Why the Fundamental Laws of Physics in our Universe are Immutable

 

Why the Fundamental Laws of Physics in our Universe are Immutable?[i]

Empty SpaceTime[ii]

When our Universe began, some 13.8 billion years ago the laws of physics that we rely on today did not form all at once, in fact the fundamental laws of physics took some time to fully develop. A question that is frequently asked is: “How did our Universe start, what caused the Big Bang?” Our current understanding is that there are events in SpaceTime called Quantum Fluctuations. A quantum fluctuation is a disturbance in the fabric of SpaceTime that converts energy into matter. We usually refer to SpaceTime as empty but SpaceTime is not empty at all. SpaceTime is filled with sub-atomic particles, protons, electrons, quarks, gluons, bosons, as well as gamma rays and X-Rays. SpaceTime is also filled with energy fields (a virtual fabric if you will) such as the Higgs Field, which gives atoms their mass. When energy is introduced into this sea of particles, it causes a random unevenness in SpaceTime creating quantum fluctuations. These quantum fluctuations occasionally result in energy being converted to matter followed by a rapid inflation of that matter.

E=MC²

The idea of matter converting into energy and vice-versa was first predicted by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago in a paper he wrote called The General Theory of Relativity. Out of this theory emerged his famous equation, E=MC². Quantum fluctuations happen all the time, they happened a nearly infinite number of times before our Universe came into existence and they continue to happen now, but it is much harder to detect them since our Universe is already in here and quite mature. There is strong mathematical evidence that other universes exist, but we can’t see them and we never will see them, the light and energy from these other universes are simply too far away from us to ever be detected.

Two Kinds of Matter

The vast majority of quantum fluctuations amount to nothing, tiny amounts of energy are converted into matter, the matter is unstable, and it typically is converted back into energy. Matter comes in two forms, ordinary matter and anti-matter. When our Universe was formed there were nearly equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. When matter and anti-matter collide, they annihilate each other in an incredibly violent explosion and release of energy. Fortunately for us, our Universe had a little more matter than anti-matter, which is why it is difficult to find any anti-matter in the natural Universe today. However, anti-matter can be created in a large particle accelerator, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator in Cern Switzerland.

Inflation

When quantum fluctuations occur, energy is converted into both matter and anti-matter in equal amounts, which is why they are so unstable. In an instant, the matter is gone and SpaceTime is unaffected. However, in our case the quantum fluctuation was different. The event continued on a course, which ultimately lead to the Big Bang. Previously, physicists believed that the Big Bang was the first instance of our Universe. Since the discovery of quantum fluctuations, we now understand that the Big Bang was a product, an outcome of an extremely rare type of quantum fluctuation.

Big Bang

Immediately after the quantum fluctuation and just prior to the Big Bang there was a very brief period of Inflation. This inflation lasted about 10^-23 seconds. That’s a negative 1 with 23 zeros after it. This would be a trillionth of a trillionth of a fraction of a second. During that incredible period of inflation, the Universe expanded 100 trillion, trillion times from a tiny particle smaller than a proton in the nucleus of an atom to the size of a basketball. To better visualize this, imagine a basketball expanding to the size of our entire solar system in 10^-23 seconds. At this point our Universe is 10³¹ degrees Kelvin. One degree Kelvin is equal to minus 272 degrees Celsius or -457 degrees Fahrenheit. At 0.0001 seconds into the Big Bang the Universe had cooled down to 10¹² degrees Kelvin, still very, very hot.

Plasma

We don’t know what stopped the rapid inflation, but it resulted in the Big Bang and our Universe began to expand, rapidly at first, then it began to slow down. During the initial period after the Big Bang our Universe was a dark hot plasma. You can think of it as a very dense, hot liquid with no form. Since light particles or photons had not formed yet our Universe was characterized by darkness.

Gravity

As the plasma became less dense it began to form tiny clumps. These tiny clumps gradually became larger clumps of matter. Matter began to warp SpaceTime. This is the birth of what we refer to as gravity. Gravity is not a force like electromagnetism or the strong nuclear force. Gravity is the result of Space & Time interacting with matter. In the 18^th century Sir. Isaac Newton identified gravity but never really explained it. It wasn’t until Albert Einstein came along and re-interpreted Newton’s theories and his mathematics to finally give us a definition of what gravity is. There is a famous saying that physicists like to use when thinking about Space, Time, matter, and gravity. Understand this phrase and you will understand how the Universe works: SpaceTime tells matter how to move and matter tells SpaceTime how to curve.

