Silver Hammer Man

Inflation is an important topic to address.  Any model needs to include it, as the evidence from the CMB makes the fact of it generally accepted, yet it requires several leaps of faith to do so.  For that very short period of time everything exceeded the speed of light, and then it ceased abruptly.  I’ve not studied it very deeply at all yet but am still intrigued by how such a force or impulse could exist and then cease so momentarily, and even when the force subsided the speed thus imparted to all masses should surely have made the whole lot explode.

The obvious retort is that as everything was so close, gravity was very strong and reined in a runaway expansion.  But this was before the laws had settled down: and anyway I can’t use gravity to explain itself.  Fortunately.

The quick answer is that during inflation the shape of the universe was unfolding.  I would rather call it a deployment, like the unfurling of solar panels, antenna arrays and instruments on a newly-launched spacecraft.  Pre-deployment, it fits into its launch shroud and has been given spin of about 1Hz for stability, and post-deployment is 3-axis stabilised, often around a gyro system using magnetic bearings for contact-free rotation, the flywheels spinning at around 20k rpm I seem to recall.  But for the 4-D toroidal universe the idea of an inflating flotation ring is also apt.

Sam has already dubbed the Big Bang the ‘Big Spin’.  Well first came the release of the enormous bubble of energy in an unstable form, and immediately after, its inflation to a form which gave the universe its shape and stability, which included conversion of most of the energy into rotational potential energy.  This model requires mass to carry moment of inertia, so would have to include that mass condensed by this stage.  So in a flash we have a 4-D flywheel of rotating spacetime with which masses engage to store energy losslessly.  Masses can’t exceed the speed of light, and electromagnetic radiation flies around at the speed of light (or would if the medium wan’t still opaque).  What is the nature of the engagement of spacetime with EM energy and mass?

Maxwell’s equations are cited as the four most significant ever.  He also determined that visible light is EM radiation because his speed calculation matched its measured speed, and thereby predicted other forms of EM energy, verified soon after by Helmholtz and Hertz.  ε₀ and μ₀ define the spacetime engagement relationship of the electric and magnetic components respectively, and in EM radiation these components can’t exist separately.  But how does mass engage with spacetime?  It has to be fundamental, and we can recall Maxwell found that 1/c² = ε₀μ₀.  Sure thing, mass can’t go faster than c.  The harder it is pushed, the more its inertia increases to oppose further acceleration.  Spacetime has a grip on all masses, noticeable only as their speed becomes relativistic.

At first I thought c was a barrier to the rotating universe idea, as a radius would be reached where v = c, and spoil the party. However it is clearly central to it.  This is a big relief, to consider c as a central property of the rotation rather than a barrier to it.  c is central to everything.

There are other fundamental properties of spacetime.  It is elastic, so the elasticity will have a definable value.  Yet it is also apparently unbreakable.  This links to another mystery I need an answer to – how is it that mass, which so readily converts to energy in an ordinary star (OK very slowly) or in the accretion disc around a black hole (up to 10% conversion I believe) becomes so stable once it has entered the event horizon?  The simple answer is that whether it is in mass or energy form it is still equivalent stuff that contributes to the black hole effective mass.  But energy doesn’t show properties of mass elsewhere.  Interesting things, black holes.