Origins and Emergence of the Cosmos

The scientific paradigm, with a wading into history, technology and politics

Publication date: 2021-08-10

[Image: Cosmic Microwave Background by European Space Agency via their Plank satellite/program, CC-BY 4.0].

Creation Myths

Each culture has formed a creation myth. This is true for nation states, and especially true for peoples. The Australian Aboriginal community talk about an emu in the sky, the Norse about Yggdrasil, the tree of life, and populate the heavens with a pantheon of gods very reminiscent of the Greeks with some rather brutal Scandinavian humor.

The scientific "culture" is also struggling with this creation story. They are terribly constrained by proposals having to stand up to scrutiny from both theoreticians and experimentalists. But, its an age old and worthy endeavour which I would like to explore, and do use as a form of meditation to ease me into sleep, now and then.

Firstly, Science is a practice and it is entirely bounded by engineering and thus technology. There is a feedback loop there, but it is true. You can only learn about things that you can measure and the greatest leap in science were the technologies that allowed us to escape the bounds of or own senses. There, of course, are risks in uncertainty that need to be understood, defined and communicated.

The Hot Big Bang

The current scientific creation myth is that the Cosmos emerged in a single event in an unmeasurably small space in which were created space and time, and into which was dumped an amount of energy which requires scientific notation to even write down. It is to gargantuan as a grain of sand is to our galaxy.

What follows thereafter is a period of an insanely fast expansion of space. We're talking about the doubling in the size of the cosmos in minute fractions of a pico-second. As space expands the energy density of the cosmos reduces finally to the point where subatomic particles like electrons and protons can form and the cosmos cools out of a hot plasma to be transparent to light.

At first glace you'd say, gimme the Greek Pantheon, its seems as realistic and far more romantic. But, there is a method in the madness, and its all about Astronomy. Edwin Hubble was given use of the Palomar Observatory, one of the most powerful optical telescopes at the time and he provides two huge insights. The first is the existence of galaxies. Really, a century ago galaxies were just an idea. With this powerful telescope he could separate individual stars from more blurry blobs that were actually collections of billions of stars. The next big step which really puts Hubble on the astronomical map was his discovery that these galaxies are all moving away from us (excepting Andromeda, which will be a mind-blowing catastrophic event after our Sun has long since cooled from its distantly coming Red Giant phase).

Okay, so we are in a galaxy, The Milky Way, and the vast majority of other galaxies are moving away from us. What does that mean? It means that space itself is expanding, or stretching. Put two dots on like a rubber band and stretch it, this symbolises the galaxies moving apart as space itself expands. This implies that, if you run time backwards, space contracts, and from this we get the "single event in an unmeasurably small space" and from General Relativity by Mr Einstein we add in space-time, and thus the creation “therein” of both. The related questions of “what happened before” and “where did it happen” are like asking the weight of 14 degrees Celsius; there was neither time, nor space.

Technology matters, and the "invention" of radar was huge, both in military technology and cultural information transmission. But, it also did huge things for Astronomy. There be big (understatement) clouds of dust and gas in the cosmos which block light, but do not block radio waves. Recall "light" is electromagnetic oscillations as described beautifully by James Clark Maxwell 250 years ago. With radio astronomy one can see through these “clouds” and view the birthing of stars in these stellar nebulea. This has produced some of the most amazingly beautiful pictures, as the captured wavelengths are shifted into our visible spectrum.

[The Crab Nebula]

But, what about other frequencies like microwaves? In one of the most wonderful events in science two USA researchers were operating one of the first, possibly the first, of this type of astronomic telescope. They had a big problem. It didn't matter where they pointed this instrument they kept getting a “background noise”. After quadruple checking everything and seeking all assistance to "fix" the problem, they just measured it. I like to imagine in my meditation the publication of these measurements as going something like:

We are really annoyed, but our instrument tells us this. If you know how to fix it so we don't get this background measurement, please come and help. Meanwhile, here is what we measured.

