particular set of physical parameters as an emergent property. If the symmetry-breaking in the early universe was in fact spontaneous, i.e., not subject to any underlying recursive mechanism, then the values of at least some of the parameters would be accidental. In other words, if we had an ensemble of universes (a "Multiverse," if you will) then the parameter values necessary for life to evolve as an emergent property had to arise from a random distribution without the requirement for an external, causal, designing agent [God] designating one particular preferred set. Indeed, there is no evidence toward the existence of God in the religious sense whatsoever. Life in our observable part of the universe looks just as it should look if it were randomly created and not designed with a particular intent. It looks and operates according to natural laws just as it should it were to appear spontaneously. [A36] One of the ironic corollaries of this ensemble of universes or Multiverse concept is that the number of universes in which we could be there to wearily ponder our human condition might be relatively sparse, with a vast, vast number of dark and cold universes surrounding us, but incapable of sustaining life as we know it. [B36]
January 8, 2007; Hubble Space Telescope images have now helped us chart the structure and location of dark matter. This material appears to be like a "construction scaffold on the outside of a building," allowing visible matter to precipitate galaxies on the scaffold surrounding it. Therefore, both forms of matter (visible and dark) are found contiguously in empty space. Furthermore, the map has demonstrated that the structure of dark matter has altered over billions of years from a smoother configuration to a rather lumpy or "filamentous" structure as it collapses on its own gravity. Dark matter and energy (96 percent of the universe) can also explain why the universe is continuing to expand. Without them, the universe, as we observe it, may already have collapsed secondary to its own internal gravity. [B38]

Before going on, we ought to remind the reader of the various historical misconceptions that afflicted the proponents of early myths about the origin of our universe...

The oldest ancients believed that all planets were simply wandering (non-twinkling) stars.
But once humans caught on to the idea that planets were somehow different than stars (the light is reflected) and that (twinkling) stars were somehow much further away, the Sun was at that time considered to be a planet and not a star! Indeed, this form of cosmology held sway from the time of Aristotle [~300 BCE], who is credited as the first philosopher to attempt to combine a knowledge of earthbound physics with celestial motions. Our local dynamics [laws of motion] and mechanics operated on four earthly elements {earth, air, water, and fire}. Quintessential matter, however, was a fifth type of element comprising so-called aether objects. These could move "sideways" in circular [but not elliptical] orbits. Therefore, aether objects didn't have to obey the laws of normal matter, like either "up" (fire and air) or "down" (water and rocks) with respect to the ground. At this point, before the invention of optics (telescopes and microscopes), we were limited to seven "planets" (visible with the naked eye). (Naively, the Sun and the Moon were included in this list of planets, even though we now know that neither is a planet.)

In pre-Copernican times, the Earth was considered to be the center of the Universe; now it known to be just another planet in orbit around the Sun. Neither is our own star pre-eminently at the "center" of the universe, nor, for that matter, is our Milky Way Galaxy at the center (sadly, professional Astrologers and professional Astronomers were not distinguished in those early days).

Galileo used his telescope to locate Sun spots, moving on the surface of the Sun that clearly demonstrated its "imperfections." But when you were taught from childhood, that God lives in the Heavens and therefore all celestial objects are perfect like Him, it's hard to break from this central dogma as an adult. Perhaps that's why clerics of the Roman Catholic Church declined to look through the telescope when Galileo invited them to do so, lest they experience cognitive dissonance and be forced to question their faith.

Most recently, our former 9th planet, Pluto, ~70 years after its discovery, was unceremoniously demoted to the status of a minor planet or more technically, a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). Another KBO named Eris (formerly Xena) with a moon named Dsynomia was recently discovered by Prof. Michael Brown of UC Berkeley to be 27 percent more massive than Pluto. Pluto, by the way, is now known to have two more moons (tentatively named S2005 P1 and P2, likely to be named Hydra and Nix, respectively [In Greek mythology, Nyx was a goddess of the night and Mother of the boatman, Charon]), in addition to its larger moon Charon.

From all of these fundamental misconceptions, the one thing that we can learn from the flawed history of science pertaining to astronomy is that the solar system that we live in turns out to be quite different than the one that our ancestors thought we lived in. Thus, as a corollary, all future cosmological hypotheses should be held as tentative and not absolute. [B37]

Note: The singleton Big Bang hypothesis (with inflation/multiverse variations to explain a few anomalies or objections) is now being challenged fundamentally by a couple of "Brane Theorists" who present convincing arguments in support of an endlessly oscillating universe (of periodic big-bangs/big-crunches when two mem'branes', under tension, come into contact and are suddenly "kicked back" with a calculated period of about one trillion years in a 10-dimensional space. The hidden dimensions [4-10] are invisible to the human eye, but are essential to make the math work) [B39].

2. Time began ticking forward at time "zero" from this initial moment (in constant intervals). The arrow of time is unidirectional, always forward, never backward (despite a vast array of stories to the contrary, authored by clever science-fiction script-writers who systematically exploit the time-travel-machine fallacy, because it's so inexpensive to represent this Star Trek foolishness on film by merely dressing up the characters in old- fashioned clothing, or whatever).

Corollary: Following the normal convention, we may partition our temporal dimension into three parts: The past, the present, and the future. All natural languages makes provision for verb inflection that grammarians refer to as tense. From the perspective of an individual lifetime, one person's perspective is like a laser-pointer illuminating a gigantic, dark ruler of time. We live in the light of the present as it systematically creeps forward. Everything 10,000 years before the pointer (the beginning of recorded history) is shrouded in the darkness of our unknowable, dead past, except, to some extent, for the work of anthropologists (striving to decipher our ancestors' thoughts), paleontologists, geologists, and astronomers (cosmologists). Everything forward of the pointer is covered by the darkness of an unknowable future. Thus, we are extraordinarily lucky to find ourselves within this light at all (the light of the present), given the vast dark expanse of the temporal ruler. [B39; p. 361]

Dr. Sean Carroll of CalTech in Pasadena, CA [B41] believes that he has a solution to the enigma of why time is unidirectional (a surrogate for the relentless increase in entropy described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics [as measured by the formula

s = K logW where

s is entropy;
K is the Boltzman Constant; and
W is the number of possible rearrangements of units in the universe]).

In a larger multiverse in which multiple universes (of which ours is only one) are active concurrently, some of them have time (entropy) moving in one direction while others have their time moving in the opposite direction. Thus, the net temporal (entropic) displacement is zero. (BTW, this does not introduce the fantasy-option of time travel because all these discussions are statistical in nature. One can never turn "an omelet into an egg" in the real world; only using the reverse button in a video can one create such an illusion of decreasing entropy in an intentional manner without doing any work). Multiple 'children universes' are spawned (budded) from a single 'mother universe' in which time is stationary, since this universe's entropy is as high as it can ever be. A new universe, with its own big bang, can then bud off randomly from the mother universe due to statistical fluctuations in quantum gravity and dark energy. By the way, the First Law of Thermodynamics (conservation of matter/energy) is not valid for the universe as a whole, since it's not a closed system. Indeed, new space is being injected uniformly from some invisible higher spacial dimension (resulting in an expansion, indeed an accelerating expansion, of the distance between certain galactic clusters). Furthermore, each cubic centimeter of new space that gets added with time comes with its own vacuum energy (dark energy). Although it's a small amount per cc, when summed together, it represents a rather large amount of energy, sufficient to warp space in strange ways and substantially change the nature of the universe in the future. See Dr. Carroll's personal website at cosmicvariance.com for more details. Schrodinger's cat makes a cameo appearance in a You Tube video clip of 30,000 colorful dominos that all fall down with the help of a single gentle push.

An alternative Loop Quantum Gravity explanation based on an oscillating universe (successive big bangs and big crunches) can be found in [B42], but the evidence for this concept is slim. It looks like our own universe will never crunch. Instead, it is destined to wind up billions of years in the future as an extremely high entropy level, very cold and uniformly dark, uninhabitable place.

