The universe is expanding because of the second law of thermodynamics, not because of the dark energy.
(In this article, I gave an alternate explanation for the expansion of the universe that does not violate the law of conservation of energy. This is hypothetical writing and is not based on mathematics.)
Author: Vishal Wagh
Abstract
In this paper, I took a new approach to look at the cosmos, by assuming energy as the most fundamental thing of the universe, from which everything is evolved. This new approach changes our assumptions about mysteries of the cosmos. I assumed that space and matter both are same energy at the most basic level, after the big bang, most of the energy became space by taking some specific orientations, and remaining became matter and antimatter. Formation of particles gave birth to temperature and forces, until then there was no force to stop the expansion and that’s why inflations may have happened. Dark energy does not exist, our universe is expanding in true emptiness by obeying the second law of thermodynamic to attend equilibrium with true emptiness. The universe is being pulled out without applying any force on it. It will end after a finite amount of time, with the big rip, like it never existed before, being entropy reached to infinity.
Keywords: Expansion of the universe, Inflation, Beyond standard model, Quantum fluctuations, Fate of the universe, Quantum Energy.
1. Introduction
Energy never been studied before they way it should, we know Energy in terms of kinetic, potential, electric, thermal, and many more, but those are just properties of energy and how it works. As Richard Feynman said, “It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge about what energy is” [1], and this is true we have no idea about energy, but we can predict different possibilities. Energy was always considered as a mathematical term, but it does exist at origin of everything. Everything is energy, although it never comes in its true form, it always exists in particle form, even the temperature itself is just passage of energy in term of energetic photons.
Quantum fluctuation is appearance and disappearance of virtual particles in space allowed by uncertainty in energy and time according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Virtual particles are indeed real and have observable effects that physicists have devised ways of measuring [2]. Their properties and consequences are well established and well understood consequences of quantum mechanics. They become real in form of Hawking’s radiation emitted by black holes.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, not just expanding, it is accelerating, but there was not enough energy in the entire the universe to cause this expansion so to fill the big energy gap of missing 68.3% energy, Dark energy was introduced. Which is assumed to be causing the universe to expand. Yet there is no direct evidence to prove the existence of mysterious dark energy, all the evidence we have are of accelerated expansion of the universe and not of dark energy itself. But with the concept of true emptiness, expansion of the universe becomes obvious, to attend equilibrium with outer emptiness.
There are many theories that claim to explain the quantum nature of space, goes beyond the standard model, or both such as String theory, Loop quantum gravity, causal dynamical triangulations, quantum Einstein gravity, quantum gravity, internal relativity, and more. They explain quantum gravity and basic building blocks of the universe with their mathematics, but they all are lacking something, either its non-testable predictions or struggles complying mathematics with other theories. This idea does not have its mathematics, because I don’t have the knowledge to create it, but its assumptions make our understanding of the cosmos easy and clear. My motive is to explain this possibility to the scientific community, I want them to consider this idea and understand how simpler things become. I am a high school (10+2) graduate, I gave my full efforts to explain this with the knowledge I have. This is an idea of possibilities that I believe is possible and worth to try developing mathematics about it.
2. Matter and Space energy
‘Energy is the ability or capacity to do work, work is the amount of stuff that has happened or will happen, then energy is the amount of stuff that could happen’. Work is considered as energy, we can measure it, do calculations with it, but the term energy we use today is just to show what could happen or what has happened. All the definitions we have for energy only tell us about how it works but not what it is. Energy is always considered as a mathematical term or as a property of things, but everything we see are properties of energy.
We never see energy at all, it does not matter what process is it or how violent a reaction is, even in a supernova explosion, in a nuclear bomb explosion, or in gamma-ray bursts, energy is always released in particle form. Things only exchange packets of energy particles such as photons and gluons that results in splitting atomic nucleus, emission of different particles, heating and other distractive effects; everything is just exchange of particles. Light rays (Photons) from the sun fall on our skin and we feel the heat, it is absorption of photons by atomic particles of atoms that changes the energy level of electrons, which further leads to some chemical reactions, and then we feel the heat. Even temperature itself is just passage of energetic photons. For example, a brief idea of an electric heater that it heats up water when electric energy is converted into thermal energy through an electric resister and by obeying the second law of thermodynamics, heats flow from hat metal body to water molecules. At quantum level electric current deposits energetic photons into the metal body which heat up and to attend equilibrium those photons travel from metal to water molecules, which increases their vibrational energy and it boils up.
