The universe was never just a dot

The universe is expanding, galaxies are moving away from each other faster than the speed of light and is ever accelerating, the observable universe is shrinking in a way, as more galaxies move out of the cosmological horizon each second and in due course of time will leave our galaxy all alone, which means there isn’t going to be as many stars in the night skies as we find today! or atleast galaxies that we think are stars will be blinded from our sight.

knowing these facts or even without knowing them, it is easy to think that all this infinite matter-energy in space-time called ‘the universe’, tracing back in time, should have taken birth in a condensed form as an infinitesimal, meeky little dot somewhere far away in empty space. When time started, the universe started out as just a dot, but with a bang it started creating matter and energy out of nothingness. Now this is a nice picture painted in our minds by science fiction and common sense.

But is this true?

Was the universe just a dot?

Let’s do a thought experiment and see if we can find out the truth!

Caution: wear goggles to protect your eyes, or you might be blinded by sheer awesomeness! :P

The Big Bang Thought Experiment

Imagine the universe, that all pervasive matter and energy as a tiny blob in space. You should be thinking of a spec of light in a never ending black canvas.

Seems like a dot universe is possible, isn’t it? Let’s put it to test.

Test No: 1

In your imagination, who/what is the observer?

Adding in clarity, if this event had to be really observed, what in the world is capable of observing it?

It might be you, the human being, or it might be a camera or the observer is some fancy scientific device, like a spectroscope.

This test passes, as there are instruments capable of detecting such an early universe as it sprays energy out.

Test No: 2

To make a valid measurement, where should the observer be placed to observe this grand phenomenon, the tiniest universe?

Somewhere away from the dot, like a few millimeters or few million light years depending on the sensitivity of the instrument at hand. Hmmm… Something is odd.

Do you see the point? Not the point sized pixel of light, but the point I am trying to make.

This test would instantly fail the hypothesis at hand!

Here’s why. Any observer is made of matter. To measure anything, we need a thing like a ruler, a balance, a stop watch, or in this case a camera or a spectroscope.

But by separating the observer from the observed, we have already expanded the universe.

Eureka! The universe is actually a tiny blob of infinite matter-energy plus a camera!

Is this the only scenario, aren’t there any alternates?

Can't the observer be somewhere inside and still observe the universe taking birth?

Let’s put the observer inside the universe. Being a fraction of the tiny universe, the observer should be tinier than the universe itself, to observe anything about the universe. Like How our telescopes and our eyes are smaller compared to the magnificent cosmos that we see.

But, if the observer can be a smaller part of a dot sized universe, we can’t call the universe a dot anymore. Makes sense right? In this case, the universe can be considered already expanded so that it is larger than the observer.

Basically, larger than a dot is not dot enough. :D

The final case: Here comes the final question

Couldn't the universe have been a dot and there be no observer to observe it? Why should there be an observer anyway?

That’s because, without any observers, there is simply no way to measure such an universe. We are dealing with the immeasurable here, to call the immeasurable to be a dot is plain absurd!

And this also leads to a classic philosophical thought experiment:

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

or a funny version by Dr.Ken Robinson in Do schools kill creativity, where he states:

If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?

That sure is funny, but anyway, along the same lines, if there couldn’t have been any observer whatsoever to observe such a phenomenon, as we can conclude from our experiment, did the phenomenon really happen the way we think it happened?

Just to make it clear, I am not claiming that the Big Bang Theory is wrong. No, there is a lot of evidence for the Big Bang to have happened, like that cracking noise old televisions made, that’s galactic noise which comes from the Big Bang! I am simply stating that popular science ideas like ‘the universe was just a dot’ has stuck with many of us, and we may not have given enough thought to it. By believing what we hear or see without doubt, we support untested beliefs, and such beliefs bind freedom.

Here is an amazing video by Minute Physics on Science, Religion, and the Big Bang in which they explain The Big Bang theory as scientists currently understand.

Now that’s awesome

I see that every time I find answer to an engulfing question, I end up with more questions. Here is one question I got from thinking about Big bang and the nature of this cosmos:

Every moment we measure reality, right? like we measure heat, light, sound, gravitational pull and so on and respond to these stimuli. That’s what living is all about, measuring and responding. Without measurement there is no living.

Here is the hypothesis:

In a dream, we measure and respond, there are a lot of stimulus of its own kind, like maybe we fly, we might experience breeze and heat. We are still bound by some rules. A) Is a dream just an alternate universe/alternate reality? B) If not, what is that which separates the so called 'reality' from a 'dream'. 'I feel it, I know when it is real and when it is a dream' is valid, but to get an intellectual understanding is a nice reward in itself.

But like Dr.Richard Feynman says, when you make a theory, however beautiful it may sound to you, if experiments disagree with it, then it is wrong!

Our work here is to find ways to test our beliefs and test them! only after we test can we understand things. I would love to listen to your comments! Share this with your geeky friends and let me know what they have to say about this.

Happy thinking!