The beginning of life on Earth by Nadia Circu

STEPHEN HAWKING The Origin of the Universe This lecture is the intellectual property of Professor S.W.Hawking. You may not reproduce, edit, translate, distribute, publish or host this document in any way with out the permission of Professor Hawking. Note that there may be incorrect spellings, punctuation and/or grammar in this document. This is to allow correct pronunciation and timing by a speech synthesiser.

Can you hear me?

According to the Boshongo people of central Africa, in the beginning, there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba. One day Bumba, in pain from a stomach ache, vomited up the sun. The sun dried up some of the water, leaving land. Still in pain, Bumba vomited up the moon, the stars, and then some animals. The leopard, the crocodile, the turtle, and finally, man. This creation myth, like many others, tries to answer the questions we all ask. Why are we here? Where did we come from? The answer generally given was that humans were of comparatively recent origin, because it must have been obvious, even at early times, that the human race was improving in knowledge and technology. So it can't have been around that long, or it would have progressed even more. For example, according to Bishop Usher, the Book of Genesis placed the creation of the world at 9 in the morning on October the 27th, 4,004 BC. On the other hand, the physical surroundings, like mountains and rivers, change very little in a human lifetime. They were therefore thought to be a constant background, and either to have existed forever as an empty landscape, or to have been created at the same time as the humans. Not everyone, however, was happy with the idea that the universe had a beginning. For example, Aristotle, the most famous of the Greek

philosophers, believed the universe had existed forever. Something eternal is more perfect than something created. He suggested the reason we see progress was that floods, or other natural disasters, had repeatedly set civilization back to the beginning. The motivation for believing in an eternal universe was the desire to avoid invoking divine intervention to create the universe and set it going. Conversely, those who believed the universe had a beginning, used it as an argument for the existence of God as the first cause, or prime mover, of the universe.

If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was what happened before the beginning? What was God doing before He made the world? Was He preparing Hell for people who asked such questions? The problem of whether or not the universe had a beginning was a great concern to the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. He felt there were logical contradictions, or antimonies, either way. If the universe had a beginning, why did it wait an infinite time before it began? He called that the thesis. On the other hand, if the universe had

existed for ever, why did it take an infinite time to reach the present stage? He called that the antithesis. Both the thesis and the antithesis depended on Kant's assumption, along with almost everyone else, that time was Absolute. That is to say, it went from the infinite past to the infinite future, independently of any universe that might or might not exist in this background. This is still the picture in the mind of many scientists today. However in 1915, Einstein introduced his revolutionary General Theory of Relativity. In this, space and time were no longer Absolute, no longer a fixed background to events. Instead, they were dynamical quantities that were shaped by the matter and energy in the universe. They were defined only within the universe, so it made no sense to talk of a time before the universe began. It would be like asking for a point south of the South Pole. It is not defined. If the universe was essentially unchanging in time, as was generally assumed before the 1920s, there would be no reason that time should not be defined arbitrarily far back. Any socalled beginning of the universe would be artificial, in the sense that one could extend the history back to earlier times. Thus it might be that the universe was created last year, but with all the memories and physical evidence, to look like it was much older. This raises deep philosophical questions about the meaning of existence. I shall deal with these by adopting what is called, the positivist approach. In this, the idea is that we interpret the input from our senses in terms of a model we make of the world. One can not ask whether the model represents reality, only whether it works. A model is a good model if first it interprets a wide range of observations, in terms of a simple and elegant model. And second, if the model makes definite predictions that can be tested and possibly falsified by observation. In terms of the positivist approach, one can compare two models of the universe. One in which the universe was created last year and one in which the universe existed much longer. The Model in which the universe

existed for longer than a year can explain things like identical twins that have a common cause more than a year ago. On the other hand, the model in which the universe was created last year cannot explain such events. So the first model is better. One can not ask whether the universe really existed before a year ago or just appeared to. In the positivist approach, they are the same. In an unchanging universe, there would be no natural starting point. The situation changed radically however, when Edwin Hubble began to make observations with the hundred inch telescope on Mount Wilson, in the 1920s. Hubble found that stars are not uniformly distributed throughout space, but are gathered together in vast collections called galaxies. By measuring the light from galaxies, Hubble could determine their velocities. He was expecting that as many galaxies would be moving towards us as were moving away. This is what one would have in a universe that was unchanging with time. But to his surprise, Hubble found that nearly all the galaxies were moving away from us. Moreover, the further galaxies were from us, the faster they were moving away. The universe was not unchanging with time as everyone had thought previously. It was expanding. The distance between distant galaxies was increasing with time. The expansion of the universe was one of the most important intellectual discoveries of the 20th century, or of any century. It transformed the debate about whether the universe had a beginning. If galaxies are moving apart now, they must have been closer together in the past. If their speed had been constant, they would all have been on top of one another about 15 billion years ago. Was this the beginning of the universe? Many scientists were still unhappy with the universe having a beginning because it seemed to imply that physics broke down. One would have to invoke an outside agency, which for convenience, one can call God, to determine how the universe began. They therefore advanced theories in which the universe was expanding at the present time, but didn't have a beginning. One was the Steady State theory, proposed by Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle in 1948. In the Steady State theory, as galaxies moved apart, the idea was that new galaxies would form from matter that was supposed to be continually being created throughout space. The universe would have existed for ever and would have looked the same at all times. This last property had the great virtue, from a positivist point of view, of being a definite prediction that could be tested by observation. The Cambridge radio

astronomy group, under Martin Ryle, did a survey of weak radio sources in the early 1960s. These were distributed fairly uniformly across the sky, indicating that most of the sources lay outside our galaxy. The weaker sources would be further away, on average. The Steady State theory predicted the shape of the graph of the number of sources against source strength. But the observations showed more faint sources than predicted, indicating that the density sources were higher in the past. This was contrary to the basic assumption of the Steady State theory, that everything was constant in time. For this, and other reasons, the Steady State theory was abandoned. Another attempt to avoid the universe having a beginning was the suggestion that there was a previous contracting phase, but because of rotation and local irregularities, the matter would not all fall to the same point. Instead, different parts of the matter would miss each other, and the universe would expand again with the density remaining finite. Two Russians, Lifshitz and Khalatnikov, actually claimed to have proved, that a general contraction without exact symmetry would always lead to a bounce with the density remaining finite. This result was very convenient for Marxist Leninist dialectical materialism, because it avoided awkward questions about the creation of the universe. It therefore became an article of faith for Soviet scientists. The other interpretation of our results, which is favored by most scientists, is that it indicates that the General Theory of Relativity breaks down in the very strong gravitational fields in the early universe. It has to be replaced by a more complete theory. One would expect this anyway,

because General Relativity does not take account of the small scale structure of matter, which is governed by quantum theory. This does not matter normally, because the scale of the universe is enormous compared to the microscopic scales of quantum theory. But when the universe is the Planck size, a billion trillion trillionth of a centimeter, the two scales are the same, and quantum theory has to be taken into account.

In order to understand the Origin of the universe, we need to combine the General Theory of Relativity with quantum theory. The best way of doing so seems to be to use Feynman's idea of a sum over histories. Richard Feynman was a colorful character, who played the bongo drums in a strip joint in Pasadena, and was a brilliant physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He proposed that a system got from a state A, to a state B, by every possible path or history. Each path or history has a certain amplitude or intensity, and the probability of the system going from A- to B, is given by adding up the amplitudes for each path. There will be a history in which the moon is made of blue cheese, but the amplitude is low, which is bad news for mice. The probability for a state of the universe at the present time is given by adding up the amplitudes for all the histories that end with that state. But how did the histories start? This is the Origin question in another guise. Does it require a Creator to decree how the universe began? Or is the initial state of the universe,

determined by a law of science? In fact, this question would arise even if the histories of the universe went back to the infinite past. But it is more immediate if the universe began only 15 billion years ago. The problem of what happens at the beginning of time is a bit like the question of what happened at the edge of the world, when people thought the world was flat. Is the world a flat plate with the sea pouring over the edge? I have tested this experimentally. I have been round the world, and I have not fallen off. As we all know, the problem of what happens at the edge of the world was solved when people realized that the world was not a flat plate, but a curved surface. Time however, seemed to be different. It appeared to be separate from space, and to be like a model railway track. If it had a beginning, there would have to be someone to set the trains going. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity unified time and space as spacetime, but time was still different from space and was like a corridor, which either had a beginning and end, or went on forever. However, when one combines General Relativity with Quantum Theory, Jim Hartle and I realized that time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions. This means one can get rid of the problem of time having a beginning, in a similar way in which we got rid of the edge of the world. Suppose the beginning of the universe was like the South Pole of the earth, with degrees of latitude playing the role of time. The universe would start as a point at the South Pole. As one moves north, the circles of constant latitude, representing the size of the universe, would expand.

To ask what happened before the beginning of the universe would become a meaningless question, because there is nothing south of the South Pole.

Time, as measured in degrees of latitude, would have a beginning at the South Pole, but the South Pole is much like any other point, at least so I have been told. I have been to Antarctica, but not to the South Pole. The same laws of Nature hold at the South Pole as in other places. This would remove the age-old objection to the universe having a beginning; that it would be a place where the normal laws broke down. The beginning of the universe would be governed by the laws of science. The picture Jim Hartle and I developed of the spontaneous quantum creation of the universe would be a bit like the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water. The idea is that the most probable histories of the universe would be like the surfaces of the bubbles. Many small bubbles would appear, and then disappear again. These would correspond to mini universes that would expand but would collapse again while still of microscopic size. They are possible alternative universes but they are not of much interest since they do not last long enough to develop galaxies and stars, let alone intelligent life. A few of the little bubbles, however, grow to a certain size at which they are safe from recollapse. They will continue to expand at an ever increasing rate, and will form the bubbles we see. They will correspond to universes that would start off expanding at an ever increasing rate. This is called inflation, like the way prices go up every year. The world record for inflation was in Germany after the First World War. Prices rose by a factor of ten million in a period of 18 months. But that was nothing compared to inflation in the early universe. The universe expanded by a factor of million trillion trillion in a tiny fraction of a second. Unlike inflation in prices, inflation in the early universe was a very good thing. It produced a very large and uniform universe, just as we observe. However, it would not be completely uniform. In the sum over histories, histories that are very slightly irregular will have almost as high probabilities as the completely uniform and regular history. The theory therefore predicts that the early universe is likely to be slightly non-uniform. These irregularities would produce small variations in the intensity of the microwave background from different directions. The microwave background has been observed by the Map satellite, and was found to have exactly the kind of variations predicted. So we know we are on the right lines. The irregularities in the early universe will mean that some regions will have slightly higher density than others. The gravitational attraction of the extra density will slow the expansion of the region, and can eventually cause the region to collapse to form galaxies and stars. So look well at the map of the

Theories of the Universe Scientific Origins of the Universe      

Bang That Drum A Big Bang Alternative The Accelerating Universe Plasma Cosmology The Standard Model The Alpha and the Omega It's Out of Control

Big Bang The most popular theory of our universe's origin centers on a cosmic cataclysm unmatched in all of history—the big bang. This theory was born of the observation that other galaxies are moving away from our own at great speed, in all directions, as if they had all been propelled by an ancient explosive force. Before the big bang, scientists believe, the entire vastness of the observable universe, including all of its matter and radiation, was compressed into a hot, dense mass just a few millimeters across. This nearly incomprehensible state is theorized to have existed for just a fraction of the first second of time. Big bang proponents suggest that some 10 billion to 20 billion years ago, a massive blast allowed all the universe's known matter and energy—even space and time themselves—to spring from some ancient and unknown type of energy. The theory maintains that, in the instant—a trilliontrillionth of a second—after the big bang, the universe expanded with incomprehensible speed from its pebble-size origin to astronomical scope. Expansion has apparently continued, but much more slowly, over the ensuing billions of years. Scientists can't be sure exactly how the universe evolved after the big bang. Many believe that as time passed and matter cooled, more diverse kinds of atoms began to form, and they eventually condensed into the stars and galaxies of our present universe.

Origins of the Theory A Belgian priest named Georges LemaĂŽtre first suggested the big bang theory in the 1920s when he theorized that the universe began from a single primordial atom. The idea subsequently received major boosts by Edwin Hubble's observations that galaxies are speeding away from us in all directions, and from the discovery of cosmic microwave radiation by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. The glow of cosmic microwave background radiation, which is found throughout the universe, is thought to be a tangible remnant of leftover light from the big bang. The radiation is akin to that used to transmit TV signals via antennas. But it is the oldest radiation known and may hold many secrets about the universe's earliest moments. The big bang theory leaves several major questions unanswered. One is the original cause of the big bang itself. Several answers have been proposed to address this fundamental question, but none has been provenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and even adequately testing them has proven to be a formidable challenge.

The beginning of the Universe About fourteen billion years ago, the Universe began in a gigantic explosion - the Hot Big Bang! Its subsequent evolution from one hundredth of a second up to the present day can be reliably described by the Big Bang model. This includes the expansion of the Universe, the origin of light elements and the relic radiation from the initial fireball, as well as a framework for understanding the formation of galaxies and other large-scale structures. In fact, the Big Bang model is now so well-attested that it is known as the standard cosmology. This tour introduces the Big Bang cosmology and its successes, while emphasising its incompleteness and the areas in which cosmologists are currently working. The key question that interests us, as we delve

backwards in time before thestandard cosmology, is:

Why was the Universe the way it was at one hundredth of a second?

A history of ideas M100, one of the spiral nebulae, in the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies (AAO photo)

Early 20th century: - the flattened 'island' or Kapetyn Universe At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was generally accepted that our galaxy was disk-shaped and isolated. But what were the spiral nebulae like M31 (Andromeda) - were they inside or outside the Milky Way? Immanuel Kant had already speculated in the 1750s that these nebulae were, in fact, other 'island' universes.

1912: Slipher - redshifts of spiral nebulae Vesto Slipher measured spectra from the nebulae, showing that many were Doppler-shifted, that is, the frequency of light was affected by speed of the source (just as the frequency of sound alters for a passing train). By 1924, 41 nebulae were measured, and 36 of these were found to be receding.

1918: Shapley - distance measure using variable stars A key advance in cosmology came with the development of means to measure the distance to these nebulae. Shapley used Cepheids, bright stars which pulsate at regular intervals between a few days and a month. The period of their variability is correlated with their absolute luminosity, which he calibrated in the nearby Large Magellenic Cloud, an irregular galaxy that is a satellite to the Milky Way.

