THE OSCILLATING ENTROPY UNIVERSE

 

I saw an article a few days ago on the internet (sciencealert.com/the-entire-universe-could-be-twice-as-old-as-we-thought) that suggests that previous estimates of the size of the universe may be inaccurate. I‘ll not go into the details here (copy and paste the link address if you're curious), but basically the article was an attempt to reconcile the red-shift of distant light sources taking into account the coupling constant, which isn’t a constant at all but rather varies with energy. The coupling constant may be much different now that it was in the early universe. The article in ScienceAlert was probably based on a much more detailed treatise that exists somewhere. The linked article was written for the layman and it leaves a lot to the imagination. But I‘ve had a problem with the estimates of the age of the universe, and the Big Bang theory, for some time now - since long before that article appeared.

 

There was a recent Youtube video from Veritasium (youtu.be/DxL2HoqLbyA) on the topic of entropy. It is a well explained description of entropy that has the universe starting with very, very low entropy, nearly zero, and ending at maximum entropy. According to Clausius Entropy theory¹, entropy is a one-way street. It always increases. Just as time goes only in one direction entropy also goes in only one direction, that is, it inexorably increases. The Verisatium video explains that the universe started with a uniform distribution of energy, and then entropy happened. Gravity caused clumping, and those clumps attracted each other, and so on. We are observing the universe somewhere into its whole lifespan, and it is very clumpy right now. But eventually it will devolve to maximum entropy, where energy is once again uniformly distributed. Watch the Youtube video. It moves a bit slowly at points, but it’s fascinating.

 

While I was watching the video for the first time (‘ve watched it several times, and parts of it repeatedly), I pondered the state of the universe a few milliseconds after the Big Bang. At that instant, the universe would have appeared exactly the same as it will billions of billions of millennia from now some few milliseconds before it reaches maximum entropy. ‘ll give you a moment to consider that. If the theory of entropy is correct, then at some point in the far distant future, the universe will look exactly the way it looked just a few milliseconds after the Big Bang. Pause and try to take that in before you read on.

 

There is a period of time just after the Big Bang that we know very little about. The math starts to break down in that extreme. Suppose, however, that the universe never was in that state! Let’s imagine that there was a universe that had accumulated enough entropy that it looked precisely like our universe looked just a few milliseconds after the Big Bang. What prevented gravity from causing that universe to begin clumping just as ours did, until it became something like the universe we observe now? And suppose further that it continued to devolve, driven by entropy, until it reached that state again after billions and billions of millennia.

 

I propose, based strictly on my understanding of entropy with no supporting mathematics whatsoever, that the universe we live in evolved from a prior universe that had been driven by entropy to a state that didn’t just look like, but actually WAS the state of our universe a short time after the math tells us there was a Big Bang. The Big Bang, then, never had to happen. The lowest entropy of our universe was, exactly, the highest entropy of the previous universe. As I remember it, the mathematics of the Big Bang don’t work well until a few milliseconds after the Big Bang, but perhaps the prior universe got to a point where it looked like our universe, oh, say, 400 million years after the mathematics tell us there was a Big Bang, and our universe actually started from there.

 

Let’s call this the Oscillating Entropy Universe theory. The period of oscillation is very, very long, and we might never be able to take enough measurements to verify the rate of the oscillation, that is, the time it takes from when entropy begins to rise until it reaches a maximum and reverses. It may, however, be possible to make a mathematical estimation of that period. And of course it is entirely possible that my OEU theory is all wet, and some simple proof of that is possible. And it's also entirely possible (and I suspect that) someone else has previously proposed the same hypothesis, and the theory lies in some moldy pile of doctoral theses in some dank university library basement.

 

I leave it now to the mathematicians and physicists. I don’t know enough, and I am disinclined, to carry on any further.

 

Footnote 1: No citation. Clausius discussion of entropy is available on-line, but I didn't care enough to pay to read it. I am depending on my sixtyish-year-old education, my memory, and Verisatium, for my understanding of entropy.