This gave us the Cosmic Microwave Background (see title image), as their instrument was operating correctly. (The Image is actually from a recent European Space Agency mission which provides a high resolution result of their earlier discovery). From this we observe the earliest "light" which pervades the cosmos. It shows us very small variations in the energy levels of this radiation. This creates a problem. Why would things that are now hundreds of billions of light years apart show very similar levels of background radiation. It is from this that we get the "rapid expansion" phase of the cosmos.

Well that's all very nice, but what's the point?

The point is that science has to incorporate all of this crazy evidence.

One experimental result may be interesting. Repeating it and getting the same result is encouraging. Publishing how you did it (the methodology) and the results means that others can repeat the experiment. When you have had multiple researchers at multiple institutions repeat the experiment and confirm the result you then have something engaging and problematic. Its engaging because it becomes a known result; not fact, result. But, it means that all theoreticians are now constrained by this result unless they can show how the result was in error. This causes the theoreticians to have to struggle to describe a mathematically and experimentally consistent theory. We end up with the Hot Big Bang as the current best "creation myth" by the scientific community.

There are asides here; scientific truth and experimentalists. There is no truth in science, there are just the "best current explanation and theoretical understandings". It should be expected that all current scientific theories are not wrong, but incomplete, for this is the history of science. As for experimentalists, they get a very poor wrap in general science education. They are the fundament of science. To recognise their power, one single experimentalist can deeply undermine any established scientific "doctrine" with a single reproducible experiment. Its actually a lovely competitive symbiosis between the experimentalists and theoreticians.

The last aside is “theory”. If your theory makes no testable predictions then the entire scientific community ignores you or says “there are other publications with deal with this sort of writing”. See also Thomas Kuhn and Falsificationalism’s branch of the Philosophy of Science.

Agriculture and Animal Husbandry

It is quite astonishing that if our species emerged 200 000 years ago in the Rift Valley in Africa that it took 180 000 years for settled agriculture to emerge. There certainly was the use of fire as an agricultural mechanism which can be seen from the Rift Valley to Australia.

All of these societies have been marveling at the once non-light polluted night skies before we developed cities and profligate night lights.

It is however the development of settled agriculture that seems to have lead to detailed interest in the year, and specifically its longest and shortest days. The vernal equinox, some time after the summer solstice and around the autumnal equinox are the planting and reaping times. I shall be focused on European contributions to Astronomy but wish to pay tribute to human societies all over our globe who built very precise mechanisms for the identification of the solstices and equinoxes.

Settled agricultural societies, with animal husbandry lead to diverse social structures, as we now find that advanced “hunter gather societies” did too. But, with the concepts of the ownership of land the settled society’s structures created more; the creation of Kings and a paid military, and most importantly writing and trade. Our earliest writing, preserved, is of trade records, not religious texts.

The Galilean Moons

Having started with the earliest phases of the scientific creation myth I like to rewind in our time to what I was glad to learn that Prof. Jim Al-Khalili also considers the key event in Western science. I like to ruminate on its emergence. There is a bit of non-researched wishful thinking here. It’s a meditation.

Before Italy was a nation, it was like the rest of Europe, a collection of city states with changing power relationships with military and religious leaders (Kings, Barons and Popes). Having learned much from the Phoenicians and having a location at least as good a location as the Greek city states to participate in maritime trade in the Mediterranean, the Italian city states had profited. Indeed, one could say they invented banking, which assisted. One specific trade secret was possessed by them, the fixing of dyes. If you have ever dyed a piece of clothing you may have noticed that the colour deteriorates over time upon washing. The Italians had learned which chemical process to use to alleviate this problem. It involved Alum and that was available from Asia Minor, now dominated by the “Turks” after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. They may even have invented the process, but I expect it came from the middle east, or China even. Nonetheless, this gave them a huge advantage in the textile and clothing trade in Europe. One can see how to maximize this trade. The target is to sell either colour fixed clothes or clothing, but to do this you need good quality cloth to dye. This involves the cultivation and farming of flax, cotton or wool, the spinning thereof, and the cloth production via looms, which were another amazing piece of technology which inexorably advanced through time. The key target is the quality of cloth coming from looms and to assist you need a magnifying glass to examine the closeness and consistency of weave and weft in the cloth. The Italians have also had a wonderful glass industry with both artistic and technical flair, and from this the magnifying glasses to support the dye fixed cloth trade is obtained.