3. The approximate time-of-origin of the Big Bang, as reckoned in our Earth years, was 13.7 (+/- 0.2) billion years ago (by definition, one Hubble Time). The background of this estimate is as follows: Over the last decade astronomers have calculated the age of the universe as ranging from [8 - 20] billion years by using different methods. This latest estimate comes from an analysis of 3,000 recently discovered quasars, allowing astronomers to map with unprecedented precision the distribution of diffuse gas between the galaxies. See Uros Seljak of Princeton University and HREF="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0407327">.NASA satellite "glow" study (Ronald Cowen, "Universal Truths: Distant Quasars Reveal Content, Age of Universe," Science News, Vol. 166, No. 5, pp. 69-70, July 31, 2004). Another recent estimate is based on The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Mission that looked back in time to just 380,000 years after the big bang, according to NASA researchers on February 11, 2003. Other recent observations were made by the Hubble Space Telescope using three random galaxies at the outer fringe of the visible universe with an average age of 12.6 billion years (per standard red shift calculations). Recently, Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia and Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California have pushed the Hubble Space Telescope's vision to its limit by looking at some of the Milky Way's least luminous white dwarfs members of stars that depleted their fuel a long time ago. They found an ancient white dwarf inside a globular star cluster 7,000 light-years away, one-billionth as bright as the faintest stars visible to the naked eye. It took eight consecutive days of exposure for the Hubble cameras to detect this dim white dwarf. These stars start off hot, but then cool down in a highly predictable manner. The coolest, dimmest dwarfs observed by Hubble are the oldest. Richer and his team calculated that these stars are [12 - 13] billion years old. Of course, one must take into consideration that about one billion years elapsed from the time of the Big Bang before light appeared in the otherwise dark infant universe, hence the final number for one Hubble Time is one billion years more. The findings were announced in Washington, D.C. on April 24, 2002 and are slated for publication in the next issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A team of Swiss and French astronomers reported on March 6, 2004 that they had found the most distant galaxy yet ( Abell 1835 IR1916), 13.23 billion light years from Earth, and was first formed when the universe was approximately 750 million years old. This puts our estimate of the age of the universe in very close correspondence with actual observation.

The Astronomy Education Board of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has prepared an article for teachers and students (K-12) on how astronomers know that the universe is so old and how it has changed with time. This article has now been posted on the Internet at The Universe in the Classroom.

4. Conventional space (in three Cartesian dimensions) became defined as a result of the expanding turbulent shock wave of the big bang filling the tapestry of the void. [ Note: It is consistent with various mathematical models in modern physics (like String Theory, for example) to imagine that the three-dimensional world we "know and love" might actually be a "shadow" or projection of a much higher (like 10-) dimensional hyperspace that we are essentially unaware of and in which gravity, for example, may appear weaker than it actually is, since it may "leak" into some of these "higher" dimensions. Ref. [B21] argues that our space "may only be one among many such spaces, a simple atom in an immensely varied ensemble." However, all of this should be construed as radical speculation for the moment, until more rigorous empirical data can be accumulated to support such curious hypotheses.]

By the way, String Theory portrays the forces and particles of nature, including those responsible for gravity, as exquisitely tiny "vibrating strings " in which something as complex as a "black hole" could be explained as a melange of strings and multidimensional membranes known as "D-branes." Complex mathematical equations based on this theory allow astronomers to calculate the [informational] Entropy of a black hole as E = S/4, where S is the surface area of the spherical "event horizon" within which time appears to stop and from which no light escapes Furthermore, the digital nature of the space is calculated using a so-called Planck Length whose dimension is 10^-35 meters. This dimension would represent the granularity of space, so to speak, with each grain representing an absolute single bit (a "one" or a "zero") but never more than that. If it proves correct, this theory would have revealed a very beautiful and deep property of space that wouldn't be at all obvious. The Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter who first solved Einstein's equations for such a space is given credit with the name de Sitter Space. Thus, according to Loop Quantum Gravity, space should not be thought of as an analog continuum but a digital mesh of tightly packed spheres, if one were to "drill down" deep enough. So, each sphere has a diameter related to Planck's Length, denoted by L(P), and is about 1.0 x 10^--20 x the diameter of a proton. L(P) can be represented mathematically as the
Square Root of {(h-bar x G)/(c³)}where:

* c is the speed of light in a vacuum;
* G is the Gravitational Constant;
* h-bar is Dirac's Constant (or Planck's Constant divided by 2xPi).

According to Heizenberg's Uncertainty Principle, each sphere cannot hold zero energy but must contain some fixed amount of vacuum (dark) energy.

5. The Universe. Immediately after the bang there followed a period of chaotic hyperinflation of space and time, with a duration of less than one second. This region of space/time defined our present physically homogeneous, isotropic, but somewhat frothy universe.

December 2004; The modern view of the universe, as seen from some distant vantage point, might look like a wispy cobweb of galactic clusters, sort of like frothy bubbles spread out and surrounding blocks of "empty" space.

March 2005; A similar cross-section of the universe shows galaxies as bright dots along filaments of matter, with a hypothetical sea of "dark energy" filling the space between the galactic islands. If it does exist, this dark energy could help to explain why the universe appears to be accelerating in its rate of expansion. Alternative explanations, however, involve "Inflationary Theory" (1981) or "Leaky Gravity" based on String Theory, in which gravitons escape (leak) into other dimensions beyond the familiar three {x, y, z} plus time {t}. According to one widely-accepted view, the observed accelerating expansion is not due to "dark matter/energy" but long ripples in the fabric of space-time created immediately following the Big Bang itself. Because these ostensible ripples would stretch far beyond the observable universe, they might not have been properly accounted for. These long-wavelength swells may ebb and flow with time and could presently give the appearance of an extra expansion to the universe. This idea could also change our speculations about the ultimate fate of the universe... (1) collapse, in a "big crunch"; (2) be completely blown apart, in a "big rip"; or (3) drift slowly into an eventual cosmic inky frozen blackness in which all twinkling stars in the night sky fade to invisibility (a "big chill"). Of course, if humans were still living under such a scenario, and saw such a remarkable sky, it wouldn't be here on Earth, since this particular planet would have long since been incinerated by our own sun's supernova, suggesting that we had moved on to a more hospitable star system, possibly even another galaxy than our familiar Milky Way with its reassuring Zodiac to keep us company. [Gratuitous Remark: By that time, the last living human may wish to turn off the lights to save on energy.]

NASA's WMAP Probe demonstrates a hyperinflation of our universe shortly after the "Big Bang" 13.7 bya (billion years ago). Speculations about the future of the Universe convince us that we are at a unique point in the history of the universe. If we go on for much longer and the universe continues to expand at an accelerating rate, as it appears to be doing, the existence of other galaxies may become uncertain as they systematically snuff out (become invisible from our current vantage point). Our own Milky Way galaxy, however, will continue to be visible for quite some time after that before it too becomes dark. And a certain class of star may continue to burn for quite some time after that like oases in a vast desert of darkness.

6. Forces. From a single unified force implied by the bang, there evolved four fundamental manifestations of this force: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force.

7. Quarks. Following the fundamental Laws of Thermodynamics (the 1^st Law [ Enthalpy] and the 2nd Law [Increasing Entropy]), average kinetic energy ( temperature) at the expanding surface of the bang's shockwave began to slow ( cool). A "phase change" took place in the energy "soup." Energy (potential and kinetic) condensed into matter and antimatter. Matter precipitated randomly from the "energy broth" in slightly unequal proportions (10^-43 seconds). A vast soup of small particles called neutrinos resulted, having an exquisitely small, hard-to-measure physical mass. These Fermions aggregated into two basic subcategories: quarks and more physically massive leptons, each with appropriate mass, charge, and spin. Thus, quarks have color, flavor, strangeness, and charm and appear in three paired specializations (up (u)/down (d); strange (s)/charm (c); and bottom (b)/top (t)). Leptons also come in three paired specializations (electron (e^-)/electron-neutrino (n_e); muon (m^-)/muon-neutrino (n_m); and tau (t^-)/tau-neutrino (n_t)). These in turn gave rise to hadrons: protons, antiprotons, and neutrons (10^-34 seconds).

