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Here is an article of interest: A Cosmic Heartbeat: The Kinder, Gentler UniverseAnd below is an extensive collection of quotations, mostly from the “Science Group” of the Theosophical Society, all of which are free to download from a number of sites including Theo-Science NewsletterThe extractions explore many aspects of the the idea of the Big Bang in relation to philosophy of the Ageless Wisdom, which, in one of its modern guises, is based mainly on the works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who sought to synthesize various aspects of religion, philosophy, and science. (Note that the blue titles in the text show the references source but are not clickable as they might appear to be.)Science – Modern and Occult--Theosophy--Blavatsky-- Part 1.pdfearlier and simplest form of his equation, and later regarded the addition of the cosmological constant as his ‘greatest mistake’. Although the SD foretold some concepts associated to the theory of the Big Bang by some sixty years, overall its teachings seem to be more in tune with the new model of a cyclic universe, which explains some difficulties found with the Big Bang theory. 2. Nature of the Sun and Origin of the Planets At the end of the 19th century, the origin of the planets of our system was explained as the result of an accidental collision by a passing star that drew a filament of hot material from the sun. This material then condensed to form the planets. Blavatsky spoke against this theory and in favour of the nebular origin of the planets, which denies the pre-existence of the sun: The Occult Doctrine rejects ... that the great planets have evolved from the Sun‘s centr al mass ... The first condensation of Cosmic matter of course took place about a central nucleus ... bu...Theosophy Quotes.txt"Theosophical Propositions....The second Fundamental Proposition states that the universe as a whole and every sub-system within it undergoes periodic manifestations and withdrawals, relating that to the Hindu notion of the “Days and Nights of Brahma.” It is characterized as “the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature” (loc. cit., p. 17). It has been suggested by some theosophists that this is related, at least on the physical level, to the “Big Bang” theory in cosmology in which space itself is said to expand. Some scientists believe that the highly compressed matter which gave rise to the initial “bang” must have come from a previous universe which collapsed upon itself after expanding to a certain limit. That accords with the theosophical view, but is still quite controversial among scientists, many of whom believe there is no evidence to support it."" “Nature” derives from Nascor, to be born/come into existence. If you believe in a creation of some sort, it must be in the likeness of the creator; the earth is the body of this being-as in the maxim “as above so below”. In the Stanzas of Dhyzan is an ancient esoteric creation story reminiscent of the today’s big bang theory, starting with a plain circle, which then has a dot in the middle, then a line thru middle, then a cross inside, then it becomes a circular pleated fan, which becomes pixilated and turns into a spiral milky-way: 3 The circle with a dot in the middle, the hieroglyph for Rah, diagrams how everything visible proceeds from the invisibile spiritual essense at it’s core. Thus every last speck of the universe is alive and ensouled - everything has in it Buddha-nature -because all atoms have life-atoms or monads inside them, a microcosm of a universe constantly making itself from within outwards as in the rah-symbol.Bilimoria, Edi D. 1997. Mirages in Western Science Resolved by Occult Science 2.txt...the request that it be taught in science classes. Freedom of belief is very important but attempting to undermine the legitimate teaching of science in this surreptitious way is reprehensible. It is also a shallow way of trying to introduce the concept of God or some form of Supreme Being into science. How should scientists respond? Charles Birch who is very interested in religion and science says (Sydney Morning Herald, November 14) that he thinks it would be much better to ignore it than to argue with them, which only gives them publicity which is what they want. He is cited as saying that as a believer in a God of ‘purpose’ rather than a blueprint wielding designer, he is not drawn to the idea of a deity who is invoked to explain away any scientific mysteries. Birch is also cited as being one of the scientists who helped persuade Pope John Paul II of the strength of evidence for evolution. Paul Davies has also said that Pope John Paul II told him he had no problem with the big bang.Davies has a further short article in an issue of New Scientist focussing on Creativity (October 29, 2005). He says we should not think of the big bang as “the creation” since the universe has never ceased to be creative: ‘rather it emerged gradually, over billions of years through a long succession of self-organising and self-complexifying processes. In the early universe, “the dull, uniform distribution of matter” matching the “the near perfect uniformity of the radiation left over from its fi...ed to set off a chain reaction of creative processes; … gravity sculpted complex cosmic sculptures. … The emergence of life on Earth, and the slow evolution of