Over the last several days I’ve been playing around with a number of cosmological principles which have lead me to an interesting potential theory of the universe that may be a bit more palatable then some of the current theory which is out there today. What started me down this course was the idea of time travel and how a theory of time travel in any form potentially establishes contradictions with the first law of thermodynamics such that either the first law is incorrect or that time is not a dimension required to define the universe as we know it.

Herein is the essential contradiction:

1) Regardless of whether time and energy are related, such that a dimension of time can be defined by some manipulation of energy at any level, the first law of thermodynamics cannot hold as there must be infinite energy available in order to establish a ‘carbon copy’ of the universe as we move backwards in time. This is because the energy of the universe must be able to be recreated in its entirety at any given point in time and from any number of given observers.

2) In order to get to those moments in time, an observer would have to be taken outside the normal flow of the universe and then “reinserted”. Ergo the total sum of energy available would be that of all known universes plus the energy required to move backwards in time.

Both aspects contradict the first law of thermodynamics which

expresses the existence of a quantity called the internal energy of a system, and shows how it is related to the distinction between energy transfer as work and energy transfer as heat. The internal energy obeys the principle of conservation of energy but work and heat are not defined as separately conserved quantities. Equivalently, the first law of thermodynamics states that perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics]

In short – the energy available in the universe is a constant.

Now certainly how liberally you want to define “the universe” has a great deal of influence over how possible time travel into the past is going to be. After all we could define the energy constant of the universe to be the sum total of all possible universes at any given point in time. That argument however is self-defeating because for any given number of universes, if time travel into the past were possible then there will be always at least n+1 universes which would inherently mean the first law of thermodynamics is wrong.

Inflationary Universe

Let’s use Ocam’s Razor as our guide in this for a moment and assume that the first law of thermodynamics actually holds. Conventional theory suggests that our universe is an inflationary one where galaxies are flying apart except in our local cluster. The principle of dark matter has been proposed to account for the missing mass of the universe required to make galaxies and local clusters ‘stick’ together.

Beyond this there are a host of other problems including the uniformity of the universe when looking at the background radiation of the universe presumed to be the leftovers of the Big Bang, the nature of what is at the center of a black holes, and why quasars are so far away in comparison to our own galaxy.

What I find interesting about the existing theory is that it assumes the first law of thermodynamics has only two possible outcomes – 1) the big crunch – where everything eventually collapses in on itself until we get another big bang, or 2) heat death – where everything eventually flies apart so far that thermodynamics is impossible to sustain. It also assumes that the universe had to have a starting point – a principle that is dependent on time being a dimension of the universe.

Convection Universe Hypothesis

One of the problems with an expanding universe theory is that recent physical evidence points dark energy welling up from the vacuum of space without any substantive cause. This energy potentially leads to the formation of particles of opposite charge (matter / anti-matter) which, in the absence of any real gravimetric forces, would possibly represent the dark matter assumed to be present.

What has surprised me in doing some preliminary research is that the principle of convection has not been mentioned anywhere as a possible mechanism for an expanding universe which preserves the first law of thermodynamics but yet accounts for how the universe may seem to be expanding. 

Let me see if I can simply paint this picture which doesn’t start with a Bang but a wimper. In no way am I trying to explain the origins of the universe itself. However let’s first start by assuming that the big bang inflationary theory is wrong – that there was no big bang. Convection currents by their very nature imply a cyclical process of creation and renewal. We will pick as the starting point the concept of a black hole as being both the beginning and the end of the cycle.

Black Holes

As theory into new and exotic particles continues to grow, one of the more interesting aspects of particle physics is this idea of quark-gluon plasma. Quark-gluon plasma exists only at very high temperatures and densities such as what will exist in the center of a black hole. At sufficient densities it may be possible that unconfined quarks can travel beyond the gravitational pull of a black hole and ‘appear’ elsewhere in the universe such as in the vacuum spaces in-between galaxies. 

This would be different from Hawking radiation, which proposes that a black hole can ‘evaporate’ at the event horizon, in that such convection acceleration would occur within event horizon after the particle has fallen past the boundary. The inference being that black holes should ‘dissipate’ faster than called for simply by the application of Hawking radiation.

