WHY THE BIG BANG IS NOT AN EXPLOSION

{W washingtonpost.com/archive/1997/05/14/why—the—big—bang—is—not—an—exp|osion/7164578f-5b06—407b—b69a—
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By Sten Odenwald

May 14, 1997

The Big Bang wasn't really big. Nor was it really a bang. In fact, the event that created the
universe and everything in it was a very different kind of phenomenon than most people --

or, at least, most nonphysicists imagine. Even the name "Big Bang" originally was a
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putdown cooked up by a scientist who didn't like the concept when it was first put forth. He
favored the idea that the universe had always existed in a much more dignified and
fundamentally unchanging, steady state. But the name stuck, and with it has come the
completely wrong impression that the event was like an explosion. That image leads many of
us to imagine that the universe is expanding because the objects in it are being flung apart
like fragments of a detonated bomb. That isn't true. The real reason that the universe is
expanding is that the objects in it are staying in one place the same place they were when
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the Big Bang started and the space between them is growing. In other words, space is not
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just void. It is a full-fledged player and is undergoing change. I know that sounds crazy, but
it's true. Virtually every aspect of our intuitive image of the Big Bang (we are stuck with the
name) is incorrect. Even the Imax movie, "Cosmic Voyage," at the National Air and Space
Museum shows the Big Bang as a fireworks display. To understand why this is wrong, you
need to understand, or at least have a sense of, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.
That may sound daunting, but general relativity, promulgated 82 years ago, is the most
revolutionary scientific advance of the 20th century, and all of us should acquire some
feeling for it before the century ends. After all, the theory has been tested in scores of
experiments, has always passed with flying colors and is firmly established as our premier
guide to understanding how gravity operates. Moreover, it is part of the foundation of Big
Bang cosmology. And it is because of general relativity that we know the Big Bang was (and
is, for the event is still going on all around us) nothing like an explosion. Einstein developed
general relativity in order to broaden his earlier theory of special relativity so it would
explain the effects of gravity. Isaac Newton already had discovered how gravity works in the
everyday world, but Newton's equations gave nonsensical answers when applied to the
extreme realms inside the atom or when objects moved near the speed of light. Einstein's
general theory of relativity, which we'll call GR for short, covers the everyday world in --