Dark Matter & Dark Energy

At around 300,000 years after the Big Bang the plasma had cooled down sufficiently so that electrons, protons, and neutrons would have formed but it was still too hot for atoms to form. Our Universe remained in this plasma state for about 50,000 years. At the end of this phase of our Universe, its temperature had cooled down to 9,000 degrees Celsius or about 16,000 degrees Fahrenheit. There are no photons of light and no atoms, so our Universe is essentially invisible. Things are pretty much boring for the first 380,000 years. However, two very strange and mysterious components of our Universe first appeared around 56,000 years after the Big Bang. These two substances, and I use that term substance advisedly make up about 95% of the known Universe. We don’t know very much about Dark Matter, although we can detect it, we can see how large clumps of Dark Matter warp SpaceTime causing a phenomenon called Gravitational Lensing. More about that in a subsequent paper. We know even less about Dark Energy, but we believe it exists because there is no other way to explain the current behavior of our Universe without it.[iii]

 Universe Sweet Spot

At the 380,000-year mark after the Big Bang our Universe reaches its Sweet Spot. Atoms begin to form, photons form and for the first time since the Big Bang there is light. The light is very dim because the photons must shine through vast clouds of Hydrogen and Helium gas. These are the only two elements that exist and they made up about 99.9% of our physical Universe at that time. As the warping of SpaceTime takes over the large clouds of gas begin to coalesce, becoming more and more dense. Ultimately, these huge clouds of gas evolve into the first stars. These early stars are typically very large and very hot but their lifespan is relatively short compared to most of the stars that occupy our Universe today.

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

The Universe Sweet Spot also included the signature of the Big Bang, the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation signal. We can still hear this signal today. It permeates every corner of our Universe. After 13.8 billion years it remains a faint reminder of the largest explosion of all time. For many years, Scientists and Physicists could detect an inexplicable hiss in their large radio antennas, in the space between FM radio signals, and on the old black & white TV screens after broadcasting shut down at midnight, back in the old days. Even today, if you have an older analog FM radio with a manual tuning dial, find a spot on the dial between radio stations and you will hear that hiss.  It is microwave radiation with a longer, lower energy wavelength just beyond the infrared spectrum. More about its discovery in a later paper.

Supernova

The opacity of the Universe is rapidly changing. Within the first 3 billion years the early stars move through their lifecycle and at about the 8 billion year-mark the first extremely large stars explode into Supernova. There are several varieties of Supernova. The largest are named Type 1A Supernova. These massive stars can be hundreds, thousands, or ever millions of times more massive than our sun. When they explode, they light up the dark sky and can be seen way across the Universe. All the heavy elements of our Universe, every element on the periodic table heavier than hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, are referred to as the heavy elements. All the elements that enable life are created during these enormous Supernova explosions.[iv] Most Supernova explosions result in the formation of extremely hot and dense Neutron stars. They are named this because they are primarily formed of neutrons. However, the largest Type 1A Supernova explosions produce something far more interesting.

Black Holes

When a Type 1A Supernova explodes it throws out vast quantities of gas, dust, heavy elements, and charged particles in the form of energy that speeds across the Universe. What’s left behind are the most unusual objects in our Universe - Black Holes, which were also first predicted to exist by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago. They were so bizarre that Einstein didn’t believe that they could actually exist. Black holes are so dense and the substance in them so tightly packed that nothing can escape from the Black Hole, not even light itself. The Photo on left is a recent radio wave image of the M87 Supermassive Black Hole approximately 55 million light years from Earth. This Black Hole is 6.5 billion times more massive than our Sun. 

Escape Velocity

Nearly every large object in our Universe has an escape velocity. Our Earth’s escape velocity is 25,000 mph. You can use a rocket to reach space at 17,500 mph. At this speed you can go into Earth orbit. Fire your rocket a little more, up to 25,000 mph and you can leave the influence of the earth’s gravity altogether; you can travel to the moon and beyond. The escape velocity of a Black Hole is an infinite speed. In other words, there is no speed fast enough to escape from the SpaceTime warping of a Black Hole. Anything that gets too close to the Black Hole will be sucked in. It’s like the proverbial Roach Motel, you can check in, but you can’t check out.