April 13, 2008; Some physicists now speculate that a new form of matter may exist at the center of the remnants of collapsed stars called strange matter, where the pressures and temperatures are so intense that the protons and electrons fuse to form neutrons, which then degenerate into a uniform quark plasma. Theoretically, the tremendous gravity of strange matter would convert any ordinary matter it came into contact with into still more strange matter (thereby destroying the regular matter) in the same way that a single particle can trigger the crystallization of ice from liquid water under the right boundary conditions. A similar phenomenon is suspected when a single infectious molecule triggers the formation of an array of misfolded proteins (e.g., alpha helix into a beta pleated-sheet) as is believed to occur in a family of prion diseases such as TSE (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalitis [Mad Cow Disease]) leaving large holes in the brains of infected cows.

November 18, 2006; Researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have identified two new subatomic particles, called Sigma sub-B particles. The short-lived particles decay in a small fraction of a second. The first consists of two "up" quarks and a "bottom" quark, while the second consists of two "down" quarks and a "bottom" quark.

An international team of physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illionois have just announced (July 21, 2000) the empirical observation of the last of the 12 basic particles that had not yet been detected until now. This helps to corroborate the so-called Standard Model of Particle Physics. Prof. Wolfgang Pauli first speculated about the existence of neutrinos in the early 1930s, the first one of which was not actually detected in a lab until 1962. Prof. Martin Perl, Nobel Prize winner at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, discovered the tau lepton in 1975. He named the "tau neutrino" but didn't have the technology to actually identify one at his lab. Finally, this elusive subatomic particle has been photographed directly as it occasionally creates a tau lepton when it strikes an iron nucles, that in turn leaves a characteristic kink in its trajectory while its tract decays.

According to the Standard Model, two quarks can combine to form a meson, three quarks make up a proton, anti-proton, or neutron, while occasionally four quarks, two normal and two antiquarks, are bound together by gluons to form an exotic meson. (For those who are interested, all this is better explained in a subspecialty of physics known as Quantum Chromodynamics [Q.C.D.][22, 23]). Interestingly, Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY has identified a quark-gluon plasma with particles containing two "up" quarks, two "down" quarks, and a fifth quark known as an "anti-strange" quark, as reported in the journal Physical Review Letters (June 27, 2003). Although QCD theory did not prohibit the existence of five-quark particles, no one had seen any such particles after three decades of searching and they were deemed unlikely. Nature continues to surprise.

8. Photons. The mutual annihilation of matter/antimatter particle pairs gave rise to curious massless wave-like discrete particles known as photons (10^-10 seconds). Their dual (quantum/wave) nature, depending on whether one looks at them as individuals or as an ensemble, provides a constant-of-proportionality (named for Max Planck) with energy. Only from this point does it make sense to say, "Let there be light." The constant velocity of photons (represented by the letter "c") in a vacuum constrain the dimensionality and shape of space, as well as the relentless vector of time. Note: Photons (Electromagnetic Force), Gluons (Strong Force), W and Z particles (Weak Force), and Gravitons (Gravitational Force) actually form a family of Bosons or particles that carry the four forces among the "massive" fermions. [There may even be a "Higgs" boson as well.] Gravitons, by the way are only postulated and have not yet been observed with today's instruments. Furthermore, they are not yet part of the "Standard Model" advocated by today's physicists. A more ambitious "Grand Unified Theory" will attempt to show that all four forces are manifestations of a single superforce, but that has not been achieved. Theoretical physicists explain these notions by employing the notion of a tiny one-dimensional string vibrating in a higher-dimensional space; 10 to 26 space-time dimensions may be required for the mathematics to work out correctly. As mentioned briefly above, the idea of a string can then be generalized to a vibrating membrane-like surface called a "D-brane" existing in various dimensions. This "theory of everything," one of Einstein's dreams, may not be made rigorous for a long time to come. Prof. John Schwartz of CalTech is not worried about a theory that sounds like "medieval theology" (matter made up not of individual particles but of tiny vibrating loops of string), since "it is too beautiful a mathematical structure to be completely irrelevant to nature," and it has now been used to successfully predict the behavior of matter while alternative theories have failed.

9. Positive Matter. By now, the average energy-density of the universe fell to such a low level that new quarks and anti-quarks could no longer be formed. They were scattered unevenly throughout the expanding cosmos. Virtually all matter/antimatter was mutually annihilated resulting in a harvest of photons (later detectable as uneven noisy "background radiation," the afterglow of the original decoupling of matter from energy), leaving behind only a small fraction of the original mass in the universe (positive matter). At this time photons could not be observed outside their local regions. A formal mathematical theory ( Chaos Theory ) is required for further explanation.

From that time to the current time, the expanding "big bang" appears to have been a relatively homogeneous or uniform process (or "flat" in the jargon of cosmologists who worry about these matters). By the way, this so-called "flatness" of the explosion doesn't mean at all that it exploded with a 2-dimensional shock wave [in the form of an expanding disk rather than spherically], since the term refers to the projection of a four-dimensional explosion onto a non-warped 3-D space. By contrast, if the projection were onto a "convex" space, the expansion might slow down and at some point stop, subsequently leading to a symmetric "big crunch," once gravity slowly pulled all matter back again to a singular point. Still another alternative would have been a projection onto a "concave" space [hyperbolic paraboloid] in which expansion could continue forever until all stars burned out, leaving uniform cold dark matter everywhere. When all stars finally burned out, black holes would still remain. However, after an additional 10¹²¹ years, black holes would finally "evaporate," leaving no energy-producing objects any where in the universe. [Ref. B19]

Note: For the moment, the above remarks should be considered highly speculative, since astronomers appear to change their minds about their validity every week; examples include Albert Einstein's proposed "Cosmological Constant" (even Einstein himself rejected it at one point, calling it "The greatest mistake of my professional career.") and so-called "quintessence" (another abstract concept created by physicists as a "fudge-factor" to make certain equations consistent with reality). Other physicists try to explain the elusive dark matter/energy in the "empty" vacuum between the visible galaxies causing turbulence among them by postulating the existence of non-baryonic quantum foam particles they call WIMPS (Weakly Interactive Massive Particles). Those supporting MACHOs (MAssive Compact Halo Objects) are now definitely out of favor. Obviously, more settling needs to take place about the relative distribution of "micro" black holes in the universe, as well, before we can employ any of these abstractions with confidence.

10. Electrons. After approximately one second; negatively-charged electrons dominate and positrons are largely annihilated.

11. Nuclei. At about one minute, protons (positively charged) and neutrons (no net charge) are created and bind together in various configurations.

12. Atoms. Protons capture single electrons: Hydrogen. More complex nuclei ( alpha particles) capture two electrons: Helium. By incremental aggregation, other atomic structures are formed. Electronic orbitals (shells) are formed in curious but well-defined patterns that are ultimately described in the "Periodic Table of the Elements."

13. Gas. At about one billion years, large collections of atoms begin to aggregate into specks of dust that, in turn, coalesced into wispy clouds of gas ( dark matter).