Figure 1. (left) Animation of a diagrammatic Cepheid brightness variations with time (HST) Figure 2. (right) Brightness variation of a Cepheid in M100 (HST photo). Click to view an HST animation of a Cepheid found in M100

1923 - 29: Hubble - proportionality between velocity and distance Hubble was able to resolve Cepheids in M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) with the 100" telescope at Mt Wilson, near Pasadena, California. He developed a new distance measure using the brightest star for more distant galaxies. He correlated these measurements with Slipher's nebulae to discover a proportionality between velocity v and distance d, that is, Hubbleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

law v=Hd. The constant of proportionality H is called Hubble's constant (it was significantly over-estimated by Hubble himself).

1964: Penzias & Wilson - the cosmic microwave background radiation Working with a horn antenna (7.35cm) at Bell Labs, Penzias & Wilson fortuitously discovered an isotropic, that is, uniform in direction, radio background, a relic left-over from the primordial fireball. This cosmic microwave background radiation is key evidence for the Hot Big Bang model. The temperature of this blackbody radiation is today measured to be T = 2.73K (that is, a rather cold -270C).

1986: de Lapparent, Geller & Huchra - large-scale structure, superclusters and voids Deep redshift galaxy surveys demonstrated the existence of huge bubbles, filaments and sheets on scales from 25Mpc (1Mpc = 3.26 million light-years) to over 100Mpc. Subsequent galaxy surveys are providing detailed information about the distribution of large-scale structure. Radio galaxy and quasar surveys indicate homogeneity (or uniformity) is approached on scales of several hundred Mpc (that is, nearly a billion light years).

The APM survey of thousands of galaxies showing their large-scale angular distribution on the sky

Deep redshift galaxy surveys have discovered that groups of galaxies form large scale structures. These include huge bubbles, filaments and sheets that can span from 25Mpc to over 100Mpc (thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s over 3.08 Ă&#x2014; 1024metres!). More recent galaxy surveys are have provided more detail about the distribution of these large scale structures, including the distribution of voids, areas with very or no galaxies at all that can span over 150 Mpc.

1992: COBE satellite - discovery of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background In April 1992, the COBE satellite team announced the discovery of anisotropies (or directional differences) in the cosmic microwave background radiation at the level of one part in 100,000. These are thought to be a snapshot at t=400,000 years of the primordial fluctuations that led to galaxy formation. This map of the sky is also the best evidence for the isotropy (or spherical symmetry) of the Universe. As far back as recorded history goes, there have been two sets of opposing ideas, beliefs, theories, or teachings about the origin of the universe. It has either existed eternally with no beginning or end, or it was created at some point in time and will eventually come to an end. In the first part we examined the early cultural, religious, and somewhat philosophical views of how the universe began. We've also spent a little time looking at some ideas about our own beginnings from a religious and scientific point of view. In this section, we're going to take a brief excursion through the various theories that science has put forth to explain the origin of the universe. By far the most popular theory in science today is the big bang theory, the idea that the universe came into existence at a certain point in time roughly 15 to 20 billion years ago. In the last 25 years this theory has moved to the forefront of cosmology. You'll meet some of the key figures whose theories have laid the foundation for the big bang. However, as you'll see as we move through this section, this theory is not only a product of science but also of the times in which we live. And although science would like to consider itself removed from outside influences, it can't help but be affected by the people who work in the field.

The Cosmological Pendulum I don't think I have to reiterate for you again the two major ways in which the study of cosmology can be approached, I'm sure you remember what they are. In our present day, these two methods have manifested, and in some cases crystallized into two distinct areas of science:

experimentation and mathematical theory. Theorists often have nothing to do with actual experimentation and the same can be said of experimenters. And it is this distinction that has been a source of disagreement between various scientific groups who put forth one view of the origin of the universe over another. To see exactly what I'm talking about, let's trace the development of the big bang theory through its various stages. Along the way you'll get a chance to meet an opposing theory, and examine some of the reasons why the big bang was developed in the first place. Science as a methodology likes to see itself as a revealer of the true nature of the universe, as sort of a seer that can look beneath the veil of appearance. Yet science is practiced by scientists, human beings who bring with themselves a whole set of predispositions, values and beliefs. And as in any cross section of our society, some will be seriously invested in their positions and viewpoints, taking themselves rather seriously and purporting the â&#x20AC;&#x153;correctnessâ&#x20AC;? of their views. Of course, there are as many who don't take this stance and seek to move beyond any personal attachment to who they are and what they've discovered.

Much of the history of cosmology and its theories are a reflection of these types of people and the cultures they lived in. Often the most widely accepted theory becomes exactly that, because of the forceful personality behind the ideas. And while science tries to remain free of influence from things outside of it, the scientists who practice it are still a product of the culture and the

times in which they live. In other words, in relation to the theories in cosmology, whether the universe has always existed or began with a bang, can't be separated from the influence of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the times. While there isn't enough time to go back through history in detail and show you how the cosmological pendulum has swung from one theory to the other, I can give you a rough outline and a few examples of some time periods in which this occurred. Just remember that there are always many factors impacting how any specific paradigm develops. ď&#x201A;ˇ

In ancient Greece the two basic concepts of the empirical (observation and practical

application) and deductive (theoretical and mathematical) methods were intimately linked to the conflict between free citizens and the slave populace. The empirical system developed alongside the free craftsman and traders, while the deductive method, which can disregard observation and practical application, arose with the slave master's disdain for manual labor. ď&#x201A;ˇ The Ptolemaic system was strongly influenced by the deductive method (theory and math as opposed to observation). Also at this time, we find the introduction of today's central theme in cosmology, the origin of the universe out of nothing. This ideology was developed out of the somewhat pessimistic and authoritarian worldviews of two founding Church Fathers, Tertullian and St. Augustine. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo served as the basis for a religious social system that saw the world as decaying from a perfect beginning to an ignominious end.



During the rise of science, two central concepts of medieval cosmology were overthrown—the idea of a decaying universe, finite in space and time, and the belief that the world could be known through reason and authority. The deductive, finite Ptolemaic system was replaced with the empirical, eternal, and infinite universe that was evolving by natural processes. It was a universe knowable by observation and experiment. The triumph of science was linked to the overthrow of the feudal system, out of which developed free labor and a society of merchants, craftsmen, and free peasants who questioned authoritarian power—religious, political, and economic. Today's view of cosmology is much closer to the systems of Ptolemy and Augustine than Galileo and Kepler. The big bang universe is a finite one that will eventually end in either the big chill or the big crunch, (we'll examine both of these theories in “Supersymmetry, Superstrings, and Holograms”) which like the medieval cosmos is finite in time. The universe of popular cosmology is the product of a single unique event, dissimilar from anything else that has ever occurred—just as the medieval universe was seen as a product of creation.

20             

And finally just to show you how what I outlined above can be revealed in the lives of the people living at some of those times, here are a few quotes from some famous people. What makes God comprehensible is that he cannot be comprehended. —Tertullian, c. 200 C.E. If I can't laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there. —Martin Luther, c. 1460 Religion teaches men how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. —Galilei Galileo, c. 1630 The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. —Albert Einstein, 1935 The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. —Steven Weinberg, 1977 We may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature. —Stephen Hawking, 1988

The Origins of the Universe: Inflation Introduction The inflationary Universe According to the theory of inflation, the early Universe expanded exponentially fast for a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Cosmologists introduced this idea in 1981 to solve several important problems in cosmology. One of these problems is the horizon problem. Assume, for a moment, the Universe is not expanding. Now imagine a photon was released very early in the Universe and travelled freely until it hits the North Pole of the Earth. Now imagine another photon was released at the same time, but "opposite" to the first one. It will hit the Earth at the South Pole. Could these two photons exchange any information from the time when they are released? Clearly not, because the time required to send information from one photon to the other would be two times the age of the Universe. The photons are causally

disconnected. They are outside of each other's horizon.

These photons could not have communicated with each other unless inflation took place during the very early Universe However, we observe that photons from opposite directions must have communicated somehow, because the cosmic microwave background radiation has almost exactly the same temperature in all directions over the sky. This problem can be solved by the idea that the Universeexpanded exponentially for a short time period after the Big Bang. Before this period of inflation, the entire Universe could have been in causal contact and equilibrate to a common temperature. Widely separated regions today were actually very close together in the early Universe, explaining why photons from these regions have (almost exactly) the

same temperature. A simple model for the expansion of the Universe is to consider the inflation of the balloon. A person at any point on the balloon might consider themselves to be at the centre of the expansion, as all neighbouring points are getting further away.

As the balloon inflates, the distances between objects on the surface of the balloon increases During inflation, the Universe expanded by a factor of about e60=1026. This number is a one followed by 26 zeros. It transcends normal political/economic discussions of inflation. Quantum fluctuations Let's suppose that before inflating the balloon, I write a message on the surface of the balloon which is so tiny that you cannot read it. Inflating the balloon will make the message readable for you. This means that inflation acts as a microscope, which magnifies what was written on the initial balloon. In a similar manner we are able to observe quantum fluctuations that were created at the beginning of inflation. The expansion of the Universe during the inflationary epoch serves as a huge microscope that magnifies quantum fluctuations, corresponding to a scale less than 1028 cm, to cosmological distances. This leaves imprints in the cosmic microwave background radiation (hotter and colder regions) and in the distribution of galaxies.

Inflation works as a cosmic microscope to see the quantum fluctuations in the very early Universe Using classical physics, the evolution of the inflationary Universe is homogeneous - each spatial point evolves exactly the same way. However, quantum physics introduces some uncertainty in the initial conditions for the different spatial points.

These variations act as seeds for structure formation. After the inflationary period, when fluctuations are amplified, the density of matter will vary slightly from place to place in the Universe. Gravity will cause the more dense regions to start contracting, leading to the formation of galaxies.

Probing the early Universe

The figure below shows how the image of quantum noise may appear imprinted on the cosmic microwave background. Red and blue denote hot and cold variations of the temperature, measured by the WMAP satellite over seven years. Comparing the statistics of the measured data with our theoretical calculations shows very good agreement.

Low density inflationary Universes How Much Matter Does the Universe Contain?

An important question today in cosmology is how much mass is contained in the Universe. If there were no matter filling the Universe, the Universe would expand forever and the recession velocity of objects at rest with respect to the expansion of the Universe would not change as the Universe expands. We know, of course, that the Universe is not empty but filled with matter, and ordinary matter through gravity attracts other matter, causing the expansion of the Universe to slow down. If the density of the Universe exceeds a certain threshold known as the critical density, this gravitational attraction is strong enough to stop and later reverse the expansion of the Universe, causing it eventually to recollapse in what is known as the "Big Crunch." On the other hand, if the average density of the Universe falls short of the critical density, the Universe expands forever, and after a certain point the expansion proceeds much as if the Universe were empty. A critical Universe lies precariously balanced between these two possibilities.

Why a Universe of Critical Density? For quite some time it has been known that the mean density of our Universe agrees with the critical density to within better than a factor of ten. Even with such large margin of error this agreement is remarkable. Establishing initial conditions so that the mean density remains close

to the critical density for more than a fleeting moment is much like trying to balance a pencil on its point. A Universe initially with slightly subcritical density rapidly becomes increasingly subcritical and soon virtually indistinguishable from an empty Universe. Similarly, an ever so slightly supercritical Universe rapidly collapses into a Big Crunch, never reaching the old age of our Universe - somewhere around twelve billion years. To obtain a Universe like ours seems to require fine tuning of the initial density to agree with the critical density to an accuracy around one part in 1060!

For a long time it was regarded simplest and aesthetically most pleasing to postulate that our Universe is now of exactly critical density. The versions of inflation developed in the early 1980s provided a mechanism for setting the density of the Universe near the critical density with nearly unlimited precision. For many years an exactly critical Universe was touted as one of the few firm predictions of inflation.

Bang That Drum So how did we end up with the version of the big bang that we have with us today? It actually occurred in a few stages, each new version superceding the next, but still within the context of a singular event. The big bang theory is a product of the twentieth century. And in a moment we'll

follow the stages that have given us the popular version. Let's compare where we were a few centuries ago to what has happened in this century, but again just generally.

The cosmology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reflected a world of unlimited progressâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;industrial, economic, and political revolutions. It was an infinite universe open to an infinite future that reflected an advancing society. But the world of the twentieth century, where advance was halted and World Wars, along with concentration camps, atomic bombs, and political assassinations dominated the attention of society, it's not too much of surprise to see the ideas and theories of a decaying, finite cosmos rear their heads again. Now this is not to say that there haven't been some very positive things that have occurred during this time. But when the big bang theory came into being, society was going through the events just mentioned. And it has entrenched itself since then. At the heart of the big bang is the notion that the universe is an embodiment of preexisting mathematical laws. It doesn't begin with observation but with mathematics derived from unquestionable assumptions. And if observations conflict with theory, new concepts are introduced to perpetuate the theory. There are only a few cases of observed phenomena that support the big bang, but they're instances that have been interpreted to support the theory rather than to question it.

Einstein's Closed Universe For the idea of the big bang to take shape, a change had to occur in how the boundaries of the universe were defined. A few years after Einstein introduced his theory of general relativity, he put forth a cosmological view that had tremendous impact. He speculated that the universe was finite, a closed four-dimensional sphere, curved by the forces of gravity predicted in his theory. It

was a static, unchanging universe governed by his elegant equations.

Non Sequitur.(ÂŠ 2001 Wiley Miller. Dist. by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.) In 1919, the year that he had announced his views, World War I had just ended. People were recovering from the ravages of war. And progress, instead of leading to advancement, had led to death and destruction. A finite, unchanging universe was an appealing and reassuring idea from the famous man who the world liked more and more. So with that formulation the ground was laid for the development of the big bang. And contained within this view was another aspect that would have significant repercussions down through the cosmological theory of today. Einstein assumed that the universe as a whole was homogeneous, that matter is, on the largest scale, spread smoothly throughout space. You know that in general relativity, the larger the mass of an object the more it warps, or curves space. If the universe had the same density everywhere, in other words, smooth and homogeneous,

all of the mass of the universe would curve space around onto itself, creating a finite sphere. But by 1919, there was sufficient evidence to support the fact that the universe wasnot homogeneous, but clumpy. This didn't bother Einstein. For philosophical and aesthetic reasons, a homogeneous universe worked better. And this precedent, to allow assumptions contrary to observation, with the idea the assumptions would eventually prove to be correct, led to that process being perpetuated down through our cosmology of today.

