The Deplosion Saga Page 13

  The lecture hall could have been in almost any university in the world. Neutral-colored, wear-resistant carpet nicely offset the laminated cherry wood finish on the row-upon-row of thin-cushioned theater chairs, each of which sported its own annoyingly undersized, tuck-away writing tray.

  The stadium-style seating accommodated over four-hundred people. The monthly Philosophers' Café meetings usually drew a hundred attendees at most. Today, it was standing room only. Attendees filled all of the chairs and spilled into the stairwells leading to the small podium at the front. With any luck, the fire marshal wasn't on duty.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.” Dr. Pratt's amplified voice projected into the depths of the packed hall and foyer from overhead speakers, a voice from the heavens that triggered ripples of "Shhh" throughout the venue. He waited a moment while people settled.

  “Welcome to the Philosophers' Café. Please bear with us while we accommodate the folks in the foyer. It looks like today’s topic, or maybe it's our young guest speaker, is a little more popular than most of our Cafés.” He paused and looked around. He saw very little sense of humor and even less patience on the faces looking back at him.

  Pratt continued, content to be amusing himself. “Due to the overwhelming response to today’s talk, the university has opened up Lecture Theater 3 for overflow seating. It is equipped with state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment that will allow everyone to participate fully in today’s discussion. I repeat, Theater 3, located across the hall, is now open for seating. Would everyone waiting in the foyer please make their way to Theatre 3. Thank you.”

  The PA system cut out and Pratt set the lapel microphone on the podium. He turned to greet Darian and his small entourage approaching the front seats. “Ah, Dr. Leigh. Good to see you.” The two men shook hands. Pratt smiled congenially in an effort to offset Darian’s wariness. “I see you brought some moral support with you.”

  Darian looked back at Greg and Kathy taking their seats in the front row. He scanned the audience for Larry, and was surprised to see him seated some distance back as if he preferred not to be associated with his colleagues. “I’m not sure why you think I would need moral support,” he replied. “I’m going to be discussing physics. Physics is truth, and the truth needs no support from anything other than data.”

  Dr. Pratt considered responding but thought better of it. He noted the hour with some relief. “It's time. Allow me to call this gathering to order.” He picked up the lapel microphone and raised his voice to cut through the background din.

  16

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if we could begin, please.” The crowd took its time settling down.

  “Thank you. I am Dr. Lucius Pratt from the Department of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University.” The polite applause lasted a second or two. “Before I introduce today’s speaker, I would like to reiterate our format and a few rules of order for the Philosophers’ Café series.

  “Dr. Leigh will open our discussion with a short introduction to the topic. Following his introductory remarks, he and I will co-chair two thirty-minute question and answer periods with a fifteen-minute refreshment break between. We have two assistants with microphones stationed in each of the two theaters. If you would like to ask a question, we ask that you raise your hand and let the nearest assistant come to you. Please keep all questions and comments brief so that as many people as possible will have an opportunity to contribute.

  “Similarly, we ask that the answers or rebuttals…” he bowed to Darian, who nodded politely, “…be kept as short and to-the-point as possible. Please frame your questions and comments civilly, respectfully, and intelligibly. To that end, no mathematical equations will be permitted.”

  A number of the attendees chuckled. A few frowned.

  “Today, we present Dr. Darian Leigh, who was accidentally exposed to a DNND lattice infection prior to his birth, giving him extraordinary mental abilities. Using the substantial computational powers of his lattice, he rapidly completed his education and undertook multiple advanced degrees in a variety of scientific fields, including nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and cosmology.

  “Dr. Leigh is also known for his work at Neuro Nano Devices Inc., the company his mother, Dr. Sharon Leigh, co-founded to develop the inSense virtual reality lattice so popular among today’s youth. Much of his work in these areas remains restricted throughout North America and Europe by the FDA and various international security agreements.

  “In recent years, Dr. Leigh has turned his attention from nanotechnology and synthetic biology to pursue the more traditional fields of physics and cosmology. However, his research in that area has been anything but traditional.

  “We are very pleased to welcome him today to our last Philosophers’ Café of 2037 to discuss, ‘The Universe Before the Universe.’ I present to you, Dr. Darian Leigh.”

  Darian looked out across the sea of faces while the applause died down. He wondered what percentage of the audience was already hostile to the very notion of what he was about to say, without having heard a word from him.

  He set a small part of his lattice to work compiling profiles and histories of the attendees while he began speaking. He tapped into one of the cameras in Theatre 3 so he wouldn't miss anyone there.

  “First, I would like to thank Dr. Pratt for inviting me to speak today. This is my first ever Philosophers’ Café, and I hope you’ll go easy on me. I’d also like to extend my deep gratitude to him for his inspiration. It was a conversation we had over lunch one day that first inspired many of the ideas I’ll be presenting today, and which eventually moved me to propose the Reality Assertion Field itself. I owe Dr. Pratt a great deal for helping me to challenge conventional wisdom about the origin and nature of the universe.” He bowed in acknowledgment to Dr. Pratt, who returned the gesture with awkward uncertainty.