Galileo Galilei's insight was to combine two specially crafted "magnifying glass" pieces to create the first telescope. You see these in "Pirate" movies with the captain using a looking glass. With this, Galileo studied the night sky and performed the first documented Western observation of the four large moons of Jupiter; Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, which he named.

The "mistake" he made was to publish this in a booklet. Not just the observation of the moons but documenting that they were orbiting Jupiter, not Earth. This was heretical because it contradicted the Catholic Church's dogma that all things revolved around the Earth. He was excommunicated and survived rather cleverly by finding support from powerful trading families by converting the telescope into the looking glass which I mentioned. This gave an advantage, especially to maritime city states as they could identify an approaching fleet much earlier and thus prepare a defence if appropriate. (The above is surely a viciously short account, and possibly misleading).

The result of the publication of the pamphlet was that other researchers learned of it, and the work of Copernicus and Kepler was strengthened in proposing a heliocentric rather then geocentric model of our solar system. Some of their work was informed by Tycho Brahe of Denmark who had performed rigorous and detailed astronomical observations for years on a little island in the Øresund between Denmark and Sweden, called Ven.

The pamphlet by Galileo broke the Church's dominance over ideas. Its success relied heavily on the invention of the printing press and the reformist movement in the European Christian religions. It seems to have been the last straw for the Catholic camel of compliance.

Principia and Optics

Much later in the 1600's we have a publication widely regarded as the greatest in all of western science “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica” authored by later to be knighted Sir Isaac Newton. It is not acroymed to PNPM, but is purely known as Principia. Its’ four core principles remain unchallenged in any interaction between massive objects at 80% sub-light speed for about to 440 years. Interestingly, Principia contained challenges that were close to heretical proclamations of Galileo; an automated world with little space for divine intervention.

He did, however, publish another very significant work about 15 years later, Opticks. Optics essentially lead to microscopes which during the next century would revolutionize biology and a raft of other sciences. You dont get The Origin of Species without Optics. If you are to visit a science laboratory, what do you expect to see? Glassware, Bunsen burners, Microscopes and lab coats. Newton's Optics also showed a weakness in Galileo's design for his telescope. To this day, every single telescope, optical or radar, whether fixed to or orbiting our planet, uses Newton's improved design. Interestingly, Newton’s design uses no lenses, just a mirror. He’s still the technology leader 420 years later.

Try to find another who dominates one section of technology (Telescope design) and almost all of another (massive objects interacting at less than 250 000 kilometres per second) 400 years after their publications. There is a big media story here, too. Newton, as he said, stood on the shoulders of giants. There are characters and intrigue and the story is far more complex than I am relaying. Hi, Leibnitz.

I am trying to emphasize Opticks, the under appreciated Newton contribution to Western science.

Politics, Science and History

The 1700s and 1800s seem like a blur of continuous European warfare, political revolution, extreme exploitation during the establishment of European Empires, the establishment of the United States of America, the continuation of the share holder company from Holland and the consolidation of banking and its merging with the state via central banks.

The 1800s bring us the steam engine, railways which change everything, not to mention the telegraph. But much of this is based on the investigations of electricity and magnetism in which we see Maxwell and the wonderful experimentalist Faraday. There are also magnificent advances in public health and equivalently devastating concentrations of people in cities to provide labour for the industrial economies that were being born. The discovery of oil is a complete game changer; a gift and poisoned chalice.

Despite the two world wars of the 1900s, science rolled on with amazing advances amongst quite some controversy. The photo-electric effect heralds quantum mechanics, the two-slit experiment illuminates the wave-particle duality, Einstein's brilliance gives us Special and General Relativity, Channon lays the foundation for information theory, Alan Turing does the same for computing, Penicillin is identified, sewerage and drinking water networks are established, the horse is replaced by the automotive thus improving health outcomes in all major cities, electric light, radios, the telephone and on and on and on.

