PART 3 of 4

The heart of my theory concerns balance. Consider the primordial singularity and its big bang together as one side of an equation. That side is replaced—and balanced—by the universe that was newly in place as soon as the big bang was spent, finished, forever ended. Within this fast-expanding new universe, the portions that were energy-matter, which of course included the black holes, were in balance with the empty spaces in between the energy-matter parts—which, don’t forget, are full of zero-point energy in apparently limitless quantity. Cosmology has long encompassed a concept that universal expansion (pushing outward) and gravity (pulling inward) counteract or balance each other. Without this balance the universe would either sail outward, unchecked forever—or would collapse back in upon itself, squashing back down to another singularity until…poof, it’s gone. Either way, nothing would happen—no galaxies, no people, no nothing. In reality, the inward gravity and the outward expansion balance each other, the balance we know and love that keeps things normal. Many scientists show interest in this balance.

Cosmology has another concept, called quintessence, that I find similar to the concept of balance despite nuances of difference. One of those nuances merits mention here. Quintessence is (unclearly) conceived as a “force” that can be either attractive or repulsive, options which of course seem equivalent to gravity and universal expansion. Some cosmologists hypothesize (as we’re doing in this whole section) that quintessence started out with the big bang as an attractive force, like gravity, and stayed that way for over three billion years. But then, say its advocates, about ten billion years ago it “switched”—sorta magic-like—and became a repulsive force—thereafter acting essentially like anti-gravity and accelerating the expansion of the universe. In other words, this quintessence phenomenon is a strange sort of balance that can change its mind. Mind you, this is not new-age foofoo or the Gospel according to Saint Louie, it is serious scientific cosmology. Respected scientists believe in it and write whole books about it. I have one or two, and it’s enthusiastically discussed in dozens of others on my shelves. But I advise not putting too much stock in it. I find quintessence mildly interesting mainly because it resembles the concept of balance which I find completely interesting.

So if scientists don’t know why quintessence exists, or why it magically switched polarities, on what grounds do they blame it for the speeding-up of universal expansion that was discovered with dismay some years ago. Well, they also suspect it may be behind the mystery called dark energy. Maybe dark matter too. Or the next election, who knows? On the serious side, they may have something going with that dark matter prospect. Consider those very tiny black holes mentioned above. For years scientists have been assuming that if Hawking radiation is real, it would have caused smaller black holes to evaporate so fast they should have vanished long ago. But suppose their assumption is dead wrong—and maybe Hawking radiation is just a myth that never existed in the first place.

What is a great deal more likely to be real is dark matter, for the reasons and evidence cited above in this chapter. It is by now fairly certain that dark matter is real, the evidence favoring it is persistent, and yet we cannot find it or see it and no one knows what it really is. Well how about those tiny black holes? If dark matter “shouldn’t” exist but it clearly does, and if micro black holes “shouldn’t” exist but they actually do, then just maybe the two are one and the same thing. After all, even the tiniest black holes have a whole lot of density to throw around, so to speak, and it most certainly is possible that legions of them—all invisible to us—are the mysterious force holding the galaxies together. Summary:  the big supermassive at the center was the structural foundation that the galaxy built around originally, and the combined density in millions, perhaps billions of micro black holes are the gravitational glue that keeps a galaxy’s spiral arms from slinging away into space due to the rotating galaxy’s sheer centrifugal force. You could say they are lending essential balance in galaxies everywhere. They all rotate don’t they?

I think black holes are an integral component of universal balance, and will remain so to the end in some unseeable future. I think they will ultimately be discovered to be integral aspects of gravity, which is the only countervailing force balancing the universe’s outward expansion that results, mainly, from the big bang’s explosive big push. I think black holes are evolving, just like everything else in this universe, and will continue doing so in the context described above until the end of time when this great experiment ends and is no more. I think black holes are a key part of the Godly Algorithm explored in Chapter 4.

If any part of my theory has validity, it should be testable when our telescopic technology reaches just a little farther than achieved to this point. The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most advanced ever built so far, can see out to about thirteen billion light years, returning exquisite images far better than any predecessor. That’s 13 of 13.8, but that last .8 eludes us. And whatever lies out right at the farthest 13.8-billion-light-year-edge will never be seen by mortals because the true edge of our universe lies just beyond the farthest point light has reached to date. No light, no see. But with one better technological iteration beyond JWST, plus a few thousand new “soundings” out to the universe’s distant sphere surrounding us, we should be able to discern whether the near-edges of the universe connote a sphere that is perfectly round and smooth, or a sphere whose edges are misshapen, deformed, even lumpy.

If indeed the big bang’s plasma consisted only of quarks and gluons, those universal edges should be an almost perfectly round sphere. However, if the plasma also included chunks of singularity blasted out to become instant primordial black holes, the universal edges affected by them should be somewhat irregular, misshapen, lumpy. This is because those supermassive black holes that originated as large chunks would immediately have created significant irregularities and fluctuations in the expanding plasma—permanently disturbing what we today call the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). I predict a lumpy, irregular universal sphere is what will be found when advancing technology finally enables us to take a few good looks. And if that indeed turns out to be the case, then science’s standard model must fall and be replaced by some new ideas big enough to encompass the whole truth. I am convinced that near-death experience teachings encompass important parts of that whole truth.

[conclusion in 2 weeks]