"A Parallel Analogy Between Supernovae And Cosmology"," Stellar objects and events, like nova and supernovae are in the cosmic scheme of things almost insignificant in comparison.
Still, there might be a lot to be gleamed from comparing the life and death of our Universe to the life and death of the stars within that Universe.
is a far more philosophically satisfying universe than a one-off born, live, and fade-away universe, which is what our Universe appears to be.
Okay, maybe you don't.
But the broader human species continues to recycle - birth, death, birth, death, etc.
Actually all of your stuff will recycle too.
So we go from Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning through to Cosmic Evolution through to The End.
What if there were many universes, and they could interact? Then there might not be an overall Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning and ultimately The End.
THE STORY OF THE SUPERNOVAE: We've all heard of supernovae, and while quite rare, there has been one visible to the naked eye recently that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud (SN 1987A), a nearby companion mini-galaxy to our own visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
It was the first visible naked eye supernovae event since 1604 - rare indeed.
Stars form out of interstellar gas, dust and perhaps larger debris.
The intense pressures heat up the interior, and if the embryo star is indeed massive enough, the heat and pressure will be enough to cause the gas, etc.
Now interstellar gas and dust clouds are not all uniform in size.
These are sort-of like Goldilocks stars; stars like our Sun.
How massive newborn stars are will determine their lifespan and their fate.
Very skinny stars are very frugal with their fuel.
When their fuel finally runs out, they just slowly, ever so slowly, fade away into a white dwarf then finally as a dark and cold black dwarf cinder.
Average stars will go through a more complex evolution, but ultimately they too will settle down to a long retirement, cooling, ever cooling when the fuel is exhausted.
However, some stars are born just plain fat! Some stars can also put on weight after-the-fact by stealing mass from a nearby companion star via their stronger gravity and close proximity.
Really massive stars live life in the fast lane; they live fast; they die young.
That really does spew their stellar guts back into the interstellar winds.
The important bit is that stuff gets spewed back into space and eventually recycled.
Gas and dust from one star's 'burp' intersect with gas and dust from another star's 'hick-up' and maybe intermingle with the 'spewing vomit' from a supernovae, all ultimately contracting again under mutual gravity to form a second, even third generation star and stellar planetary system.
If it weren't for supernovae, we wouldn't be here.
So the basic cosmic cycle is stars form from interstellar gas and dust; stars live; some stars spew their guts of gas and dust back out into interstellar space, providing the raw materials for the next generation of stars.
THE PARALLEL COSMOLOGY ANALOGY: So what the hell does the above have to do with cosmology? There's lots of stars; only one Universe - or is that really the case?
One set of assumptions has to be made from the get-go.
This assumption is more philosophical than scientific.
Unfortunate, the standard model of cosmology postulates a beginning, and a fade-away ending and a finite amount of stuff and space to stuff it into.
Well, already we have a parallel analogy - supernovae are mini big bang events.
There's lots of observational evidence for the Big Bang and the expansion.
7 billion years ago.
That violates my philosophical ideals of not only no boundary in time, but no bounds in space for our Universe to strut its stuff in.
Well, that's a parallel analogy with the spewing out of gas and dust via stars going nova and supernovae.
In other words, the expected fate of our Universe was to be born from a Big Bang, live and evolve, and die in a Big Crunch.
Mother Nature's a real Hall-of-Fame bitch.
So runs the standard spiel.
Let's climb the cosmic mountain for the grander picture.
And so, while from our limited point of view there is our Universe, and thus we assume the one-and-only-Universe, in fact there is more - much, much more.
Thus, a lot of expanding regions of individual universes will intersect, eventually.
That region will slowly, but surely, start to contract.
It seems something cyclic has happened.
Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions B, C, and D in one direction, say left.
Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions H, I, J and K in the up direction; Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with the L, and M Big Bangs in the downward direction, and so on and so forth.
And so the endlessly cycling of stellar nova/supernova (expansion) to intersecting clouds of interstellar gas/dust (contractions) thus forming new stellar objects, some of which will in turn vomit up their quota of interstellar gas/dust has a parallel though many orders of magnitude on up the line.