which the equations are equivalent to Newton's but also allows us to predict what happens
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in certain unfamiliar realms of experience. GR, for example, predicted that black holes
should exist. Astronomers then searched for the bizarre ob jects and found them. Because of
GR's success in real-world experiments, physicists believe its explanation of our expanding
universe. It says the Big Bang was not an explosion. Just how good is general relativity? So
far, it has succeeded in the following test cases, among others: * Astronomers had known
since the 1880s that the entire, elliptical orbit of Mercury rotates around the sun, a
phenomenon called perihelion shift. Some of the shift could be explained through Newton's
laws, but some could not. GR said the unexplained part was caused by the sun's gravity
warping nearby space, and in 1915 its equations gave the exact amount of unexplained shift
that astronomers had observed. * GR says gravity can appear to bend the path of
electromagnetic radiation such as light. This was confirmed in a 1919 solar eclipse by
observing the light of stars near the sun's edge. The stars‘ apparent positions shifted as the
sun came close to the beams of starlight. In the 1970s, this was reconfirmed with radio
emissions from quasars. Deflection of the radiation was exactly as GR predicted. * GR says
clocks run more slowly in stronger gravitational fields. This was confirmed in 1959 and again
in the 1960s and 1970s using high-precision hydrogen maser clocks flown on jet planes and
satellites. Farther from Earth's center, the clocks ran faster. * GR says gravitational mass and
inertial mass are identical. In other words, to gravity, it doesn't matter what something is
made of. One gram of lead falls just the same way as one gram of aluminum. This has been
tested many times. In 1971, for example, an experiment confirmed GR's prediction of
equality to within 1 part in a trillion. * GR says black holes exist. Although these objects were
first suggested in the early 1970s, only in 1992 was a key acceptance threshold crossed in the
astronomical community. It was then that Hubble Space Telescope observations revealed
very massive, billion-sun black holes in the cores of nearby galaxies. We have now boxed
ourselves into a corner. If we accept the successes of GR, we are forced to see the world and
the cosmos through its eyes, and its eyes alone, since it is the only theory that satisfies all
known tests. This means that we must accept a prediction of GR that troubled even Einstein.
General relativity says space is constantly changing its size. The theory by itself requires that
space be expanding or, equally valid mathematically, shrinking. This notion disturbed
Einstein, who assumed the cosmos was static. So he arbitrarily added a fudge factor to the
equations to neutralize the effect and produce a steady-state universe. By 1929, however,
astronomer Edwin Hubble confirmed that galaxies are moving apart from one another.
Einstein recanted his fudge factor, calling it his biggest mistake. So, how should we think
about the Big Bang? Our "fireworks" image of the phenomenon depends on five basic
requirements: 1) A preexisting sky or space into which the fragments from the explosion are
injected; 2) A preexisting time we can use to mark when the explosion happened; 3)
Individual projectiles moving through space from a common center; 4) A definite moment
when the explosion occurred; and 5) Something that started the Big Bang. All of these
requirements in our visualization of the Big Bang are false or unnecessary, according to GR.
Preexisting Space? There was no preexisting space. The mathematics of GR state
unambiguously that three-dimensional space was created at the Big Bang itself, at "Time
Zero," along with everything else. At that beginning, there were no separations between
particles anywhere. This is another way of saying there was no three-dimensional space.
Theorists studying various prototypes for an even broader theory, sometimes called a Theory
of Everything, have modified this statement only somewhat. During its earliest moments,
they say, the universe may have existed in a nearly incomprehensible state with more than
four dimensions or perhaps none at all. Many of these theories of the earliest moment
hypothesize a "mother space-time" that begat our universe, much as a balloon pinch off to
form a second enclosed bubble. But you cannot at the same time place your mind's eye both
inside this greater "space-time" to watch the Big Bang happen and inside our universe to see
matter flying around. This is exactly what the fireworks display model demands that you do.
Preexisting Time? Nor was there preexisting time. Again, GR's mathematics treats space and
time together as one object called "space-time," which is indivisible. At Time Zero plus a
moment, there was a well-defined quantity called time. Rework the equations to see what the
situation would be like at Time Zero minus a moment, and this same quantity changes its
character and becomes "imaginary." This is a mathematical warning flag that something
dreadfully unexpected has happened to time as we know it. In a famous quote by Einstein,
"time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live." Steven
Hawking, the British astrophysicist, has looked at the mathematics of this state using the
fledgling physics of quantum gravity theory and concluded that, at the start of the Big Bang,
time emerged from something utterly different. For example, it may have been created from
another "timeless" dimension of space, or so the mathematics seems to suggest. Individual
objects moving away from a common center? There is no common center. Moreover, it is
equally true to say every place in the universe is at the center. In other words, no matter
where in the universe you might stand to gaze at the heavens, you would see all other
galaxies racing away from you. The reason, according to general relativity, is that space is not
a passive stage across which objects dance but a full-fledged member of the cast. GR treats
galaxies and "space-time" together, giving a very different picture of what happens than if
they were treated separately, as most of us tend to do. For one thing, the properties of space
affect the matter in it. Curved space bends the paths of moving particles. It would even bend
your path if, for example, you stepped into a space ship and tried to fly straight to the edge of
the universe and look beyond. You would never reach an edge no matter how long or how far
you flew. Where you would end up depends on the amount of mass in the universe, which is
not known precisely. Remember that the mass makes space curved. If there is enough mass
to cause the universe to collapse, the curvature of space would be so great that not only could
you not reach a supposed "edge" of the universe, you also eventually would find yourself
arriving where you departed. This is analogous to the way Earth's curvature would bring you