multicellularity, is just a small branch of the cosmic creativity that began with the big bang. Viewed on a cosmological scale, the history of the universe appears to be one of increasing complexification”. At first sight, he notes, this appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics which requires an increase in entropy or disorder,...He goes on to say: “One thing is clear. The simplicity of the primordial universe ensured its eventual complexity. Only these bare beginnings contain such immense creative potential; cosmic creativity was forged in the big bang. Once sentient beings like us emerged, a whole new phase of creativity came with it. Through art, science and technology, humans are refashioning the world. Who can say how far mental creativity will help create the cosmos”? Note the implication of the last sentence; he is apparently suggesting the emergence of mind.tina-2015-march.pdfA Big Bang - or a Beginningless Universe?The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. Ahmed Farag Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end. Their work is based on ideas by the theoretical physicist David Bohm and would be of special interest to the student of The Secret Doctrine.Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter April 2009.pdf...alactocentric and cosmocentric concepts ushered in by the likes of Einstein who provided the theoretical foundation of modern cosmology; then Hubble’s famous law and the cosmic background radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson from which the big bang was calculated to have occurred around 13.7 billion years ago. He pointed out that cosmology and particle physics suggest that the universe is always growing (evolving) and the observable universe is a miniscule part of a larger reality. More ar...Itself? He opened by stating that the viewpoint of most physicists is: no God and no Multiverse. He outlined the gaps in our understanding with the stark declaration that there is no theoretical basis for predicting the Hubble parameter H0 (concerning the rate at which the universe is expanding), which relies on experimental measurements. Furthermore big bang theory contains the seeds of its own destruction on account of the free parameters and ‘theoretical slack’ that is used, and needed to fit...ounts. Therefore faith in God is primal and not at all irrational. The next speaker to take up the theological theme was the Reverend Dr. Rodney Holder in Can a Multiverse Provide the Ultimate Explanation? However he dealt in roughly equal measure with Multiverse ideas and theistic arguments, comparing and contrasting the explanations that these two camps have put forward. We were treated to a brief history of cosmology including the role of inflation and string theory. He had no doubt that big bang was established by the cosmic microwave background radiation and confirmed his acceptance of the fact of the fine tuning of the initial conditions and physical constants that have conspired to produce our universe. Talking of Intelligent Design arguments, one theory put forward by proponents was to look for the gaps that science cannot explain and then to put ‘God into the gaps’. The atheistic alternatives to the design argument were that only one set of laws was possible and the notion of ...Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter Dec 2005.pdf...to argue with them, which only gives them publicity which is what they want. He is cited as saying that as a believer in a God of ‘purpose’ rather than a blueprint wielding designer, he is not drawn to the idea of a deity who is invoked to explain away any scientific mysteries. Birch is also cited as being one of the scientists who helped persuade Pope John Paul II of the strength of evidence for evolution. Paul Davies has also said that Pope John Paul II told him he had no problem with the big bang. Much better than teaching so called ‘creation science’ would be finding a way to introduce students to some of the serious attempts being made in recent years to reconcile religion and science or to find common ground, as we have been discussing in this Newsletter from time to time. Writers such as Birch, Kauffman, Conway Morris and Davies come to mind. Especially pertinent is Davies’ concept of “teleology without teleology” (See N54) whereby God creates laws which allow complexity to func......sics and the states of the real world might be interwoven at the deepest level”. THE CREATIVE UNIVERSE Davies has a further short article in an issue of New Scientist focussing on Creativity (October 29, 2005). He says we should not think of the big bang as “the creation” since the universe has never ceased to be creative: ‘rather it emerged gradually, over billions of years through a long succession of self-organising and self-complexifying processes. In the early universe, “the dull, uniform distribution of matter” matching the “the near perfect uniformity of the radiation left over from its fiery birth” was “primed to set off a chain reaction of creative processes; ... gravity sculpted complex cosmic sculptures. ... The emergence of life on Earth, and the slow evolution of multicellularity, is just a small branch of the cosmic creativity that began with the big bang. Viewed on a cosmological scale,...th law of thermodynamics”. He goes on to say: “One thing is clear. The simplicity of the primordial universe ensured