Black Holes, Cyclic Universes & The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

(The following is a conversation between myself and my good friend, the lovely & brilliant poet, writer and philosopher Maya Muturi)

Late night reading on cyclic models of the universe and "The Big Bounce" theory. Nietzsche, it seems, was onto something when he suggested eternal return. Particularly intrigued by [Roger Penrose’s] Conformal Cyclic Cosmology theory: there's an implicit idea that black holes are the pre big-bang state; a state of accumulation without expansion where eventually, under its own weight, matter collapses into a singularity that would then explode into a new (extra) (or intra?) universe. If this is right, black holes aren't just portals to otherverses [as claimed by Stephen Hawking], they are creators. Also interesting, if the cyclic model is right over the Big Bang Theory, the universe, because of increasing entropy with every cycle, will deplete itself and become... nothing? •Whistles self out•

A:

This theory and it's implications are so crazy it gives me a brain freeze. So: basically at the end-stage of our universe, black holes, after engulfing everything, will themselves evaporate in Hawking radiation, and massless photons and gravitons will remain, and after that, spacetime will cease to exist (because light and electromagnetic waves are not governed by time and space as time dilates at their speed according to special relativity), and everything is halted until matter starts getting dense and hot and singularity is achieved and the next big bang happens and a new “aeon” begins. Interesting.

I found it intriguing that even after black holes evaporate, and even after spacetime is shattered, matter still remains, even though only in the form of massless gravitons and photons (light). But instead of a new big bang where a new universe begins all over again, I would hope that this would be an entry into an alternate (not necessarily new) universe where spacetime does not exist or at least behaves differently from ours. Because of the centrality of black holes to understanding the universe and the fact that the speed of light is the only constant thing in the universe as well as its influence on spacetime, I feel like when our universe eventually becomes nothing, we'll go into this massless, timeless and infinite place. I guess for me this type of universe conforms to the one in which angels (made of light according to Islam) and God (allusions to God as light or related to light abound in major scriptures) as well as heaven exist. And that whether through blackholes or not that’s where we’ll eventually go. I guess I'm faithful. The idea of infinitely cyclic eons that keep on ending and beginning for eternity seems tragic, sad, meaningless.

I wonder, though, how these cyclic universes conform to one another. ‘Cause that's not clear in the theory. Like how different/similar is the previous aeon from the next one. Is everything in the previous universe going to repeat itself exactly as it happened (as Nietzsche claimed) or it's a new universe entirely with new events and matter et cetera?

M:

I think whether cyclic universes are the same or different every time depends on the transference event from one aeon to another. The ways it's theorized the cycles can happen is a) spatial collapse, where matter contracts into space singularities then explodes and expands – and this continues ad infinitum or b) compositional change – such as the Hawking evaporation – where matter returns to a pure, or if you want to apply faith to it, a God state and is comprised of only photons and gravitons. From this perfect state, creation happens again and the process repeats poetically and perpetually. Time and space are not necessarily altered.

Thinking about it computationally, if there were even slight variations to the original set - structurally say or compositionally – if the initial conditions were not the same, because, for example, they are altered during collapse or evaporation, the resulting universes would be different.

I like this model better than standard cosmology, better than the Big Bang suggestion, because it means we're not a freak event, that if there are variables and they are all true, our instance of the universe happens, that there are other mathematical sets with probabilities for different, unimaginable universes. I don't believe anthropocentric models of the universe – we can't possibly be the reason for it, or at the center of it, have you gone outside? – but I think the cyclic model would be comforting because it means our current universe will always exist in probable time, even when it ends. This thought has wondrous possibilities, you're right.

A:

The idea that the universe is not anthropocentric unsettles me. It makes my Ego— it's Pompous Highness—feel like a deflated balloon to imagine that I live in a world where on the ladder of biological life I am on the same level as bacteria. Other intelligent life does exist, of course, but we humans are the most special. We are important because we are conscious.

There's evidence to suggest that numerous "coincidences" in the early conditions of the universe led to predetermine not just the development of our universe but that of conscious life itself. This argument is based on the scientifically proven idea of fine-tuning of the physical quantities that occur in nature by the causative acts of a higher purpose (Intelligent Design), a fine-tuning which the Principle argues to bind together – through a specific and unnatural process – critical components of nature at critically set distances, forces, directions etcetera by means of weak and strong gravitational and electromagnetic forces. And according to the argument this fine-tuning had to occur at the early stages of the formation of the universe, unlike the more directionless formulation of the Darwinian development of life.

Speaking of old Darwin, while biologists are increasingly moving further towards directionless evolution, physicists seem to favour models of cosmic history that move towards increasing order and that go against the general entropic tendency of the universe. Perhaps this could this also be true for the human body?

But at the end of the day theories such as the Multiverse and the cyclic universe theory, try to scientifically interpret singular events in the history of the cosmos, events that belong to the realm of religion and philosophy. But I get the sense that the more we know about the physical universe the more we glimpse at the miraculous.

I imagine why you'd favour a cyclical model over the Big Bang. You can’t bear the "lightness" of being in an ephemeral, Kunderan world—I may not have understood his ideas well, I suspect—in which life happens only once and dissipates all too quickly into thin air. Do you long for the infinity of existence that Nietzsche's eternal return and a cyclical universe offer?

M:

Actually, like Frida Kahlo, I hope never to return. I'm not tortured by the ephemeral any longer. I have come to accept that everything ends. I have nothing to do with it and it has nothing to do with me. And Kundera is wrong. There is nothing unbearable or light about being.

Maybe life is easier than all this. Maybe what you think and what you believe is what is true. Maybe there's no absolute theory, no incorrect idea, no collective experience. Maybe life is personalized VR. Maybe we are both right. I certainly hope you are. I hope you are important, that you matter more than f****** bacteria. I hope there's rationale, design, a director. I hope however you look at it, you're the thing in the middle.

A:

Yes. I—the conscious human—am in the middle. At least I should be. However egocentric that sounds. Islam, and other Abrahamic religions—and probably many other religions as well—maintain that God has favored man above all His other creations. I’m reminded of what Kendrick Lamar says in Section 80: "I'm not on the outside looking in. I'm not on the inside looking out. I'm in the dead centre looking around."

Everything in the universe exists in a balanced duality. Light and darkness, good and evil, male and female... This too must be true for being. It must be equally and simultaneously "light" and "heavy." There’s both hardship and ease in proportion. Some days it might feel ephemeral; others, never-ending. To some it might dissipate all too quickly, like dust floating in the air. Yet to others it might drag eternally, like the hands of a clock on a prison wall. It might all depend on how each individual lives and the circumstances of their lives. To me the universe – on the macrocosmic level – might not be cyclical, but it might be in the microcosms of our individual lives. Like when we cycle between life and death when we sleep at night, each day beginning anew, the night a sort of 'black hole' from which a new 'big bang' happens at each day break; when we become entirely new people because we are moved deeply by a profound work of art or by a sudden and unexpected glimpse at the spiritual, the sublime; when we can date a new chapter in our lives from reading, as Thoreau said he did when he read the books he valued the most; or when we come close to death and feel as though we have obtained a new lease of life, and the season of our life changes, like autumn into winter, and we drop old leaves so that we may prepare ourselves to grow new, different ones. In our one brief life, we might get numerous deaths and numerous new lives, like a cyclical universe.

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