Before I start, a brief word on religion: a Google search will tell you there are perhaps some 4,200 religions in the world, almost all of which we might well assume came into being long before mankind had the scientific tools to look out into space and thereby had the ability to begin to get to grips with its sheer size and complexity.
“Where did everything come from?” is one of the most basic human questions and in trying to answer this over the last few thousand years, a few learned individuals around the globe attempted to explain the inexplicable: their various conclusions formed the basis of those 4,200 religions and, as throughout most of human history the majority of the world's population were literally uneducated, people were “encouraged” to blindly accept what they were told.
In fact to question religious views is well-documented as having been generally a very bad idea.
There was, and there remains to this day, much conflict between the religions: sadly they tend to be intolerant of each others' alternative beliefs.
So which of those 4,200 religions is actually correct? Quite clearly they can't all be.
I'll leave you to guess what I think, but for the rest of this article, let's keep an open mind and put religion to one side.
The generally accepted wisdom in the scientific community is that the universe sprang from absolutely nothing around 13.7 billion years ago in “The Big Bang”.
The theorists conveniently dismiss what happened BEFORE: we are told that there was no 'before' and that both space and time were created in an instant from a 'singularity'.
Something tells me that this might be wrong: it's tempting to suggest that the theorists have given up at this point and might as well resort to 'magic' as being the answer to the ultimate question (which is actually similar to the only possible answer to the religious question, “If God created everything, where did God come from?”)
The rest of us are expected to simply accept that persons with more numerate (though not necessarily more numerous) brain-cells than our own have done some very clever mathematics that we could never begin to understand and have thereby worked it all out for us, so we should not bother our heads about it any longer and jolly-well stop asking the obvious but awkward questions.
Is that really good enough?
How else might we explain things?
As far as we are aware, we exist in a “four-dimensional” universe.
This means that the actual location of any object (your breakfast, yourself, your Great-Great Grandma, her pet rabbit, a bucket of carbon-dioxide gas etc) can be perfectly described in terms of its position in three-dimensions (its “X-Y-Z co-ordinates” which means its position “east-west”, “north-south” and “up-down”) as well as the moment in time (that's our 4th dimension) when whatever we're talking about actually occupied that X-Y-Z position: if your Great-Great-Grandma was standing on the far end of Blackpool Pier at 10.00am on 24th February 1903, that's her location in four dimensions perfectly fixed.
So hopefully, our four dimensions are quite easy to understand.
OK, disregarding the 4th dimension of time for a moment, now consider a two-dimensional scientist living in what he or she thinks is a two-dimensional universe, which I ask you try to imagine to be like an infinitely thin piece of paper. If you as a three-dimensional being poked a pin through that piece of paper and then withdrew it, the two-dimensional scientist would be baffled to say the least. He or she would make valiant attempts to explain what they observed, namely that a metallic disc (that would be a cross-section through the pin) appeared from nowhere, grew to a finite diameter then disappeared leaving a hole (HELP – that would be a hole with no depth because it's in a two-dimensional universe!)
Having no concept of our own third dimension the scientist would very probably reach entirely the wrong conclusion.
So my point is that just as the two-dimensional scientist can have their world influenced by a dimension unknown to them, so might our own familiar dimensions be similarly affected.
Whilst I'm not clever enough to explain how dimensions other than the four we already know about might manifest themselves, what I've just described hopefully explains how additional dimensions might nonetheless exist and influence us, even though we can’t get our heads around the concept of what those dimensions actually are.
So perhaps the answer to, “Where did everything come from?” may lie in the existence of a fifth (or sixth or seventh...) dimension which we currently have no real concept of (and indeed may never be able to fathom).
If we can accept that idea, then herein may lie the answers to yet other mysteries:
What and where is the 'missing mass' or 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' that scientists are sure is definitely 'out there' but frustratingly cannot yet explain: might these mysterious phenomena actually be the result of matter, energy or other influences outside our known dimensions?
Could it be that an ability to exploit other dimensions may be the key to travelling across the vast distances of the Universe?
Maybe it's a step too far to speculate that Aliens in their UFOs may already be doing this?!?
Another ongoing debate concerns the expansion of the Universe: will it expand indefinitely etc.
We are told that analysis of distant objects in space shows them to be moving away from us: but perhaps this is not necessarily so?
When we look into the furthest reaches of space, we are in effect looking back in time: we see objects billions of light-years away, which means we're seeing them not as and where they are right now, but as and where they used to be, billions of years ago.
Assume we're looking at a galaxy estimated to be 7.5 billion light-years away and it's apparently moving away from us.
It seems to me that what our observations actually tell us is that that particular galaxy WAS moving away from us 7.5 billion years ago: but during those 7.5 billion years either the expansion of the Universe may have continued, in which case we are in reality still further apart
It could actually have halted and indeed have been reversed: maybe 'The Big Crunch' is already underway but we are not yet able to see it coming?
I first floated the above ideas (as part of a longer article) into a cyber-space discussion group for planetarium professionals around the turn of the millennium and I included a suggestion that if two objects were both travelling in opposite directions at fractionally more than half of light-speed, then neither would be able to see the other as their velocities relative to each other would exceed light-speed.
One reader pointed out to me that Einstein's Theory of Relativity determines that the speed of light is irrespective of the speed of the observer, rendering my suggestion incorrect: this may well be true but my limited brain power still doesn’t allow me to understand why: if I’m in a space-ship already travelling at near light-speed and I shine a torch out of the front windscreen, surely the light setting off from the torch will be travelling at near double light-speed (relative to a stationary observer)?
Anyhow, another reader congratulated me on “thinking outside of the box.”
Most readers remained silent: this wasn’t surprising because even in 2000, it was highly contentious to dare to question the widely accepted Big Bang Theory etc
It was easier to keep quiet than risk ridicule!
However, I note there now exists “The Perimeter Institute” in Canada, within whose walls some of the world’s foremost theoretical physicists now dare to openly question the accepted Big Bang Theory and allow themselves to ponder “What happened before?”
In October 2010 the BBC aired a Horizon programme entitled “Before the Big Bang”: be sure to watch that if you get the opportunity some time.
I am neither a trained physicist nor a mathematician and it may be that I have missed some fundamental points.
If you accessed this script from my website you’ll be aware that I operate a mobile planetarium in central England, visiting schools and Young Persons’ Groups.
Don’t worry: my presentations to schools are tailored to the content of the National Curriculum - I keep any contentious ideas such as these to myself, but I hope you found them intriguing to think about. You might even have had similar thoughts yourself?
I recall reading one of Sir Patrick Moore's books which contained a passage describing the work of Dr Halton C. Arp of the Max Planck Institute in Germany – Dr. Arp made some radical suggestions concerning the nature of Quasars (i.e. that they may be comparatively close and even minor features ejected from young galaxies) to the utter consternation of many traditional astronomers.
I was heartened by Sir Patrick’s comment on this:
"Arp has been strongly criticised for casting doubt upon the conventional picture of the universe, but this is the fate of all pioneers".