The Primeval Atom Without going into more detail about the development of a finite universe, let's look at the next stage in the birth of the big bang. The first version of the big bang was developed by a Belgian Catholic priest, George-Henri Lemaître (1894-1966). He had studied many of the observations made by astronomers, especially those of Edwin Hubble and Carl Wirtz. They had proposed that the universe was expanding based on the degree of redshift they had observed. Lemaître synthesized this information into a mathematical theory that showed two things: 

Einstein's idea of a static, unchanging universe couldn't be true, if it was expanding. However, he did agree with Einstein that it was finite.  If the universe was finite in time that meant that it also had to be finite in space. And if the universe was expanding outward that meant that it had to have started from a point of nonexpansion, a single point in time and space called a singularity. This single point that Lemaître proposed he called the “primeval atom.” Remember the cascade effect of cosmic rays as they entered and collided with other particles in earth's atmosphere? This was his fireworks theory of the expansion of the universe. When the primeval atom exploded, it split up into smaller and smaller units, cosmic subatomic particles that became galaxies, with those decaying into suns and solar systems.

Another Bang With the advent of the Second World War and the development of the atomic bomb, the next version of the big bang came into existence. George Gamow, one of the Manhattan Project scientists, became the man who would push his view of the origin of the universe into the forefront of science. Upon seeing the explosion of the atomic bomb, he drew an analogy to the beginning of the universe. If the A-bomb can, in a hundred-millionth of a second, create elements still detected years later, why couldn't a huge explosion at the beginning of time produce all of the elements we have today? If the universe did come from a single point, using the equations from general relativity, Gamow theorized that the nuclear reactions created during the explosion would create all of the light elements like hydrogen and helium. And eventually as the universe continued to cool the heavier elements would be produced as well. By making some adjustments to the mathematics that explains the density of the matter in the universe, he was able to produce data that agreed pretty close to what was observed.

With theory in hand, George went on to popularize and publicize his ideas to the postwar population. Science writers and the general public quickly embraced his theory because it was easy to understand the analogy of atomic bomb explosion. And as the popularity of the theory increased, it became taken more as fact rather than theory. Of course this was helped along by the publication of Gamow's book, One, Two, Three, Infinity, in which he presented the big bang as fact in the last section. It wasn't long before scientists and theologians began discussing the similarities between the big bang and the creation of the universe in the Bible. In 1951, Pope Pius XII made one of the first official statements of the Catholic Church regarding the big bang theory. He stated that, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Scientists are beginning to find the fingers of God in the creation of the universe.â&#x20AC;? And if you look at the cartoon on this page you can get another idea of how God's finger may have been used.

A Big Bang Alternative While the big bang was making its way into public consciousness, there were other physicists that still didn't go for it. Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and H. Bondi, three other prominent scientists, put forth a theory that has come to be known as the steady state theory. Like the big

bang theory of LemaĂŽtre, it was based on philosophical premises, not scientific ones; but unlike the big bang, it proposed an eternal universe, not one that was created in time. This theory was

based on thecosmological principle, which contained aspects first put forth by Einstein. Basically the idea was that the universe is homogeneous (smooth) and looks the same from any place in the universe (isotropic). If the big bang occurred, it would look different to observers at different times. The steady state theory proposed a perfect cosmological principle. In other words, the universe looked the same to all observers in all times and at all places. Gold and Bondi suggested a unique solution for their smooth, uniformly dense universe, the spontaneous and continuous creation of matter. In each area of space, about 100 meters square, once a year a new atom comes into existence. Throughout the vast regions of space this small amount of matter would accumulate over time and maintain a constant density in an expanding universe. As old stars and galaxies die, new ones are born and formed by the constant regeneration of matter that is introduced through this spontaneous process. This theory accounted for the creation of all of the elements in the same way that Gamow's big bang did, so it served as a good argument against the popularity of the big bang. But it never gained the scientific support that the big bang did. It was also very difficult to prove. While it went a long way in providing a sound alternative to the big bang, no one had ever observed the creation of these atoms that were supposed to be occurring spontaneously out in space. But for over fifteen years the two theories were hotly debated in scientific circles, although because of Gamow's push to popularize his, it definitely got a lot more publicity.

Microwaves to the Rescue The most important piece of evidence in support of the big bang came in 1965 when two researchers at Bell Labs in New Jersey, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, verified the existence of something that was predicted by the big bang. This something is called cosmic microwave background radiation. It's sort of the diluted afterglow of the titanic explosion of the big bang. As

you know, all radiation can be described by its spectrum. If you plot that spectrum on a graph it

will show you how much power the radiation has at various frequencies. The big bang theory predicts that the cosmic background radiation should be in thermal equilibrium, that is, the spectrum of an object in thermal equilibrium neither absorbs nor gives up heat to its surroundings. If the source of the radiation being measured is an explosion, like the big bang,

which involves the entire universe, it must be in equilibrium because there are no surroundings to get energy from or give it to. With this confirmation of the predicted radiation, scientists became convinced that the big bang was â&#x20AC;&#x153;the answer.â&#x20AC;? Papers poured in by the hundreds, all developing mathematical theories and reasons in support of its correctness. If there was any doubt, or if some aspect of the theory ran into problems, instead of questioning it, more theories were developed to plug the holes. Scientists received grants and built their reputations on the big bang theory, so no one was about to question its rightness. Besides, it is the best theory around, so why go looking for something new when what you have works pretty well. Is it cosmological laziness or just the fact that too much time, money, and energy have been put into a theory that has been presented as fact? And the assumption that Einstein introduced, that eventually a theory can be proven totally correct, is still a very strong influence, albeit somewhat unconsciously. However, as more time has gone by, and with more experiments and stronger telescopes to verify big bang cosmology, the very thing that the experiments hoped to show, has ended up causing more problems for it. These are significant questions that the big bang has trouble answering. In the next section we'll take a look at exactly what the problems are and see how science thinks the universe is going to end. You'll also get a chance to learn about some new theories that may offer an alternative to the big bang.

The Accelerating Universe We'll begin this section by picking up were we left off, completing our analysis of the big bang theory. Here you'll get a chance to see the two or three significant obstacles that prevent complete acceptance of it. Be that as it may, since it is the most popular theory right now, we'll also look at the consequences of how the universe will end, if the big bang theory is the correct one. It's not a happy picture and raises a number of philosophical questions about the meaning of human existence. But again, the view of how the cosmos will eventually end is a projection of a theory, not the way it will necessarily end. Within the context of this section, we'll also examine another theory that has been put forth over the last decade, the theory of plasma cosmology. It supplies answers to some of the questions that the big bang has problems dealing with. And after all of that, we'll look at the three possible fates of the universe and the geometrical shape that coincides with what cosmology knows about the structure of the cosmos at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It's Bigger Than We Thought There are two basic assumptions in conventional cosmology that new observations have posed problems for: ď&#x201A;ˇ ď&#x201A;ˇ

The universe is, at the largest scale, smooth and homogeneous. This smooth universe is dominated by gravity alone and therefore must either contract to or expand from a single point, a singularity.

However, our universe is anything but smooth, it's clumpy. But what are these clumps? They turn out to be galaxies grouped together in vast supercluster complexes. These are huge ribbons of matter a billion light years long. And these clumps would not warp all of space or cause it to expand or contract. Each of these superclusters would just dimple the space around it.

The idea of homogeneity has always been a problem for the big bang because for decades astronomers have known that the universe is not smooth. The usual answer to account for this clumpiness has been that even though the universe started out smooth, there were very tiny clumps in its early period. And through gravitational attraction these clumps gradually grew bigger and bigger, forming the stars, galaxies, and clusters that we have today.

The only problem with this is that the bigger the clump, the more time it takes for it to form. The age of the universe has been determined to be between 15 and 20 billion years old. Cosmologists realized that it would have taken much longer for these superclusters to form, longer than 20 billion years. It works like this. By observing the redshift (we covered that in the last section) of galaxies, astronomers can calculate two things: how far away the galaxies are and how fast they

are moving relative to one another. And as it turns out, galaxies very seldom move faster than 1,000 kilometers per second, or one three hundredth the speed of light.

What this means is that in the 20 billion years since the big bang, a galaxy could have only moved about 65 million light years. Well, in order for these huge clusters to form, the matter contained in them would have moved at least 270 million light years, which would have taken at least 80 billion years, or four times as long as allowed by the big bang. But waitâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there's more. Because the matter contained in these galaxies would first have to accelerate up to speed and the seed mass located in these regions of space would also have to form to attract matter these big distances, it would take at least 100 billion years for this all to happen. So the 20 billion years that the big bang estimates is far too short a period of time for the universe to have formed into the way it is right now.

Plasma Cosmology We still have a lot of material to cover in this section, and I want to give you a brief overview of an interesting alternative to conventional cosmology. So I'm going summarize for you these two challenges to the big bang and include a third problem as well. The test of any scientific theory is based upon the relationship between its predictions and observations. Let's see how well the big bang has done:

ď&#x201A;ˇ ď&#x201A;ˇ

It predicts that there should be no object older than 20 billion years and larger than 150 million light years across. And as we've discussed, that's certainly not the case. It predicts that the universe, on the large scale that it exists, should be smooth and homogeneous. It's notâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it's clumpy!

ď&#x201A;ˇ

The third problem has to do with the strongest evidence in support of it, cosmic microwave background radiation. In order for the universe to produce the galaxies we see around us, the fluctuations found in the background radiation indicates that there must be a hundred times more dark matter than visible matter. But there is no experimental or observable evidence that dark matter exists. It's a theory to make the big bang work. So if there is no dark matter, the theory predicts that we can't have galaxies, but we live in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Milky Way.

So while the big bang predicts the things in the preceding list, observations have shown them to be incorrect. However, this is the accepted theory for now, and many scientists assume that it's right. To abandon it would not be easy. Few theories in science are ever left behind when there is no alternative in sight. So what are we left with? Well, there is a new alternative on the horizon. It's called plasma cosmology. Here's a basic idea of what it's about.

The advocates of plasma cosmology believe that the evolution of the universe in the past must be explained in terms of the processes occurring in the universe today. In other words, events that

occur in the depths of space can be explained in terms of phenomena studied in the laboratories on earth. This approach rules out the concepts of a universe that began out of nothing, somewhere in time, like the big bang. We can't recreate the initial conditions of the big bang in laboratories. The closest we can get is in the particles created in accelerators. Plasma cosmology supports the idea that because we see an evolving universe that is constantly changing, this universe has always existed and has always evolved, and will continue to exist and evolve for eternity. Another aspect of this new theory is that, while the big bang sees the universe in terms of gravity alone, the plasma universe is formed and controlled by electricity and magnetism, not just gravitation. With the introduction of electromagnetism the â&#x20AC;&#x153;clumpinessâ&#x20AC;? of the universe and the fluctuations in microwave background radiation can be easily accounted for. Even the expansion of the universe can be explained by the electromagnetic interaction of matter and antimatter. And while electromagnetism forms the basis for plasma cosmology, it is also the basis for our technological society that surrounds us today. Plasma technology has stimulated research for better computer screens, how radio and radar transmission can be increased, and may be the answer to developing the long-sought-after genie in the bottle: fusion energy. So in the long run it holds the possibility of not only providing a better description of the origin and structure of the universe, but it can also lead to a whole new area of advanced technology. I'll be discussing some material on the Eastern traditions and their approach to cosmology. There are some interesting correlations between their understanding of the universe and the ideas behind plasma cosmology. Given the state of cosmology today it's probably a good idea to spend the rest of this section providing you with an understanding of where the conventional theories are taking us. The standard model in cosmology is the big bang. And while plasma cosmology is a potential alternative, it'll still be a while before it finds more adherents. So let's continue with some aspects of the big bang that we haven't covered yet. The focus of this discussion revolves around the three possible scenarios of how the universe will end. Two of these can be summarized as follows:

39 ď&#x201A;ˇ

ď&#x201A;ˇ

The big crunch is the mirror reverse of the big bang. This would happen if the amount of gravitational force in the universe were strong enough to bring the currently expanding universe to an end. The universe would then stop expanding and eventually collapse back in on itself. The big chill is the opposite of the big crunch. In this scenario the universe would continue to expand forever. There is not enough gravitational force to stop the expansion, and eventually all of the stars and galaxies would exhaust their supply of energy and the universe would cool down and there would be no heat left. Everything would be cold, cold, cold. Brrhhhh! I think you can see from the preceding summary that the most important factor in determining the fate of the universe is gravity. And to give you a little better idea of how these two fates are possible, let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate how they would work. If you toss a ball in the air, it will reach some maximum height where it stops momentarily and then returns to your hands. In this case the force of gravity is strong enough to brake and decelerate the moving ball to the point where it reverses its velocity. This is what the big crunch is like.

If, on the other hand, we launch a rocket into the far reaches of outer space, never to return, we have an example of the big chill. In this case, the rocket's energy of motion exceeds the gravitational energy, and the rocket continues on forever becaus e the Earth's gravity was incapable of stopping the motion. So in both examples it's the amount of gravity that affects the outcome. But there are some other factors we need to look at besides gravity. One is the second law of thermodynamics and the other is the shape of the universe. This second law is also linked to another physical process: entropy. Entropy is the measure of the amount of disorder in the universe. It reflects the concept that once something wears down it won't build itself back up without outside help. A broken egg will never reassemble itself. In a closed system, entropy never decreases, only increases or remains constant. So if the universe is a closed system, it will slowly run down and die. If on the other hand it is an open system, order can increase and entropy decrease, because there is input coming from somewhere else that will help bring this about.

The Alpha and the Omega Now that we know that gravity, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics all play a role in defining the fate of the universe in big bang theory, let's put it all together and look at the three possible fates of the universe. I've already mentioned twoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the big chill and the big crunchâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but there is a third alternative as well. Let's get a little more into the role of the scientist and view this whole process and all three possible scenarios in ideas and concepts that cosmologists use.