  Well played. Score one for Darian Leigh—both men thought.

  “Today, I want to talk about what the universe might have looked like in the beginning, the Universe before the Universe, if you will.

  "Since we're not all physicists here, I'd like to start out by talking about the Big Bang, and how cosmologists think the universe began. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it brief. From there, we'll move on to nothing. What do philosophers, theologians, and physicists mean by the word, ‘nothing?’ I’ll warn you, it’s more complicated than you think. Then things are going to get a little strange. I’ll introduce you to what I think of as the ultimate bits of nothing, virtual particles; how physicists think of them; why we’re certain they exist, even though they can’t be directly observed; and why they're so important.

  “That will bring us to my most recent theories, which attempt to answer some of the most exciting and fundamentally important questions in our era, questions such as: How could real particles and the physical universe evolve from the virtual particle chaos that preceded it? Where do the ‘laws of nature’ come from? And, how can we test and apply these ideas?

  “Let’s begin with something you’ve probably heard before. Scientists believe everything in the universe began in a cosmic explosion that we call the Big Bang, around 13.8 billion years ago. Why do we think everything came from a Big Bang, a moment of creation? This is still a relatively new idea. The ancient Greeks, for example, believed that the universe was static; that it had always existed.”

  Darian put up a slide of the familiar Milky Way galaxy shown as it was projected to look from hundreds of light years above its elliptical plane.

  “Until the mid-1920s, astronomers thought that our own Milky Way galaxy, with its hundred billion stars, comprised the entire, never-ending universe.

  “In 1925, Edwin Hubble used a 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson to prove there were other galaxies outside of ours. Suddenly the universe was a lot bigger and more remarkable.”

  The slide changed to a famous picture compiled by the Hubble telescope, showing the thousands of galaxies in what used to be thought of as an empty portion of the sky. />
  “Around the same time, a physicist named George LeMaître constructed a mathematical model based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. His model concluded that the universe was expanding from an initial Primeval Atom. But nobody believed him, not even Einstein. A few years later, Hubble showed that not only was the universe expanding, but the farther away a galaxy was from us, the faster it was moving from us.

  “Since then, we’ve looked at millions of galaxies using far more powerful telescopes like the orbital Hubble, the James Web, the Wukong 3, and they all confirm what Professor Hubble saw over a hundred years ago. When you rewind the motion of the fleeing galaxies, you can project that all matter must have at one time occupied the same point in space from which it expanded outward.

  “These calculations and observations put an end to the idea of a static universe. For a while, some people believed that perhaps the universe was oscillating through periods of expansion and contraction, eternally being re-created. But our best calculations today suggest this universe is going to go on expanding forever. There’s not enough matter for gravity to pull it all back together. There’s no contraction in our future, and there probably wasn’t in our past, either.

  "But not everyone has been satisfied to leave it at that. There’s a simple problem with the idea of a Big Bang: where did everything come from? If there was nothing here before that, what was it that exploded? What caused the explosion?

  “Our best cosmological answer is still: nothing. However, the physicist’s definition of nothing is quite different from the philosophical idea of nothing. And precisely defining ‘nothing’ in a way that satisfies everyone turns out to be exceedingly difficult, more difficult than one might imagine. Both sides agree that something can’t come from absolutely nothing. So how do you get around the problem that there is, obviously, something?

  “Let’s look at the philosophical theologians’ perspective. Christian ideas about creation, along with those of many other religions, assert the existence of some deity, God, if you will, who is outside of time and space, who has always existed, and who created the universe from absolutely nothing.

  Darian changed the slide from the image of thousands of distant galaxies to a picture of the famous Michelangelo paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, showing the Christian God in the act of Creation.

  “Let’s think about that for a minute. Theologians say, ‘God is not made of anything.’ In other words, God is outside the universe of matter and energy, outside of space and time. Still, He is powerful enough to make something from nothing. But is this really nothing, even a philosophical nothing?

  “As I see it, there are two possibilities that fit with this traditional religious model of creation. Either the universe was created as part of God, or there was something in existence, or potentially in existence, apart from God, before He supposedly created the universe from it.

  “If the universe came from a part of God, and the universe is made from ‘something,’ then it seems logical to conclude that God is made, at least in part, of ‘something’ as well, especially if the universe is still a part of God. On the other hand, if God created the universe apart from Himself, then whatever He made it from was either ‘something’ or had the potential to become ‘something’.

  “Some theologians speak of an ‘empty room,’ separate from God, with absolutely nothing in it. But an empty room is a location, a space separate from God. So, that’s still something, isn’t it? Either everything was God at the beginning, or there was something, maybe only an empty space, that wasn’t God. In the end, the Creationist idea of an omnipotent God creating the something of the universe from absolutely nothing fails logically.”

  * * *

  Darian casually scanned the audience and monitored the progress of the background facial recognition check. The data both piqued his interest and accounted for some of his unease.