And so we have an overall cyclic cosmos or Multiverse (because there is more than one universe).
In fact, if you think about it, the idea that there are many expanding and contracting universes is but the next logical step in what was already proven to be a natural progression.
Now we know better.
Now we know better because there are lots of suns and planets that have eliminated our uniqueness.
Today we know better.
So, I suggest that our Universe is now not the centre of the universe (or cosmos to avoid confusion).
Now it could already be the case that part of our expanding Universe has recently (even as in multi-millions of years ago) intersected part of another expanding universe.
There is at least one interesting consequence inherent in this cyclic Multiverse.
The upshot of that is that anything and everything that can happen, everything that is not forbidden by the laws, principles and relationships inherent in nature, has happened an infinite number of times and will happen again an infinite number of times.
Although the 'you' that is reading this in the 'now' will fade away (that sounds nicer than kicking-the-bucket), take comfort in that another 'you', somewhere and somewhen else, will carry on carrying on the 'you' tradition.
The Big Bang event was a one-off; it was unique; a one-of-a-kind; a fluke; just one of those interesting things that happen for no apparent reason at all.
But - and you'll read that non-observation (since there was no one around including any lady cosmologists to observe at the Big Bang's ground zero) in any standard book on the subject - it's nonsense, a scientific fabrication if you really stop and think about it.
That applies to the creation of our Universe as much as it applies to creating widgets in a factory! To claim otherwise is to suggest all of ultimate creation was kick-started in no space at all! How absurd is that! Consider the reverse: how can you cram everything into nothing?
Now if the Big Bang event did not, could not, create space way back then, then space is not undergoing continuous creation today contrary to the standard spiel.
Expanding space either means that space is getting thinner and thinner (less dense) like an expanding balloon skin stretching (and that's nonsense - how can space decrease in density?), or new space is being created out of nothing to fill the void as space expands.
That's a violation of all the basic conservation laws that are the bedrock of physics.
Now fortunately for me, and unfortunately for those cosmology professors, there's no actual observational test or experiment that can be done to distinguish between the two possibilities and settle the matter.
But it's not there.
The unwritten sentence is ""just take my word for it"" because I can't back it up with any evidence, far less proof.
That something could equally be Big Bang stuff spewing out into pre-existing space like an exploding firecracker will spew its contents outward bound and ever expanding.
7 billion years ago.
Besides, all those extra dimensions predicted by the purely mathematical and hypothetical string theory (if string theory is to work) are compactified; curled up into super-ultra microscopic foetal positions; they are tiny.
So it's back to the drawing board for our standard lady (and gentlemen) cosmologists.
The Big Bang was an event.
If causality has any meaning at all, and it's one of the foundations upon which all of science rests on, then an effect has a cause.
Therefore, whatever caused the Big Bang event (or effect), must of necessity have happened before (preceded) the Big Bang event.
Since there was a before the Big Bang, since cause always precedes effect, then again time could not have been created - time has always been, is, and always will be.
So the standard 'create time and space' model is pure extrapolation (running the film backwards from today's data) and ultimately a best guess.
7 billion years ago that kick-started our Universe off on its evolutional path, when it comes to some of the nitty-gritty details, like that 'create time and space' detail, well I just think that is plain wrong - pure and simple.
Science, like the church and other formal institutions does not approve of mavericks that go against the grain.
, a job, research funding, a career with promotions, publications, etc.
Science, and that includes cosmology, for all its self-correcting ways and means and methods and ideals is still, ultimately, a human endeavour.
Now there are a few bold cosmologists who do acknowledge that the Big Bang event still has some kinks to be ironed out and that there was a ""before the Big Bang"".
They probably wouldn't in a pink fit!
Heading back on track, even if my supernovae analogy is wrong, there still had to have been an existence both of time and space prior to the creation of our Universe via the Big Bang event, and that alone suggests that all things are still cyclic or re-cyclic in the cosmos.
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