Convection Inflation

Once past the boundary of the black hole – such unconfined quark-gluon plasma becomes confined in the cooler vacuum regions of the universe where they begin to form dark matter. Such matter accretes in the void spaces between galactic clusters which serve to push the universe outward creating new islands of matter from which new galaxies can take root.

Space itself would then be subject to both expansions and contractions as new galaxies start to take shape. Such an effect would appear to be forcing local galaxy clusters together while those galaxies on outside of this boundary would be constantly pushed away (thereby explaining why it is only our local cluster of galaxies that appear to be contracting whereas everything else is rushing away from us).

Quasars

Stellar formations such as quasars which represent the amalgamation of multiple galaxies into a single galactic formation would necessarily take billions of years to form under such a model. As new dark matter would constantly be pushing such formations further and further away, these super massive objects would necessarily not be near or close by our own local area if the scattering effect was constantly searching for the ‘weakest’ point in the universe to re-express itself as dark matter.  Hence the propensity for such matter to fill the interspatial regions outside the gravitational influence of a quasar would be substantially higher than it would within the gravitational vicinity.

Microwave Background Radiation

By a similar token, the background radiation of the universe may be able to be similarly explained not as a remnant of the Big Bang but rather as the echo of dark matter being formed in the spaces between stars and galaxies. Such uniformity would be consistent with an ongoing process of matter – antimatter collisions which are proposed as part of the mechanism for dark matter formation.  While there does not seem to be any direct linkage between the hot and cooler measurements of the cosmic radiation background and the actual consistency of what is physically present in those areas, I would think it would not be surprising if there was a co-relationship between the presence of dark matter generation and those areas which are fairly ‘hot’.

Accelerating Universe

Another aspect of the coalescing of dark matter into galaxies and new star formations is that the warping of space during these formations would tend to artificially show a universe that is expanding at an accelerating rate rather than at a constant speed. Consider that when dark matter forms in a region of fairly uniform, flat space, there is very little bending of space. As matter begins to coalesce, the gravity well produced would seem to the outside observer as if the galaxy was accelerating away from the observer at an ever increasing rate when in fact the relative point to point distance, not accounting for gravitational effects, would be the same as it was previously.  Such effects should be more pronounced the larger the size of the galaxy.

Convection Cycle

The convection cycle could repeat infinitely without the need for the universe to expand infinitely or contract into a big crunch. One of the major benefits is that a convection model doesn’t require exotic particles nor does it break the first law of thermodynamics. Most of the observable aspects of the universe are apparent through a simply rotation of energy in and out of convection currents and are in many respects the simplest explanation with the fewest assumptions.

At the moment I haven’t found anything which suggests that such a convection hypothesis of the universe is not workable. That isn’t to say there may not be substantive holes in the theory, just that at the moment, any such holes are not big enough to discount the theory either. It is also important to note that while the specifics of this theory may use some aspects that need to be modified later (for example the assumption that a dense quark-gluon plasma is the final end-state of a black hole before it evaporates internally) it is the general principles here which are fundamental to its understanding and explanation of observable and testable hypotheses.

Time

Originally I started out with this concept of time as being problematic specifically as it applies to the first law of thermodynamics. If there is going to be a major obstacle to a convection model of the universe – it is likely going to involve principles related to time (such as the relationship of particle positions relative to each other and any constraints imposed by the speed of light). We’ve already seen that particles can be influence in quantum theory at distances that are not possible based on a universe where the speed of light is an upper constraint. This would tend to suggest that either our model of the quantum layer of the universe is incomplete or our concept of time is incorrect.

While time is relative producing various testable hypotheses when use for forward time travel, the fact that our observable universe breaks down when travelling backwards would suggest that it is our concept of time which is incorrect. In order to conserve energy objects must be able to move faster than the speed of light without using all of the available energy inherent in the universe as part of that acceleration.  This may be testable indirectly even if all the sub-atomic processes are still being worked out which is what caught my interest and attraction in the idea.

Certainly lots of gaps but at the same time it provides a ton of opportunities for reading and research in new directions which may prove more beneficial to immediate space-based goals and objectives than just whether the big-bang existed or not. More on that later thou.

— Kevin Feenan