14. Stars. The Primordial Era of the universe, which started with the big bang and included the birth of many light-weight elements in the Periodic Table, soon gave way to the next of five proposed Eras of the universe called the Stelliferous Era (which we are still in as of the present time). The Stelliferous Era is characterized by the foamy distribution of a large numbers of massive luminous objects filling space with photons. By the way, this Era is scheduled to terminate in about 90 trillion years, when the Degenerate Era is slated to begin. Anyway, as gravity pulled various cosmic gases (quark-gluon plasmas) together at various points in space, the gasses became so hot that exothermic nuclear fusion reactions began to take place. Electromagnetic-wave-emitting stars were born, illuminating the earlier darkness with solar winds in all directions. Quasars, quasi-stellar objects, with exceptional brightness at the fringes of the universe were born. They are powered by matter-sucking black holes as massive as a billion suns. One of the most distant quasars was recently spotted 26 billion light-years away (estimated to have been born about 1 billion years post big bang and traveling away from us on the other side of the center point of the origin). A recent census performed by astronomers at Johns Hopkins University (July 2003) and to be published by the London Royal Astronomical Society estimated that there are 70 sextillion stars in the known universe (7 x 10²²), more than the number of grains of sand on every beach, desert, or field of dirt on the planet Earth. Pulsars were fast-spinning "lighthouse" stars that appear to flash periodically with great precision. A particular star, in a relatively undistinguished corner of the universe, we call Sol (the sun).

LBV 1806-20 was observed recently (January 5, 2004) on the opposite edge of our Milky Way Galaxy (about 45,000 light years away) to be a short-lived blue star [4 to 40] million times as bright as the Sun, at least 150 times as massive, and at least 200 times as wide. Next to this star our sun would appear as small as Mercury does next to our Sun. However, this star will burn out quickly, within a few million years, compared with the 10 billion-year lifespan estimated for the Sun. When it goes, it will explode in a succession of supernovas, "like a massive fireworks display," according to the Astrophysical Journal.

Summary:

Table of Periods/Eras of the Universe

15. Molecules. Because of the intense pressures, heavier elements were formed deep with stars. Fortuitously, different atom types were then able to combine in new arrangements to form molecules. Heterogeneous combinations of elements are called compounds and give rise to structures with significant new physical properties.

16. Water. One of these compounds, H₂O, a hydroxide of hydrogen, an "O" with two "H"'s attached at the precise angle of 104.5^o, has a fluid/solid physical phase-change point on the cool side of its maximum-density temperature (277^oK). This allows bodies of this fluid (lakes for example) to freeze from the top down instead of the reverse, something whose importance will become apparent later on.

17. Galaxies. Galaxies are formed from swirling dish-shaped clouds of dense dark matter and newly-forming stars. At one time in their evolution they may appear to have great spiral arms, a consequence of the fact that the internal rotation of the loosely-coupled dish of dust may have higher angular momentum than the external regions. Later, they become massive twisting clusters of stars in which new stars are born and die at a regular, continuous pace. A recent study (January 10, 2004) using the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that there are at least 1.6 billion galaxies the size of the Milky Way out to a distance of 9 billion light years. Another study predicts that there are about 100 billion galaxies altogether, each one containing on the order of 100 billion stars.

18. Galactic Clusters. At two billion years, galaxies arrange themselves in clusters, spherical bubbles of space with membranous surfaces made up of thousands of galaxies surrounding empty space measured in millions of light years. The surfaces of the clusters are chaotic and turbulent as droplets on the surface of an ocean wave striking a beach. This turbulence may explain how galaxies are capable of colliding with one another, giving rise to extensive new star formation. Indeed, if the big bang was originally characterized by a smoothly expanding spherical shock wave, small lumps, pockets, or ripples of increased mass density in certain local regions now give rise to gravitational great attractors that retard or distort the expansion of the big bang. As a result, what we observe today is a lacy collection of different size galactic bubbles, some of which are called clusters and some of which are now called super clusters, collectively forming a sort of foam. The space in between super clusters appears to be void.

19. Black Holes. These are essential singularities in space/time in which the gravitational field created by a sufficient mass at a point is so powerful that the light attempting to exit curves back into the interior, making it appear dark. Black holes like a vortex essentially swallow up any matter that has the "misfortune" to be near by. It is believed that most spiral galaxies house massive black holes in their centers. However, some regions of space may be densely sprinkled with "micro" black holes that could account for a substantial amount of the allegedly "missing" dark matter. These holes, which are characterized by parameters of center, event horizon, mass, and angular momentum, come in three flavors: static (spherically symmetric with no angular velocity), stationary (axisymmetric), and perturbed (completely asymmetric). Just as our sun looks relatively calm when viewed from a distance but in reality is quite turbulent when observed close up, so the throat of a black hole is even more tumultuous, with super-heated atoms slamming into each other, causing unexpected fusions. Layers of electrically-charged plasma orbiting at different speeds can sheer against each other tangling into a series of intense magnetic storms. Curiously, the black hole presumed to be at the center of our own Milky Way is unusually "black." Those in other galaxies emit far more visible light, while ours seems to keep its vast energy close to home, for whatever reasons that are yet to be explained.

20. White Holes. The counterpart of black holes, white holes would be space/time singularities that spit out newly-formed matter -- possibly a different phase in the evolution of black holes.

21. Worm holes. These are hypothetical tunnels through space/time systematically connecting black and white holes. Traveling along or through a worm hole, as far as time is concerned, make "all bets off." Such a topology makes for a universe with interesting properties, but the jury is still out on this mathematically interesting construct.

22. The Milky Way. A relatively undistinguished galaxy in a far off corner of the universe is known as "The Milky Way," which is part of a local group of about 50 galaxies in turn part of the Virgo Supercluster of local groups.

360-Degree Photographic Panorama of the Milky Way, from the Viewpoint of Our Solar System.

Structurally, the Milky Way Galaxy is a flat plate of [200 - 400] billion stars scattered in a set of spiral arms around a central bulge ( Sagittarius A*), which is believed to contain a massive black hole. The flat disk is surrounded by a spheroid halo of older stars. The entire disk slowly rotates with a period of [225 - 250] million years (corresponding to one Galactic Year). Thus, it is thought to have completed about [20 - 25] orbits since its birth. The main disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is [80 - 100] thousand light-years in diameter (about [250 - 300] thousand light-years in circumference) and outside the galactic core, about 1,000 light-years in thickness. Architecturally, it contains four major spiral arms ( Perseus, Norma, Scutum-Crux, and Sagittarius), all of which start at the galaxy's center, plus a number of smaller arms ( Cygnus, Orion, and Carina). For reference, our Sun is located on the inner rim of the Orion Arm about 26 thousand light years from the center ([60 - 70] percent of the way from the center). Also, something that may be difficult to appreciate is that the plane of the Milky Way the plane of the ecliptic of our solar system may not be parallel. What this means for the evolution of life, however, is not clear.

The Milky Way is not a static entity, but has its own internal dynamics. In January 2005, researchers reported that a heretofore unexplained tympanic warp in the disk of the Milky Way had now been mapped and found to be a ripple (or vibration) set up by the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds as they circle the Milky Way, causing vibrations at certain frequencies as they pass through the edges of the Galaxy. Thus, our sun "bobs up and down" (a vertical oscillation) with respect to the plane of the galaxy as though it were floating on the surface of a lake with waves propagating across it as a speed boat passes by. Thus, the trajectory of the Sun-in-space is sinusoidal, as the disk itself is rotating (clockwise). The period of this oscillation is 63.0 million years. As the upper face of the nebula is more exposed to cosmic radiation than the lower face (because of its neighboring galaxies), it is suspected that there is a cause-and-effect relationship with the periodic swings in the biodiversity of species that inhabit the surface of the Earth. Local minima of species takes place with a surprisingly-regular interval of 62 million years based on 500 million years of data. If sharp drops in biodiversity correspond to peaks in the intensity of cosmic rays, it may be that radiation damage to DNA has potentially lethal consequences thus causing the extinction of many vulnerable species all at once. The dinosaurs that became extinct 65 million years ago, however, don't fit this cyclic pattern (experts widely blame their extinction on the impact of a large asteroid that formed what is now the Gulf of Mexico. Herbivores could not sustain a multi-year dust blockage of the Sun that led to a decline in vegetation secondary to a loss of photosynthesis).