The Four Fundamental Laws of Physics

Now let’s return to our original premise, that is: the absolute nature of the four fundamental laws of Physics. Everything that exists in our Universe, all forms of matter, from minute photons of light to the tiniest quarks, to the largest Galaxies and clusters of Galaxies are products of the Big Bang. At the beginning of the Big Bang there were no fundamental Physical laws. As soon as particles of matter began to evolve out of the super-hot plasma, Gravity, which is the first fundamental force emerged. The second fundamental force is the Strong Nuclear Force. This is the force that holds the nucleus of the atom together. This is the force of the atomic bomb. Shoot a proton of uranium into the nucleus of another uranium atom and its nucleus will split releasing enormous amounts of energy. The third fundamental force to emerge was the Electromagnetic force. This is the force of magnetism and electricity or the flow of electrons. The final force to emerge was the Weak Nuclear Force. This is the force that keeps the right balance of protons and neutrons in a nucleus. It is the force of nuclear decay, such as when radioactive Carbon 14 decays at a known rate allowing geologists to accurately date ancient organic substances that contain traces of carbon.

Although the weak nuclear force is the only fundamental force that is referred to as weak, the force of gravity (which is not really a force at all) is far weaker. Gravity is the oldest and the weakest fundamental force. Since these fundamental forces of nature emerged out of the Big Bang everything in our Universe is governed by these four forces. This is an inescapable fact of the nature of the Universe. All matter, both Dark Matter and Dark Energy, all light or photons, X-Rays, Gama Rays, everything that there is or ever will be began with the Big Bang in our Universe and are governed by the four fundamental laws of physics.

Observable Universe

Our Universe is unimaginably large. It has no center and no edge. Dark Energy has been pulling our Universe apart for billions of years. Physicists once thought that our Universe would expand, slow down, and then collapse in on itself to an infinitely small particle called a singularity. We now know that this is not the case. We can see distant stars and galaxies rushing away from us at very near the speed of light. These stars are shifted to the red end of the spectrum, which means that they are moving away from us. We say that these stars are Red Shifted. This is the result of the Doppler Effect. We experience the Doppler Effect all the time with sound waves. We hear an airplane coming towards us and its sound pitch is high but as it moves away from us, we notice that the sound is much lower in frequency. The same thing happens with light.

The SpaceTime that those far-flung objects reside in is expanding at a speed much greater than the speed of light. The individual stars and galaxies are not expanding faster than the speed of light but the SpaceTime itself is expanding faster than C, the letter mathematicians and physicists use to represent the speed of light. It now appears that our Universe will continue to expand forever. Current estimates for the size of our Observable Universe is 93 billion light years in diameter. Many of the objects in our Universe that are farthest away are travelling so fast and have been doing so for so long that their light will never reach us. It is said that these objects are no longer part of the Observable Universe. We will never know anything about them.

What is Outside of Our Universe?

The question is often asked, “What lies outside of our Universe?” We know that there is a fuzzy line that separates our Observable Universe and our Unobservable Universe, but what’s outside of that? Today, most physicists believe that there may be an infinite number of universes, each having a beginning similar to ours. There is no assurance that these other universes, sometimes called Bubble Universes have similar Fundamental Laws or similar chemical elements to ours. However, given that quantum fluctuations caused our Universe to leap into existence it is probable that quantum fluctuations caused these other universes to exist. If that is the case, we can make a reasonable assumption that other universes may have similar fundamental laws. They must have matter and as a result they must have gravity because, as we have stated earlier: SpaceTime tells matter how to move and Matter tells SpaceTime how to curve.

The Curvature of Space

It is difficult enough for our brains that have evolved in a three-dimensional universe with a 4^th dimension, that being time to imagine more dimensions of SpaceTime. But trying to get our heads around the idea that Space & Time are one in the same and that SpaceTime is curved is a nearly an impossible concept to grasp. And yet, we have 50 years of observational experience and flawless mathematics to validate the law – matter curves space, there is no way around it. In the picture on the left physicists provide an example of matter curving space. 

Imagine a large rubber sheet with gridlines drawn on it. Now drop our Sun, the Earth, our Moon onto the rubber sheet. Notice how the more massive Sun warps the fabric of SpaceTime more than less massive objects. We can see massive objects, such as our Sun bend the light of a distant star, as our Sun warps the space around it to such an extent that light itself curves. We can observe this phenomenon during a total Solar Eclipse, when the Sun’s light is cut off by the disc of our Moon completely covering our Sun. We observe the light from a distant star, not where it should be if light travelled in a straight line but slightly bent or warped by the Sun’s SpaceTime warping. The light from this distant star has curved around our Sun.  