When discussing the gravitational energy of the universe as a whole, there is a direct correlation to the mass density of the universe: the higher the mass density of the universe or an object, the greater the gravitational energy. For example, aneutron star is a very compact star that is created when the core of a very massive star collapses. A neutron star can have a mass similar to that of the sun, but a radius that is seventy thousand times smaller. Consequently, gravity near the surface of the neutron star is about five billion times stronger than near the surface of the Sun. The gravitational energy of the universe is precisely equal to its kinetic energy (the energy an object possesses by virtue of its motion) for a particular value of the mass density in the universe. This value, which separates eternal expansion from eventual contraction, is called the critical density. If the density in the universe is higher than the critical density, gravity will prevail; the expansion will stop and contraction will occur. If the density is lower than the critical density, the universe will continue to expand forever. The third scenario is a borderline state between the big crunch and the big chill. In this case, when the kinetic energy exactly equals the gravitational

energy (in other words, when the mass density is exactly equal to the critical density) the expansion still proceeds forever, but the speed at which the universe is expanding approaches zero as time progresses. In physics, as you've seen before, a Greek letter is used to denote this ratio of the actual density to the critical density. The letter used is omega, 立. Omega is the twenty-fourth and final letter of the Greek alphabet, an appropriate symbol in this case. So using this letter as cosmologists do when they talk about how the universe will end, eventual contraction and the big crunch correspond to a value of omega larger than one. Or in other words, the ratio of the mass density to the critical density is greater than one. If the universe expands forever for eternity, the value of omega will be less than one. This means that the ratio of the mass density to the critical density will be less than one. And in a universe that expands forever, but has a speed that slowly approaches zero, omega will be exactly equal to one. In this case, the ratio of the mass density to the critical density is equal.

The Need for Dark Matter Therefore, in order to answer the question about the ultimate fate of the universe, we need to determine the present value of omega, or in other words, determine whether the density of the mass in our universe is higher than, lower than, or equal to the critical value. It sounds simple, doesn't it? Well this is where support for the concept of dark matter comes in. It seems that without this hypothetical mass there just isn't enough matter in the universe to account for the gravitational forces that are holding the galaxies and superclusters together, so the universe would go on expanding forever. Without the presence of dark matter, the overall density of the universe (mass density) is 100 times smaller than the critical density, which would give us a value of omega less than 0.01. That figure is too small and doesn't agree with other values for omega that have been estimated.

There are several methods that have been employed by astronomers to determine omega. I'll give you an idea of how one of them works. From the speeds of gaseous clouds around the center of

individual galaxies and the speeds of galaxies in clusters and superclusters, astronomers have established that the dark matter overweighs the luminous matter by a factor of 10 or more. So, the value of omega inferred from the gravitational dynamics in clusters and superclusters is about 0.2 to 0.3. This is not the official estimate however. As it turns out, omega has been inferred to be equal to one, and the lower values, it is thought, only represent an inability in the methods used to uncover all the dark matter that exists. The theory that was developed in support of an omega value of one is rather complicated and beyond the introductory scope, but it's important to note that even before the theory was developed, physicists expressed a strong prejudice favoring omega equals one, simply on the basis of aesthetics.

Living in the Flatlands Gravity, the force that is the key ingredient in big bang cosmology is, as you've learned, also used to define the value of omega. Gravity is also employed to define the shape of the universe. As you'll see in a moment, there is a direct correlation between the shape of the universe and the value assigned to omega. In a universe that is closed, the value of omega is larger than one. In this model, the mass density is sufficiently high that gravity would stop the expansion and the universe will collapse back into itself. Geometrically, this corresponds to space-time with a spherical shape, in other words a big round ball. The mass density causes the space to curve back on itself. In such a universe, if you travel along a straight line, (which would really be a great circle) you would eventually return to the point from which you started. There are other strange features of this shape for a universe: Parallel lines eventually cross each other, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line but a curve, and the sum of the three angles in a triangle is always more than 180 degrees. (There are always only 180 degrees in a triangle on a flat surface. And when airplanes fly great distances on the Earth, they never fly in a straight line; it's shorter to follow the upward or downward curve of the Earth.) The second possibility is a universe that's open. This corresponds to a value of omega that is smaller than one. In this case the gravitational field is too weak to stop the expansion and the universe will expand forever. The geometrical shape of this type of universe is the opposite of the previous model. Instead of space-time curving back on itself and creating a finite volume, space curves away from itself in an open universe, which produces an infinite space. The shape

can best be described as looking like a saddle. And of course, it would also have the opposite features of the sphere. Parallel lines would eventually diverge, the sum of the angles of a triangle would always be less than 180 degrees, and the shortest distance between two points is a hyperbola.

Our third possibility is that of a universe in which omega is precisely equal to 1. This, as you know, puts the universe on the borderline between eternal expansion and eventual collapse. It expands forever, but the speed at which it expands becomes closer and closer to 0. The geometric shape of this universe is flat. Yes, flat, just like a tabletop or wall. And in this case we have our familiar features: parallel lines stay parallel, there are always 180 degrees in the sum of the angles in a triangle, and the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Does the fact that our everyday world reflects the geometry of flat space have anything to do with it being flat? Not really, it just makes it easier to understand.

3 Theories That Might Blow Up the Big Bang Time may not have a beginning—and it might not exist at all.

Image courtesy of NASA

For Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, the Big Bang ended on a summer day in 1999 in Cambridge, England. Sitting together at a conference they had organized, called “A School on Connecting Fundamental Physics and Cosmology,” the two physicists suddenly hit on the same idea. Maybe science was finally ready to tackle the mystery of what made the Big Bang go bang. And if so, then maybe science could also address one of the deepest questions of all: What came before the Big Bang? Steinhardt and Turok—working closely with a few likeminded colleagues—have now developed these insights into a thorough alternative to the prevailing, Genesis-like view of cosmology. According to the Big Bang theory, the whole universe emerged during a single moment some 13.7 billion years ago. In the competing theory, our universe generates and regenerates itself in an endless cycle of creation. The latest version of the cyclic model even matches key pieces of observational evidence supporting the older view. This is the most detailed challenge yet to the 40-year-old orthodoxy of the Big Bang. Some researchers go further and envision

46 a type of infinite time that plays out not just in this universe but in a multiverse—a multitude of universes, each with its own laws of physics and its own life story. Still others seek to revise the very idea of time, rendering the concept of a “beginning” meaningless. All of these cosmology heretics agree on one thing: The Big Bang no longer defines the limit of how far the human mind can explore.

Big Idea

1: The Incredible Bulk

The latest elaboration of Steinhardt and Turok’s cyclic cosmology, spearheaded by Evgeny Buchbinder of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, was published last December. Yet the impulse behind this work far predates modern theories of the universe. In the fourth century A.D., St. Augustine pondered what the Lord was doing before the first day of Genesis (wryly repeating the exasperated retort that “He was preparing Hell for those who pry too deep”). The question became a scientific one in 1929, when Edwin Hubble determined that the universe was expanding. Extrapolated backward, Hubble’s observation suggested the cosmos was flying apart from an explosive origin, the fabled Big Bang. In the standard interpretation of the Big Bang, which took shape in the 1960s, the formative event was not an explosion that occurred at some point in space and time—it was an explosion of space and time. In this view, time did not exist beforehand. Even for many researchers in the field, this was a bitter pill to swallow. It is hard to imagine time just starting: How does a universe decide when it is time to pop into existence? For years, every attempt to understand what happened in that formative moment quickly hit a dead end. In the standard Big Bang model, the universe began in a state of near-infinite density and temperature. At such extremes the known laws of physics break down. To push all the way

47 back to the beginning of time, physicists needed a new theory, one that blended general relativity with quantum mechanics. The prospects for making sense of the Big Bang began to improve in the 1990s as physicists refined their ideas in string theory, a promising approach for reconciling the relativity and quantum views. Nobody knows yet whether string theory matches up with the real world—the Large Hadron Collider, a particle smasher coming on line later this year, may provide some clues—but it has already inspired stunning ideas about how the universe is constructed. Most notably, current versions of string theory posit seven hidden dimensions of space in addition to the three we experience. Strange and wonderful things can happen in those extra dimensions: That is what inspired Steinhardt (of Princeton University) and Turok (of Cambridge University) to set up their fateful conference in 1999. “We organized the conference because we both felt that the standard Big Bang model was failing to explain things,” Turok says. “We wanted to bring people together to talk about what string theory could do for cosmology.” The key concept turned out to be a “brane,” a three-dimensional world embedded in a higherdimensional space (the term, in the language of string theory, is just short for membrane). “People had just started talking about branes when we set up the conference,” Steinhardt recalls. “Together Neil and I went to a talk where the speaker was describing them as static objects. Afterward we both asked the same question: What happens if the branes can move? What happens if they collide?”

48 A remarkable picture began to take shape in the two physicists’ minds. A sheet of paper blowing in the wind is a kind of twodimensional membrane tumbling through our three-dimensional world. For Steinhardt and Turok, our entire universe is just one sheet, or 3-D brane, moving through a four-dimensional background called “the bulk.” Our brane is not the only one; there are others moving through the bulk as well. Just as two sheets of paper could be blown together in a storm, different 3-D branes could collide within the bulk. The equations of string theory indicated that each 3-D brane would exert powerful forces on others nearby in the bulk. Vast quantities of energy lie bound up in those forces. A collision between two branes could unleash those energies. From the inside, the result would look like a tremendous explosion. Even more intriguing, the theoretical characteristics of that explosion closely matched the observed properties of the Big Bang—including the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the universe’s fiercely hot early days. “That was amazing for us because it meant colliding branes could explain one of the key pieces of evidence people use to support the Big Bang,” Steinhardt says. Three years later came a second epiphany: Steinhardt and Turok found their story did not end after the collision. “We weren’t looking for cycles,” Steinhardt says, “but the model naturally produces them.” After a collision, energy gives rise to matter in the brane worlds. The matter then evolves into the kind of universe we know: galaxies, stars, planets, the works. Space within the branes expands, and at first the distance between the branes (in the bulk) grows too. When the brane worlds expand so much that their space is nearly empty, however, attractive forces between the branes draw the world-sheets together again. A new collision occurs, and a new cycle of creation begins. In this model, each round of existence—each cycle from one collision to the next—stretches about a trillion years. By that reckoning, our universe is still in its infancy, being only 0.1 percent of the way through the current cycle.

The cyclic universe directly solves the problem of before. With an infinity of Big Bangs, time stretches into forever in both directions. “The Big Bang was not the beginning of space and time,” Steinhardt says. “There was a before, and before matters because it leaves an imprint on what happens in the next cycle.” Not everyone is pleased by this departure from the usual cosmological thinking. Some researchers consider Steinhardt and Turok’s ideas misguided or even dangerous. “I had one well-respected scientist tell me we should stop because we were undermining public confidence in the Big Bang,” Turok says. But part of the appeal of the cyclic universe is that it is not just a beautiful idea—it is a testable one.

The standard model of the early universe predicts that space is full of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time left over from the first instants after the Big Bang. These waves look very different in the cyclic model, and those differences could be measured—as soon as physicists develop an effective gravity-wave detector. “It may take 20 years before we have the technology,” Turok says, “but in principle it can be done. Given the importance of the question, I’d say it’s worth the wait.”

BIG IDEA 2: Time’s Arrow While the concept of a cyclic universe provides a way to explore the Big Bang’s past, some scientists believe that Steinhardt and Turok have skirted the deeper issue of origins. “The real problem is not the beginning of time but the arrow of time,” says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech. “Looking for a universe that repeats itself is exactly what you do not want. Cycles still give us a time that flows with a definite direction, and the direction of time is the very thing we need to explain.”

In 2004 Carroll and a graduate student of his, Jennifer Chen, came up with a much different answer to the problem of before. In his view, time’s arrow and time’s beginning cannot be treated separately: There is no way to address what came before the Big Bang until we understand why the before precedes the after. Like Steinhardt and Turok, Carroll thinks that finding the answer requires rethinking the full extent of the universe, but Carroll is not satisfied with adding more dimensions. He also wants to add more universes—a whole lot more of them—to show that, in the big picture, time does not flow so much as advance symmetrically backward and forward.

51 Barbour argues that time is an illusion, with each moment—each “Now”—existing in its own right, complete and whole.

The one-way progression of time, always into the future, is one of the greatest enigmas in physics. The equations governing individual objects do not care about time’s direction. Imagine a movie of two billiard balls colliding; there is no way to say if the movie is being run forward or backward. But if you gather a zillion atoms together in something like a balloon, past and future look very different. Pop the balloon and the air molecules inside quickly fill the entire space; they never race backward to reinflate the balloon.

52 In any such large group of objects, the system trends toward equilibrium. Physicists use the term entropy to describe how far a system is from equilibrium. The closer it is, the higher its entropy; full equilibrium is, by definition, the maximum value. So the path from low entropy (all the molecules in one corner of the room, unstable) to maximum entropy (the molecules evenly distributed in the room, stable) defines the arrow of time. The route to equilibrium separates before from after. Once you hit equilibrium the arrow of time no longer matters, because change is no longer possible. “Our universe has been evolving for 13 billion years,” Carroll says, “so it clearly did not start in equilibrium.” Rather, all the matter, energy, space, and even time in the universe must have started in a state of extraordinarily low entropy. That is the only way we could begin with a Big Bang and end up with the wonderfully diverse cosmos of today. Understand how that happened, Carroll argues, and you will understand the bigger process that brought our universe into being. To demonstrate just how strange our universe is, Carroll considers all the other ways it might have been constructed. Thinking about the range of possibilities, he wonders: “Why did the initial setup of the universe allow cosmic time to have a direction? There are an infinite number of ways the initial universe could have been set up. An overwhelming majority of them have high entropy.” These high-entropy universes would be boring and inert; evolution and change would not be possible. Such a universe could not produce galaxies and stars, and it certainly could not support life. It is almost as if our universe were fine-tuned to start out far from equilibrium so it could

53 possess an arrow of time. But to a physicist, invoking fine-tuning is akin to saying “a miracle occurred.” For Carroll, the challenge was finding a process that would explain the universe’s low entropy naturally, without any appeal to incredible coincidence or (worse) to a miracle. Carroll found that process hidden inside one of the strangest and most exciting recent elaborations of the Big Bang theory. In 1984, MIT physicist Alan Guth suggested that the very young universe had gone through a brief period of runaway expansion, which he called “inflation,” and that this expansion had blown up one small corner of an earlier universe into everything we see. In the late 1980s Guth and other physicists, most notably Andrei Linde, now at Stanford, saw that inflation might happen over and over in a process of “eternal inflation.” As a result, pocket universes much like our own might be popping out of the uninflated background all the time. This multitude of universes was called, inevitably, the multiverse. Carroll found in the multiverse concept a solution to both the direction and the origin of cosmic time. He had been musing over the arrow of time as far back as graduate school in the late 1980s, when he published papers on the feasibility of time travel using known physics. Eternal inflation suggested that it was not enough to think about time in our universe only; he realized he needed to consider it in a much bigger, multiverse context. “We wondered if eternal inflation could work in both directions,” Carroll says. “That means there would be no need for a single Big Bang. Pocket universes would always sprout from the uninflated background. The trick needed to make eternal inflation work was to find a generic starting point: an easy-to-achieve condition that would occur infinitely many times and allow eternal inflation to flow in both directions.” A full theory of eternal inflation came together in Carroll’s mind in 2004, while he was attending a five-month workshop on cosmology at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s famous Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics with his student Jennifer Chen. “You go to a place like Kavli and you are away from the normal responsibilities of teaching,” Carroll says. “That

54 gives you time to pull things together.” In those few months, Carroll and Chen worked out a vision of a profligate multiverse without beginnings, endings, or an arrow of time. “All you need,” Carroll says, with a physicist’s penchant for understatement, “is to start with some empty space, a shard of dark energy, and some patience.” Dark energy— a hidden type of energy embedded in empty space, whose existence is strongly confirmed by recent observations—is crucial because quantum physics says that any energy field will always yield random fluctuations. In Carroll and Chen’s theory, fluctuations in the dark-energy background function as seeds that trigger new rounds of inflation, creating a crop of pocket universes from empty space.