home if you flew west and never changed course. Because the universe has no edge, there is
no one center. This is totally counterintuitive, but if general relativity is true, so are all of its
consequences. As a mental anchor, many people use an expanding balloon covered with
spots as an analogy to the expanding universe. As seen from any one spot, all other spots
rush away from it as the balloon is inflated. You cannot single out any one center to the
expansion of the surface. (You can simulate this by doing the experiment suggested in
Phenomena on page H8.) This is very different from the fireworks display, which does have a
dramatic, common center to the expanding cloud of cinders. The balloon analogy, however,
is not perfect, because as we watch the balloon, our vantage point remains in a preexisting
larger arena that GR says never existed for the real universe. The center of the Big Bang was
not a point in space but a point in time! It is a center, not in the fabric of the balloon, but
outside of it along the fourth dimension, time. We can't see time, but we can look back
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through time at ancient images from distant objects in space. We see the early history of the
universe in these images the farther away, the older the image. So, you can think of us as
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living in the present surrounded by spherical shells of the past the bigger the shell, the
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farther back in time. If we could peer far enough into space in all directions, we would see the
earliest moments of the Big Bang in all directions, with ourselves at the center. At this point,
common sense must yield to the insights provided by GR. And at this point, many non-
physicists refuse to be so courteous. Who can blame them? Unfortunately, the situation gets
even weirder. Projectiles moving through space? GR again gives a very troubling answer.
Through millions of years of evolution, we have learned that, in the everyday world, we can
move through space. As we drive along the highway, we have no doubt about what is
happening as we traverse the distance between landmarks. But science is not about
confirming our prejudices. It's about revealing how things actually are. Perhaps the strangest
truth to emerge from general relativity is the expansion of space. Like spots glued to the
surface of a swelling balloon at eternally fixed latitude and longitude points, the galaxies
remain where they are while space dilates between them as time passes. There is no reason
why we should find this kind of motion intuitive. If space is stretching like this, where do the
brand new millions of cubic light years come from? The answer in GR is that they have
always been there. Space has always existed in the complete shape of the universe in four
dimensions. But it is only as all four dimensions, including time, play out that the full shape
and size of the universe is revealed. It is only because of the way the human mind
traditionally works that our consciousness insists on experiencing the universe one moment
at a time. That's what prompts us to ask where the new space comes from as the universe
expands. Scientifically and mathematically, in reality as far as physics is concerned, there is
no paradox. Einstein and modern quantum physics have taught us that space is not nothing.
It is merely another name for the gravitational field of the universe. As the great man once
said, "space-time" does not claim existence on its own but only as a structural quality of the
gravitational field. If you could turn off gravity with a switch, "space-time" would vanish.
This is the ultimate demolition experiment known to physics and for which an
environmental—impact statement most certainly would be required. It's also the reason that
you would never want to make an antigravity machine. Was there a definite moment to the
start of the Big Bang? GR is perfectly happy to forecast that our universe emerged from
something called a singularity, a point of infinite density that had no physical size at Time
Zero. Any more than this, we cannot say. Physicists feel very strongly that this instant was, in
a sense, blurred out and, therefore made forever inaccessible to science, by any number of
quantum mechanical effects, so that we can never speak of a time before about 10 -43
seconds after everything started. Just as author Gertrude Stein once remarked about my
hometown of Oakland, Calif., that "there is no there’ there", at 10 -43 seconds, nature may
tell us that before that moment, "there was no when’ there" either. The moment dissolves
away into some weird quantum fog, and as Hawking speculates, the dimension we call time
actually may have been some other kind of dimension of space and no longer even definable
in this state. Ordinary GR cannot describe this condition, and only some future theory
combining GR and quantum mechanics might be able to tell us more. We hope. Something
started the Big Bang At last we come to the most difficult issue in modern cosmology. In a
real fireworks display, we can trace events leading to the explosion all the way back to
chemists who created the gunpowder and wrapped the explosives. GR, however, can tell us
nothing about the stages preceding the Big Bang. In fact, among GR's strongest statements is
one saying that, before the singularity, time itself may not have existed. How then do we
speak or think about a condition or process that started the whole shebang if we are not even
allowed to frame the event as "This happened first, then this, then kerpowie!"? This remains
the essential mystery of the Big Bang and seems to transcend every mathematical description
we can create to describe it. All known, logical frameworks are based on chains of events. All
of our experiences of such chains in the physical world have been ordered in time. Even
when mathematics and theory tell us that it is neither logical nor scientifically legitimate to
ask what started the Big Bang, we insist on viewing this as a proper question to ask of nature,
and, naturally, we expect a firm answer. But like so many other things we have learned in this
century about the physical world, our gut instincts about which questions ought to have
definite answers often is flawed when we explore the extreme limits to our physical world. It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to accept the fact that the Big Bang was a spectacular moment
in history. What is amazing is that the daring audacity of humans may have demystified
some of it and revealed a universe far more strange than any could have imagined. Sten
Odenwald is a Hughes STX astronomer who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
and studies how galaxies were born in the infant universe. At his web site, the Astronomy
Cafe, he has answered more than 3,000 questions about cosmology, black holes and other
issues in astronomy. It's at www2.ari.net/home/odenwald/cafe.html. CAPTION: Almost
every object in this picture, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a galaxy.