Liquidrage

Has anyone seen any theories or have any ideas regarding the possability that instead of our universe being created in a temporal event there is a constant spew of *stuff* from a location our neck of the woods left about 15 billion years ago?

[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: Liquidrage ]</p>

Friar Bellows

I don't know of any recent theories, but there was the old Hoyle-Narlikar theory where you had constantly created matter in an expanding steady-state universe. But the discovery of the 2.7K cosmic background radiation put a nail in the coffin of that theory (at least in its original form). Quote by Dennis Sciama:

"I must add that for me the loss of the steady-state theory has been a cause of great sadness. The steady-state theory has a sweep and beauty that for some unaccountable reason the architect (!) of the universe appears to have overlooked. The universe is in fact a botched job, but I suppose we shall have to make the best of it."

NumberTenOx

OK I'm no expert.

But I think the steady state model was that hydrogen atoms would occasionally pop into being. Something like one hydrogen atom per cubic meter every billion years or so, but spread out over space. This doesn't really account for the expansion of the universe but provides a model so that the universe could be forever expanding and still have stuff in it.

What Rage is proposing sounds different. That theory sounds like there is a big matter creation spot, the "spew zone", that is constantly creating matter. This is also a model for an eternal universe, where matter is constantly created to fill up the space caused by expansion.

I see a couple of problems with this.

First, we've never seen it. We can't point to a spot in the sky and say "there, that's where matter is being created!"

Second, everywhere we look we see essentially the same thing. We see the same microwave background radiation, we see the same density of galaxies, we see the same density of quasars, etc. If there was a central spew zone, then stars/galaxies in that direction should look younger.

Furthermore, in the other direction, we should see less density of matter (and older stars). This was at least a positive consequence of the steady state theory, that matter was created uniformly throughout space, so there was no favored direction.

I could be wrong.

It's a bit interesting that - perhaps obviously - all three of these theories violate the converation of energy. But the theory of inflation suggests that matter/energy is "positive" and that gravitational potential is "negative", and the two cancel out. So when the big bang occurred, energy and gravity were created without violating the conservation of energy.

I assume the other two theories (steady state and big spew) could somehow claim the same trick and just make stuff without violating basic physical laws.

[ June 15, 2002: Message edited by: NumberTenOx ]</p>

Liquidrage

Thanks for the replies

I agree that if there was a "spot that spewed" we could look for it and say "look that is where matter comes from".

But we can't yet. Even under the BB model we could do that but can't yet. We haven't quite been able to see that far out yet.

The 2nd and "furthermore" points certainly make sense.

Someone on a physics board I frequent pointed me to Andrei Linde's self reproducing universe theory.

KeithHarwood

Yes, this was the original steady state theory.

This idea does have the problems you suggest. However, something like it was thought up for the steady state theory in its last days. It wasn't a single spew zone, though, it was many. They were called white holes where matter was created as distinct from black holes where it was destroyed. These white holes were tentatively identified with quasars and later BL Lac objects. It didn't get anywhere though, the problems simply became to great and the theory was abandoned.

NumberTenOx

Ahh, but that's the microwave background radiation, isn't it? That's the radiation leftover from when the universe cooled enough to coalesce into neutral atoms and became transparent. So everywhere we look and see that radiation, we're seeing the location of the cosmic spew. The fact that it's highly uniform is one of the great pieces of evidence for the BB.

Hmmm, could be. In Alan Guth's The Inflationary Universe he describes Linde's model of universe creation (Chapter 15): "On the very large scale, however, from a view that shows all the pocket universes, the evolution will strongly resemble the old steady state model of the universe." The big difference with this new model, however, is that each universe that's created is separate and unobservable. So we might as well continue to view our own BB as the only "spewer" in these parts.

The idea of the existence of an area of false vacuum, that's continuously undergoing inflation and splitting off whole universes at an incredible rate, is simply too mind-blowing for me. My brain hurts just thinking about it...

Cool!