The really bad news about mankind’s fate

When I was a child we learned that the Earth would one day be consumed when our dying sun exploded and consumed this planet of ours. But we were always assured that by the time that happens, humans would migrate to another solar system and take up as before. Millions of years of human civilization (by that point) would be saved even though our old home would burn to a cinder.

Now it turns out, that exodus will be futile. In fact, if there is life on other planets, their exoduses from their dying suns will be futile as well. Their millions of years and our millions of years—the vast sum glory of life in this universe—will be utterly lost.

Then, thinking of moving to another universe altogether? In a multiverse existence, we could slip through space and time to another universe and find a suitable home there. Not so fast. That will be futile as well.

All life on all planets, in all galaxies and in all universes will eventually end. That’s if you’re to believe one theory concerning the Big Bang. As you probably know by now, the Big Bang was the beginning of our universe, when everything in was about the size of a cantaloupe. I’m really not sure what size the universe was at the moment of the Big Bang, but it was very, very small and very dense. After the Big Bang, energy shot outward with such speed, a process theoretically known as “inflation,” and with such forces that energy became matter and the universe was created.

Some physicists believe that multiple universes are created during a Big Bang because of the sheer force of the “dark energy” of the heavenly voice and the amount of energy bursting forth requires that energy and matter coalesce. Physicists such as Neil Turok posit that someday in the vast future, out universe, and all universes, will pull back on their unfolding, reverse course and eventually collapsing back down to cantaloupe size.

That means that everything, all life in all universes will be crushed and extinguished. There will be no migration to another planet, another galaxy or another universe. Everything will be compacted and everything everywhere will be utterly lost.

And that’s really bad news. Sorry to ruin your day. 

As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. 

Can You Cross to Another Universe?

There's no proof of the multiverse, but has someone made the journey to another dimension already?

Indeed, are there rubbing points that would enable you to slip from this universe into another? In the multiverse theory, as we have seen, there are “bubbles” of many, even trillions of universes out there. If those universes were to touch one another, the way that soap bubbles can cling to one another, would it be possible to slip through the membrane of our dimension, into that of an adjacent one?

Research is now turning to this topic. And while there is absolutely no empirical evidence that alternate universes exist, there has been plenty of theoretical work done on the matter. Numerous celebrated physicists such as have argued that as space expands cosmic-scale energy sparks and creates vast amounts of matter, which we term a universe. Elsewhere in space other energy discharges spark more universes. Alex Vilenken, of Tufts University, theorized that the seminal Big Bang was not the first such event in cosmic existence, that there have been countless others before.

But because space is constantly expanding, there is no way to bridge the distances between universeses. Light can’t reach us from these vast distances.  Physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin counters that because you can’t see the other parts of the multiverse, how can you be confident it exists?

Yes, science needs to observe to prove, and so far we can observe. However, there is a tiny, fascinating document that was discovered in the 1960s that gives a tantalizing vision. Written by the putative Professor François Marceau, an ethnographer of the 1930s with l’Institute Française Impériale de l’Extrême-Orient, a learned treatise discusses possible “rubbing points” that have enabled men to cross into an alternate reality.

It was immediately dismissed as fiction—a response that I, as a novel, take umbrage with—and that it had been concocted. Yet much of the theoretical foundations for “Professor Marceau” was not even determined until the 1990s and even later. How could his treatise, which is addressed to the “French imperial authorities in Calcutta,” discuss in detail the multiverse and its characteristics decades before the world’s leading physicists began positing the phenomenon? One might argue that the author had extrapolated Einstein’s thinking to come up with the multiverse. But even so, it is a terrific feat of imagination, whether it is fiction or not.

One last thing: There were no “French imperial authorities in Calcutta.” During the 1930s Britain would have been the imperial authority in Calcutta. Was Professor Marceau a visitor from another universe?

As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. If you'd like a free sample for your Kindle, click here. 

The odds on seeing your doppelganger

For novelists and filmmakers, one of the attractive notions about parallel universes is the possibility that this universe has a double somewhere and all of us here on Earth have counterparts in another place in the cosmos. This idea appears again and again, and indeed it does have the ear of numerous physicists who belong to the multiverse camp. But beyond the ken of fiction spinners, is there any real validity to the notion that we have doppelgangers in another universe?

There are no facts to back up the idea. Indeed, there are no facts to support the theory that there are other universes. The idea stems from “inflation” theorists who say that the Big Bang which begat our universe was not the only Bang, but that there may have been other Bangs in the past and there may yet be more in the future. (Something to look forward to, at least.)

And during these series of Big Bangs, it is possible that more than one universe was created at each time. As well, it is established that our universe continues to expand. Whatever container our universe expands inside must also be expanding. Think of cake batter expanding inside an oven. The mass (the container holding our universe) grows but as it does pockets open up and matter coalesces into new universes.

That’s the theory—the cake batter expands with gas pockets making it light, semi-dry and fluffy. Those pockets stay put even after expansion, just as (the multiverse theory says) collected matter fills the bubbles created by the overall contain in which universes reside.

So what does this have to do with your doppelganger in another universe. The theory states that somewhere out there, there could be another universe just like ours. My short answer is: Don’t hold your breath.

Multiverse theory depends on string theory, which suggests that sub-sub-atomic particles, known as quarks, are made up of “strings,” more like crinkly loops actually, that have a multitude of properties, but also a number of different “dimensions.” The energy associated with these strings turned out in our universe to be just right for our existence, and everything we see in the heavens.

