So, the current debate in astrophysics is around this theory of dark matter. You see, we noticed that large galaxies seem not to follow Newton’s laws of motion once you get far enough from the center of the galaxy. Newton’s laws would state that the further an object is from the center of the galaxy, the slower its orbit should be due to the balance between the reduced gravitional force and the inertial forces attempting to fling the solar system out of the galaxy and into deep space. The theory is that there is dark matter in the galaxy that adds additional gravitational force to the overall gravity of the galaxy, but which is not detectable by us far flung human beings. While this theory may be correct, there is another theory that hasn’t gotten nearly as much play time, but which I find very intriguing due to a couple follow on theories it creates.

The alternate theory is that gravity itself does not dimish with distance infinitely, but instead once you reach a certain distance from an object, the gravity tails off to a constant. This theory was just a theory and had nothing to support it until recently. Then another scientist created a system of math called TeVeS (for Tensor/Vector/Scalar) that suppossedly explains this phenomena in galaxies without the need of dark matter from a mathematical perspective (the original theory just said gravity tails off to a constant at distance, TeVeS gives the reason *why* gravity might tail off at a distance).

So, why do I like this theory (which, after reading up on dark matter, I have to admit that dark matter certainly sounds more likely, but for the sake of argument I’m going to outline what I came up with anyway)? Because the basic idea that a force in our universe might exert a diminishing force over distance, and then settle in to a not so dimishing force once a certain threshold in distance has been reached caused me to muse over the possibility that all the forces in our universe are actually the same force tailing off multiple times. That quantum force would tail off and become strong nuclear force, strong nuclear force would tail off and become weak nuclear force, that weak nuclear force would tail off to electromagnetic force, which would then tail off to gravity, which would then tail off to something else (I’ll get to that in a minute). Think of this kind of like those Russian dolls where as you take apart one doll, there’s another doll inside. You take that apart and there’s another underneath that. This sort of explanation for all the forces in our universe has a certain elegance that makes it hard to just throw away ;-)

This then lead me to a different theory entirely. One that’s sure to hackle more than a few feathers. It’s a theory for *why* the big bang happened. To be succinct about it, the big bang is the result of a scientist in a white lab coat performing an experiment in a particle accelerator in a universe that we couldn’t begin to understand nor interact with because the basic particles in that universe are all massive point singularities that result from a universe such as ours collapsing. Their electrons and protons are entire collapsed universes to us. Our gravitational force would tail off to their equivelant of quantum force. Our largest galaxy clusters would be seen as quantum particles. A single solar system would be so insignificant to that scientist as to be undetectable. A single person on a single planet in a single solar system saying “Hi” would never result in any sort of detectable phenomena that they could observe. It would explain why we can’t see anything outside of our universe (and in fact would have an impact on dark matter theory since our universe would no doubt be impacted by the presence of universe sized electrons and protons around our exploding electron or proton). It would explain why there was nothing then a big bang. It would explain why we can’t prove God (because we can’t interact with God, we are on different time scales, what we see as billions of years happens so quickly in His universe that the majority of what our universe does is totally undetectable by Him). It also raised the interesting question of whether or not we are creating entire universes with every particle collision experiment we perform. Are we in fact creating life at a smaller than quantum scale that we can’t even detect? Are we creating the same sorts of “where do I come from, and why do I exist?” questions in sentient beings that develop from our experiments? How many layers down might we be? Could our God in fact be another God’s experiment? Could we be 10, or 100 layers down? When we do a particle experiment, could sentient life develop, and over millions of years in their time (and less than a millionth of a second our time) perform their own super collider experiments, and create more layers of life below them?

Bake your noodle on that possibility for a while…