Conclusion, at least for now

In have introduced a number of physics and astronomical concepts in this paper. The very best scientific minds will tell you, “I really don’t understand exactly how our Universe works.” Every time physicists and astronomers make important discoveries many new questions arise. This is the way science works. Concepts such as SpaceTime, how matter warps SpaceTime, quantum fluctuations, the size of our Universe, the shape of our Universe, and thousands of other complex physics phenomenon will occupy our imagination and our research until the end of Earth time. This is what makes us human, that inexhaustible search for knowledge, how things work, what’s going to happen next. That’s the fun thing about being human, about being alive, there is always something new to figure out.

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[i] Written by Dave Stiles, compiled from many books and articles, as well as several other papers including a presentation on Quantum Physics created in 2019 and a longer paper entitled, Astronomy Primer, also written in 2019.

[ii] Physicists and astronomers use the word SpaceTime is used instead of Space & Time. SpaceTime refers to the entanglement of Space & Time in such a way as to be intertwined and inseparable. Einstein postulated that Space and Time are relative depending on the position of the observer, the speed of an object, and the elevation of an object. This is a complex topic and is covered in detail in another paper. Suffice to say, all objects move either through Space or Time. An object at rest moves only through time. As it speeds up more of its motion is through space. As it accelerates towards the speed of light nearly all its motion is through space almost none of its motion is through time. For the accelerating object, approaching the speed of light, time appears to pass normally but the observer of the fast-moving object would say that time appears to stand still for the accelerating object. Many physicists prefer the word personal instead of relative. SpaceTime is personal, depending on your particular state.

Think of it this way: If you are in a car and you move past me at a high rate of speed and I am standing still and I am watching you pass me I notice that the clocks on your wrist, on your phone, and on your car dashboard will tick more slowly than the clocks on my wrist, phone, or in my stationary car. You however, in the speeding car look out your window at me. To you, I seem to be moving in relationship to you. You see my clocks click more slowly than yours. All time is relative or personal depending on your position and viewpoint. This seems impossible, it is a difficult concept to grasp but it is true. Thousands of experiments and measurements over the years have shown it to be true. We are witnessing a mixture of Space & Time, which is why we can use the term SpaceTime instead of just Space or just Time.

Prior to the 20^th century Space and Time were considered absolutes, with little relationship to each other. Einstein’s great insight in 1905 was that Space and Time are personal. Einstein reinterpreted Space and Time as relative, not absolutes at all. Causality, a series of connected and dependent events mark the flow of time. Time moves in one direction. Space on the other hand can be moved through forward and backwards. Causality is the fundamental aspect of time. Our experience of the flow of time is a product of that.

[iii] Refer to the book, The 4% Universe, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, by Richard Panek. The book demonstrates that, just about everything we learned in school about our Universe is wrong. Only about 4% of our Universe consists of ordinary matter, the stuff that makes up you and me, this paper, the planets & stars, etc. The rest is mostly unknown, a complete mystery.

[iv] The building block elements of life are referred to as CHNOPS, pronounced Cha-nops. This is an abbreviation for Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur. All life on our planet is made up of these basic building blocks of organic elements. There are many other trace elements necessary for life but without these six elements life will not occur anywhere in our Universe. Astrobiologists use spectrographic analysis to look at distant stars and their planets to determine if any of these elements are present. Many other conditions need to be met for life to form, the presence of liquid water, the right temperature range, the right size and mass of the planet, its distance from its parent star, the presence of a magnetic field to shield it from harmful radiation from the star, an atmosphere that contains at least some oxygen and nitrogen; all these need to be present for primitive life to begin and survive. Many other conditions need to be met in order for intelligent life to evolve. However, most recent estimates predict that there may be as many as 60 billion planets in the habitable zone that could support life in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. The best guess for the number of potential habitable planets in our entire Universe is 50 sextillion or 10²¹ power. That’s 1 followed by 21 zeros. Rest assured, there is life on other planets and a sub-set of intelligent life on trillions of planets in our Universe. Given the fact that nothing can exceed the speed of light it is highly unlikely we will ever meet them. Sorry UFO believers.