The energy can have endless variations, giving rise to endless numbers of variations of universes—some of which may present characteristics so strange and so alien to us that their very laws of physics would be different. But somewhere, out there, among the quadrillions of possible universes, there would one that could randomly be just like ours.

The odds are extremely long and outside of ripping fiction (like mine!) you’re not likely to meet your double any time soon.

As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. If you'd like a free sample for your Kindle, click here. 

Raccoons can have doppelgangers too, right?

Catching the wave

Last week’s announcement that experimenters have successfully detected gravitational waves begins the third epoch of astronomy. Heretofore, we have only been able to explore the cosmos through the electromagnetic spectrum: First with visible light, and since the Second World War with radio waves, including X-rays and gamma rays. Now we have, as one scientist put it, developed “ears” to go with our “eyes.”

My good friend and colleague, science writer Kate Lunau, hosted a panel at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, on the day of the announcement. On the panel, Perimeter director Neil Turok said that the discovery will enable researcher to “see black things—dark matter, black holes—and much of what the universe is made up that doesn’t provide electromagnetic energy. His colleague, Luis Lehner, said that gravitational waves provide direct proof of the existence of black holes.

The beauty of gravitational waves is that it extends the nature of observation in researching the cosmos. Physicist Latham Boyle noted that in the past decades physicists had to work in the lab, adding known inputs to try and achieve an hypothesized outcome. But in the heavens, gravitational wave detection will extend the process of observing to see what pops up.

There could be all kinds of surprises and even shocks ahead. Big-bang theories of the creation of the universe can be detected. Turok and other physicists have asked the question, was the first Big Bang really the first? What if it’s been a series of Big Bangs stretching back into an incomprehensibly long past. And what if each time there was a Big Bang, this wasn’t the only universe created. What if the Big Bangs produce other universes, including doppelgangers of this one?

We’re a long way from detecting alternate universes, if they really do exist. But gravitational wave detection is a new tool, and there will be many surprises ahead. 

As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. If you'd like a free sample for your Kindle, click here. 

Trapped underground

If you’re like me and have nightmares about who being trapped underground, you’re not going to want to read this post. It concerns a woman in Iceland who fell into a newly opened crevasse in Iceland and before she could be rescued, the crevassed closed up again. Rescuers dug for 36 hours, and despite making a hole ten metres wide they were never able to find Inger Matsson, a Swedish tourist who fell into the crevasse.

Crevasses are common in Iceland. The fissure was created during a strong but highly localized earthquake in 2009. Iceland sits atop two tectonic plates—the Eurasian and the North American—and these plates are slowly moving away from one another, literally ripping apart the country apart by two to five centimetres a year. All this movement creates crevasses, both in glaciers and in the earth itself. One of the most visible and dramatic crevasses is at Thingvellir, northeast of the capital of Reykjavik, which is large enough to drive cars through.

Fortunately for Icelandic motorists, the Thingvellir crevasse has long been filled in. But in the case of the tourist Matsson, the crevasse opened so rapidly, witnesses reported, that there was no time to evade it. “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said a spokesman for ICE-SAR, the Icelandic search-and-rescue organization.

An earthquake was blamed for the sudden fissure. Iceland can sometimes have more than 100 earthquakes a day. On January 15 of this year, the Iceland Geology website reported 217 quakes just in the Tjörnes Fracture Zone in the sea just north of Iceland. Fortunately, such “earthquake swarms” are usually very small. But large ones, as anywhere, can be highly destructive to Iceland.

What does this have to do with physics and the supernatural? The questions I raise are purely speculative. Where did Inger Matsson go? There is no trace at all of her body in the excavated pit. Witnesses to her disappear recorded a sudden wind when the crevasse opened, that seemed to suck dust into the fissure. During the panic caused by an earthquake, they could easily have been mistaken.

I only offer the question. If there are multiple universes, and they are like bubbles that occasionally touch ours, what would happen is the bubble membrane suddenly ripped?

I hope I never find out. 

As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. If you'd like a free sample for your Kindle, click here.

Ripping

A rip in the earth

Longing for alien life? Forget the Milky Way

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/AP

So far, no aliens. Despite decades-long searches for life on other planets, no alien life has turned up. If you looking to meet aliens, you might do better to search in other universes. (The trouble is no one knows how to do that.) Here’s why we’re unlikely to find alien life in huge areas of our home galaxy.

In 2014, Tsvi Piran of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Raul Jimenez of the University of Barcelona argued in a research paper that there are many areas of the Milky Way that are hostile to the creation and evolution of life. Behind these great barren regions is gamma-burst radiation (GRB). A single GRB produces as much energy in a few seconds as a star like our sun produces in its entire lifetime. Such an immense burst of radiation would any life close by.

Here’s why we haven’t been destroyed, at least not lately. Our solar system orbits 24,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way, while a quarter of the galaxy’s stars and presumed planets are close to the centre. That’s where GRBs are much more common—a planet in that region would endure a 95 per cent chance of being hit by a GRB every billion years.

Since it took life on Earth several billion years to evolve to its current state of affairs, a giga-burst of radiation would knock back evolution on those planets, assuming life generally evolves at the same rate elsewhere. That means that, unless life elsewhere has found a quick way of evolving, if we ever do discover life on planets closer to the centre of the Milky Way, it might prove far less evolved than us. We may be the sole practitioners of advanced intelligence.

So if you want to find extraterrestrials, perhaps we should be looking more at how to make the leap from this universe to an alternative one. We don’t know how to do that yet, but the theory of membrane-enclosed universes bumping against one another like soap bubbles, may be the inspiration for future generations of clever explorers.

As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. If you'd like a free sample for your Kindle, click here.