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Topics to be discussed in this section include the Big Bang, was there one? How far are things away from us, is the Universe expanding, and what lies beyond? Scientific thought on most of these matters lies in the hands of the mathematicians, so does this limit their thinking?

One of the problems that limits our thinking on such matters is our own brain. It has developed over millions of years to allow us to deal with everyday problems that we are likely to encounter on earth, and may not be suited to dealing with the wider picture. One of the problems is that we are unable to visualize infinity. We know what it means but have trouble getting our heads round it. We are used to things having boundaries, and a start and finish. We just can’t imagine that the universe goes on for ever and there is no limit to it. Also, we can’t imaging how the universe could have no beginning. It was always here, but we have to visualize a start to it. Similarly, in antiquity, people thought that the world only extended to the horizon and if you sailed to the edge you fell off. As we were able to see further, the world got bigger and, eventually, so did the universe. It now appears to be a size that is the same as our range of vision. Do people really think that there is nothing beyond this range. It would seem logical that if you moved to the range of our vision there would be as much to see from there as there is from here. In other words, the universe goes on for ever. Why not?

It would seem reasonable that in certain areas of the universe matter would fall in on itself. The natural state seems to be orbiting masses but orbits collapse with time and large masses will inevitably collapse into each other. Now there are all sorts of theories as to what happens when you pile too much mass into one space. Obviously the pressure would be immense and the matter at the core would be compressed unbelievably. We then get so much mass in a relatively small space that the gravitational force is so great that even light cannot escape. This is a Black Hole and gives another example of how gravity reacts with light, reinforcing the arguments about the bending of light rays around a large mass.

What we don’t know about Black Holes is what their limit is. Obviously, the bigger they get, the more matter will be attracted in, even whole galaxies could be swallowed up. Now, as this happens the matter at the centre of the Black Hole will become more and more dense until the atomic sub-particles will be pushed so close that they could possibly be touching. At some point there could be an almighty explosion, throwing matter out in all directions at great speed. Eventually this will condense into single stars and these into new galaxies.

Now the Big Bang theory suggests that this happened once in the not too distant past and that is all the matter that exists in the Universe. But I don’t see why this should be a unique event. This sort of thing could be happening all the time somewhere in the infinite universe, and there is no reason why some of the matter from one expanding system shouldn’t interact with matter from another system. If there were only one expanding system, all matter would be diverging from the initial point of the Big Bang, which makes it hard to explain colliding galaxies which are known about. Isn’t it more likely that these galaxies, moving towards each other, are from different expanding systems?

More to come...