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Tuesday, 24 November 2009 01:56 |
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The earliest moments of Creation are where our modern physics
breakdown, where `breakdown' means that our theories and laws have no
ability to describe or predict the behavior of the early Universe.
Our everyday notions of space and time cease to be valid.
Although we have little knowledge of the Universe before the Planck
time, only speculation, we can calculate when this era ends and when
our physics begins. The hot Big Bang model, together with the ideas
of modern particle physics, provides a sound framework for sensible
speculation back to the Planck era. This occurs when the Universe is
at the Planck scale in its expansion.
- time and space overlap during the Planck era
- at the end of the era 4D spacetime will unfold and 6D quantum space will compactify
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Remember, there is no `outside' to the Universe. So one can only
measure the size of the Universe much like you measure the radius of
the Earth. You don't dig a hole in the Earth and lower a tape
measure, you measure the circumference (take an airplane ride) of the
Earth and divide by 2
p
(i.e. C = 2
p
radius).
The Universe expands from the moment of the Big Bang, but until the
Universe reaches the size of the Planck scale, there is no time or
space. Time remains undefined, space is compactified. String theory
maintains that the Universe had 10 dimensions during the Planck era,
which collapses into 4 at the end of the Planck era (think of those
extra 6 dimensions as being very, very small hyperspheres inbetween
the space between elementary particles, 4 big dimensions and 6 little
tiny ones).
During the Planck era, the Universe can be best described as a
quantum foam of 10 dimensions containing Planck length sized black
holes continuously being created and annihilated with no cause or
effect. In other words, try not to think about this era in normal
terms. |
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