The food we eat, the work we do, the motion you are doing, every activity is exchange of bosons. For example, you can never touch anything, because of electromagnetic repulsion [3]. Atoms are 99.9999999999996% empty so if there wasn’t a strong repulsion, your hand would directly go through things without feeling the touch. That repulsion is share of momentum by exchanging virtual photons. The touch we feel is a biological concept of brain signals. Also, if you think or study, there is no such thing as temperature at quantum level. Everything is explainable in term of exchange of bosons, and because we never see energy in its true form, we can assume that matter-energy always exist in particle form.
According to Einstein’s energy-mass equivalence (E = MC^2) all matter is energy, but that’s only half true, everything is energy, even the space we live in is energy. In quantum physics, quantum fluctuations are tiny random fluctuations in the value of different fields, which are elementary particles come in matter-antimatter pair, and annihilate each other before we could detect them, but without a source of energy, they are said to violate the law of conservation of energy. Temporary violations of conservation energy are allowed [3], but if space itself is energy then this violation is of conservation of energy in between matter and space although total energy of the universe still be conserved.
In a hydrogen atom, an electron and a proton are bound together by photons. Every photon will spend some time as a virtual electron plus its antiparticle, the virtual positron since this is allowed by quantum mechanics. The hydrogen atom has two energy levels that coincidentally seem to have the same energy. But when the atom is in one of those levels it interacts differently with the virtual electron and positron than when it is in the other, so their energies are shifted a tiny bit because of those interactions [3]. That shift is called the Lamb shift. The Casimir effect is evidence that quantum fluctuations can influence human scale objects. The simplest explanation of the Casimir effect is that the two metal plates attract because their reflective surfaces exclude virtual photons of wavelengths longer than the separation distance. This reduces the energy density between the plates compared with that outside, and–like external air pressure tending to collapse a slightly evacuated vessel–the Casimir force pulls the plates toward one another [4]. Virtual particles are real, and they can come in permanent existence as hawking radiations, which is the thermal radiation predicted to be spontaneously emitted by black holes. It arises from the steady conversion of quantum vacuum fluctuations into pairs of particles, one of which escaping at infinity while the other is trapped inside the black hole horizon [5]
Unless space and matter energy are same at the most basic level, matter particles shouldn’t be forming by space energy. Gravitational waves are ripples of space so without space they cannot exist, and Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has detected gravitational waves. All these things proves that space is energy, and because space is everywhere the universe is not empty at all, unfortunately, we cannot harness space energy because space is in equilibrium.
Energy was a mathematical term that gives answers in numbers and never had a definition explaining energy as an existing thing. By assuming that everything is evolved from the same thing since the big bang, our understanding about the evolution of the universe becomes clear and easy. And except energy nothing else fit as the most fundamental thing.
3. The Origin and its orientations
In 1661 atom was discovered, and considered as basic and undividable, later in 1897, 1909, and in 1932 electron, proton and neutron were discovered respectively, again were considered as fundamental particles. And now we have the standard model of particles physics which explains basic building blocks of the universe that’s why it is called the most successful scientific theory of all time. Standard model explains all elementary particle which are currently considered as basic building blocks of the universe [6], but the fact that there is something happening inside of them because they are exchanging bosons and if something is the most fundamental thing of the universe then there shouldn’t be anything happening or existing inside of it. Maybe that’s why scientists are searching for more basic things, there are many theories that goes beyond standard model such as supersymmetry, loop quantum gravity, and string theory.
The origin energy is somehow interacting with itself doing the most fundamental process of our existence: The exchange of bosons. This basic process is responsible for all known reactions from chemical to nuclear, everything is explainable in terms of exchange of bosons.