its eventual complexity. Only these bare beginnings contain such immense creative potential; cosmic creativity was forged in the big bang. Once sentient beings like us emerged, a whole new phase of creativity came with it. Through art, science and technology, humans are refashioning the world. Who can say how far mental creativity will help create the cosmos”? Note the implication... view of the charge of scientific fundamentalism, I want to explain the situation carefully. This subject is featured in a major article by Charles Lineweaver and Tamara Davis in Scientific American (March 2005) entitled Misconceptions About the Big Bang. They were invited to write this article based on their cited paper* They were then both at the University of New South Wales in Sydney but by the time of the recent article, they had both moved to Australian National University, Canberra. I wil...Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter Dec 2013.pdfNOT A BIG BANG but a BIG BOUNCE...tion fields that act as a kind of universal memory. Once a form or activity has come into being it provides the blueprint for other similar effects, which may then multiply with ease. The classic example is the formation of crystals, for which Sheldrake has elsewhere provided evidence, but in principle he thinks it can apply to anything, from the development of organisms to the acquisition of new skills. This has implications for cosmology, he believes. Far from being set in stone since the Big Bang, nature's laws should be considered as evolving habits that grow stronger through repetition; the universe is an ongoing creative process, of which human creativity is part. On the subject of consciousness Sheldrake points out that even materialists can't decide what causes it, which is why there are so many rival theories. He quotes Galen Strawson, himself a materialist, who is scathing about the way fellow philosophers are willing to deny the reality of their own experience - testament to...Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter April 2013.pdf* * * * * * * * Physics has things back to front Observers are important Observation is done by agents (subjects, observers) Agents are the source of physics - not v/v [vice versa] This is a taboo idea ([because it smacks of] intelligent design) Physics needs to come to terms with agents [even Stephen Hawking agrees about the necessity for agents e.g. to 'inform' pre big bang events, but backs off off when asked what these agents are] [We need to move] Towards a Science of Agents Ingredients: cognitive, networks, hierarchy, complexityThesophy-Science Group Newsletter December 2011.pdf... understanding of the universe, from “the age of exciting discoveries” – the 19th Century – through the unexpected discovery that the universe is expanding, the ‘big bang’ and ‘steady state’ theories, to the currently continuing cross-examination of these theories with the concepts of ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’ (and, I underst...the universe was discovered through the ‘red shift’ (Doppler effect), which proved that distant galaxies are all moving away from us, leading to the alternative ‘big bang’ and ‘steady state’ theories; and how apparent flaws in these theories led to the postulation of dark matter and dark energy, and ultimately the emergence of ‘mav...ters do not obey Newton’s universal law of gravity. After expanding on these theories and describing the current astronomical model – at which point an everyday talk on astrophysics would stop – David concluded with an overview of the theosophical implications of all this, showing how the ‘big bang’ model accords with Biblical Old...c of lights of the Aurora, HPB said “we must remember that the Aurora Borealis and the Southern Lights take place at the very centre of terrestrial and magnetic forces. The two poles are said to be the storehouse, the receptacles and liberators ... of cosmic and terrestrial activity.” Aldo referred to the works of several authors: Kristian Birkeland, said to be the originator of experimental astrophysics, who went to the North Pole three times and took measurements; Eric Lerner who said the Big Bang never happened; David Talbott who talked of plasma balls and galactic currents; and Irving Langmuir who tried to measure changes inside plasma in space. The subject of the sun’s corona was covered, with mass ejections from the sun following flares, which distort earth’s magnetic field. From here the exciting exploration extended to comets, particularly Tempel One; a segment on comets and electromagnetic forces featuring Immanuel Velikovsky, and the 2007 Hubble telescope discovery of a comet......le, rubbery rather than rigid and fixed, and the red shift, unlike the Doppler shift, is caused by the stretching of space itself between galaxies, telling us how fast the universe is expanding. These considerations led to the ‘standard cosmological model’ of the universe, suggesting that going back in time, the universe was increasingly hotter and denser than today, ultimately having originally been infinitely dense – a ‘singularity’ – the initial expansion of which has become known as the Big Bang, occurring around 14 billion years ago. But it is still unclear as to what actually ‘banged’, how, or why. Theoretically the initial expansion would have been explosively fast, slowing over time due to gravitational attraction. But