“Some of these pocket universes will collapse into black holes and evaporate, taking themselves out of the picture,” Carroll says. “But others will expand forever. The ones that expand eventually thin out. They become the new empty space from which more inflation can start.” The whole process can happen again and again. Amazingly, the direction of time does not matter in the process. “That is the

funny part. You can evolve the little inflating universes in either direction away from your generic starting point,â&#x20AC;? Carroll says. In the super-far past of our universe, long before the Big Bang, there could have been other Big Bangs for which the arrow of time ran in the opposite direction.

On the grandest scale, the multiverse is like a foam of interconnected pocket universes, completely symmetric with respect to time. Some universes move forward, but overall, an equal number move backward. With infinite space in infinite universes, there are no bounds on entropy. It can always increase; every universe is born with room (and entropy) to evolve. The Big Bang is just our Big Bang, and it is not unique. The

56 question of before melts away because the multiverse has always existed and always will, evolving but—in a statistical sense—always the same. After completing his multiverse paper with Chen, Carroll felt a twinge of dismay. “When you finish something like this, it’s bittersweet. The fun with hard problems can be in the chase,” he says. Luckily for him, the chase goes on. “Our paper really expresses a minority viewpoint,” he admits. He is now hard at work on follow-up papers fleshing out the details and bolstering his argument.

BIG IDEA 3: The Nows Have It In 1999, while Steinhardt and Turok were convening in Cambridge and Carroll was meditating on the meaning of the multiverse, rebel physicist Julian Barbour published The End of Time—a manifesto suggesting that attempts to address what came before the Big Bang were based on a fundamental mistake. There is no need to find a solution to time’s beginning, Barbour insisted, because time does not actually exist.

57 Back in 1963, a magazine article had changed Barbour’s life. At the time he was just a young physics graduate student heading off for a relaxing trip to the mountains. “I was studying in Germany and had brought an article with me on holiday to the Bavarian Alps,” says Barbour, now 71. “It was about the great physicist Paul Dirac. He was speculating on the nature of time and space in the theory of relativity.” After finishing the article Barbour was left with a question he would never be able to relinquish: What, really, is time? He could not stop thinking about it. He turned around halfway up the mountain and never made it to the top. Perhaps some universes move forward in time while an equal number move backward; the Big Bang is just our Big Bang. Isaac Newton thought of time as a river flowing at the same rate everywhere. Albert Einstein unified space and time into a single entity, but he still held on to the concept of time as a measure of change. In Barbour’s view there is no invisible river of time. Instead, he thinks that change merely creates an illusion of time, with each individual moment existing in its own right, complete and whole. He calls these moments “Nows.”

“As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows. The question is, what are they?” Barbour asks. His answer: Each Now is an arrangement of everything in the universe. “We have the strong impression that things have definite positions relative to each other. I aim to abstract away everything we cannot see, directly or indirectly, and simply keep this idea of many different things coexisting at once. There are simply the Nows, nothing more and nothing less.”

58 Barbour’s Nows can be imagined as pages of a novel ripped from the book’s spine and tossed randomly onto the floor. Each page is a separate entity. Arranging the pages in some special order and moving through them step by step makes it seem that a story is unfolding. Even so, no matter how we arrange the sheets, each page is complete and independent. For Barbour, reality is just the physics of these Nows taken together as a whole. “What really intrigues me is that the totality of all possible Nows has a very special structure,” he says. “You can think of it as a landscape or country. Each point in this country is a Now, and I call the country Platonia,” in reference to Plato’s conception of a deeper reality, “because it is timeless and created by perfect mathematical rules. Platonia is the true arena of the universe.” In Platonia all possible configurations of the universe, every possible location of every atom, exist simultaneously. There is no past moment that flows into a future moment; the question of what came before the Big Bang never arises because Barbour’s cosmology has no time. The Big Bang is not an event in the distant past; it is just one special place in Platonia.

59 Our illusion of the past comes because each Now in Platonia contains objects that appear as “records,” in Barbour’s language. “The only evidence you have of last week is your memory—but memory comes from a stable structure of neurons in your brain now. The only evidence we have of the earth’s past are rocks and fossils—but these are just stable structures in the form of an arrangement of minerals we examine in the present. All we have are these records, and we only have them in this Now,” Barbour says. In his theory, some Nows are linked to others in Platonia’s landscape even though they all exist simultaneously. Those links create the appearance of a sequence from past to future, but there is no actual flow of time from one Now to another.

So What Really Happened? For each of the alternatives to the Big Bang, it is easier to demonstrate the appeal of the idea than to prove that it is correct. Steinhardt and Turok’s cyclic cosmology can account for critical pieces of evidence usually cited to support the Big Bang, but the experiments that could put it over the top are decades away. Carroll’s model of the multiverse depends on a speculative interpretation of inflationary cosmology, which is itself only loosely verified. Barbour stands at the farthest extreme. He has no way to test his concept of Platonia. The power of his ideas rests heavily on the beauty of their formulation and on their capacity to unify physics. “What we are working out now is simple and coherent,” Barbour says, “and because of that I believe it is showing us something fundamental.” The payoff that Barbour offers is not just a mathematical solution but a philosophical one. In place of all the conflicting notions about the Big Bang and what came before, he offers a way out. He proposes letting go of the past—of the whole idea of the past—and living fully, happily, in the Now. In one model, each round of existence stretches a trillion years. By that reckoning, our universe is still in its infancy.

7 Theories on the Origin of Life Primordial soup Life on Earth began more than 3 billion years ago, evolving from the most basic of microbes into a dazzling array of complexity over time. But how did the first organisms on the only known home to life in the universe develop from the primordial soup?

The Primordial Soup Theory suggest that life began in a pond or ocean as a result of the combination of chemicals from the atmosphere and some form of energy to make amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, which would then evolve into all the species. The Primordial Soup Theory states that Life began in a warm pond/ocean from a combination of chemicals that forms amino acids, which then make proteins. This is suppose to happen at least 3.8 billion to 3.55 billion years ago. The Russian Chemist A.I. Oparin and English Geneticist J.B.S. Haldane first conceived of this idea. Both developed this theory independently in 1920. In this theory, the basic building blocks of life came from simple molecule which formed in the atmosphere (w/o oxygen). This was then energized by lightning and the rain from the atmosphere created the "organic soup". The first organisms would have to be simple heterotrophs in order to survive by consuming other organisms for energy before means of photosynthesis. They would become autotrophs by mutation. Evidence now suggest the first organisms were autotrophs. Chemist Stanley Miller and physicist Harold Urey did a famous experiment in 1950 to test

this theory. They mixed gases thought to be present on primitive earth:     

Methane (CH4) Ammonia (NH3) Water (H2O) Hydrogen (H2) No Oxygen

They then electrically sparked the mixture to signify lightning. The results were amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. It was later discovered that other energies also can excite gases and produce all 20 amino acids:  Electricity  Ultraviolet light  Heat  Shock Problems with theory 1. Amino acids have to become protein a) 1 protein = 100amino acids of 20 varieties b) 10130 combinations of amino acids c) Hard to hit the right protein by accident d) Amino acids are building blocks, not the assembled structure 2. Early atmosphere contain different gases than those used by Miller/Urey a) No ammonia and methane b) Not reduced (opposite of oxidized) c) Experiments with true atmospheric gases did not produce abundant amino acids 3. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics a. System becomes less and less organized over time

Means amino acids cannot form protein spontaneously (more and more organized) 4. Primordial soup too dilute to achieve anything a. Cannot spontaneously generate proteins b. No mechanism to concentrate and make protein This theory emphasize metabolism because of the cooperative group of molecules and how they gain and use energy and molecules. In an experiment by Sidney Fox, heated amino acids drove out water as steam and made peptide chains. They were Proteinoids though, very different from real proteins.

Electric Spark Electric sparks can generate amino acids and sugars from an atmosphere loaded with water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen, as was shown in the famous Miller-Urey experiment reported in 1953, suggesting that lightning might have helped create the key building blocks of life on Earth in its early days. Over millions of years, larger and more complex molecules could form. Although research since then has revealed the early atmosphere of Earth was actually hydrogen-poor, scientists have suggested that volcanic clouds in the early atmosphere might have held methane, ammonia and hydrogen and been filled with lightning as well.

The Electric Universe theory is based on the idea that as 99.9% of the Universe is made up of plasma â&#x20AC;&#x201C; electrically charged gas â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and that the electromagnetic forces that are found everywhere

may have more influence on our Universe than gravity. Nearly everything in the Universe is formed of plasma, all stars, including our sun is made of plasma. Gravity is the weakest of all forces. the electromagnetic force is approximately 10 to the power of 36 times stronger than the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gravitational field! That is (to put it in perspective) 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times stronger than gravity on Earth.

As plasma makes up most of the universe, is everywhere and is so much stronger than gravity could it be an Electric Universe? The Electric Universe theory is very simple in its basic model and understanding. The EU Theory is based on Plasma Cosmology. What is great about the Electric Universe theory is that beginners come up with the same conclusions and ideas about how it effects our Earth and the Universe, meaning that the basics and logic appear to be easy to understand and make sense.

The Electric Universe Scientists suggested that each body, object and planet in our solar system and the universe was separated and not connected. All the evidence has shown that everything is connected to each other. This makes no sense in a Gravity Universe but in the Electric Universe it not only makes sense, the Electric Universe theory predicted it. Because if you do not have connections and circuits between everything in the universe then you can not have the Electric Universe. The Electric Universe theory is a simple idea and easy to understand and then implement into everything that you see. Although the universe is wonderfully complex it is not as crazy as mathematical science has us believe. If gravity is the weakest of all the forces why is it a gravity universe? The electromagnetic force is many times stronger than gravity, so it should be the Electric Universe that we live in.

ANY EVIDENCE TO BACK UP THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE THEORY? Yes there is but one of the most intriguing aspects of the EU Theory is that mankindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history has recorded evidence of past massive electromagnetic events that resulted in the catastrophes that have so often struck the Earth.

The Squatter Man image and petroglyph (rock carving) that suddenly appeared around the world at the same time and recorded by all nations. Either they were all in contact with each other or perhaps they saw and were inspired by the same event in our ancient skies?

If you are interested in reading and especially looking at more Electric Universe theory sites then thunderbolts.info is the best place to start, especially its EU Theory Picture of the Day. The thunderbolts forum is also very good and active.

Community Clay The first molecules of life might have met on clay, according to an idea elaborated by organic chemist Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

These surfaces might not only have concentrated these organic compounds together, but also helped organize them into patterns much like our genes do now. The Community Clay theory was created by Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith, whose work was thriving in the mid to late 1900’s. Alexander was a molecular biologist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. While his theory was greatly overshadowed by some of the more popular theories at the time, the work of Cairns-Smith has picked up much more popularity in recent times. The Community Clay theory is quite complicated. As a result, I have simplified it as much as possible to allow for basic understanding as to what this theory is suggesting. Now, the moment you have all been waiting for. What is the Community Clay theory? The Community Clay theory is a theory that aliens crafted humans, with a clay-like substance similar to the Play-Doh product that every young child can’t live without. Don’t believe me? Good, you shouldn’t, because that was completely false. But, now that I know you are paying attention, it’s time for the real theory. Community Clay suggests that life was started, and overall created, among layers of clay found on the Earth. In this theory, the Earth’s

clay forms naturally with silicates. These silicates contain many crystals that help the clay maintain its shape. Organic compounds, found in the Earth’s atmosphere and environment, would “fall” into this clay shape and be organized into patterns. These patterns would make protein. It is this protein that would eventually make cells, which would in turn mean life. The theory then suggests that the molecules, eventually, took over the clay’s function and started organizing themselves. Recall that the purpose of DNA in the cells of any organism is to contain the genetic sequences (through genes) that instruct how amino acids are arranged to make proteins. The Community Clay theory suggests that the clay acted as the DNA, in the sense that it made a structure that only a certain combination of amino acids or other organic compounds could fill. There are other theories that relate to this topic, such as the “RNA World Theory” that states that RNA existed first, and it was responsible for creating the protein chains that would eventually become DNA (after all, you can’t have DNA without protein, and protein without DNA. One question you may be having over the Community Clay theory is the explanation of how these amino acids fell into the right order to make proteins? After all, the number of combinations are limitless, and it surely wouldn’t have all happened by chance. The answer is simple: natural selection. It is very likely in this theory that many combinations occurred before the “right” one for proteins were made. But natural selection states that the organizational patterns that didn’t work wouldn’t have survived. Therefore, they don’t exist today. The pattern of the components that made life are the only ones

to create life. All of the “false” combinations wouldn’t work, and therefore wouldn’t lead to any substantial creation. The theory is supported even further by being an example of Abiogenesis. In basic terms, Abiogenesis is the explanation of how life began through natural processes. From the start, there was no life. But then, individual amino acids or organic components were formed (they call these monomers). These are the building blocks of life, as I’m sure every Biology class has covered at one point or another. Then these monomers were organized together to make polymers, which are also known as protocells. Protocells aren’t actually living, but contain all the crucial components to become living. (These ties in to another theory that states that life began with small molecules interacting with one another in small cycles, within small “cell membrane” type structures called protobionts. Over time, these molecules became more complex, and eventually formed organisms). Anyway, these protocells eventually become cells, which signify life and start the creation of living organisms. Community Clay is a strong theory to the origin of life because it is inter-woven among many other theories, and is also a prime example of the concept of Abiogenesis, explained above. Make sense? If so, you are on the first step to understanding the overwhelming ideas and concepts that have enthralled philosophers and scientists alike for centuries. If you don’t quite understand all of this, and are just lucky to make it to this point in the paper, then don’t fret. This is very high level thinking. This is beyond the “think outside the box” level; this is all the way to the “there is no box” level of thinking. After all, none of these theories originated overnight. All in all, it will probably be a while still until scientists formulate a definitive conclusion as to the origin of life in the Universe. Maybe it is a theory we have yet to even begin thinking about. Maybe it is something we have already learned about. The answer could be right in front of us, and we don&#39;t even know it. Either way, it is important to divulge into the concepts of life’s origins and learn about theories such as Community Clay (which, to me, does seem quite plausible, especially when compared to some of the other theories out there. What do you think?). After all, it may be you that will eventually solve what is considered the most controversial and puzzling mystery of

all time: Where did we as living organisms come from? The main role of DNA is to store information on how other molecules should be arranged. Genetic sequences in DNA are essentially instructions on how amino acids should be arranged in proteins. Cairns-Smith suggests that mineral crystals in clay could have arranged organic molecules into organized patterns. After a while, organic molecules took over this job and organized themselves.

