BEFORE THE BIG BANG ALSO BY BRIAN CLEGG Upgrade Me The God Effect A Brief History of Infinity Light Years BEFORE THE BIG BANG THE PREHISTORY OF OUR UNIVERSE BRIAN CLEGG ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK BEFORE THE BIG BANG. Copyright © 2009 by Brian Clegg. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.stmartins.com Book design by Gretchen Achilles Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clegg, Brian. Before the big bang : the prehistory of our universe / Brian Clegg.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-312-38547-7 ISBN-10: 0-312-38547-1 1. Cosmology. 2. Big bang theory. I. Title. QB981.C627 2009 523.1—dc22 2008046035 First Edition: August 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 DEDICATED TO THE CENTER OF MY UNIVERSE— GILLIAN, CHELSEA, AND REBECCA CONTENTS Acknowledgments 1. BIG BANG PRIMER 2. ENTER THE CREATOR 3. WHAT AND HOW BIG? 4. HOW OLD? 5. A BANG OR A WHIMPER? 6. KEEPING THINGS STEADY 7. INFLATING THE TRUTH 8. LET THERE BE TIME 9. GROUNDHOG UNIVERSE 10. LIVING IN A BUBBLE 11. WELCOME TO THE MATRIX 12. SNAPSHOT UNIVERSE Notes Index ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to the many people who have provided information including Dr. Marcus Chown, Professor Günter Nimtz, the librarians of Swindon Central Library and the British Library, the Mullard Radio Astronomy Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and the organizers of the Andrew Chamblin Memorial Lecture. As always, this book would not have been possible without the help and support of my editor, Michael Homler, and my agent, Peter Cox. BEFORE THE BIG BANG 1. BIG BANG PRIMER The beginning of things must needs lie in obscurity, beyond the bounds of proof, though within those of conjecture or of analogical inference. —ASA GRAY (1810–88), “Darwin on the Origin of Species” (The Atlantic Monthly, July 1860) Welcome to the universe. “The universe” is an awesome concept, one that belies the apparent simplicity of the term. It’s everything, the whole of what’s out there, the sum total of existence. We are part of that whole, yet the vast majority of the time we ignore everything but our own tiny corner of it, the infinitesimal speck that is our planet. Since intelligent reasoning began, human beings have wondered about what the universe is and from where it came. As we see later, all kinds of possibilities were considered, but it wasn’t until the twentieth century that our current widely accepted description of the beginnings of the universe—the Big Bang—was first formulated. The scientific curiosity that makes us wonder about the universe and where it came from seems to be a natural human trait, although it is often suppressed by peer pressure. All children have a sense of wonder when looking at the world around us. They want to know why and how and what, sometimes asking these questions so frequently that adults are driven to distraction. Sadly it’s not cool to be interested in science in your teens, so for many that fascination in what’s out there gets pushed to one side. But it’s still there, waiting to be uncovered. There’s a good reason for this curiosity. As I describe in my book Upgrade