To help us get our bearings, the Nebula in Andromeda is an adjacent, neighboring galaxy toward which we are traveling at the rate of 250,000 miles per hour for a scheduled impact (or "pass through") in another 3 billion years. At least two very different outcomes might prevail post collision: The turbulence may (1) pull our local piece (arm) of the Milky Way far out into dark space or conversely (2) drive it in toward the center of the combined galax(ies). If there would be anybody left on the Earth to look up at the sky at night, if there still were an Earth and if there still were a night [and day] (if there still were a sun [that had not yet gone into supernova]), the experience might be quite different than what we are accustomed to. In the first case, the night sky would appear very dark indeed. In the second case, the "night" sky would appear very bright indeed [much brighter than a full moon], since the density of stars in the local neighborhood might be several orders of magnitude greater, and the effect would be of a multi-sun system that never led to real darkness except in times of exceptional alignment of local moon(s), providing, of course, that there still were moon(s) available for the purpose of a full multi-solar eclipse. However, it may be a moot point, since by the completion of the merger of the two galaxies in about 5 billion years, our sun will certainly have burned out by then.

A new simulation by Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb predicts that the Nebula in Andromeda and the Milky Way Galaxies are on course to collide in only two billion years and that the galaxies will fuse within five billion years. In the mean time, as our universe continues to expand, all other galaxies will fade from sight in the night sky. Thus, we live in a very special time in the history of the universe in which the global universe is destined to become a very lonely place until the next "Big Crunch," which is much further down stream in time.

23. Solar Systems. At one to three billion years through the aggregation of massive amounts of dust, planets and their associated moons are formed around stars in an ecliptic plane. It is not unusual for moons to break apart and reaggregate themselves. So far, astronomers have identified 115 "extra solar" planets, at least one of which is in the center of a star cluster called M4 in the constellation Scorpius and was formed only 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The star at the center of the cluster is a pulsar, or neutron star spinning at nearly 100 times per second, emitting regular radio pulses like a light house.

Planemos are a new category of extrasolar objects that by weight would qualify as a planet if they were orbiting a star but are actually solitary, free-floating, dark orphans, possibly surrounded by a disk of dust or gas with enough mass to coalesce into their own miniature solar system. Some even appear to have their own planetary mass objects orbiting them and could be a nascent solar system in an early stage of evolution that has not yet gone fusion-critical.

24. Our Solar System. About four-and-a-half billion years ago, such a system of eight (8 + /- 2) planets were formed around Sol, a star located along the outer edges of The Milky Way. These planets are now called Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, {Asteroid Belt}, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, {Pluto/Charon}, and maybe 2000 EB173 (a newly-discovered minor planet about 400 miles in diameter located beyond Pluto beyond the outer rim of the solar system and lies near a belt of comets called the Kuiper Belt. The standard planets possessed sufficient mass that their cores melted, allowing them to "sphericalize," instead of remaining a haphazard collection of lumpy subunits. The Ort Cloud consists of comets and dust that lie far beyond the limits of the Solar System.

Correction: Since its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Pluto has always been considered the ninth planet from the Sun despite its highly-eccentric elliptical orbit that ranges far outside the plane of the ecliptic. But in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), in its wisdom, redefined the criteria for a "planethood," so as to exclude Pluto as well as other Trans-Neptunian Objects like Ceres and Eris, a Kuiper-Belt object, which, as it turns out, is slightly larger than Pluto. These peculiar objects are all now called Dwarf or Minor Planets. Interestingly, the Oort Cloud, extending beyond the Kuiper Belt, may contain billions of comet-like objects of unknown size, so there will be no end in new astronomical observations and discoveries, as better space-based telescopes are put in place.

25. Sol. This star is a moderately-sized sphere with a boiling thermonuclear structure. Because it is not a rigid object, but a gaseous ball, its equator rotates more rapidly than its poles, 25 days in the equatorial region vs. 31 days in some polar regions. Wandering belts of gas (trade winds like the jet streams on Earth) between 17,000 and 40,000 miles across occur in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Like stripes on a barber pole, they start in the mid- latitudes and gradually move toward the equator. Solar eruptions called sun spots appear to form at the turbulent edges of these zones with a periodicity of approximately eleven years that extend their electromagnetic influence throughout the solar system.

According to a physicist who's modeled the effect of temperature fluctuations within our Sun, it may have a "dimmer switch" at its core that causes its brightness to oscillate in periods of around 100,000 years. This is exactly the same duration as occurs between ice ages on Earth. According to the standard model, the temperature of the Sun's core was to be held constant, while subtle changes in Earth's orbit was what was supposed to cause ice ages, but this view has persistent problems and variation in the Sun's temperature itself may better explain this empirically-observed ice-age phenomenon.

In terms of the natural history of the Sun, as with all stellar objects, it will continue to warm till in about one billion years from now the oceans of our Earth will have boiled off and the Earth's surface will have burned to a crisp. In about five and a half billion years, the Sun will expand to a Red Giant. Only a few thousand years are needed for the temperature of the Sun to grow to 30,000 degrees K. At this temperature, the Sun will begin to emit large quantities of UV radiation. This UV radiation is capable of ionizing the Hydrogen shell of matter that escaped from the Sun during an earlier phase. Eventually, exhausting its fuel supply, it will cool off becoming a mere Earth-sized White Dwarf that dims to a Black Dwarf, essentially a cold, dark, ignominious lump of carbon.

26. Earth. The inner solar-system planetary bodies (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) began forming much earlier than astronomers previously believed, within 10,000 years after Sol ignited. However, even after 10 million years, the third planet, Earth, had only reached about 64 percent of its present size by a slow process of dust accretion. Earth had a fortuitous distance from its star with a period of revolution that is now referred to as one year, although this duration has lengthened over the course of geological time over what it once was. It also had an appropriate angular momentum allowing for rotation around its own axis (forming days [and nights] of 24-hour intervals, each hour further subdivided into 60 minutes, each minute further subdivided into 60 seconds, in an arbitrary manner). The shape of the sphere became an "oblate spheroid" due to the angular momentum of its daily rotation. Seven of these intervals are given the name week and were named accordingly (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). Its axis of rotation had an appropriate declination angle with respect to the plane of the ecliptic (23.5^o +/- 10 ^o). This angle is responsible for seasonal variation ( Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer). It was established in 1891 that location of the North Pole tends to drift slowly about 20 feet to-and-fro with a period of 433 days. This so-called "Chandler Wobble" has now been explained (in the year 2000) as due to the fluctuating pressure on the bottom of the ocean, secondary to temperature/salinity changes and wind-driven changes in the circulation of the oceans.

A curious observation is that life on a rocky planet like the Earth depends on the presence of heavier elements in the Periodic Table being present in space at the time of the formation of the solar system of which this planet is a part. This in turn depends on first-generation neighborhood stars having been through a supernova that "seeds" heavier elements into the neighboring space, since the space around primordial first-generation stars following the Big Bang would only be rich in Hydrogen and Helium, so rocky crusted (sandy/watery) planets couldn't even form. Indeed, in a survey of 120 galaxies that were formed around a billion years after the Big Bang vs. a set of 21 comparable younger galaxies, the younger galaxies were in the process of synthesizing new stars at 10x the pace (~500 new stars per year).

27. Luna. A singleton moon is called Luna, whose period of rotation is called a month, almost 12 of which fit into one year, naming these months accordingly ( January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December). The Moon's mass and distance from the Earth played a significant role in tidal flexing of the Earth's oceans. It also provided significant illumination on the Earth during darkness, depending on the relative juxtaposition of the three astronomical bodies: Sun, Earth, and Moon.