Deep-Sea Vents The deep-sea vent theory suggests that life may have begun atsubmarine hydrothermal vents, spewing key hydrogen-rich molecules. Their rocky nooks could then have concentrated these molecules together and provided mineral catalysts for critical reactions. Even now, these vents, rich in chemical and thermal energy, sustain vibrant ecosystems.

Chilly Start Ice might have covered the oceans 3 billion years ago, as the sun was about a third less luminous than it is now. This layer of ice, possibly hundreds of feet thick, might have protected fragile organic compounds in the water below from ultraviolet light and destruction from cosmic impacts. The cold might have also helped these molecules to survive longer, allowing key reactions to happen.

RNA World Nowadays DNA needs proteins in order to form, and proteins require DNA to form, so how could these have formed without each other? The answer may be RNA, which can store information like DNA, serve as an enzyme like proteins, and help create both DNA and proteins. Later DNA and proteins succeeded this "RNA world," because they are more efficient. RNA still exists and performs several functions in organisms, including acting as an on-off switch for some genes. The question still remains how RNA got here in the first place. And while some scientists think the molecule could have spontaneously arisen on Earth, others say that was very unlikely to have happened. Other nucleic acids other than RNA have been suggested as well, such as the more esoteric PNA or TNA.

Simple Beginnings Instead of developing from complex molecules such as RNA, life might have begun with smaller molecules interacting with each other in cycles of reactions. These might have been contained in simple capsules akin to cell membranes, and over time more complex molecules that performed these reactions better than the smaller ones could have evolved, scenarios dubbed "metabolism-first" models, as opposed to the "gene-first" model of the "RNA world" hypothesis.

Panspermia Perhaps life did not begin on Earth at all, but was brought here from elsewhere in space, a notion known as panspermia. For instance,

rocks regularly get blasted off Mars by cosmic impacts, and a number of Martian meteorites have been found on Earth that some researchers have controversially suggested brought microbes over here, potentially making us all Martians originally. Other scientists have even suggested that life might have hitchhiked on comets from other star systems. However, even if this concept were true, the question of how life began on Earth would then only change to how life began elsewhere in space. Panspermia Theory suggests that life seeds came from outer space and planets exchanged life. Panspermia literally means seeds everywhere. Panspermia suggests that life could have existed on another planet and moved to Earth. Statistics have showed 7.5% of rocks from Mars reach Earth. The rocks would travel between less than 100 years to 16,000 years and more to get to earth. Some of the proponents include Sales Gyon de Montlivant, who proposed life came from moon, H.E. Richter, who suggested life came from meteorites/comets, and Svante Arrhenius, who came up with Panspermia.

Evidence for Panspermia 1. Bacteria can survive harsh environment of space a. Ultraviolet radiation b. Protons bombardments c. Cold 2. Evidence that meteorites contain life a. Amino acids (left handed in helicity) b. Bacteria c. Carbon d. Protected inside rocks 3. Bacteria can live for a long time in sleeping state until awakened 4. Mars safer than Earth (less bombardments and less gravity) 5. Mars not as hot as Earth in early development 6. Mars had have had oxygen back then when earth did not

Different Scenarios of Panspermia 1. Life began once, on Mars, and came to Earth in Martian meteorites. May or may not still exist on Mars (amino acids or bacteria) 2. Life originated on both Earth and Mars independently. Cross-colonization (crossfertilization) may subsequently have occurred (a.a. or bacteria) 3. Life began once, on Earth, and was propagated to Mars, where it possibly established itself (a.a. or bacteria)

4. Life originated on both Earth and Mars, but in spite of the exchange of rocks and dust, no transfer of viable organisms has occurred 5. Life originated on neither Earth nor Mars, but somewhere else entirely, such as a comet, Jupiterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s moon Europa, Venus, or body outside the Solar System altogether. It came to earth, perhaps Mars too, via some sort of Panspermia mechanism (a.a. or bacteria) 6. Life has originated on earth alone and has not (yet) successfully colonized another planet. Mars is, and always was, lifeless

The theory states that after they arrive safely from space, they became protein from amino acids

and eventually life (if not already). They would then grow and reproduce, possibly in a warm pond/ocean or underground.

Creationism Creationism is the idea that a Creator, God, created life according to its kind (as in the Bible), and life has evolved and changed but not enough to create new species. God created Earth and everything in it (including life) in a six-day period around 4,000 or 8,000 B.C. 1st day – Monday – Morning and evening 2nd day – Tuesday – Sky 3rd day – Wednesday – Land, seas, and vegetation according to its kind 4th day – Thursday – Sun, moon, and stars 5th day – Friday – Sea and sky animals, each according to its kind 6th day – Saturday – Land animals and man, each according to its kind 7th day – Sunday – Rest Each organism is created according to its kind by God. Variations can exist within a kind. Humans produce humans, cows produce cows is an example of how each is created according to its kind.

Mutation and natural selection could not by themselves have brought all living things from a single organism. Neither can create information out of nothing or pure randomness (evolution). Organisms can only have the same information or lose it, not gain it. On the other hand, evolutionists believe that organisms gain more and more information (complexity) in mutation and natural selection Gaps in fossil records also support Creation. Animals appear abruptly and there are no clear links. Noahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Flood is used to explain the fossil record. Quick fossilization in Catastrophism would create fossils. The Global flood could made fossils by catastrophic processes. This accounts for fossil records in geology and there are evidence of a global flood.

Other evidence 1.

Birds are specialized a. Wings and lungs not from reptiles b. Created especially for its purpose c. Advanced and could not have evolved DNA are composed of same building blocks in all organisms

a. b.

Evolutionists say from same ancestor Creationists – same special Creator – designed using same building blocks for efficiency 3. Complexity of living organisms a. Designer b. In SETI, complex radio signals = designer c. Complex organisms = designer 4. Problems with Big Bang and Chaos Theories 5. Problems with dating methods a. Radiometric dating b. Radioactive dating c. Radiocarbon dating d. Unstable and incorrect each time e. 90% of dating methods indicate far younger Earth Although evolution (the theory) is said to be accepted by most scientists, there are many problems and gaps with the theory (even evolutionists admit it), and many scientists are not evolutionists (creationists or not).

C.S. Lewis – If the existence of life is an accident, then the evolution of man was also an accident, and everything that we have achieved are accidents, and our thoughts are accidental byproducts of the movement of atoms. Meaning why should we believe these accidental accounts of accidents? Albert Einstein – “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

Creation Myths As Strange As The Bible China’s Cosmic Egg

The first living being was P’an Ku, who grew for 18,000 years inside a cosmic egg. When he hatched, the shell above him became the sky while the piece below became the earth. The opposites in nature were separated as well—male and female, wet and dry, light and dark, yin and yang, etc. After all this effort, P’an Ku literally fell to pieces and his features became the natural world. His limbs turned into mountains, his blood to rivers, his breath the wind, his voice the thunder, his hair the grass, his sweat the rain, and so on. His left eye became the sun and his right became the moon. Some people say that the parasites on P’an Ku’s body became mankind. Others say that, many centuries after P’an Ku’s death, a lonely goddess named Nü Wa saw her reflection in a pond and made some beings like herself out of mud. These became the aristocrats. Creating these beings was hard work, though, so Nü Wa swung a muddy vine through the air and

its droplets became the commoners. Years later, the heavens collapsed, creating holes in the earth through which waters rose to form a great flood. NĂź Wa patched the earth, but became exhausted by her labors and died. Her body became yet more features of the world.

The Blackfootâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Colored Language Water

Old Man came from the south, making the terrain, plants, and animals as he headed north. The first people he created were a woman and her son from clay. Old Man showed them how to collect plants for food and told them which herbs were good for treating sickness. He taught them how to make weapons to kill animals and fire so they could cook them. Most importantly, he told them how to get spirit power by finding their spirit animal in their dreams. Like many other origin stories, Blackfoot legends tell of a great flood. One possible explanation for this are the worldwide floods from melting icebergs that may have occurred around 5,000 BC, possibly the time of Noah. After the flood, Old Man gathered the people on top of a mountain and gave themwater of different colors to drink. Each color represented a different

language. The Blackfoot, Piegan, and Blood tribes all drank black water, which is why these tribes speak the same language.

Yanomamo Sanemaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Moonblood

The Sanema people are part of the Yanomamo group of tribes who live in the Amazon rain forest. Each tribe has its own collection of stories, passed orally from generation to generation. Because of this, their creation myths vary. Generally, however, the Sanema believe that all the living things are descended from â&#x20AC;&#x153;original ancestors,â&#x20AC;? whose spirits still inhabit the forest. One story has Peribo, the Moon, eating the souls of children. This angered Suharina, who shot Peribo in the belly with an arrow. His blood spilled to the earth, forming puddles from which mortal men arose. The most belligerent human beings were created where large amounts of blood fell, and where only a few drops fell, less violent men were born.

In another myth, Naro (Opposum), who was ugly and smelly, was jealous of his brother, Yamonamariwa (Honey Bee), who was beautiful and had two wives. Naro shot charms made from his pubic hair at Yamonamariwa and killed him. A third brother, Reha (Lizard), discovered Naroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s treachery and denounced him. The Ancestors destroyed Naro and transformed themselves into spirits and animals by painting themselves with his blood. The sloth, however, was created with a small amount of Naroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s excrement.

India: Create, Preserve, Destroy, Repeat

Brahma began from nothingness. By thought alone, he created the waters, into which he deposited his semen. This grew into a golden egg, out of which he was born. By thought again, he split the egg in two, and the halves became heaven and earth. Brahma grew lonely, so he split himself in two to form male and female. In one variation of the story, Brahma repeatedly splits himself in two until all living things are created from his body. In another, the first man and woman mate in different animal forms until life forms are born.

Together, Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Preserver), and Shiva (the Destroyer) make up the Supreme One. Each universe Brahma creates is eventually destroyed by Shiva, after which there is nothing but a vast ocean on which Vishnu floats, resting on a great snake. In some versions of the myth, Brahma comes not from an egg, but from a lotus flower that springs from Vishnu’s navel. Eventually, our world, too, will be destroyed by Shiva and the cycle will begin anew.

The Navajo’s Four Worlds

The Navajo have one of the longest and most complex creation stories on the planet. It starts in the First World, called the Black World. The Black World contained four clouds, including a black one, which represented female substance, and a white one, which represented male. Together they created First Man, representing dawn and life, and First Woman, who represented darkness and death. Other beings in the Black world included Great Coyote (who was hatched from an egg), First Angry, and various insects. The Black World became too crowded, however, so everyone climbed to the Blue World of birds. There, they lived in harmony for 23 days, until someone tried to sleep with the swallow chief’s wife. Banished to the Yellow World of mammals, they found six mountains, where holy

people lived. The holy people were immortal and traveled by following rainbows. First Woman gave birth there to twin hermaphrodites. Four days later, she gave birth to another set of twins, one male and one female. By the end of 20 days, five pairs of twins had been born. One day, Great Coyote took Water Monster’s baby. Water Monster got so angry that he made it rain and rain, until the flood waters rose higher than the mountains. In what must have been the slowest flood in all of time, First Man planted various trees and a male reed in sequence, none of which grew higher than the level of the waters. Finally, a female reed grew to the sky. Everyone climbed to the top of it, where they found the Fourth World—the White World—which is where we all live today.

Scandinavia’s Fire Demons And Frost Giants

Before time existed, there was a place of fog and ice called Niflheim. Across a great void was Muspelheim, where fire demons and fire giants dwelled. Fire from Muspelheim eventually melted Niflheim’s ice, which dripped and formed a giant cow named Audhumla and a frost giant named Ymir. More giants grew from Ymir’s armpit sweat and were breastfed by Audhumla, who created more giants by licking blocks of salty ice.

These giants mated and gave birth to the god Odin and his brothers. Odin and his brothers killed Ymir and the earth was made from his flesh, the heavens from his skull, the sea from his blood, the clouds from his brains, mountains from his bones, and trees from his hair. Odin built Asgard as adwelling place for the gods and linked it to Midgard (Earth) by a rainbow bridge called Bifrost. The maggots in Ymir’s corpse become dwarfs and remained beneath the surface of the earth in what was left of Ymir’s body. The Gods found two tree trunks on Midgard and breathed life into them, creating Ask and Embla, the first man and woman.

Japan: Chaos And A Very Painful Birth

Japan’s creation myth may be the longest and most complicated of all. It begins with chaos, out of which came matter, separating over eons into heaven and earth. Various deities came into being, including Izanagi and Izanami, the first male and female. Izanami mated with Izanagi and gave birth to the islands of Japan, as well as a variety of deities. The last of these was a fire deity, whose birth burned Izanami’s genitals so badly that she died.

