Oh What A World

When everything else in life is going well - not, mind you, that it is - but when everything else in life is going well I will worry about the fate of the Universe. I will also worry about aging and death; it seems to be my outlook's lot to hover just above some horrifying inescapability, now managing the resolve to rise above and gather rosebuds, now sinking below into the blackness of the things I cannot change. I am blessed to have an equilibrium sufficiently above despair that I don't do anything stupid.

When I was studying astronomy as an undergraduate Dr. Wills discussed the Big Bang and framed the current, broadly accepted scientific debate as to whether the spreading Universe was sufficiently dense to cave back in on itself or not (in which case it would expand forever).

Now, let's be reasonable: railing against the True State of things (and I do believe there is one, objectively speaking, although I won't get into why, here) is taking windmill-tilting to a ridiculous extreme. Given the chance, I would actually not shatter this state of things entire, nor remold it nearer to my heart's desire, Old Khayyam, because my heart is a fickle little bastard and I would bet on the Universe being a bit more beautiful than anything I, little piece of it, could dream up. Although, yeah, it's tempting sometimes. So whatever is going to happen is fine by me, at least officially.

But I, at 18, pretty quickly hoped for the former, denser alternative: the Big Crunch that would suck all of space and time back in. Whether this would mean a following Big Bang (as I imagined and hoped) or just the end of it all, anything would be better than the slow decay of all energy, momentum, and life, until all is dust, forever floating away towards an expanse exceeded only by what it would be the day after. For the next Big Bang would mean rebirth (excellent) and a sucking in, not to be followed by another Big Bang, would at least leave room for other Big Bangs to come along instead. (For if it happened once it is the height of vanity to suppose it won't happen again.) But the never ending expanse of our pitiful little mass-glob would sweep out all potential space and dash any mortal dream of a happier future. (Is this really right? I have no idea. It's fun to conjecture, but I am an earthworm trying to read Khayyam - what place at the reality table may I claim? I will leave it as it lies.)

Then a couple of years ago I was informed by a posthumous footnote in The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan that in 1998 the Universe was deemed too light to support my bold hope - we would continue to expand forever, wrapping all existence in deadly gray. Shit.

But now Scientific American and Martin Bojowald have come to my rescue: Bojowald claims that space, like matter, is not infinitely divisible but is made of a fabric of tiny - well, maybe particles isn't the best word, but that there's a tiniest size that's appropriate for something to be thought of as a piece of space. Pack too much mass into it (a trillion Suns per proton-size!) and gravity regurgitates it. Pack all the matter of the Universe on the head of a pin and it will explode. There is no case of infinite density, as was previously thought to precede the "first" Big Bang. Redemption!

So I hold out hope for eternal existence. I personally won't be there, for I am alive now, and will die well before the next Big Bojowald Bounce. And call me vain, but once you leave existence, you never come back. . . .