THE PHYSICS OF CREATION: LECTURE NO. Va

The Early Universe

We know nothing whatsoever concerning the physical processes that created our universe.

There are physicists who will tell you that everything emerged from a sudden event at a point in space at which all the substance that was to form the visible universe suddenly appeared as if from nowhere. This is the scenario of the 'Big Bang' hypothesis.

There are theologians who will tell you that God created the universe and qualify that by implying it is blasphemous to delve further into the question by asking how God came into being.

Then there are those who will just admit that the creation of the universe is destined to remain a mystery for all time, given that we can only describe what we think we understand, using terms which relate to what we experience here on Earth in our immediate local environment.

The latter viewpoint seems to me to be the most appropriate as it allows one to define God in the role of Creator and say God is a 'mystery', without the implication that it is blasphemous to delve into the physics of Creation.

As to the 'Big Bang' idea, that is a primary hypothesis dependent upon another secondary hypothesis. The latter is the assumption that it is possible for light, which exhibits a frequency measured in many trillions of trillions of oscillations every second to travel for distances exceeding:
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometres without losing its time-keeping at that ultra high frequency. What is so curious, indeed absurd, about this is that the primary hypothesis is founded on the conflicting observation that what we suspect are light emissions from remote galaxies of comparable frequencies traverse those large distances and reach us having lost frequency, the further their distance of travel.

By assuming that there is no frequency loss and then noting that astronomical evidence indicates a frequency loss, the cosmologist contrives to fit the two together to deduce that the universe has been expanding from a point since it was created. It not being possible to extrapolate back to a time before that 'point event', at least without wandering into a world of make-belief, the cosmologist has settled for his notion of the 'Big Bang'.

Admittedly there is here the use of some limited knowledge of physics because it is known that propagated vibrations exhibit a lower frequency than that of their source, if that source is moving away from a receiver. This is the well-known Doppler Effect. So one can see how a cosmologist might be deceived into thinking that the Doppler Effect solves the dilemma by telling us that the universe is expanding relentlessly on an ongoing basis.

A deeper knowledge of physics suggests another process, one that applies to a non-expanding universe. This involves us in understanding how an electromagnetic wave knows it has a certain frequency. Yes, we can sense that light reaching us has a certain frequency, because we can sample it in a consecutive inspection sequence, in effect timing its oscillatory ups and downs. However, if that wave has to travel over really vast distances through the space between the galaxies how is it that it can regulate itself so as to retain its frequency? Here, your physicist will tell you that the light is conveyed by photons, which are packets of energy, the energy quantum involved being related to frequency by something called Planck's constant, a universal constant. So, provided that photon retains its energy intact, it will keep its frequency intact as well.

The problem with this argument is that the photon is supposedly travelling at the speed of light, but that speed needs a reference frame and, to talk about the Doppler Effect as a reason for an apparent loss of frequency and not an actual loss of photon frequency, we need the keep that frame intact over the whole distance traversed by the photon. Yet physicists have abandoned their belief in an aether as a universal light reference frame, relying on experiments performed here on Earth in their laboratories. So the photon notion is hardly compatible with the expanding universe hypothesis.

You must understand that it is standard practice in physics to switch between a photon theory and a wave theory of light propagation. If things do not add up right using photon theory then the physicist flips over to wave theory and vice versa.

That brings us back to wave theory and the question of how an electromagnetic wave knows it has a certain frequency, one it can keep intact as it ripples through space shared by numerous other propagating waves in a sea of space rippled by electromagnetic waves emitted by every atom in the universe. There has to be an answer to this question. It is, however, one which eluded Clerk Maxwell. It is that every electromagnetic wave travels in company with a companion wave of the same frequency. They serve to assist in at least partially balancing one another dynamically in their oscillations lateral to the direction of propagation, but they have different displacement amplitudes in terms of both their electric and and their magnetic field properties. Analysis then shows that the wave frequency is coded into the relative strengths of those displacement amplitudes. As a result the wave in transit through space can be intercepted by quasi-material particles in its path and so shed energy in a way which progressively modifies that ratio of displacements, so affecting the coded data and reducing the wave frequency.

Now, as I said, this is rather technical and is best studied by reference to the original papers describing the phenomenon. However, suffice it here to say that the quasi-material particles just mentioned are Nature's ongoing attempts throughout all space to shed energy and create matter in the form of electrons and protons. The activity is governed by the equilibrium processes which keep the energy of matter, including its mass-energy, conserved throughout space. The analysis is confirmed by the theoretical derivation of the Hubble constant, the measure of that loss of frequency in relation to distance travelled by light from its source. However, it is asking too much that you, the reader, accept this at this point and so I will now discuss an alternative scenario, the one involved in the creation of stars, given that Nature has a way of creating protons and electrons everywhere throughout all space.

I take as my starting point an analogy inspired by by efforts to explain some aspects of ferromagnetism during my years of research for my Ph.D. degree. My thesis subject was the effect of mechanical stress in electrical steels upon the magnetization process in those steels and in particular upon the anomalous magnetization losses known to occur with alternating magnetization. It was experimental research, but a diversion that fascinated was the seemingly time-wasting excercise of trying to calculate how mechanical strains and stress forces were set up as between atoms in the body-centred crystal structure of steel.

I say it seemed to be a time-waster because I adopted as my model for the calculation the notion that the ferromagnetic state of iron was attributable to the synchronized orbital motion of a pair of electrons in each atom. That made the calculation feasible and gave higher internal stress than a model in which the electrons were seen only as closed circuit current flows, meaning that their electrodynamic effects on electrons in adjacent atoms were smeared as if due to a circle of current in the orbit position. Indeed, my calculations indicated that high stresses of the order of the rupture strength of steel could exist if the model I adopted had any merit.