Our small and precious place

The Heliosphere is the boundary at which the pressure of particles with mass (e.g protons, helium nuclei, electrons) from our Sun is equalised by pressure from equivalent particles coming from elsewhere. Our star is revolving around our galactic central core at quite a speed. We know the galactic core has a super-massive black-hole at its center, Sagittarius A. Onwards we rotate, but still have almost no idea as to the shape of our star's influence, that Heliosphere.

We do have three space probes that have moved beyond this "local influence" boundary, Pioneer 10, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. The amazing thing is that Voyager two, launched in 1977 still has the smallest smidgen of power and every now and then at vary carefully timed events will wake up and take a measurement of the density of these massive particles it can detect, amongst a few other things, as we probe beyond our star's sphere of influence. Voyager 2's transmitter is 23 Watts, which is equivalent to a fridge light. So, you're here on Earth trying to receive a signal from billions of kilometres away that amount to that little space probe opening a fridge door in the infinite blackness.

For everything else that we understand about the cosmos, it is Astronomy that informs us. One part in the largest number you can imagine is what we have observed of the scale of the universe by any other method than Astronomy. All of the detailed work we've done here on this lovely planet is considered useful because "the laws of nature are universal". And, they have been, as tested in our exploration of our solar system. But, our knowledge of almost everything outside of it is via celestial observation of electro-magnetic radiation.

Remember the Cosmic Background Radiation, the justification for the insane expansion phase of the universe to accommodate the near equivalence in energy of the background microwaves? Surely you can’t see beyond that, when the cosmos was opaque to light! Maybe.

To Galileo and Newton, an experimentalist and theoretician (and experimentalist in the alchemical arts), I add two more similarly separated in time, Einstein and Kip Thorne. Recall also that disproving any part of Einstein's Special or General Relativity takes one reproducible experiment and is instantly worthy of a Nobel Prize in Physics. Some have tried, all have failed. But Kip took an idea from the "space-time" of General Relativity and believed that a new form of astronomy was possible; the detection of expansion and contraction of space over time as gravitational waves passed. The good news is that gravitation waves are "theoretically" happening all the time. Just wave your hand in front of your nose; wave generated. The bad news is detecting them.

The USA's National Science Foundation had funded some research into establishing an observatory to detect gravitational waves. It was, pretty much, the last theoretical prediction of General Relativity which had not been experimentally verified, or disproved. So, worth a shot, either way. The first round was just nowhere near sensitive enough to detect anything. Not deterred, Mr Thorne sought more funding, no doubt cajoling and/or pleading with ever larger consortia to petition for the required funding while the technical shortcomings of the first experimental apparatus were analysed. By hook or crook or luck or permission of the pantheon, funding was granted.

Its a small project. Two, precisely 90 degree tunnels are built, four kilometres long, each. That is at site A. Site B is identical. You can read the experimental setup. Its basically interference patterns after a laser is split down each of the two tunnels, bounce back off the mirrors at their ends and shifts in wavelength indicate a change in distance between the mirror splitting the laser and the mirrors reflecting it. The sensitivity is a fraction of the width of a proton. Read that again. Their biggest "noise" problem on their instrument comes from trucks driving on roads 50 Km away.

This is what it took for both experimental sites to successfully detect a change in distance which was caused by the circling and merger of two black holes approximately the mass of 30 suns each. The result was obtained during the "testing" phases of the two sites' apparatus. The publication announcing the result listed every employee of both sites, including the cleaners. The lead researcher was a woman. I like her style.

This creates to possibility to see beyond the Cosmic Microwave Background, back in time if or when a solar system sized version of a LIGO experiment is built. The tech is known, what they need is distance and a little time.

Sources

Yggdrasil: The Tree of Life in Norse Mythology

Edwin Hubble, Wikipedia

Thomas Kuhn, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

James Clerk Maxwell, Britannica

History of writing, Wikipedia

LIGO R&D, LIGO Caltech

Observation of gravitational waves from two neutron star-black hole coalescences, A few people

Monty Python, What have the romans ever done for us,

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