1. The Mighty Adam
The visible matter we see around us (including the mountains, planets, stars and galaxies) make up a paltry 4 percent of the total matter and energy content of the universe—and of that 4 percent, most of it is in the form of hydrogen and helium, with probably only 0.03 percent taking the form of the heavy elements. Most of the universe is made of a mysterious, invisible material of totally unknown origin ... 23 percent of the universe is made of a strange, undetermined substance called dark matter, which has weight, surrounds galaxies in a gigantic halo, but is totally invisible. Dark matter is so pervasive and abundant that, in our own Milky Way galaxy, it outweighs all the stars by a factor of 10 ... But perhaps the greatest surprise is that 73 percent of the universe, by far the largest amount, is made of a totally unknown form of energy called dark energy, or the invisible energy hidden in the vacuum of space. Introduced by Einstein himself in 1917 and then later discarded (he called it his “greatest blunder”), dark energy, or the energy of nothing or empty space, is now re-emerging as the driving force in the entire universe. This dark energy is now believed to create a new antigravity field which is driving the galaxies apart. [Michio Kaku,
Parallel Worlds
(2005), 12]
Let’s call this first, solitary atom
Adam
.
It is all that exists. It exists and that's all. It lasts from the beginning to the end, and that’s all there is—just it, alone in its spacetime Eden. It existed from the beginning to the end and then it exists again, backwards (as it were) through time, from end to beginning, setting up a complicated interference pattern with itself. Because as yet there is no 'time' or 'space', not as we currently understand it, which means this is a more natural progression than you might think. So it arrives back when it starts and exists once again following the arrow of time forwards. This means (there's no time, and it doesn't happen
sequentially
like this, but permit me the approximation) that ‘now’ there are two atoms, coexisting in the same ‘location’. It’s alright, though. The topography of the pre-universe can bear this. The atom exists, moving forwards and backwards through time (40 billion years, perhaps) 10^80 times. This number happens to be the density threshold, according to pre-universe topography, beyond which the copresence of so much 'matter' becomes unstable. The reduplicated unity breaks down, and the big bang occurs, spreading this matter into—or more accurately, creating the spacetime
of
—the observable universe in which we live.
Running ‘backwards’, as it would later appear, and however awkwardly inexpressive that kind of talk is, entailed a swimming-against-the-stream friction—a tenfold force, generating ten times the tourbillions of friction in the spacetime medium, such that the matter running back from the end to the big-beginning brought with it not the same amount but
ten times as much
mass. But that’s a trivial thing, a nothing, compared to the profounder mystery; and that profounder mystery is the incomparably vaster shroud which we call dark energy, the halo that surrounds Adam and all his 10^80 iterations of himself.
What is the dark energy? Good, right, yes. Although
what
is not always a question that gets answered. Nor is
why
.
2. First Contact
I saw that the shanty town had grown over the graves and that the crowd lived among the memorials. [James Fenton, 1983]
It was the strangest summer of Ange Mlinko’s life. It was the same thing for everybody on the planet, of course; but Ange felt she had some justification in believing it was rather more strange for her than for most.
It was the first contact with alien life, and everybody was intensely aware of the strangeness of this. Ange felt a more acute relationship to the experience, though. She was to crew the
Leibniz
, to meet the aliens in person. And then
The visible matter we see around us (including the mountains, planets, stars and galaxies) make up a paltry 4 percent of the total matter and energy content of the universe—and of that 4 percent, most of it is in the form of hydrogen and helium, with probably only 0.03 percent taking the form of the heavy elements. Most of the universe is made of a mysterious, invisible material of totally unknown origin ... 23 percent of the universe is made of a strange, undetermined substance called dark matter, which has weight, surrounds galaxies in a gigantic halo, but is totally invisible. Dark matter is so pervasive and abundant that, in our own Milky Way galaxy, it outweighs all the stars by a factor of 10 ... But perhaps the greatest surprise is that 73 percent of the universe, by far the largest amount, is made of a totally unknown form of energy called dark energy, or the invisible energy hidden in the vacuum of space. Introduced by Einstein himself in 1917 and then later discarded (he called it his “greatest blunder”), dark energy, or the energy of nothing or empty space, is now re-emerging as the driving force in the entire universe. This dark energy is now believed to create a new antigravity field which is driving the galaxies apart. [Michio Kaku,
Parallel Worlds
(2005), 12]
Let’s call this first, solitary atom
Adam
.
It is all that exists. It exists and that's all. It lasts from the beginning to the end, and that’s all there is—just it, alone in its spacetime Eden. It existed from the beginning to the end and then it exists again, backwards (as it were) through time, from end to beginning, setting up a complicated interference pattern with itself. Because as yet there is no 'time' or 'space', not as we currently understand it, which means this is a more natural progression than you might think. So it arrives back when it starts and exists once again following the arrow of time forwards. This means (there's no time, and it doesn't happen
sequentially
like this, but permit me the approximation) that ‘now’ there are two atoms, coexisting in the same ‘location’. It’s alright, though. The topography of the pre-universe can bear this. The atom exists, moving forwards and backwards through time (40 billion years, perhaps) 10^80 times. This number happens to be the density threshold, according to pre-universe topography, beyond which the copresence of so much 'matter' becomes unstable. The reduplicated unity breaks down, and the big bang occurs, spreading this matter into—or more accurately, creating the spacetime
of
—the observable universe in which we live.
Running ‘backwards’, as it would later appear, and however awkwardly inexpressive that kind of talk is, entailed a swimming-against-the-stream friction—a tenfold force, generating ten times the tourbillions of friction in the spacetime medium, such that the matter running back from the end to the big-beginning brought with it not the same amount but
ten times as much
mass. But that’s a trivial thing, a nothing, compared to the profounder mystery; and that profounder mystery is the incomparably vaster shroud which we call dark energy, the halo that surrounds Adam and all his 10^80 iterations of himself.
What is the dark energy? Good, right, yes. Although
what
is not always a question that gets answered. Nor is
why
.
2. First Contact
I saw that the shanty town had grown over the graves and that the crowd lived among the memorials. [James Fenton, 1983]
It was the strangest summer of Ange Mlinko’s life. It was the same thing for everybody on the planet, of course; but Ange felt she had some justification in believing it was rather more strange for her than for most.
It was the first contact with alien life, and everybody was intensely aware of the strangeness of this. Ange felt a more acute relationship to the experience, though. She was to crew the
Leibniz
, to meet the aliens in person. And then
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