A distraught Izanagi beheaded the fire deity and went to Yomi, the land of the dead, to look for Izanami, but Izanami couldn’t return with him because she had eaten in Yomi. Izanami told Izanagi that she would ask for permission to leave, but made him promise not to follow her. After waiting a long time, Izanagi broke his promise and went to look for Izanami, but only found a decaying corpse with maggots (the eight deities of thunder) eating her body. (If this sounds familiar, check out the Greek myths of Hades and Persephone and Orpheus and Eurydice.). Izanagi freaked and sealed Izanami in Yomi. She swore that, in revenge, she would strangle one thousand people a day, to which Izanagi replied that he would cause fifteen hundred more to be born. This is why each day in Japan, fifteen hundred children are born and one thousand people die. Eventually, Earth’s first emperor descended the Floating Bridge from Heaven and married Princess Brilliant Blossoms, but he grew suspicious when she got pregnant right away. To prove the children were his, the princess sealed herself in the palace and set fire to it, since only the Emperor’s descendants could survive flames. As the palace burned, she gave birth to beings who became the ancestors of the imperial family of Japan.

The Aborigines’ Rainbow Serpent

Aboriginal creation stories begin with the Dreaming, when the world was bare and cold. The Rainbow Serpent slept underground with all the animal tribes in her belly. When the time

was right, she emerged and spewed forth the animals, along with the features of the natural world. The Rainbow Serpent was the maker of laws, which all creatures must obey. In some variations of the myth, she swallowed wrongdoers and spat out their bones to form rocks and hills. In others, she rewarded those who obeyed the law by giving them human form and turned the lawbreakers into stone. The Rainbow Serpent is sometimes called the Old Woman, and it was she who taught humans how to get food. In tribes who believe they are descended from animals, the Rainbow Serpent was said to have given each a totem and ruled that no man could eat the animal it represented. This way, she ensured there would be enough food for all.

Egypt’s Divine Semen

Before the beginning of time, there was Nu (or Nun), the primeval ocean of chaos. From an egg on Nu’s surface emerged a deity referred to variously as Atum, Amen, Re, Ra, or Amen-Ra. Ra created a divine son and daughter via masturbation, who bred to produce a race of gods. Ra’s tears became mankind. Ra’s grandson, the god Osiris, married his sister Isis. Isis learned Ra’s

secret name, which allowed Osiris to take Ra’s place as king of Earth. Osiris showed humans how to get food and wine, while Isis taught themweaving and medicine. Osiris’ brother Set, who represents evil, was jealous of Osiris. He tricked Osiris into a chest, which was sealed with molten lead and cast into the Nile, drowning him. After a long search, Isis found the chest, but Set managed to get his hands on it and tore his brother’s body into 14 pieces before hurling them back into the Nile. Isis recovered all the pieces of Osiris except his penis, which had been eaten by a fish. She fashioned a penis out of clay and blew life back into Osiris through it. He was revived just long enough to impregnate Isis with their son, Horus, after which he died for good and became king of the netherworld. To keep baby Horus safe from Set, Isis put him in a basket to float down the Nile, inspiring the story of Moses. When Horus grew up, he and Set had a contest to see who should rule the earth and Horus won.

The Dogon’s Alien Egg

The Dogon are an indigenous tribe of Mali, believed to be of Egyptian descent. Dogon origin stories begin with Amma, the god who existed before time. Amma was lonely, so he created the

Earth, which is sometimes called the “egg of the world” or the “original placenta.” Earth is said to exist in infinite space and contain a model of all creation. Amma married the Earth, but her clitoris was opposed to Amma’s penis, so Amma circumcised her. She later gave birth to Ogo and a pair of androgynous twins in the form of fish called the Nommo. Since Ogo had no partner or twin, he committed incest with the Earth. From this union came the first menstrual blood, along with the spirits of the underworld. Amma undid the disorder this act caused by transforming Ogo into a jackal. The blood that flowed from Earth became various heavenly bodies, plants, and animals. Amma then created the stars by throwing pellets of earth into space. Using two white earthenware bowls—one encircled with red copper, the other with white—he created the sun and moon. Black people are supposedly born under the sun and white people under the moon. In the 1930s, the Dogon told a pair of French anthropologists that the germ of all things was originally contained in an invisible twin to Sirius, the Dogstar. This twin star, now known as Sirius B, wasn’t discovered by astronomers until 1970. According to the Dogon, astronomical knowledge was given to them by one of the Nommo, who is referred to in this account as “the son of God.” Some people have taken this to mean that the Nommo was Jesus, but maybe the Dogon were just having a cosmic laugh at Western expense.

American Indian Creation Myths Apache: In the beginning there was only darkness. Suddenly a small bearded man, the One Who Lives Above, appeared rubbing his eyes as if just awakened. The man, the Creator, rubbed his hands together and there appeared a little girl, Girl-Without-Parents. The creator rubbed his face with his hands and there stood the Sun-God. Again Creator rubbed his sweaty brow and from his hands dropped Small-boy. Now there were four gods.Then he created Tarantula, Big Dipper, Wind, Lightning-Maker and Lightning-Rumbler. All four gods shook hands so that their sweat mixed together. Then Creator rubbed his palms together from which fell a small round, brown ball. They took turns kicking it and with each kick the ball grew larger. Creator told Wind to go inside the ball and blow it up. Then Tarantula spun a black cord which he attached to the ball and went to the east pulling as hard as he could. He repeated this exercise with a blue cord to the

south, a yellow cord to the west and a white cord to the north. When he was done the brown ball had become the earth. The Creator again rubbed his hands and there appeared Hummingbird. "Fly all over this earth," said Creator to Hummingbird, "and tell us what you see." When he returned Hummingbird reported that there was water on the west side. But the earth rolled and bounced, so Creator made four giant posts one each black, blue, yellow and white and had Wind place them at the four cardinal points of the earth. The earth was now still. The creation of the people, animals, birds, trees, etc takes place hereafter.

Cherokee: Long, long ago, a great island floated in a giant ocean. This island hung from four thick ropes from the sky, which was solid rock. There were no peoples and it was always dark. The animals could not see so they got the sun and put it in a path that took it across the island from east to west each day. The animals and plants were told by the Great Spirit to stay awake for seven days and seven nights but most could not and slept. Those plants that did stay awake, such as the pine and cedar and those few others were rewarded by being allowed to remain green all year. All the others were made to lose their leaves each winter. Those animals that did stay awake, such as the owl and the mountain lion and those few others were rewarded with the ability to go about in the dark. Then the people appeared. That is another story.

Chippewa:

In the beginning before there were people, before there were animals a lone woman lived in a cave. She lived on the roots and berries of the plants. One night a magical dog crept into her cave and stretched out on the her bed beside her. As the night grew long the dog began to change. His body became smooth and almost hairless. His limbs grew long and straight. His features changed into those of a handsome warrior. Nine months later the woman birthed a child. He was the first Chippewa male and through him came the Chippewa peoples.

Aztec Creation Myth

Quetzalcoatl, the light one, and Tezcatlipoca, the dark one, looked down from their place in the sky and saw only water below. A gigantic goddess floated upon the waters, eating everything with her many mouths. The two gods saw that whatever they created was eaten by this monster. They knew they must stop her, so they transformed themselves into two huge serpents and descended into the water. One of them grabbed the goddess by the arms while the other grabbed her around the legs, and before she could resist they pulled until she broke apart. Her head and shoulders became the earth and the lower part of her body the sky. The other gods were angry at what the two had done and decided, as compensation for her dismemberment, to allow her to provide the necessities for people to survive; so from her hair they created trees, grass, and flowers; caves, fountains, and wells from her eyes; rivers from her mouth; hills and valleys from her nose; and mountains from her shoulders. Still the goddess was often unhappy and the people could hear her crying in the night.

They knew she wept because of her thirst for human blood, and that she would not provide food from the soil until she drank. So the gift of human hearts is given her. She who provides sustenance for human lives demands human lives for her own sustenance. So it has always been; so it will ever be.

Maya Creation Myth

In the beginning was only Tepeu and Gucumatz (Feathered Serpent). These two sat together and thought, and whatever they thought came into being. They thought earth, and there it was. They thought mountains, and so there were. They thought trees, and sky, and animals etc, and each came into being. But none of these things could praise them, so they formed more advanced beings of clay. But these beings fell apart when they got wet, so they made beings out of wood, but they proved unsatisfactory and caused trouble on the earth. The gods sent a great flood to wipe out these beings, so that they could start over. With the help of Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, and Crow they fashioned four new beings. These four beings performed well and are the ancestors of the QuichĂŠ.

Japan Creation Myth

In the beginning the earth was a shapeless mass. Then the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami were given the job of stirring this mass with a long, jeweled spear. As they stirred, the mixture thickened and dropped off the spear point and hardened into an island. On the island the god and goddess were married and had children. These offspring included the eight islands of Japan, many gods and goddesses, and finally the sun-goddess Amaterasu. From her descended the emperors of Japan.

African Creation Myths Boshongo: (The Boshongo are a Bantu tribe of Central Africa.) In the beginning there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba. One day Bumba, in pain from a stomach ache, vomited up the sun. The sun dried up some of the water, leaving land. Still in pain, Bumba vomited up the moon, the stars, and then some animals: the leopard, the crocodile, the turtle, and, finally, some men, one of whom, Yoko Lima was white like Bumba. Dogon: At the beginning of time, Amma (a supreme god who lived in the celestial regions and was the origin of all creation) created the Earth and immediately joined with it. But the Earth's clitoris

opposed the male penis. Amma destroyed it, circumcising his wife, and they had a child, Ogo, and the twins, the Nommo. Ogo had no partner and was barren, so he introduced disorder into the world by committing incest with his mother, Earth. The first menstrual blood came from this union, as well as Yeban and Andumbulu, the spirits of the underworld. Amma created the stars by throwing pellets of earth into space. He created the sun and moon by modelling two white earthenware bowls, one encircled with red copper, the other with white copper. Black people were born under the sun and white people under the moon. (The latter paragraph is quoted in L.V.Thomas, Les Religions de L'Afrique noire, Paris, 1969)

Efik: (The Efik are a Nigerian tribe) The creator, Abassi, created two humans and then decided to not allow them to live on earth. His wife, Atai, persuaded him to let them do so. In order to control the humans, Abassi insisted that they eat all their meals with him, thereby keeping them from growing or hunting food. He also forbade them to procreate. Soon, though, the woman began growing food in the earth, and they stopped showing up to eat with Abassi. Then the

man joined his wife in the fields, and before long there were children also. Abassi blamed his wife for the way things had turned out, but she told him she would handle it. She sent to earth death and discord to keep the people in their place. Ekoi: (The Ekoi are a tribe in southern Nigeria.) In the beginning there were two gods, Obassi Osaw and Obassi Nsi. The two gods created everything together. Then Obassi Osaw decided to live in the sky and Obassi Nsi decided to live on the earth. The god in the sky gives light and moisture, but also brings drought and storms. The god of the earth nurtures, and takes the people back to him when they die. One day long ago Obassi Osaw made a man and a woman, and placed them upon the earth. They knew nothing so Obassi Nsi taught them about planting and hunting to get food. Ethiopia: Wak was the creator god who lived in the clouds. He kept the vault of the heavens at a distance from the earth and covered it with stars. He was a benefactor and did not punish. When the earth was flat Wak asked man to make his own coffin, and when man did this Wak shut him up in it and pushed it into the ground. For seven years he made fire rain down and the mountains were formed. Then Wak unearthed the coffin and man sprang forth, alive. Man tired of living alone, so Wak took some of his blood, and after four days, the blood became a woman whom the man married. They had 30 children, but the man was ashamed of having so many so he hid 15 of them. Wak then made those hidden children into animals and demons. Fans: (The Fans are a Bantu tribe in Africa.) In the beginning there was nothing but Nzame. This god is really three: Nzame, Mebere, and Nkwa. It was the Nzame part of the god that created the universe and the earth, and brought life to it. Whle the three parts of Nzame were admiring this creation, it was decided to create a ruler for the earth. So was created the elephant, the leopard, and the monkey, but it was decided that something better had to be created. Between the three of them they made a new creature in their image, and called him Fam (power), and told him to rule

the earth. Before long, Fam grew arrogant, he mistreated the animals and stopped worshipping Nzame. Nzame, angered, brought forth thunder and lightning and destroyed everything that was, except Fam, who had been promised immortality. Nzame, in his three aspects, decided to renew the earth and try again. He applied a new layer of earth to the planet, and a tree grew upon it. The tree dropped seeds which grew into more trees. Leaves that dropped from them into the water became fish, those that dropped on land became animals. The old parched earth still lies below this new one, and if one digs deep enough it can be found in the form of coal. Nzame made a new man, one who would know death, and called him Sekume. Sekume fashioned a woman, Mbongwe, from a tree. These people were made with both Gnoul (body) and Nissim (soul). Nissim gives life to Gnoul. When Gnoul dies, Nissim lives on. They produced many children and prospered. Wahungwe: (A Rhodesian peoples) Maori created the first man, Mwuetsi, who became the moon. Maori gave him a ngona horn filled with ngona oil and told him he would live at the bottom of the waters. Mwuetsi objected and said he wished to live on the land. Maori reluctantly agreed, but said Mwuetsi would give up immortality if he did. After a while Mwuetsi complained of loneliness, so Maori sent him a woman, Massassi (the morning star), to keep him company for two years. Each night they slept on opposite sides of a campfire, until one night Mwuetsi jumped over the flame and touched Massassi with a finger he had moistened with the ngona oil. In the moning Massassi was huge, and soon gave birth to plants and trees until the whole earth was covered by them. At the end of two years Maori took Massassi away. Mwuetsi wept for eight years, at which time Maori sent him another woman, Morongo (the evening star), saying that she could stay for two years. On the first night Mwuetsi touched her with his oiled finger, but she said she was different than Massassi, and that they would have to oil their loins and have intercourse. This they did, this night, and every night thereafter. Every morning Morongo gave birth to the animals of creation. Then she gave birth to human boys and girls, who became full-grown by that very same evening. Maori voiced his disleasure with a fierce storm, and told Mwuetsi he was hastening his death with all this procreation. Morongo, ever the temptress, instructed Mwuetsi to build a door to their habitat so that Maori could not see what they were doing. He did this, and again they slept together. Now in the morning Morongo gave birth to violent animals; snakes, scorpions, lions, etc. One night Morongo told Mwuetsi to have intercourse with his daughters, which he did, thereby fathering the human race.