Apparently, Luna was formed 4.5 billion years ago (surprisingly recently) when a massive rogue planet (at least as massive as Mars) struck the Earth and blew off huge chunks of matter into space. These pieces formed ring(s) (like the rings of Saturn) which subsequently aggregated into a single body that "sphericalized" once the inner core melted/liquified (due to the intense pressure within the interior). [These events have been simulated by researchers at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.] Over time, the moon has moved away from the Earth (at the rate of three feet per Century) from a distance of no more than 10,000 miles away to 240,000 miles away today. In the beginning, the Earth's day may have been only five or six hours long, as energy from the Earth's rotation is lost through tidal ocean drag. Thus, the moon's gravitational drag has slowed the spin rate of the Earth, such that by 500 million years ago, it slowed to 22 hours. Thus, the biological clocks of all organisms alive at that the time were adapted to a somewhat faster circadian rhythm. Today, of course, it's 24 hours. In the future, the day will continue to lengthen, and adaptation will presumably continue.

The presence of numerous large and small craters on the surface of today's moon -- without an atmosphere to erode its history -- provides testimony that the solar system was at one time a much more busy and crowded place, densely packed with asteroids that were pulled toward and crashed into on any high-gravity objects nearby. Today, such objects are relatively sparse. Even though the early Earth must have been an equal victim to such bombardment, the evidence for such craters on our own surface is relatively rare, owing to wind/water erosion. One might ask if the moon is still being hit by asteroids or meteors today? By bouncing laser beams off the Moon, astronomers have discovered that it "sways" in its orbit by a few meters forward and back with a period on the order of three years. Like the oscillations of a huge bell, still ringing long after it has been clanged, Luna is acting as though it had been struck by a large object with the last 1,000 years. Our Earth is scheduled to "welcome" a sizeable asteroid or other object (Code named "2000 SG344") in our vicinity around the year 2030. A more serous one is scheduled for September 16, 2071. Stay tuned for updates from NASA and the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

28. Earth Structure. The Earth, whose mass, by definition, forms a gravitational field of 1 g, was formed with extraordinary complexity throughout, especially regarding its surface. It possessed an atmosphere, a lithosphere, and a hydrosphere. The atmosphere burned up most of the meteors that fell toward the Earth, leaving only a few significant impact craters. The ozone layer in the upper regions of the atmosphere (stratosphere) served to filter (protect against) the ultraviolet rays of the Sun. As the planet cooled, the lithosphere, composed of separate hard tectonic plates, formed as a crisp shell (punctuated with "pin" holes) around a molten central core, whose character is still revealed to the surface today in the form of volcanoes occasionally spewing hot molten fluid (lava). The molten core contained large concentrations of the element iron, whose magnetic properties served to protect the planet further with a radiation-shielding magnetosphere; not all planets are so endowed. The motion or the plates ( continental drift) is still detectable today in the form of earthquakes. From an initial primordial continent ( Pangea or Gondwanaland) 550 million years ago visible above the hydrosphere, a number of subcontinents ( North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica) with wrinkled texture ( mountains) emerged. These continents partitioned the hydrosphere into oceans ( Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, etc.). Organic molecules (composed of Carbon [with an electron shell of four electrons, making it ideal for linear chaining], along with the elemental building blocks of Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Sulfur,...) formed initially in a liquid soup in the oceans now laden with salt, giving to it an appropriate osmotic pressure.

29. Climate and Weather. Rain (floods/hurricanes/cyclones/monsoons/typhoons and drought), snow, ice, hail, desert sandstorms, and electrical discharges (lightening/thunder) further served to erode, cook, churn, and electrify the organic pot. Rain also formed lakes, ponds, puddles, and rivers. Over millennia, ice ages came and went (just a 3-5^oC reduction in the average temperature of the Earth is sufficient to trigger an ice age with longer Winters and cooler Summers lasting Centuries). This further distorted geological formations on the Earth's surface. As the precession of the Earth around its axis-of-rotation caused it to wobble and nod with a periodicity of 22,000 years, the stronger Summer sunshine at higher northern latitudes was probably responsible for the end of ice ages every 100,000 years or so. These last three items were important to establish the proper ecological boundary conditions for the formation of life on Earth. There is continuing controversy as to whether these boundary conditions are commonplace around the universe and that life or even intelligent life has arisen spontaneously elsewhere, and that it is therefore worth attempting to communicate with "them." To help establish this hypothesis, it is fashionable to represent the probability of intelligent life appearing on any planet as a mathematical product:

PI = n₁ x n₂ x n₃ x ... x n_(delta)

where PI (the capital Greek letter PI) is the probability of intelligent life in the Milky Way, n₁ is proportional to the number of stars in our galaxy, and many of the other n's are fractions, like the fraction of such stars that are likely to have planetary systems, etc. It should be pointed out that even for any large number of stars n₁, there is a sufficiently large (delta) such that PI turns out to be infinitesimally small. In other words, we may very well be alone in the universe, and the SETI Project, despite the cogent arguments put forth by the late Carl Sagan to the contrary, may well be a big waste of money. Also, one can imagine other kinds of scenarios besides the romantic Star Trek model for how intelligent alien species might interact with Homo sapiens [See Ref. B18, Ward and Brownlee and Ref. B20, Aczel which further elaborates on the 7-factor Drake Equation {Francis Drake, 1961}]:

1. Everyone listens, no one talks. (this is paradoxical) (Also, remember inadvertent TV signal leakage);

2. Raising one's hand attracts attention to one's self, leading to one's demise. (Heisenberg's Principle);

3. There's a conspiracy of advanced civilizations who are secretly observing us but haven't approved us for membership in their club yet, as, in their view, we're not sufficiently mature [B40];

4. Conversations prove uninteresting for various other reasons:

a. Their IQs are immeasurably low (bacteria, "can't fog a mirror," "no EEG [brain dead]," "Don't bite my finger, look where I'm pointing,");

b. Their IQs are quite low ("they move their lips while reading"); or

c. Their IQs are extremely high (we're the ones who appear to think like bacteria!).

At this time, we cannot accept the so-called Cosmic Imperative Hypothesis which suggests that life always arises spontaneously, given the proper initial/boundary conditions (a plentiful supply of solar-energy photons, carbon atoms and other low atomic weight atoms that are normal constituents of organic molecules [like H, N, O, S, Cl, Na, K, Ca, etc.], liquid water undergoing some degree of turbulence [stirring/churning], electrical discharges [lightning], pH not far from 7.0 with moderate pressure and temperature variations, and sufficient time [perhaps 2-3 billion years]. A single data point, life on Earth, does not constitute proof, no matter how many millions, billions, or trillions or Earth-like planets may exist in other solar systems throughout the universe, notwithstanding the possibility that life might have existed at one time on Mars (and is now extinct) or in the oceans under the ice of one of the moons of Jupiter (Europa), as it is now fashionable to imagine. There is no known law of physics that compels life obligingly to arise under ancient earth-like conditions. The beginnings of life on Earth are lost in the mists of time as the fossil trail peters out 3.5 billion years ago. This "if you build it, they will come" hypothesis fondly urged by astrophysical chemists who have shown that various amino-acid building blocks could arise spontaneously given the right boundary conditions, also falls short of the sort of evidence we need.

While amino acids are like "bricks," life is like an elaborate "house" made up of simple bricks. Except in a cartoon running a video tape in reverse, have you ever seen a hurricane assemble a house out of a pile of bricks? On the other hand, everyone can imagine that a hurricane can "disassemble" a house into a random pile of bricks in a very short time. Simple bacteria are self-reproducing organisms of exquisite complexity made up in part of self-replicating molecules (DNA). There is a minimal number of genes (perhaps 100) needed for the simplest type of bacterium that could ever be naturally constructed and still be alive. Dr. J. Craig Venter, CEO of Celera Genomics Group of Rockville, Maryland, is now proposing to conduct an experiment of this sort starting with one of the simplest bacteria known (200-300 genes) and selectively deleting genes one-at-a-time until the creature stops being capable of reproduction, no matter which gene is chosen for deletion. It is likely that results of this experiment will be reported in the next five years.

