Small Worlds

This is something that boggles my mind.  If you take everything that exists and compress it down to the size of an atom, you would have the universe before the big bang.  At the moment of the big bang, in the first one billionth of a second, that atom would increase to a size that would equal that of our sun.  I don't understand how scientists have come to this hypothesis, but according to the Discovery channel this is how everything began.  Now, you would think that once this has been agreed upon by the world's biggest brains, that they would put their calculators and chalkboards away and call it a day.  Not so fast, what came before the big bang?  All the scientists stop in their tracks and go back to the drawing board.  Where did that atom sized seed of existence come from?  Scribble, scribble, scratch, scratch.  One scientist says, "Must have come from an alternate universe."  All the other scientists nod their heads in agreement.

If there is one, then there must be more.  There is a multitude of alternate universes.  And there are over ten dimensions.  (???)  Unfortunately, humans can only see four: Width, height, depth, and time.  How can there be more?  Or better still, how do we know that there are more?  Well, we know that because of something called the string theory.  String theory breaks down the atom to electrons and quarks forming one-dimensional oscillating lines.  One-dimensional?!!  This makes no sense at all.  How can something have height, but  no width nor depth?  Two-dimensional is strange enough, but I can accept this if I think about the image on a television screen.  It would have to be a frozen image because of the two dimensions, time is not one.  To only have one dimension stretches my imagination to the breaking point.  Even if that dimension is time.  How can you prove time exists without using other dimensions?  Can't have clock, they're three dimensional, and will not exist in a time only dimension.

I wish I could understand this stuff.  Either that, or I wish I never seen the Discovery channel.  I never thought about quarks before.  Isn't there four quarks to a gallon?  Or is that the noise a duck makes?  Quarks and string theory and alternate universes and multiple dimensions hurt my head to think about.  This stuff may be fun for Stephen Hawking, but not for me.  Speaking of Hawking, he has recently revised his brief history of time to state that not only does black holes suck up all matter, they also gobble up time.  (Ouch.  Cerebral overload.)  If a black hole absorbs time to a standstill, then how can it move through the time stream?  If a black hole moves through time, then wouldn't what the black hole has consumed also travel through time?

I have no idea where I'm going with this other than to say, "I think in the future I will have to avoid the Discovery channel and go back to the DIY network."  Installing a wet bar, I can get my mind around.  That does not scare me.   I'd rather learn how to design a liquor cabinet, than hear about CERN.  CERN is a place in Europe that is trying to create a black hole.  So if you wake up one morning and find that our planet has been sucked into a timeless void, you will know that CERN has succeeded in its experiment.