To understand how the origin works and to visualize it in diagrams we can consider that origin energy is aligned in different orientations crating different particles but because I don’t have the mathematics, I cannot explain the individual orientation for every elementary particle, but I can show what type of orientation I’m talking about. And I believe they should be explainable in three physical dimensions because we have no clue about the existence of higher physical dimensions. This idea of orientations is baseless so it cannot be compared with Feynman diagrams, but if energy is the origin, then this will be a very good tool in understanding properties of origin energy.
Table 1: Arrangement of one-sided arrow, two-sided arrow, and a line in three dimensions. Gives 64 possible orientations.
In order to consider color charge, I must use three different colors which gives lots of possible orientation and mutual interactions, but just to understand how orientations works 1 color model is enough.
Table 2: To comply with the exchange of gluons and photons by specific fermions, the following orientations are allotted to their respective elementary particles. (Not by mathematics)
In Figure 1, quarks and gluons are oriented in such a way that by exchanging a small amount of energy in terms of gluons changes only total energy of quarks and not geometry. Color charge of gluons and quarks are explainable by using different colors which can comply with basic Feynman diagrams.
If we can concentrate the highest possible amount of energy to make energy come in its true form or do the highest possible energy collisions, and if we could see the splitting of one elementary particle and how it transforms itself into different lower energy particles then in that transformation process we may able to detect energy in its true form. But it will convert itself into either some specific particles with some specific orientations or any random orientation creating any random particle depending upon the amount of energy and its possible orientations. If it were possible, we may have detected it by now, so we can assume that energy convert itself into different particles faster than we could ever detect or it is undetectable in its true form.
We can consider that when the big bang happened, there was only one entity, it took different orientations creating different things, being space as most common. The possibility about why energy took all the different orientations that it did creating the universe we know, one is that it is random like water, if you put water into any container it takes the shape of that container, but in space water can take any possible shape (ignore surface tension) like triangular, circular ,or any weird shape. Similarly, after big bang energy took all possible orientations it could randomly with equal probability for each orientation, each with different properties.
4. True emptiness and The expansion of universe
True emptiness is something that is nothing, where nothing exists not even space. True emptiness is empty, it exists beyond the universe. It’s a common misconception that space is empty, the universe is not empty at all rather it is full of space which is energy itself. There is no such thing as empty space in universe. Since Edwin Hobble discovered that the universe is expanding, there was no explanation for this by that time and in 1998 by studying redshift of type Ia-supernovae it was found that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but there was not enough energy in the universe to cause this expansion so to fill the gap of required missing ~68% energy, dark energy was introduced.
Expansion is measured in term of Hobble constant which is different than previously measured which was ~63.4 (Km/s)/Mpc (Kilometers per second per megaparsec) and now it is ~73.3 (Km/s)/Mpc which means dark energy is weirder than previously thought [7]. Also, density of dark energy should be constant over time which means it should increase as the universe expands, but there is no answer to where does it come from? But with true emptiness there is no need of any repulsive energy to cause the expansion. The universe is expanding in true emptiness as an inert gas cloud would expand in space without the influence of gravity. This is because of the second law of thermodynamics according to which higher concentration of energy flows towards lower concentration of energy, higher temperature flows toward lower temperature, and higher potential energy flows towards lower [8]. This is the reason rivers flow in one direction, this is how every natural process occurs, and this is the reason for the expansion of the universe. Space is neutral and all fundamental forces only affect matter and not space except gravity, which influences space but doesn’t hold it, so because there is no force which can hold space in place, by obeying the second law of thermodynamics the universe is expanding. Our universe is a dense energy ball, and true emptiness is empty so obviously, energy will flow outwards. For example, after opening door of a space shuttle in space that is full of gas, then that gas will flow outwards with the maximum speed possible depending upon amount of gas, but in this case the universe, it is expanding with speed faster than the speed of light, without breaking any laws of physics. Galaxies beyond the Hubble horizon are traveling faster than light. There is no upper limit for the speed in true emptiness because rules of Higgs mechanism and general relativity does not apply in true emptiness, this is because according to general relativity “Anything which has mass cannot travel faster than the speed of light in Space” [9], and things get mass via interacting with Higgs field. So, things cannot travel faster than light in space but if space itself is moving then there is no limit. Even if a body is not moving in space, for a distant observer it appears that a body is moving faster than the speed of light. All the evidence we have are of expansion of the universe and not of dark energy, so this idea about true emptiness just changes the way we look at the expansion.
