By: John Silva – February 2019
Come with me, come back in time. Back before cell phones, airplanes and the pony express. Back before the tall ships and knights in shining armor, before the Pax Romana and the Valley of the Kings. Before Lucy and the stone age, before when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before there was any life on earth, back to when the earth was just a cloud of stardust swirling in space. Back before there were stars, supernovas and black holes, when space was empty and dark. Back to before, there was light, time and gravity, to the very beginning, when there was absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Not an atom, not a quark, nothing. There wasn’t even a void, because to have a void there must be space and there was no space then. There was nothing, absolutely nothing!
I tried to think about what it would feel like to experience nothing. This nothing could not be seen because there were no stars to illuminate it. What would it have been like to be there when there was no “there,” when there was nada, zip, nothing at all? There was no space… just absolute nothingness.
And yet, here we are, you and I, spinning round as we orbit the sun on this unbelievable planet. The oceans and the land teem with millions and millions of different living things, from those enormous seagoing leviathans, the largest living thing which has ever existed, to those billions and billions of tiny one-celled animals floating in the brine or causing illnesses. How is this possible?
How could this incomprehensibly vast universe and this tiny speck we call Earth, with all of its varied life forms, come from nothing? How do we believe in the impossible when such a belief itself seems impossible? How can we believe in a Big Bang that seemingly appeared for no reason, with no explanation of its origins or source? Where was the Big Bang before it “banged”? Was it in the nowhere next to the nothing?
How can something that isn’t possible give birth to something possible? No matter how you examine the possibilities, it just doesn’t seem feasible. Yet, here we are. It’s a conundrum, with seemingly no answer. It’s the chicken and the egg.
But wait, perhaps we have been misled. Could what we are being told be incorrect? Could it all be a falsehood… a lie? Maybe the universe didn’t spontaneously burst into existence from nothing. Is there another possibility, any alternative, or any other options? Is there anything more plausible?
Perhaps life was inadvertently left here when a being or organism from a more advanced civilization sneezed, passed gas, or defecated billions of years ago? Maybe life on earth exists because a comet smashed into Jupiter, blasting millions of tons of debris into space, with a single rock carrying a tiny microbe hidden in a crevice. This microbe survived the 500-million-mile journey through temperatures approaching absolute zero and, against all odds and millions of other choices, chose to land on Earth.
Or, maybe a spaceship from another galaxy traveled millions of light-years to Earth in search of the perfect place to replicate itself. These thoughts, improbable as they may be, do seem to make a bit more sense than the idea that the universe and everything in it came from nothing.
Or, maybe life wasn’t brought here from another galaxy, but from another universe. Perhaps it was a universe that existed before the big bang… perhaps it has always existed.
What if things in this other universe are vastly different from how things are in our universe? Perhaps, in this alternate realm, an alien possesses superpowers, knowing everything and having the ability to be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously.
Perhaps this being with its superpowers can simply think things into existence – galaxies, black holes, planets, mountain ranges, plants and animals capable of self-replicating. Picture forests filled with millions of Monarch butterflies, ocean of whales and lobsters, herds of tyrannosaurus rexes and prides of lions, all conjured into being by this all knowing presence.
What if time doesn’t exist in this other universe? In that case, everyone would live forever, with no need for procreation.
Perhaps, such a great leader should have a name. Let us call him “God” because he is the creator of our universe. And the other universe where his presence resides, let us call that “heaven.”
Have you ever wondered, if baby turtles and baby tigers come from adult turtles and adult tigers, then are there baby oxygen atoms and baby hydrogen atoms that come from adult hydrogen atoms and adult oxygen atoms? If not, where do they come from? And if matter cannot be created or destroyed, how did the big bang bring them into existence. Whoops, of course, that never happened because the whole universe was packed inside the basketball before it exploded. And besides that, how come those fourteen-billion-year-old atoms are still spinning? Come on, what do you know that’s fourteen thousand years old and still moving, let alone fourteen billion years? That’s right, nothing. Nothing from nothing makes nothing. Sounds a bit like my last relationship.