Yoruba: Every African tribe had its creator god. He was called Obatala by some and Yansan, Olorun or Ogun by others. Some Yoruba tribes called him Shango. Shango was the god of thunder and the ancestor of the kings of Oyo. He was virile and virulent. He dispensed justice, punishing wicked people such as liars, thieves and criminals. His favorite weapon was the thunderbolt. His emblem was a two-headed axe. Shango had three wives: Oya, Oshun, and Oba (all three are rivers). Zimbabwe: Modimo was the creator. He distributed good things, appeared in the east and belonged to the element water. At the same time he was a destroyer, a terrifying creature responsible for drought, hail, cyclones and earthquakes. When these things happened he appeared in the west and was part of the element fire. Modimo was also sky and light, earth and root. He was unique and singular. He had no ancestors, no past or future. He pervaded the whole of creation. His name was taboo and could be spoken only by priests and seers. Zulu: The Ancient One, known as Unkulunkulu, is the Zulu creator. He came from the reeds (uthlanga, means source) and from them he brought forth the people and the cattle. He created everything that is: mountains,streams, snakes, etc. He taught the Zulu how to hunt, how to make fire, and how to grow food. He is considered to be the First Man and is in everything that he created.

China Creation Myth In the beginning there was a huge egg containing chaos and a mixture of yin-yang (female-male, cold-heat, dark-light, wet-dry, etc). Also within this yin-yang was Phan Ku who broke forth from the egg as a giant who separated the yin-yang into many opposites, including earth and sky. With a great chisel and a huge hammer, Phan Ku carved out the mountains, rivers, valleys, and oceans. He also made the sun, moon, and stars. When he died, after 18,000 years, it is said that the fleas in his hair became human beings. In summation, the Chinese say that everything that is is Phan Ku and everything that Phan Ku is is yin-yang.

China Creation Mankind Myth

N端 Wa Makes Men: It is said that there were no men when the sky and the earth were separated. It was N端 Wa (Emperor Yandi's youngest daughter) who made men by moulding yellow clay. The work was so taxing that her strength was not equal to it. So she dipped a rope into the mud and then lifted it. The mud that dripped from the rope also became men. Those made by moulding yellow clay were rich and noble, while those made by lifting the rope were poor and low. Note: From Tai ping yu lan (Taiping Anthologies for the Emperor)

China: (Still Another Myth) In the beginning , the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up and formed the heavens,

the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth. Pan Gu stood in the middle, his head touching the sky, his feet planted on the earth. The heavens and the earth began to grow at a rate of ten feet per day, and Pan Gu grew along with them. After another 18 thousand years, the sky was higher, the earth thicker, and Pan Gu stood between them like a pillar 9 million li in height so that they would never join again. When Pan Gu died, his breath became the wind and clouds, his voice the rolling thunder. One eye became the sun and on the moon. His body and limbs turned to five big mountains and his blood formed the roaring water. His veins became farstretching roads and his muscles fertile land. The innumerable stars in the sky came from his hair and beard, and flowers and trees from his skin and the fine hairs on his body. His marrow turned to jade and pearls. His sweat flowed like the good rain and sweet dew that nurtured all things on earth. According to some versions of the Pan Gu legend, his tears flowed to make rivers and radiance of his eyes turned into thunder and lighting. When he was happy the sun shone, but when he was angry black clouds gathered in the sky. One version of the legend has it that the fleas and lice on his body became the ancestors of mankind. The Pan Gu story has become firmly fixed in Chinese tradition. There is even an idiom relating to it: "Since Pan Gu created earth and the heavens," meaning "for a very long time." Nevertheless, it is rather a latecomer to the catalog of Chinese legends. First mention of it is in a book on Chinese myths written by Xu Zheng in the Three Kingdoms period (CE 220-265). Some opinions hold that it originated in south China or southeast Asia.

India Creation Myth (The Dhammai are from northern India. They are a non-Hindu people.) Before there was anything, there existed Shuzanghu and his wife, Zumaing-Nui. In time she gave birth to a girl (earth) and a boy (sky). Sky and earth mated and gave birth to the mountains. Then they

produced two frogs who married and made the first humans. These humans were covered with thick hair, but when they mated they produced people as they are now.

Assyria Creation Myth The Annunaki [sky gods: Anu (sky), Enlil (earth), Shamash (sun), and Ea (water)], created the earth and the heavens. When they were finished, they looked carefully at their creation and concluded that something was missing. They decided that mankind was needed to till the fields and celebrate religious festivals. So it was that the first humans [Ulligarra (abundance) and Zalgarra (plenty)] were created. Aruru, the "lady of the gods", was given sway over their destinies.

Romania Creation Myth: God made Heaven, and then, after measuring the space underneath with a ball of thread, he began to form the earth. A mole asked to help, and God gave him the thread to hold while he wove the patterns of the earth. Sometimes the mole would let out too much thread, and finally the earth grew too large for the space under heaven. The mole was so upset that he hid under the earth. God sent the bee to look for him; he wanted the mole's advice on what to do about the mistake. The bee found the mole and the mole just laughed at the idea of advising God. The bee, however, hid in a flower and overheard the mole mumbling to himself about what he would do if he were God. 'I would squeeze the earth,' he said. 'That would make mountains and valleys it is true, but it would make the earth smaller at the same time.' When the bee heard this, he went directly to God and told him. God did what the mole had said, and everything fit fine.

Slavic Creation Myth

Ewenki: Long ago Father Heaven had two sons, Ulgen Tenger and Erleg Khan, Ulgen became the lord of the upper world and Erleg Khan became the lord of the lower world. At that time the earth was covered with water, there was no land. Ulgen Tenger asked the loon to bring up mud from below the water to create land, he was not able to do so, and he was punished by having his legs broken so he could not walk, and the goldeneye duck was called next to bring up land. The duck created a small piece of land that Ulgen was able to lay on. Erleg Khan seeing that his brother had fallen asleep on the new land, tried to pull the land out from under him, but instead the land stretched out in all directions as he pulled it. Next, Ulgen Tenger created animals and humans out of mud and he spread them out to dry. He created the dog to keep watch over the bodies of the new humans while he was gone. Erleg Khan, unhappy to see that his brother was creating humans, came to see the new bodies. The dog would not let him come close, at that time the dog could talk but had no fur. It was cold, and snowing, so Erleg Khan tempted him, saying that if the dog allowed him to see the humans' bodies he would give him a beautiful fur coat. The dog agreed, and was given a shiny beautiful coat. Erleg Khan then spat on the bodies so that humans would have diseases and not be immortal. When Ulgen returned he saw that the dog had fur and that the humans had been damaged, so he punished the dog by making his coat smelly, taking away his voice, and by making the dog follow humans in order to get its food. Note: I can't recall/find from which resource I got the foregoing myth and its accreditation as Slavic, so I can't check out the following message that I was E-mailed: "The creation myth of ancient slavs, doesn't linguistically correspond to slavic languages. It more likely reflects the myth of ancient mongols who are not considered to belong either to slavic culture or ethnicity."-Grigoriy Titiyevskiy Sounds to me as if Mr. Titiyevskiy knows what he is talking about. Any ideas or comments?

Babylonian Creation Myths

From the mixing of Apsu (sweet water) and Tiamat (salt water) there arose the gods, Mummu (the waves), and Lakhmu and Lakhamu (gigantic twin serpents). The serpents produced Anshar (heaven) and Kishar (earth). From these two came Anu, Enlil, and Ea, as well as all the other gods of the sky, earth, and underworld. Apsu and Tiamat became angered because of the noise made by such a large group of gods, and began talking about killing off their progeny so they could get some rest. When Ea, the all-knowing, learned of this he used his magic to capture Apsu and Mummu. Tiamat was furious and raised a large army of gods and freaks to battle Ea and his cohorts. Anu and Ea became frightened and Ea created Marduk to battle Tiamat. Marduk promised to do so if he were granted supremacy over all the other gods. All the gods agreed and Marduk, armed with bow and arrows, lightning, the winds, a hurricane, and a special net sallied forth to battle Tiamat. When they clashed, Marduk caught Tiamat in his special net, and as she opened her mouth to swallow him, loosed the hurricane into her mouth. As she swelled from the hurricane within her, Marduk slew her with an arrow into her belly. Then he cast the net again capturing her army within it. These he chained and cast into the underworld. From her corpse the world is created. He was then proclaimed God of the Gods.

Egyptian Creation Myth Only the ocean existed at first. Then Ra (the sun) came out of an egg that appeared on the surface of the water. Ra brought forth four children, the gods Shu and Geb and the goddesses Tefnut and Nut. Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere. They stood on Geb, who became the earth, and raised up Nut, who became the sky. Ra ruled over all. Geb and Nut later had two sons, Set and Osiris, and two daughters, Isis and Nephthys. Osiris succeeded Ra as king of the earth, helped by Isis, his sister-wife. Set, however, hated his brother and killed him. Isis then embalmed her husband's body with the help of the god Anubis, who thus became the god of embalming. The powerful charms of Isis resurrected Osiris, who became king of the netherworld, the land of the dead. Horus, who was the son of Osiris and Isis, later defeated Set in a great battle and became king of the earth.

100

Another Egyptian Creation Myth:

At first there was only Nun, the primal ocean of chaos that contained the beginnings of everything to come. From these waters came Ra who, by himself, gave birth to Shu and Tefnut. Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture gave birth to Geb and Nut, the earth god and the sky goddess. And so the physical universe was created. Men were created from Ra's tears. They proved to be ungrateful so Ra, and a council of gods, decided they should be destroyed. Hathor was dispatched to do the job. She was very efficient and slaughtered all but a remnant, when Ra relented and called her off. Thus was the present world created. Against Ra's orders, Geb and Nut married. Ra was incensed and ordered Shu to separate them, which he did. But Nut was already pregnant, although unable to give birth as Ra had decreed she could not give birth in any month of any year. Thoth, the god of learning, decided to help her and gambling with the moon for extra light, was able to add five extra days to the 360-day calendar. On those five days Nut gave birth to Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys successively. Osiris became the symbol of good, while Set became the symbol of evil. And thus the two poles of morality were fixed once and for all.

Celtic Creation Myth The giants are the gods of old. In the first winter, a mighty giant was created from hoarfrost. And when fire came, he melted. From the enormous bulk of his body came the world. From his blood flowed the sea, from his bones the mountains, from his hair the forests, from his skull the sky. In the centre of the Earth, on hills rising high as mountains, live the gods, and below seethes the Underworld, land of the dead and all their secrets.

101

GREEK Creation Myth From Hesiod's Theogony (loosely interpreted): In the beginning there was only Chaos, an empty void. This huge vacancy gave birth to Gaea (the earth), to Tartarus (the great region beneath the earth), to Eros (the god of love and attraction, to Erebus (the darkness of the underworld), and Night (the darkness over the earth). Then Erebus slept with Night, who gave birth to Ether (the heavenly light), and to Day (the earthly light). Later Night alone produced Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, Dreams, Nemesis, etc. Meanwhile Gaea alone produced Uranus (the starry sky), the Mountains, and Pontus (the sterile sea). Uranus became mate and equal to Gaea, because he "covered" her on all sides. As a couple (he-sky, her-earth) they procreated the Twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes, and the three Hecatoncheires (with the fifty heads and hundred arms each). Uranus hated these latter children, and they hated him. In anger he pushed them back into Gaea's womb and kept them there. This was very painful for Gaea and she plotted revenge against Uranus. She fashioned a flint sickle and called upon her children to avenge her.

All but Cronus, the youngest Titan, refused to help her for fear of Uranus's wrath. That night, when Uranus came to lie with Gaea, Cronus, hiding in ambush, was able to grab his father's genitals and sever them with the flint sickle. As the blood fell to the earth the Furies, the Ash-

102

Tree Nymphs, and the Giants were created. When Cronus heaved the testicles into the sea Aphrodite arose from the foam. We hear no more of Uranus in the myths. Cronus then became leader of the Titans, and confined the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires to Tartarus. He married his sister Rhea and they produced many offspring.

But Cronus had been warned by both Uranus and Gaea that a child of his would replace him as leader of the Titans, so when Rhea gave birth to a child and presented it to Cronus he would swallow the baby. This is what happened to Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon shortly after each was born. Rhea finally wised up, and when Zeus was born she presented Cronus a stone wrapped in the swaddling clothes, which he swallowed thinking it was the newest child. Zeus grew to manhood on the island of Crete, attended to by nymphs. He sought and got advice from Metis, another Titaness, who prepared an emetic potion for him. Soon, disguised as a cupbearer, he was able to get Cronus to drink the potion. Cronus immediately vomited up all the children he had swallowed, all safe and sound, and fully grown. They overwhelmed Cronus and bound him as a prisoner in Tartarus. And so the Olympians began their rule. (It took ten more years of strife and wars between Titans, Olympians, Cyclopes, Hecatoncheires, assorted monsters and dragons (like Typhoeus) before the rule of the Olympians was solidified.)

Another Greek Creation Myth: Eurynome, the goddess of all creation, arose from Chaos and separated the sea from the sky. Then, dancing naked upon the waves, she created the wind and rubbed it in her hands to create the serpent Ophion, who made love to her. Pregnant, Eurynome laid the World Egg, and Ophion coiled around it and hatched it. This egg brought forth the cosmos and everything in it. Eurynome and Ophion settled on Mount Olympus, and here, soon, Ophion was proclaiming himself creator. Eurynome, angry, banished him to the netherworld. Then she established the seven planets, each with a Titan and Titaness to rule it. When man appeared, he sprang from the soil, and the first man, Pelasgus, taught the others to eat acorns, build huts, and make clothes.

103

Bibliografie> http://www.infoplease.com/cig/theories-universe/scientific-origins-universe.html http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/origins-universe-article/ http://discovermagazine.com/2008/apr/25-3-theories-that-might-blow-up-the-big-bang

    

Claude-Catherine Ragache “Creation of the World (Myths and Legends)” Peter Torbay “Creation Myth” Harriet Rohmer, Mary Anchondo “How We Came to the Fifth World: A Creation Story from Ancient Mexico (Tales of the Americas)” Barbara C. Sproul “Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World” C. Scott Littleton “Mythology: The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling”