Strange Loop Cosmology

By Leo Gura - February 4, 2019

Consider the following intriguing possibility:

According to modern cosmology, our universe started as an infinite singularity which spontaneously blew up and started expanding at an accelerating rate — which is continuing today. There has been some speculation that in the future it might start to decelerate and eventually crash in on itself in a Big Crunch, back to where it began. An elegant solution, but our universe currently shows no sign of deceleration so I wouldn’t hold my breath. So let’s assume it just keeps accelerating outwardly forever. What then? How do we end it in an elegant way?

Thermodynamics tells us that ultimately the universe will end in entropic heat death, where all the atoms dissipate their kinetic energy until the entire universe is one energetically uniform, frozen field. This is the universe’s most boring state. Nothing interesting to see or do because everything is so uniform that everywhere is the same. There’s nowhere to go and you don’t have enough of an energy gradient to power anything (no cars, no power plants, no life). Everything is one uniform temperature and eventually even all the atoms decompose into a perfectly uniform soup.

But at precisely this point our perfectly uniform universe also becomes indistinguishable from a singularity! Now, you might think, “But wait a minute, this new singularity is a billion times larger than the old one, due to billions of years of expansion.” Except size, distance, time, and temperature are all relative notions. In a totally uniform universe it is impossible to distinguish here from there, big from small, past from future, or hot from cold, and hence impossible to distinguish the old singularity from the new singularity, making them literally identical!

After all, who is to say there is difference between beginning and end?

And suddenly the whole thing explodes again.

Ta-da! We’ve come full-circle! The perfect strange loop.

But wait, it gets even stranger! If reality is nothing but distinction, could it be possible to eliminate the distinction between something and nothing, reality and unreality? After all, who is to say that the universe is real or has ever even happened?!

This very moment you are sitting here reading this sentence thinking you are inside an actual universe which has happened. But perhaps if you realized that “actual” is a distinction that you are creating, you could also collapse it, thus making it literally impossible to distinguish an “actual” universe from its opposite, a “potential” universe, thus nullifying this very moment, as though it never actually happened, all at the same time as it appears to be happening!

After all, who is to say there is a difference between happening and non-happening?

So, was there an actual Big Bang or not? Adapting, a bit, the famous words of Henry Ford, “Whether you think there was, or think there wasn’t, you’re right!”

How does God create something out of nothing? By imagining a difference between the two.

Ta-da!

So while everyone else is running around taking life seriously, you might be able to realize that life isn’t happening at all. Perhaps existence is only possible as an idea.

Sounds impossible? Who is to say there is a difference between possible and impossible?

Sounds insane? Who is to say there is a difference between sane and insane?

Here’s an interesting video long these lines, although not quite as radical. Modern cosmology is still not addressing the elephant in the room: the relativity of existence itself.

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