in fact the opposite appears to have occurred. The ‘Standard Model’ of the universe has some shortcomings. Brian outlined these as: the current size of the universe (which at the starting size required to reconcile quantum theory with cosmology, and its well-esta......smological constant. Inflation relates to the rate of expansion of the universe, measured in terms of the time taken to double distances between galaxies. In the Big Bang model the doubling time increases with the size of the universe, the slowing down caused by gravity – known as ‘power law expansion’. But during the ultra-brief p...expansion, followed by a slowing under gravity and a reversion to power law expansion. Brian then outlined how the Inflation model resolves the problems with the Big Bang theory mentioned above: The horizon problem – the Big Bang model is incompatible with the uniformity of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), as vastly different regions of space have never been in contact, so could not have exchanged heat energy and therefore reached equal temperatures. With Inflation, however, if an exponential expansion is wound back in time, two regions of space have more time to affect each other – initially space expands slowly enough for all regions to rea......ous negative pressure, a gigantic repulsion driving every region of space apart. It then released its pent-up energy resulting in the production of ordinary particles of matter and radiation, after which the universe developed as in the standard Big Bang theory. This theory was developed over the last 40 years, with variations and improvements, passing all observational tests so far, particularly in predicting temperature variations in the CMB. However, puzzles and problems still exist – the inf...the collision of two three-dimensional branes, an event occurring every trillion years or so releasing a fireball of energy to start a new universe. Ekpyrosis leads to many of the features of Inflation but without the singularity problem. So the Big Bang might indeed have been a collision, not a beginning. New data from various sources such as the Large Hadron Collider, and the PIPER satellite to be launched in 2013, might throw new light on the causes of Inflation and the pre-inflationary unive...We exist in a conscious universe. Some...tures come into existence. The dualitywilder speculations on duality, broken symmetry and phase change: Duality andof electricity and magnetism united in electromagnetism. multiplicity can emerge from unity, examples in physics include electric and magnetic fields being manifestations of electromagnetism. Other examples include that the nuclear forces (strong, electro-magnetism and weak) can be shown to be manifestation of a more fundamental force. Finally Richard shared with us his ‘Big Bang’ idea: could this have been the moment when the fundamental unity of pre-existent reality split into spirit/matter to create our existing reality? Could the differentiation of pre-existent non-dual fundamental unity into the duality of Consciousness and Matter-Energy be the event that gave birth to our universe? Richard referred us to Stanza III of the Secret Doctrine, displayed on the screen and describing just such an event … The audience was wowed!Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter December 2014.pdf... steady-state theory proposed by Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi over the idea of the Big Bang. However, when evidence for the idea of the Big Bang began to become more convincing, I read and followed the development of this theory over many years. Much more recently I have been introduced to Theosophical discussions and ideas. The idea and power of having an open mind made me realise that a number of Theosophical concepts just couldn’t happen within a Big Bang universe. I developed an understanding that the Big Bang universe with which we are relatively familiar was only a small part of a much bigger universe. I began to call our experiential universe the ‘Big Bang universe’ or the ‘physical’ or ‘visible’ universe to differentiate if from the infinitely larger universe in which ours is such a tiny speck. At the Adelaide Lodge of the Theosophical Society I heard people talk about and refer to one of Helena Blavatsky’s written works called The Secret Doctrine. I was warned it ......ng in suit order, which can only be created in ONE way, becomes highly disordered with shuffling. The new pack has very low entropy which can be greatly increased. The same is happening with our physical universe. It can be considered to have started in a very ordered state with very low entropy at the Big Bang. In the roughly 13.798 billion years since the Big Bang, its entropy has been increasing. Each of the stars and galaxies within it could be arranged in a vastly huge number of ways, their... perhaps more accurately, would not be manifested. Time within our physical universe started, like a stopwatch, with the Big Bang. In 1998 it was announced that the expansion of the universe is increasing at an ever increasing rate. This expansion wi...hed into longer and longer wavelengths becoming exceedingly low energy radiation. The immensely high temperatures of the Big Bang have already cooled to 2.7° above absolute zero. As the universe expands, this cooling will continue to the level of vac...nto the far future. De Sitter space is