*First published in the December 1999 issue of Necroscope News

A NEW STEADY STATE THEORY?

I am a layman, so this will be in layman's terms.

It may seem a strange subject for my web page, but that's because I want to get it down on paper before someone else has similar thoughts. Also, it may shed a little light on my Mobius Strip fixation, the way I've used the Strip in my fiction...

1. This may be arguable:

The universe has a boundary. This boundary is the speed of light. Therefore the speed of light defines the age and size of the universe. Since in "the beginning" there was nothing -- not even space or time -- before the Big Bang, then quite obviously (given that light spreads out in every direction from a source) the diameter of the universe is its age multiplied by twice the speed of light. And, working backwards, its diameter divided by 2 X lightspeed equals its age.

2. In order to explain the concept that the universe has this boundary or limitation:

It is an established scientific fact that galaxies as they "recede" from us in every direction throughout the universe are moving at different speeds in relation to their distance. Those galaxies that are furthest away are moving faster; indeed, they are speeding up. Since they can't slow down because the gravity of the universe is too "weak" to affect them, they will continue to speed up, presumably limitlessly. Except: they cannot exceed the speed of light, not in this universe. Hence my theoretical boundary. And no matter where in the universe a body achieves the speed of light, that place is the boundary of our universe, beyond which lies mystery.

3. Another scientific fact:

The mass of a physical object as it approaches the speed of light increases dramatically. At the speed of light itself an object's mass is infinite -- as great as the universe that produced it! -- which is why the universe is no longer able to contain it. But here we've been talking about mass not weight. Weight is the product of the mass of a body and the acceleration acting upon it. How heavy, then, is an infinite mass when it's moving at the ultimate velocity? (Heavy!)

4. Let's look at black holes, if indeed they exist.

The gravity of a black hole is so great that even light cannot escape it. The escape velocity is such that light is simply too slow. How did such gravity come to be? (Perhaps the collapse of a star to a point where its weight was so great it fell through the "skin" of the universe.) That's one theory, but not mine. I think that a black hole is the vortex left behind after a body has achieved light speed. We'll try to tie some of these things together eventually...

5. Velocity (speed) and time.

Not only does mass increase with velocity, but time slows down. (Relativity.) At the moment an object -- no longer solid, but reduced to its atomic constituents -- achieves the speed of light it crosses the boundary and would then seem to depart our universe. I'll explain later. But in that same "moment" time is frozen and the vortex left by the departure lasts indefinitely. We have a black hole, and a hole with the incredible gravitic attraction of the object that passed through it.

6. The shape of our universe.

Speculation is rife as to the "shape" of our universe. I'm not talking about our solar system or even our galaxy but everything, the universe. Because it's there (here) it has to have a shape.

What if the universe had a Mobius Strip shape? The boundary is the surface of the strip at any and every point, and in the time dimension the surface of the strip is NOW. Obviously, (look at any Mobius Strip diagram) if we were to pass through the boundary wall of the universe we'd exit at the point farthest away from us... And the point in our space-time continuum which is farthest away -- farthest away from us now as it was a million years ago and will be in a million years time -- is the Big Bang itself, before which there was nothing. The lightspeed boundary wasn't "merely" the edge of space but also the rim of time. For as we've seen, time stops at the speed of light. And any object passing beyond that boundary must emerge ... where else but at the Big Bang itself. Indeed, in my theory it IS the Big Bang.

7. The lack of gravity.

Many scientists are puzzled by the universe's apparent lack of weight. Where the hell is all the missing gravity? I am a layman, not a scientist. But if my "whacky" ideas should just happen to be nearly correct, the lack of gravity (there's only 10% or less of what there should be to maintain the universe) can "easily" be explained away. The gravity is there in all those fast-fleeing galactic bodies on the rim of the universe which are gradually approaching light-speed. And as for why the universe is speeding up the further out we go, that's because it's being drawn out by the vestigial gravity of all those near-infinite masses gone before.

8. The "Expansion" Theory, which in scientific circles has it that in the first smallest possible fraction of a second our universe went from sub-microscopic to football-size, and then as the universe developed its laws of physics slowed down a little (but not a lot, not when we consider the speed of light.)

This seems to me a very close model for my theory. For if everything that breaks through the space-time boundary of our universe at any given time at the speed of light ends up back at the Big Bang, what effect would that have? Well picture it: an infinitely heavy stream of nucleic particles, all appearing simultaneously in a limited space (indeed in space which only a "moment" ago didn't exist at all), with nowhere else to go but outwards? And not only that, but all of this travelling at or even "faster" than lightspeed?

Expansion? Absolutely...!

9.  So then, forgive the exclamation marks and italics, but I am after all a Science Fiction writer and given to dramatics. I think that my theory -- while there's no mathematical proof for any of it (not that I'm aware of or capable of following) -- is intriguing if nothing else. And if it's easily disproven scientifically, well, so be it.    

What it amounts to is a kind of Steady State theory which takes into account the Big Bang. What it says is that the universe is self-perpetuating, and that the Big Bang is happening now and always will be but on the other side of the space-time continuum.

What will be has been...

Thanks for your time.

Brian Lumley, November 1999