Proponents of Creationism firmly believe that even if one successfully evolved a family of one-celled organisms (like bacteria), one could never bring about a complex creature with eyes to "see," simply by means of "natural selection." For them, such visual organs are obviously too complex to imagine without recourse to a "miracle" to help explain the eye's very existence. On the other hand, evolutionary theorists have now proven that many types of eye-like photo sensors could have evolved independently more than 40 times over the broad span of paleontological history. An interesting new data point has recently shed some light on this debate... We know that bricks can be used to build either an aqueduct to deliver water (Roman engineers did it often) or a gothic cathedral to worship God (Europeans built many fine examples in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany). Conventional wisdom ascribes great intelligence to the architect of the cathedral; the builder of an aqueduct is merely an engineer. Think of the complex blueprints needed to specify a magnificent cathedral, you say. Now think of the dim- witted brick-layer; not too much intelligence is demanded of the mason who makes the bricks, right? Just make a brick and do it again, and again, and again, ten billion times if need be. Now think of the complexity of a multicellular organism (the cathedral) compared to, say, a single- celled organism (the brick). What would you say is the ratio of complexity between these two? Prof. Gerald M. Rubin of the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of California at Berkeley and Chairman of the International Drosophila Consortium has just provided us with the following surprising data point (March 24, 2000; Science): A fruit fly (complex creature)'s genome is now know to contain 13,601 genes along its four chromosomes [ Drosophila melanogaster]; while a yeast (simple one-celled creature)'s genome contains 6,241 genes on its chromosomes [ Saccharomyces cerevisiae]. Curiously, a lowly microscopic worm (or nematode) contains 18,424 genes [ Caenorhabditis elegans]. Conclusion: Half the complexity of a magnificent creature is in its bricks! The other half is, indeed, needed to specify the embryogenic program (ontogony) that delivers the proper phenotype (phylogony), but it's not 10 or 100 times more complex. Wow! I didn't know that.

So how long would you have to wait for a monkey sitting at a keyboard striking keys randomly to produce the works of Shakespeare? Is this the same as asking "How long would it take for a hurricane to assemble a house out of bricks?" even if there were an ample supply of appropriate bricks just lying around? But, we must appreciate that the evolutionary force of natural selection, once started, is quite different than the random force of a cyclone or a tornado. We may call the transition from wind to life a stochastic inflection or singularity.

Another observation about the unlikelihood of other intelligent life forms in other parts of the visible universe is the following: There do not appear to be any non-wild-type stars in our field of view. All stars and/or galaxies that we know about appear to have been scattered, if not randomly, at least by natural stochastic processes. And their energy profiles appear to be random as well. So, for example, there do not appear to be any three-dimensional geometric arrangements of stars that would conspicuously be detected as artifactual (despite the belief of early astrologers who fancied that stars actually do form geometric patterns which they called the zodiac), which would be evidence in favor of "star engineering" for the specific purposes of an advanced intelligent race. Just as one can tell at a glance from satellite photos or form airplane overflights that certain areas of the Earth's surface have been cultivated (farm land with geometric patterns of planting is more efficient for the purpose of harvesting), as distinguished from naturally-occurring forests (corn does not look the same as random pine trees), we don't see the equivalent of a regular array of stars, let alone the equivalent of a British "Crop Circle in the Sky." If intelligent aliens existed anywhere at all, some of them would almost certainly be ahead of us in technological sophistication, since there are a lot of stars that are older than our Sun. So assuming that they had the knowhow and the will to rearrange stars to suit their purposes as we rearrange bricks to suit our purposes, it would be hard to conceal the evidence in favor of artifacts. [By the way, if humans were ever anxious about revealing their presence to any advanced civilization that may be lurking in the neighborhood, it's already too late. Our cities glow at night in a distinctly artifactual pattern in a manner that is difficult to control. A virginal, uninhabited planet (or conceivably one controlled by an intelligent but paranoid life form who attempted to conceal its presence by surreptitiously maintaining radio/telephonic silence and keeping its heat and light pollution to a minimum) would have a characteristic signature to an external observer in scanning mode, whereas a real civilization that actually did things would have a very different signature and be detected quickly.] To conclude this thread, our current inability to detect star "cultivation" does not represent incontrovertible proof that there are no intelligent aliens out there. It may suggest instead that really advanced civilizations meet their energy needs in radically different ways and./or that they have no interest in "rearranging" the visible star field but deliberately choose to maintain an ecologically-natural universe in their own backyard.. [ Editor's Note: To further speculate about what intelligent agents (who have already solved the problem of "instrumentality" and can exist in a perpetual state of pure contemplation) is beyond the scope of the current discussion. See the next essay on this website entitled The Return of the Krell Machine by Steven B. Harris for speculation of the Science-Fiction implications of a civilization that learns how to pass through a "technological singularity" and safely come out on the other side.]

Before completing Chapter 1 and our discussion of the physical universe from the big bang to the present time, it might be useful to touch on what our cosmological/physicist friends forecast about how the universe is expected to end ( eschatology) and whether intelligent beings, such as ourselves, might even be around to witness such an event. It is now widely accepted in this community (at least for the last four years) that the universe will continue to expand and cool forever (modulo some non-zero Kelvin temperature associated with what is called Hawking Radiation). The idea that the universe will collapse, due to gravity, and implode at some point into a "big crunch" is now discredited due to the suggested presence of so-called "dark matter" characteristic of empty vacuum (3/4ths of the hypothetical matter/energy in the universe is now believed to be invisible or "dark."). Indeed, highly luminous exploding stars dubbed Type Ia Supernovas can be used to gauge the distances and motions of galaxies with unprecedented precision, and it now seems that the most distant galaxies are moving more slowly than we would expect from observations of nearby galaxies, an indication that the universe has more recently sped up. Thus, astronomers are now convinced that the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating! One wouldn't expect to see this if only gravity were at work. This phenomenon is now attributed to the "dark energy" present in seemingly empty space (As we mentioned earlier, Albert Einstein invented a fudge factor, which he called the "cosmological constant," to help his relativistic equations balance, and he subsequently called this contrivance "the greatest blunder of my career," but he may now be shown to have been truly prescient). One may not be happy with the choice of ice over fire as a way to end things. But one cannot be justified in having an informed opinion on these matters. Even though we know that Nature's laws can be simple, if she wants them to be, just as often Nature is extravagant, and there is no reason why the universe cannot be more extraordinary than we dare to imagine.

The implications of this accelerating permanent expansion are truly profound. We will get to see less and less (if we're still around) of the universe our astronomers know and love. About 150 billion years from now, almost all the galaxies in the universe will be receding fast enough to become invisible from the point-of-view of the Milky Way (their seeming rate of departure will exceed the speed of light). The galaxies in our so-called "Local Group" (of which our Milky Way is a member) will still be visible, however; so from an Earth naked-eye-perspective the night sky would still look the same (even though the Earth itself will have been incinerated long before by the extinguishing of our own Sun), although astronomers would certainly know the difference through modern telescopes, if they still had any. About 100 trillion years from now, most of the interstellar gas and dust from which new stars condense will finally be used up. Thus, no new stars will be born. From that time on, the sky will grow darker and darker, photons will become a scarce commodity, and nighttime will become a permanent state of affairs. All of us will find the sky sadly empty; the fireworks display will be over. Now the serious struggle by intelligent life to capture energy will begin in earnest, since just thinking requires energy which in turn generates heat that must be dissipated somehow. Maybe the "event horizons" (surfaces) of black holes will become a precious commodity after all, since they will still spew out energy from time to time in a landscape of perpetual darkness. However, according to the laws of Quantum Thermodynamics if we wait long enough, anything can happen, even the creation of a new "big bang." Thus, on this relatively optimistic note, so ends Chapter 1.

Except that we should acknowledge that we have not attempted to address certain metaphysical/cosmological questions that are occasionally asked by philosophers with way too much time on their hands, like (1) whether the universe described above is a singular event or might there not be an infinity of such universes (a multiverse)? Or (2) Might not some of these universes, if they exist, be able to merge with ours under the right circumstances, leaving us the possibility of escaping from an inevitably frozen death under the present central dogma? Or (3) Is there a "prime mover," what ever that means? Or (4) What happened before the "big bang"? [33] Clearly, there are a lot of semantically or pragmatically meaningless questions that can be posed in English (or any natural language that serves as its own meta language) that have the ring of grammatical correctness and therefore must be answerable in principle. Wrong! There are plenty of syntactically correct English sentences that are, in fact, meaningless. This is the sort of argument that the Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle [1922 - 1935] sought to avoid, and so we will deliberately avoid indulging in further discussions of this sort.

  Chapter 2

 1. Life. The first billion years on Earth are known as the azoic era (without life), sometimes called the Hadean Era by geologists because they imagine it so resembled the Biblical description of Hell. The surface was largely covered with molten volcanic rock (or lava). Oceans, if they existed at all, frequently boiled away into a superheated incandescent mist due to the impact of large numbers of meteors that slammed into the Earth with a fabulous intensity and great frequency (inhospitable to say the least). These collision events would not merely extinguish a particular species or two, making it thereby extinct, but routinely sterilize any incipient life form whatsoever on our infant planet.

Indeed, we have now learned that there were at least five great mass extinctions that obliterated more than 50 percent of all living creatures on this planet. Ironically, we may be witnessing a sixth great extinction in our contemporary times, secondary to humans' technologically-advanced methods for intensively farming the land, burning down the jungles, hunting elephants and rhinos, etc., and fishing the oceans at industrial-strength levels, resulting in climate change as one small consequence, but mainly producing a tide of destruction for innocent botanical and zoological species that could not possibly defend themselves against our human penchant for radically changing the world to suit our own short-term, self-indulgent needs.
Editorial Remark: Is this sort of behavior consistent with "stewardship" or what?
Ref.: George C. McGavin, Endangered: Wildlife on the Brink of Extinction (Firefly; 2006; $35.00).

However, at about 4.3 billion years ago in the Precambrian Era, Archaea, the first of three major Biological Domains gained a foothold that they never released. [Note that the so-called five kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and protozoa) have now become obsolete in describing the taxonomy of life.] This first domain consisted of prokaryotic (or single-celled) organisms that were generally heat loving (hyperthermophilic) and evolved in what we would call exotic environments like boiling hot springs, active volcanoes, or deep-sea ocean vents with continuous seepage of hot sulphurous salt-water. Furthermore, they typically produced methane as a byproduct of their metabolism rather than carbon dioxide. But they were composed of a traditional DNA molecule (a linear or circular, double-helical, informational molecule containing a sequentially-coded blueprint for recreating the cell's three-dimensional architecture) and other structures surrounded by a bilayer lipid membrane sack (or oil droplet). They were capable of multiple functions: irritability ( tropisms), metabolism of energetic molecules ( autosynthesis), mitotic division ( reproduction), and adaptation to a constantly changing environment. DNA expresses its information content from the primary strand by a process of selectively transcribing messenger RNA (from genes [introns splicing out exons]) and, with the help of other machinery in the cytoplasm (ribosomes), fabricating long polypeptide chains of amino acids (proteins). Some of these proteins function to support the cell's structure while others serve as enzymes to promote the dynamic activity of various biochemical reactions needed to maintain the health and well being of the cell. Random alterations in the DNA sequence during replication ( mutations) may occasionally be beneficial (adaptive), so far as the next generation of organisms is concerned. Most changes, however, are useless, and many are lethal. Prokaryotic cells were the first players at the "slot machines" of life. They solved many "multiple lock-in" problems (one needs three "lemons" all lined up in order to be permitted to keep on playing). Adaptation to an unruly external environment, forced the invention of cybernetic control and homeostatic equilibrium in the parameter state space. Considerable numbers of failed experiments littered the landscape (extinct species); but fortunately for us, these cells never stopped playing the game.

Factoid: Earth's oceans appear to be teaming with bacteria-phage viruses. There may be ten times as many of these viruses as there are of all other living creatures on Earth put together. Each ml of ocean water holds about 50 million virus particles and these organisms kill 20 percent of the bacteria in the ocean every day. In the process, viruses move gene sequences from one bacterium to another, speeding up evolution, and even turning some bacteria into human pathogens. Curiously, most of these viruses are single stranded DNA.

2. Eubacteria. This was the second major biological domain. It also consisted of prokaryotic organisms whose metabolism is based more on consuming oxygen from the environment. Even today, it is estimated that these first two domains together account for 80 to 90 percent of the world's biomass.

3. Eukarya. This was the third major biological domain. As molecules combined in ever more complex patterns of growth, there arose a new cell type with its DNA packaged in segments called chromosomes with centromeres in the middle and a pair of telomeres at the tips which were surrounded by their own lipid compartment (nuclear membrane). Other specialized organelles also evolved or were captured from the environment (mitochondria [for energy], vacuoles [for storage], smooth and rough endoplasmic reticulum [for internal transport]. At about 3 billion years ago, simple single-celled plants were formed surrounded by a stronger "wall." They engaged in photosynthesis, which permitted more reliable conversion of photonic energy directly from the sun, using a specialized organelle called a chloroplast. This had subsequent implications for the gaseous composition of the atmosphere.

4. Multicellular Organisms. Switching our temporal reference to one billion years ago, these cells became capable of aggregating into multicellular arrangements (organisms) with a complex architecture and differentiated tissue types. The first multicellular organisms were microscopic worms and feasted on clumps of bacteria. Multicellular animals became widespread during the early Cambrian period, 540 million years ago. Hormones became chemical messengers that could operate at greater distances than would be possible by simple molecular diffusion alone (which is normally adequate for intracellular distances). Then evolved full endocrine and cardiovascular systems, as highways, to move hormonal and nutritional molecules toward their receptor end-organs and targets, respectively. Similarly, neurons were invented to control distant activities with significantly shorter response times than could be accomplished by endocrine means alone. These, in turn, evolved into full nervous systems, both central and peripheral. Immune systems were subsequently invented to perform necessary house keeping and security functions in response to a continuous exposure to a flood of pathogenic microbes. Concurrently, embryogenesis was invented to solve the problem of developing an adult (multicellular organism) from an egg (single cell). This included, blastulation, gastrulation, and neurulation. Curiously, the majority of genes needed to construct an adult organism turn out to be employed not in building visible adult structures but in specifying design (blue prints) and organizing scaffolding (which is later torn down, a process called apoptosis or Programmed Cell Death [PCD], as distinguished from necrosis or Traumatic Cell Death [TCD] by suffocation). Forests especially redistributed the composition of the atmosphere toward much higher concentrations of Oxygen (nearly 20 percent). Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide, Argon, and a few other rare gases persisted. Analysis of a deep rock core taken from Australia reveals the presence of measurable concentrations of oxygen in atmosphere 2.3 to 2.4 billion years ago. Before that, Earth's atmosphere was dominated by Methane and Ammonia, hardly hospitable to life as we know it.

5. Movement to the Land. At about 570 million years ago, at the time of the so-called "Cambrian Explosion," swimming creatures moved from the ocean on to the land. The reverse migration of earth-based creatures back to the ocean, like whales and dolphins, happened much later but the up-and-down tail movement is characteristic of all mammals who swim, as distinguished from the side-to-side tail motion of fish.