I knew, of course, that steel, and indeed nickel and cobalt had a high modulus of elasticity, besides high rupture strengths, and their adjacent position in the atomic table meant that they had similar 3d electron orbits. It then dawned on me that the state of ferromagnetism might be attributable to the fact that internal stress meant stored potential energy, whereas I new that in more advanced physics dealing with magnetism, magnetic energy could be regarded as 'negative energy' in a potential sense. Therefore I reasoned that the state of ferromagnetism might exist in steel, for example, when, and only when, the energy shed by the onset of the magnetic state was enough to overcome the consequent mechanical strain energy that resulted from that state.

I eventually, some 12-13 years later, published this as a chapter of my book Physics without Einstein but to no avail, physicists were happy with their understanding of ferromagnetism though you would be hard put to it to find one that can explain the phenomenon to your satisfaction. You may hear some mutterings about 'exchange forces' but will not learn anything that can tell you as much as I have just outlined in the the brief account presented above.

However, to come to the point of this commentary with the creation of the universe in mind, my theoretical analysis of the model of a structured lattice array of particles containing electric charges which move in sychrony to set up electrodynamic forces of mutual attraction, drew my attention to certain properties that connected with h, Planck's quantum of action. This universal physical constant plays an important role in regulating energy quanta involved in electromagnetic radiation. Once I addressed the problem of electron 'spin' versus orbital electron motion and the anomalous gyromagnetic ratio evident in experiments on the reversal of polarization and the accompanying angular momentum in ferromagnetic rods, then I knew there had to be a real aether itself having structure. The model I had developed for the ferromagnetic condition in steel was applicable also to the aether itself!

I soon found that I could evaluate Planck's constant as a function of the speed of light and the electric charge of the electron. It was all wrapped up in the geometry of space, the cubic structure of charges spread throughout the aether but hidden from view by the very perfection of that structure. At least my account of that in my book Physics without Einstein generated some interest amongst physicists, notably by Dr. D M Eagles of the National Measurement Laboratory in Australia. See [1972a].

More important, however, from the point of view of creation of the universe, I had a glimpse of the 'promised land' when I realized that the ferromagnetic analogy with aether goes much further. If a dispersed vapour of iron atoms cools there comes a point at which molten iron forms. Further cooling results in solidification as the iron segegrates into crystals. Even further cooling results in the state of ferromagnetism developing within those iron crystals. This happens at the Curie temperature as the state of magnetism releases energy, some of which feeds into elastic strain energy, but the rest of which converts directly into heat. The result is that we see a reduction in the specific heat of iron during the transition at the Curie temperature. It takes more heat input to raise temperature by 1 degree and, conversely, upon cooling the extra heat is released during that Curie temperature transition.

Relevant also to our discussion here is the fact that, within those crystals of iron, magnetic domains form. These are regions to which the electrodynamic forces acting between the atoms are confined. They have planar boundaries.

Now we come to the main analogy. Suppose we see space as a system of electric charges formed into a cubic structure and regard space devoid of matter simply as one very large single crystal. Suppose now that that crystal forms as regions throughout which protons and electrons are dispersed and as this plasma system cools through some critical temperature. Instead of saying that electrodynamic forces now come into play with the onset of order in forming that structure, we say that gravitational forces come into being. We are later going to declare that gravitation is an electrodynamic force and take our insight into that ferromagnetic model as a clue to solving the problem of the Unified Field Theory. However, our sights for the moment are on that magnetic domain structure. In our aether model we are looking instead at vast domains, each one of which would serve as a confinement range for gravitational action, just as the magnetism of a magnetic domain is confined by electrodynamic interplay to the planar boundaries of that domain.

So the picture we form of Creation, as being the generation of stars, is an event when the chaos of the dispersed proton-electron plasma became subject to the onset of gravitation. What then happens is that, within a single space domain, the protons, which are positively charged, see one another as two interacting particles subject to gravitation. You can then work out that their mutual acceleration of gravity will be at a rate that is 1836 times greater than the corresponding mutual acceleration rate as between two electrons. The proton has 1836 times the mass of the electron.

It follows that there will be a coming together of electrical charges with the protons dominant so that, before the plasma body thus formed condenses into hydrogen form it will possess a positive charge. Eventually the electrons left behind will converge onto that ball of plasma so formed and render it electrically neutral.

The star has formed! There is one star in each of the space domains. Even though the stars then move and, in traversing space, leave the space domain in which they are born, so as to cluster to form galaxies, they are only subject to gravitational action from matter which shares the same space domain. That then is our picture of Creation, but this is only a brief introduction to the story.

The onward story concerns the discovery that the creation of a plasma ball that has a substantial net electric charge of one polaity will immediately, by its interaction with enveloping aether, cause a state of spin to develop. Stars spin. Body Earth spins. The Moon spins. Thunderballs, the product of lightning in which electrodynamic pinch effects create charge clusters, spin. Tornadoes, which nucleate on whirlwinds and develop even more spin energy owing to recurrent lightning discharges through their funnels, are related phenomena. It all comes down to understanding how anomalous spin effects arise by interaction in or with the aether and the real story of this begins by deciphering the spin properties of the photon. The story was told in Physics without Einstein and has been further reported in Physics Unified and elsewhere in these web pages.

Indeed, albeit after a lapse of two years since this web page was written, the author, in reacting to something recently published (February 2001) by the U.K. Institute of Physics, has deemed it appropriate to enlarge on the above account in discussing the broader picture of this Creation of the Universe issue and that is the subect of the next lecture.

As a final note, and concerning the reference to the theoretical evaluation of Hubble's constant and the reason for space having domains with parallel planar boundaries see the author's published papers [1984e] and [1983k].