Singularity

From what was once nothing,

now is everything.




Every story has it's beginning, and as I listen to the rain rap the backs of my fellow Angelenos, I can't seem to constrain my mind to this celestial plane for much longer. For beyond the millions of billions of water molecules that entrap us in our cumulonimbus microcosm, the cosmic storm of existence rages on with a power that the collective consciousness of this planet cannot fathom. And so, I begin my journey into the blogosphere by exploring the beginning of it all: Singularity. From nothing to something.

Singularity. The word runs through my mind like a broken record, taunting my intellect with what I know I will never fully be able to grasp. Singularity is the story of us all. It is the beginning and end of everything. Whereas it is fanciful to write in such vague, enigmatic tones, I mean each keystroke in a very literal sense. Singularity: The rise and fall of everything that ever was, and ever will be.


It would be easy to ramble on about the ironic notion of the singularity cliche- born alone, die alone and so on. Given my recent mood, such a post would be a fitting outlet for an emotional tirade. I am, of course, not talking about the notions of singularity and loneliness in social situations, but rather a singularity as it pertains to the wonderful realm of astro-physics.


A naked singularity is the womb from which we all were born. And while my great appreciation for the mothers on this planet is most deserving of a post, for now, I am referring to the universal womb- the universal conditions as they were mere milliseconds before the Big Bang.



The singularity is defined as a single point in space-time where gravity causes matter to become infinitely dense, occupying an infinitesimal space, and causes both space and time to become infinitely distorted.


Read that again.


One more time....


OK- Lets get into this.

To break this down, lets take it one facet at a time. A singularity is a single, infinitesimal point in space-time. The concept of Space-time is a direct consequence of Albert Einstein's generally accepted Special Theory of Relativity*, although it is actually the culmination of the works of a long line of scientists dating all the way back to Sir Isaac Newton, and further still to Galileo. Through Einstein's revolutionary theory, we were able to realize, among many other things, that space and time are not two separate entities, but are intertwined and dependent upon one another. Thus, just as space can be distorted, so can time, and therefore so can space-time.

*(Forgive me for citing wikipedia, but these articles have the basic tenets of what we're talking about here without reading like a Physics text book.)


So we have space-time taken care of, now let's pick one specific point. Hold a penny in the palm of your hand. If you your budget doesn't permit such frivolous activities, imagine that you're holding a new, shiny penny in the palm of your hand. The penny is going to represent our point of space-time. The problem now is that our singularity is infinitesimal, or infinitely small.


Let's now imagine that we cut the penny in half. We throw one of the halves away and cut the remaining half in half. We throw one of those halves away and cut the remaining in half. To reach a point that is infinitely small, we'd have to continue this process....infinitely. Forever. Even when our penny reaches a size that is one billionth of what it used to be, that point would still be infinitely larger than a singularity.


So we're dealing with a very small amount of space here. Let's tackle the notion of infinite density. Density refers to the amount of mass per unit of volume. For all intents and purposes, lets imagine our full sized penny again. Look around you. Imagine cramming everything your room (even the air) into an area the size of your penny. Now imagine cramming the entire building you're sitting in into your penny. Now your city. Your continent. The Earth. The Sun. The Milky Way. Even once we manage to fit our entire galaxy into the penny, remember that the singularity is infinitely denser than even that, and that the penny is actually infinitely smaller than the one we hold in our hands.


All of this information has been circling my mind for some time now, ever since I began reading my Father's most prized novel, A Brief History of Time by Dr. Stephen Hawking, while on a cruise over Christmas. The aforementioned tenets of singularities are absolutely remarkable to consider, but given the preposterous nature of all things infinite, it would take an infinite amount of time for me to consider all of the implications of what we just talked about. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time and there's still more to get to.


My favorite notion of the nature of these singularities is by far the one that I understand the least. The distortion of Space-time. As previously discussed, space and time are palpable, interdependent entities, malleable in nature, and subject to the effects of the force that brings this whole thing together, gravity.

Though we are in essence talking about the moment of creation, and thus dealing with a naked singularity, this concept is easier understood when dealing with covered singularities. The only difference between a naked and covered singularity being that a covered singularity is blanketed and surrounded by a sphere that represents the absolute point of no return for any matter, radiation, or electromagnetism. Once crossing into this sphere, the force of gravity from the singularity becomes so great that not even electromagnetic waves in the form of light can escape it's grasp. We call this spherical threshold The Event Horizon, and the singularity at it's core a Black Hole.


The event horizon is a place where even the most fundamental laws of physics are completely null and void, and can be thrown out the window. It is a place where almost anything is possible, and a place that we very literally will never be able to fully understand.


The notion of almost anything being possible and our absolute inability to fully understand what happens once the horizon is crossed are connected. As previously mentioned, once the Event Horizon is breached, the astounding force of gravity becomes so great, that not even light can escape it's grasp. It suffices to say then that once an observer, or object crosses the event horizon, that no form of communication, and even more so, the observer or object, can ever be transmitted back past the boundary of that horizon.


In fact, to a distant, stationary observer of a person crossing the horizon, the person doing the crossing wouldn't even appear to move. Once they begin to cross the threshold, to the distant observer, their form would freeze in whatever position they happened to be in while crossing the threshold, their light waves gradually becoming elongated, forcing their frozen image to become redshifted to the point that they simply disappear.


Though for some amount of time, the person crossing the threshold may even appear to be retrievable, you, the observer are looking directly into the past. For while the person's image is being transmitted via lightwaves from where they once were to your eyes, the actual person has been catapulted through space and time, hurtling towards the perpetual blackness of the singularity at the core.


This notion of space-time distortion, among many of the other absolutely absurd concepts of singularities, black holes, and event horizons, lends itself to truly astounding hypothetical situations. The ONLY thing that is guaranteed once you cross the threshold is that you will be pulled into the singularity.

Due to the extreme distortion of space and time though, there is no telling with definition exactly when you enter the singularity, or exactly where the singularity actually is. Given the extreme folding and distortion of time itself, it is actually conceivable that you can enter the singularity before you ever crossed the event horizon. Add in factors such as the photon sphere, where light is actually bent around the singularity, it is perfectly plausible that you, as you enter the event horizon, can actually watch yourself be catapulted toward the singularity from a 3rd person point of view. As Dr. Robert Nemiroff puts it, "You can actually see the back of your head".


I hadn't planned on writing a full history of singularity when I was bored at work and daydreamed onto the subject, and this blog doesn't even scratch the surface of the surface of the matter, but it is important for me to close with the point I had initially started with. This is where we came from. Merely milliseconds before the Big Bang, everything you can see, feel, touch, or hear was literally together as one. Together in an infinitely small, infinitely dense, infinitely awesome point, somewhere in this plane of existence. We are all made of the same stuff. Fourteen Billion years ago, the very particles that make up our very own bodies were thrown from one infinitely tiny point, propelled by fusion, fission, electromagnetism, and gravity to travel at the speed of light, to fall privy to circumstance, and to drop us where we are today.


Our universe has been forever expanding, since the beginning of time. Yet some believe that the force of gravity, ironically, the weakest of the four cosmic forces, will again take reign of us all. And one day the expansion and division of the universe will gradually come to a close and the period of contraction will begin. And though our world will have long since been expired, our Earthly particles just dust and echoes of a distant past, I quite fancy the time when we will all be rejoined, once more together as one . . .


in Singularity.