5. Nothing can exist in the true emptiness, not even the universe
Everything exists in space, without it nothing can exist and that is for a reason, for electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear force there are force carrier particles, which has to travel from one particle to another in order to affect that particle but if there is no space then there will be no force. Gravity does influence space, but it does not hold space, so without space gravity won’t exist. Nothing can exist without space.
If anything gets caught in true emptiness, it vanishes in a very short fraction of a second way faster than the speed of light. Even for a black hole, it’s same, you won’t see an explosion or emission of energetic photons rather at first movement it was there and in second it’s gone. If you could see and slow down the process, then this is how it would work: For example, this is what will happen with the earth: all forces will be gone because there would be no space, every elementary particle of every atom of every molecule will move apart from everything with space faster than the speed of light (technically nothing is moving), and energy in every elementary particle will dilute and will be gone forever. All this will happen together at the same movement. This will be same for a black hole, every particle will move apart with space because space is inert and neutral, and there is no force that can hold space around a black hole, this makes the expansion a property of universe. Because all the forces are unaffected on space, and space itself is neutral, no force can stop the expansion of the universe, eventually, nothing is more powerful than true emptiness, even though it has no force. If you ask me what is the known most powerful thing? I would say ‘Nothing’.
There are many different models explaining the fate of the universe depending on their theoretical framework such as Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bounce, Big Slurp, and Big Rip. By considering true emptiness fate of the universe will be big rip, which means every atom, nucleus and every elementary particle will be torn apart, and the origin energy will dilute. The universe is not just expanding, at the edge of the universe things are being destroyed and space is diluting. It is possible that the universe is not expanding at all, yes, things are moving away from us, but the outward motion of space is creating an illusion of expansion, and it is also possible that the universe is decreasing in size. The universe will expand forever but we should stop saying it because after a finite amount of time expansion of space will reach us and later the whole universe, so universe will end after a finite amount of time, and it will dilute infinitely.
There is one way to survive this expansion, if there is another universe colliding with ours then there will be space in between them to travel, so we could go into another universe but if not, with some evidence and precise mathematics we will be able to tell humanity’s death date soon.
I am sure that there are other universe existing, other big bangs happening and will happen, but there is no way we can detect them. We are invisible and undetectable ghosts for other universes and vice versa. Because in order to see or detect, photons must travel to us, but there is no space so no way to detect other universes. From the outer side, there is no shape and size to the universe because there is no background to measure.
6. Possibility of Quantum Gravity
It is possible that matter-energy interact with space-energy, and it won’t violate the law of conservation of energy if it exchanges an equal amount of energy. Even if they do some kind of interaction, we can never detect it because space is everywhere, even within all the elementary particles so whatever the interaction is, unlike other force carrying particles, it does not need to travel so there shouldn’t be any force carrying particle for gravity. It is also possible that the interaction of matter with space influence the space around that mass body and so when any other mass body comes in that influenced space, it behaves differently than as it would behave in uninfluenced regular space. This influence is already explained at the macroscopic level in terms of curvature in space-time by Albert Einstein in his theory of General Relativity.
This can be very wrong, but maybe this is how Hawking’s radiations works, such as when a pair of virtual particle forms near the event horizon, one escapes and another one fall into the black hole, but energy is not conserved because those virtual particles were formed from space energy, so space takes that energy from the mass body around it which has the most influence on space. Because space is everywhere even inside of black holes, energy doesn’t have to travel. This may help in understanding quantum gravity and may lead to some possible experiments. But the question is, why does balance of space and matter energy is conserved even if they interchange in each other, total energy of the universe still be conserved.
