In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words, the singularity assumes heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception. There is no past for it to emerge from.Īnd so, from nothing, our universe begins. We can't even ask how long it has been there-whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. The singularity has no "around" around it. It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it goes. When the universe begins to expand, it won't be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to retire to because outside the singularity there is no where. Naturally, you will wish to retire to a safe place to observe the spectacle. In either case, get ready for a really big bang. In fact, you will need to gather up everything there is-every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation-and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all. If you'd prefer instead to build a more old-fashioned, standard Big Bang universe, you'll need additional materials. I'm assuming of course that you wish to build an inflationary universe. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Now imagine if you can (and of course you can't) shrinking one of those protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small that it would make a proton look enormous. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this I can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, rather more than the number of seconds contained in half a million years. It is just way too small.Ī proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. NO MATTER HOW hard you try you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spatially unassuming, is a proton.
0 kommentar(er)