  The lattice revealed statistics about a number of attendees that fell well outside the norm for a casual presentation like this. Among the usual mix of students and professors, there was a high proportion of people with no discernible links, neither present nor past, to any of the universities in the city. It was common to have unaffiliated members of the public dropping by these Philosophers' Cafés but usually no more than a dozen or so at any particular event. Today's turnout was remarkable. Or perhaps it wasn’t, considering the protest that had greeted him outside.

  The lattice also revealed a disproportionate number of individuals, across the university and non-university attendees alike, who maintained strong ties with fundamental Christian religious groups. The Yeshua’s True Guard Church was especially well represented. Of those individuals, a suspiciously high number had recently flown in on tourist visas from the New Confederacy, many of whom he recognized as agitators from the unruly crowd outside the building.

  Are they in town for some big event and just dropped by? Why would so many show up to hear me talk about physics?

  Darian expanded the parameters of the background search, and applied it to his own internal recording of the audience. The program identified a network of subtle glances between identified Church members, focusing on two specific members garnering an inordinate amount of attention.

  The first individual whom people were watching came as no surprise. As the prominent leader of the True Guard Church, Reverend Alan LaMontagne was easily recognized, a celebrity of sorts. Those who recognized him were likely to be at least mildly curious, if not hyper-attuned to, his reactions to the talk.

  The second person drawing unusual attention was more of a puzzle. He was not a well-known celebrity, and he raised no other alerts in the lattice. By all accounts, he wasn't in any way noteworthy, not until the system factored in facial micro-expressions. With that, his hatred of Darian jumped out like a gargoyle sculpture in a Japanese Zen garden. Compared to the rest of the audience, his face expressed an inordinately high number and level of distasteful expressions.

  The individual was otherwise a picture of blandness: middle-aged, Caucasian, male, neither too pale nor overly tanned, short-cropped blondish hair, neatly but not fanatically groomed. He was casually dressed in khaki pants and a beige, all-cotton hiking vest.

  His face exuded uncompromising, steely determination. He had barely moved a muscle during the entire first half of the talk; it was his face alone that set off numerous alerts within Darian’s lattice. The system had tracked all sorts of facial micro-shifts as the man’s gaze intensified. It registered his brow gathering into tense little creases, his eyes locking onto the young scientist without distraction, and the jaw clenching and unclenching.

  Darian instinctively picked up on the murderous intent in the man's stare; he didn't need his lattice to interpret that. What it couldn't tell him, was the connection between this man and the members of the YTG Church who kept glancing his way. According to official records, the man didn’t even belong to the group, yet their glances indicated that many recognized him. What could I have done or said to attract such open hostility? I haven't even touched on the controversial part yet.

  Darian sighed; there was nothing he could do about it at this point, anyway. And judging by the audience composition, things were only going to get worse. He waded in.

  * * *

  “So, we’ve arrived at one conclusion. The argument that a Creator God existed before the universe is not substantially better than the Greek static model of the universe. The Greek model doesn’t fit our observations, and the Creationist model simply moves the static, eternal part into an adjacent universe containing an intelligent, willful being. It does not say how this universe containing a purposeful, omnipotent God came about. Nor does it explain how or why a potential universe, a space adjacent but separate from the universe of God—an empty room from which or where He created everything—could exist. It is illogical.

  “What does physics have to say about all this? What kind of natural ‘nothing’ could have existed before the Big Bang, according to
physics?”

  The next slide was a pure black image. "In quantum mechanics, nothing is generally interpreted as space devoid of stuff, without matter or energy. The nothing of physics is not the same as the nothing of philosophy or religion, so physicists call it something different, a quantum vacuum. A quantum vacuum is empty of matter and energy, it contains no things. But it’s not completely empty; it's full of virtual particles, of perturbations in the quantum fields.

  “Aha, you say, that's still something! Well, yes, and no. Virtual particles are called ‘virtual’ because they’re not real. In quantum mechanics, they're as close to nothing as physicists can imagine. Virtual particles pop into and out of existence all the time.

  "I know this sounds completely ridiculous and unreal to many of you. You're thinking, he might as well say unicorn as virtual particle. It would make about as much sense. An imaginary thing for an imaginary thing, right? Let’s see what would that sound like.

  “Unicorns come in balanced pairs: unicorns and anti-unicorns. One of the unicorn types can travel some distance for a very short time before recombining with an anti-unicorn of the same type. When they combine they are both annihilated. This happens over such a short time and distance that unicorns can’t be observed. Nevertheless, unicorns have real effects that can be observed.

  "Sounds silly, I agree. Except they're not the same. Unlike unicorns, virtual particles are more than just an idea. How do we know that?

  “We use virtual particles to explain such things as quantum tunneling. That's a well-documented phenomenon where an electron can disappear from one side of an insulator and instantly reappear on the other side, in spite of the barrier. All of our modern electronics containing quantum dot, field effect transistors depend on this tunneling effect.

  "Ordinary static electricity is a virtual particle phenomenon. It’s a field composed of the virtual particles emitted by moving electrons inside a charged material.