7. One more possibility of evolution of the universe after the Big Bang
Considering the idea of energy being the most fundamental thing of the universe, this is may have has happened in the early time of the universe: Before the big bang there was only one entity that evolved into different things by taking different orientations, maybe that’s why the universe appears homogeneous, when the big bang happened most of the energy took orientations of space and became space, other took orientations of elementary particles. The universe was invisible even after the big bang until the formation of particles, there were no matter particles which means no temperature, no light, and no forces. Because there were no matter and forces to oppose the expansion, the universe grew exponentially which is cosmic inflation. But the sudden formation of particles gave birth to temperature and forces, and also backfired the so fast expansion. That’s why at a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang, the estimated temperature of the universe was 10^32 degrees Celsius [10]. Inflation stopped in around 10^–32 seconds after the bang, with the universe’s volume having increased by at least 10^26 [11]. That is when the universe really came into existence, but it wasn’t visible until the universe cooled down enough for light to freely travel, we get that light as microwave frequencies and we see that movement in the cosmic microwave background. Later things happened as evidence says and the universe evolved as we know it today.
Inflation (the very fast expansion) may be still happening, and it may never has stopped. What I mean by saying the formation of matter and forces stopped the inflation above is that, after the big bang when particles and forces formed, matter applied force on other matter particles and held each other while space (universe) kept expanding, and it appeared that inflation stopped. In the early universe, gravity was negligible compared to other forces because matter was only in form of atomic particles. Evidence says that roughly 4 billion years ago expansion of the universe started to accelerate[12], but this may be the time when gravity become weaker as distance increased, and it can no more hold matter around, then things started to move with space. This is how different time periods of expansion appears to us, but maybe the expansion of the universe never had slowed down.
8. Thought experiments and testable predictions
1. Expansion of the universe dilutes space which should affect quantum fluctuations.
If space is energy then adding it into the total energy of the universe, which must be conserved. If true emptiness exists then space must be diluting and not being created or stretched as the universe expands, and if it is diluting then it must affect the rate of quantum fluctuations. Near cosmic event horizon or Hubble horizon space should be very much diluted and because of this there should be very few quantum fluctuations, and if this experiment turns out to be true then it proves that true emptiness exists.
2. ‘Gravitational waves’ should be energy deposited by matter into space.
If it is true that matter exchanges energy with space then, when two heavy mass bodies like neutron star or black hole colloids because of their massive gravitational influence on space they may deposit some energy into space which results in creating ripples in space. By obeying causality they travel at speed of light and to keep the balance between space and matter energy, they return that energy in form of kinetic energy when a gravitational wave hits a mass body, and that mass body experiences a disturbance. By measuring the intensity of force of gravitational waves experienced and distance from the collide bodies, we could calculate the amount of energy loss in space by those bodies.
3. Simulating expansion of the universe.
By studying expanding gases with different intensities in a vacuum, and then predicting their nature after removing the upper limit to speed. We may be able to simulate the expansion of the universe. May be the universe is expanding way faster than we think, but because of causality, things are appearing different and slower to us. If that is the case, then we need mathematics which can explain the nature of space in true emptiness.
9. Fictional possibilities
1. In the universe space and time are our background measurements, unlike space, time is independent of physical existence, so time can be the background in true emptiness.
2. We know that after the big bang energy became space and matter, so in order to exist it created space to live and matter to exist but why did it do all this? Does energy have consciousness and do all these processes by itself to survive? But again, how can something like energy have sense and if not then how could something without sense create a conscious being like us. We can do tests by studying the collision of particles in particle colliders, if there is a pattern of formation of particles then it can be possible that energy has sense, but it can also be just probability or property of energy itself so nothing can be said. And if there is no pattern then everything is just probability.
3. We know that the universe was invisible and undetectable before the big bang and will go extinct after a finite amount of time by diluting infinitely, like never existed. This is very similar to quantum fluctuations. So, are universes macroscopic fluctuation? This raises a question on the emptiness of true emptiness, which can be answered if we found out where the universe before the big bang came from.
4. One fictional possibility of why energy doesn’t come in its true form is maybe because it is unaffected on physical things, and if something cannot influence anything and cannot be seen then it does not exist for other things. So, it means energy in true form does not exists physically.
5. Why do origins (fermions) exchange bosons? It may be possible that all origins with different orientations are trying to achieve a stable orientation and to do that they exchange bosons. Maybe that’s why all unstable atoms are trying to achieve a stable state because their most basic components are trying to do same.
10. Author Contributions
Vishal Wagh: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Validation, Resources, Writing — Original Draft, Writing — Review & Editing, Visualization and Project administration
Reference
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