infinite and has an energy very slightly above absolute zero. It appears that our Big Bang universe is evolving to become de Sitter space. De sitter space behaves in same way as a quantum vacuum in which pairs o...ities which predict a whole universe could suddenly pop into existence from de Sitter space – as our universe did in the Big Bang. Indeed, many universes may come into existence, eventually returning their borrowed energy to de Sitter space after eit...De Sitter space is an infinite universe which contains our Big Bang universe. In an infinite universe all sorts of things can happen simply by chance – we only have to wait long enough. Random fluctuations will occur, most of which will be tiny. Some will be large and reinforce themselves to become even larger. It is proposed that some very intense fluctuations may spawn completely new “bubble” or “pocket” universes. Our physical universe could have emerged from de Sitter’s eternally existing very high entropy field of infinite size. An infinite number of universes may have propagated and could still be propagating. H.P.B. writes “the eternity of the Universe in toto is a boundless plane, periodically the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing.” (S.D. V1 p16). What an amazing correlation with modern cosmology! *****************************Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter June 2008.pdf...iology and Paul Davies‟ belief that life is the natural result of yet -to-be-discovered laws, and also that life does occur elsewhere. Concepts were linked in clearly understandable references to Theosophical Society H P Blavatsky‟s (HPB‟S) work The Secret Doctrine. Canadian clinical psychologist and HPB enthusiast, Christopher Holmes, explored this relationship with the Ancient Wisdom in his presentation, God, Science and the Secret Doctrine. (also the title of one of his books). His zero point metaphysics and the holographic space of HPB combined in fascinating form with „heart doctrine‟ and the origin of human consciousness. And did the big bang occur as discussed by Vic Gostin, or can the evidence be interpreted as universal vibration? This was the hypothesis of Aucklander Ray Tomes is his „galaxy Red Shift‟ concepts of cosmic light and sound wavelengths. New cosmic particles meeting others coming from other galaxies create waves and a shift of frequencies. It‟s not random he says.Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter May 007_3_.pdf...ning years they had to contend with entrenched medical opinion and pharmaceutical interests making millions out of antacid drugs. One researcher even experimented on himself by swallowing live stomach bacteria he isolated and taking the antibiotic to cure the violent stomach pains that followed. However, there still remain a few dissenters in the scientific establishment. A mirror image of this is that it takes a mountain of contrary evidence to overturn a cornerstone scientific theory. The Big Bang theory of cosmological evolution is one of the most cherished scientific institutions but has had to be continually tweaked by the introduction of concepts such as inflation to accommodate anomalous findings that cannot be presently explained. It seems that scientists remain human beings as well as scientists and no human being’s objectivity can be guaranteed at all times. This is a talk about exploring boundaries however and not a witch hunt against established science, which we indeed hav...... cosmic architect manifested through the rational order revealed by science. That kind of God is largely immune from scientific attack. The next chapter explains what we know about the universe. The age of the universe is 13.7 billion years. The big bang was everywhere. Space is in the universe rather than the universe being in space. There is no centre of the universe. The big bang was everywhere. The oldest galaxies are seen as they were 12 billion years ago. The furthest back in time we can see is the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) at age 380,000 years after the origin, before galaxies began to form. Much information is contained in the tiny systematic fluctuations in temperature of the CMB. These fluctuations are the origin of all structure in the universe including galaxies and stars, planets, and hence life. There is a distance horizon set by the speed of light beyond which we cannot see, currently at 46 billion light years as calculated by Davis and Lineweaver (See ......a fluke. B: The Unique universe. There exists a deep underlying unity in physics (a ‘theory of everything’) which is sought after but not yet achieved. The biofriendliness of the universe is shrugged off as an insignificant coincidence. It is unexpected good fortune that this fix is consistent with life and mind. C: The Multiverse. Davies has given a lot of attention to this theory. He says a growing number of scientists now support some version of a multiverse; either arising from separate big bang origins or in socalled ‘pocket universes’; i.e. different regions of the universe, (presumably well beyond our observability horizon). Life only arises in those universes in which the laws happen to be just right for life, neatly explaining the Goldilocks enigma. As living beings we can only find ourselves in such a universe. Davies, who has given a lot of attention to this theory, notes that many, like him, see this as a very extravagant way to explain bio-friendliness. D: Intelligent Desi...Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter Nov 2006.pdf...scussing the relationships between the basic parameters of modern physics. The uniting of Classical Physics and Quantum Theory is, of course, the “Holy Grail of Physics”. In the second part, Douglas presented his alternative idea to the current “Big Bang” theory by outlining a “Cold Start” to our Universe. This involved the formation of very heavy matter when neutrons are stripped of their electron components after a neutron star is swallowed by a black hole. An energy bolt or ultra-gamma ray galvanised this, creating the initial huge inflation of the universe normally attributed to the Big Bang. First speaker on the second day was Professor Richard Silberstein who is the Foundation Professor of the Brain Science Institute at Swinburne University, Melbourne. He is also Honorary Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Howard Florey Institute of Medical Research. His topic was the interface of...”. The Dalai Lama had, at the age of 20, been taught a form of cosmology known as Abidharma which he found has too many contradictions including a flat Earth whereas he already knew the Earth is round. He takes seriously the modern theory of the big bang, with the temperature decreasing rapidly to the point where elements could form while space expanded. “Thus all of space, time matter and energy as we know and experience them came into being from this fireball of matter and radiation”. He refer...culation about the origin, he says: “I am not subject to the professional and ideological constraints of a radically materialist worldview. In Buddhism the universe is seen as infinite and beginningless, so I am quite happy to venture beyond the big bang and speculate about possible states of affairs before it”. There are quite a few cosmologists today who like to at least speculate on this and even on a cyclic universe. Consciousness Not surprisingly, a substantial portion of the book deals wit...Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter May 2014.pdf...cond book, The Particle At The End Of The Universe, is about the hunt for and discovery of the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider. He is also featured in a TED talk and has a number of videos freely available in YouTube, to be found by searching for his name. From Eternity To Here follows the familiar route of multitudes of others having been written about time, incorporating a view of the history of human measurement of time, the evolution of the universe from its inception in the Big Bang and discussions of black holes and wormholes. Carroll’s approach, however, is refreshing. While conceding that we have no idea of what time actually is, he offers entropy as being the rationale for the existence of time in the universe, from its very beginning and forever on. In the prologue to the book Carroll recognises that not everyone agrees with such views. He writes that an unnamed professor of physics was very disparaging of his ideas, referring to them as being dumb and nonsensical......ing to the arrow of time, Carroll explains how time can be thought as having directions, the future moving away from the Big Bang while the past is back towards the Big Bang. He notes that the Big Bang was the time of total order in the visible universe – there are not many ways all the matter and energy in the universe could then be packed together. This was a state of very low entropy, low disorder. Now, some 13.789 billion years after the Big Bang our universe has a much higher level of disorder, a higher entropy – and it will continue to become more and more disordered. Carroll argues that this increase in entropy is the cause of the arrow of time in our universe, but in other universes time could run backward as he demonstrates with the use of diagrams. If you are unsure about entropy, rest assured that this book explains what it is, with the use of more diagrams, very well. The announcement of the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating was a major surprise t...... that anything can be spontaneously created: be it a subatomic particle or even an aware, thinking brain (such a probability is described as a Boltzmann brain). After all, there is infinite space and infinite time for this to happen. Perhaps less an extreme thought to contemplate may be the idea that a quantum fluctuation could spontaneously release a huge amount of energy from which matter and a universe such as ours forms. This, Carroll, states, is precisely how our universe did form: the Big Bang was the result of such an event. Considering this, if our universe formed from a quantum fluctuation in a de Sitter space, then more universes could have formed …. and will continue to be formed. Our visible universe, according to Carroll, is but one of an infinite number of universes that have formed and will be formed, eternally. They will not all be the same. Some will have laws of physics just as in this universe, others will not. That, he says, means that carbon based life may be possi...book. A fine writer of science, Carroll’s reference notes contained much detail of interest and his 10 bibliography pages provide a complete background to follow up, should you desire. I can highly recommend this book. When you hear someone say that time didn’t exist before the Big Bang, smile quietly and accept that the Big Bang just signalled a clock being started, a clock that had its roots in eternity and which will continue forever.Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter November 2008.pdf... discernible metaphysical implications not yet paralleled in the macro-universe. Turning to astrophysics he reviewed the Big Bang theory with its expanding universe of galaxies, and the challenges surrounding this concept, also considering its similarities to, and differences from, metaphysical ideas such as Christian and Hindu creation beliefs. While the Big Bang theory is currently overwhelmingly accepted, there are many strange anomalies, and David drew an analogy between its status and that ...f subatomic theory a century ago. He enlarged on these anomalies relating to each of the three scientific pillars of the Big Bang theory – cosmic microwave background radiation, the red shift in the spectra of galaxies and the composition of the elem...posed answer to the puzzle of why the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating rather than slowing after the Big Bang, while Dark Matter addresses the problem of missing gravitational mass within the universe, required to maintain the tig...Thesophy-Science Group Newsletter September 2009.pdfENDLESS UNIVERSE - BEYOND THE BIG BANGA Book by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok There has been considerable disquiet expressed of late, including in popular scientific journals, concerning the unsatisfactory nature of the Big Bang model with the arbitrary nature of creation from nowhere with the equally arbitrary introduction of matter and its resulting rapid inflationary expansion (with closely spaced nearby particles separating at speeds greater than that of light) and then an equally arbitrary cutoff to terminate the expansion whe...position. For many years it was hoped by many, especially theosophists, that the current expansion rate of the universe would be found to be slowing down at a sufficient rate to lead to a future contraction to a ‘big crunch’ followed by another ‘big bang’ in a continuing cyclic process. The initial very rapid expansion rate of the universe decreased gradually due to mutual gravitational attraction between the galaxies. Prior to 1998, the current rate of decrease was a matter for speculation and ....... At this stage the brane separation decreases very slowly. Eventually the energy curve associated with the springlike force dips to negative values and the branes approach at an increasing rate leading to a big crunch, followed immediately by a big bang as the branes separate again. This is a more sophisticated version of the story told earlier in the book of the “crunch” followed immediately by a new “bang”, thus beginning a new cycle. There is a two-page spread in the book representing THE CY...brief comments accompany some of the pictures. (It takes a stretch of imagination to contemplate flat branes as representing the universe). In the first picture the branes are smooth when “the branes are empty and flat a trillion years after the big bang”. In the next 3 diagrams, the branes are shown increasingly wrinkled. Then comes an almost flat pair with the description “wrinkled branes collapse, create slightly non-uniform hot plasma, and rebound”. [This is the collapse-bang-rebound situati......forever. Einstein died in 1957. “George Gamov was responsible for combining the Friedman-Lemaitre model with the laws of atomic and nuclear physics to create the big bang model. He was sensitive to the issue of whether the big bang was truly the beginning of the universe. In 1952 he published a beautifully written popular book called ‘The Creation of the Universe’. The title of the book suggests that Gamov favoured the idea of a universe created from nothing, but the story between the covers makes clear that he thinks otherwise”. Hoyle, along with Bondi and Gold, introduced, in the 1940’s, a so-called ‘steady state’ model with eternal exponentially increasing expansion, and continuous creation of new matter to maintain a constant density.. Hoyle was a forceful public speaker and there was a long battle with Gamov, fought largely in public. Hoyle coined the term “Big Bang” (derisively) in the course of a talk on the BBC. He was anti-religious and thought that the model was too close...ic background radiation (in 1965) upended the steady state model, Hoyle’s caricature had become the standard model.”. The background radiation was discovered in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson who at first thought the radiation coming from everywhere was caused by a fault in their specially designed very sensitive aerial. However, they happened to meet Dicke and Peebles who, with their colleagues Roll and Wilkinson, were planning a search for universal low temperature radiation as a relic of the big bang. This was obviously the source of the assumed noise in the aerial. The two teams arranged to publish successive papers. “The discovery of the cosmic background radiation became widely interpreted in the minds of cosmologists, physicists and the general public as the final proof that the universe had a definite beginning. This is how it is described in nearly every popular account today from elementary school text books t o graduate school courses”. . In 1992 the Cosmic Background Explorer s...