The Alpha and the Omega
copyrite 1994 by Russell J. Redgate

      Stephen Hawking begins the acknowledgments in "A Brief
History of Time" by saying that the basic questions
which led him to take up the study of cosmology and quantum
theory are the same questions which led him to write the
book.  He mentions the many books on the early universe,
naming one he considers very good, but says that none of them
really address these questions.

     Where did the universe come from?  How and why did it
begin?  Will it come to an end, and if so, how?

     It is not surprising that books on the early history of
the universe do not address the questions.  It is a bit
surprising that Hawking should turn to cosmology and quantum
theory for the answers.  Ultimately, the questions are
philosophic and quite beyond the scope of science.  Still,
the last question is, at least partially, amenable to scientific
inquiry and its answer should be attempted.

     Although Hawking eventually arrives at an opinion
about the end of the universe, he says the question is not
answered by contemporary science because the amount of mass
present in the universe is not known.

     Accepted theory holds that if there is more than some
critical amount, then gravitational forces will be
sufficiently strong to eventually halt the expansion and
begin the contraction which will ultimately result in the big
crunch, a return to that infinitely small, infinitely dense
nugget of matter which Hawking calls a singularity, and from
which, it is generally believed, everything has come.

     Conversely, the accepted theory holds that if the total
amount of matter in the universe is less than this critical
mass, then the expansion will go on forever, gravitational
forces being too weak to arrest it.

     But why should this be so?

     When a gun is fired, the pellet is propelled by an
explosion.  The explosion causes gases to expand rapidly.
This rapid expansion, being hemmed in by strong rigid
barriers in every direction but one, accelerates the
projectile down the barrel.  At the muzzle, that projectile
has attained its maximum velocity, after which it is carried
forward by inertia.  The force of the initial explosion no
longer acts upon the bullet.

     Even when not constrained, or directed, as when a bomb
or shell bursts in mid-air, the material surrounding the
explosion accelerates only for a time.  Then, unless the
initial force of the explosion is infinite, a time will come
when that force is spent, when the force has done all the
work it is capable of doing, when all the potential energy
that was present before the explosion has been converted into
motion.  At that time, there will be no further acceleration.
The material expelled from the center of the blast will
continue expanding in a more or less spherical shape, but
only due to inertia.

     Now the force of gravity may be a weak force.  But I
have always understood it to have some peculiar properties.
I have always heard that a gravitational attraction is
exerted by every particle of matter in the universe upon
every other particle.  (This concept of action at a distance
was a great trouble to Sir Isaac Newton and many others.) The
strength of the attraction being directly related to the mass
of the particles involved and varying inversely with the
square of the distance between them.  At very great distances
(this, of course, means nothing in the abstract, but only in
relation to smaller intervals) this force is miniscule,
almost negligible.  But it is a force which acts constantly
upon its object. It tends to accelerate the object upon which
it acts.  If no other force is acting upon the object, then
the force of gravity will, in fact, accelerate the object.
If no other forces were at work, this force, no matter how
weak, would eventually cause any two objects, no matter how
massive and no matter how far apart, to come together.

     But what other force is now acting upon the debris flung
into the void by the fractus magnus (yes, that is a much
better name for the "big bang")?  Is matter still being
accelerated by that explosion?  Will it always be?  Is the
force of the blast unlimited?  If it is not unlimited, will
it not eventually cease to act upon the fragments hurtling
off into space in every direction?  What would then prevent
gravity, however weak it may be, from eventually arresting
the flight, halting the expansion, and finally beginning
accelerating everything back toward the center?
 
                     The End

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