by Bob Seery

Created on: May 16, 2009

There are two "Big Bangs" - there is the one that marks the beginning of the universe and it is this which most of us are by now familiar. But then there is the other, more pertinent one, that will undoubtedly herald it's end. Let me begin with the first and try to explain it in such terms that will hopefully make the circumstances of the second "Big Bang" more comprehensible, and thus more avoidable; as we yet live in hope!

The conventional view of the Big Bang is of an initial massive expansion. Most would accept that the energy provided to chase this expansion to it's endpoints has largely cooled. Hence, we now have material that could not have existed say in the first yoctosecond. Quark and anti-quark annihilation etc have ensured the present-day proportions and kinds of matter ... but these things are just distracting, the bottom line is that things have cooled down sufficiently to call a halt to the jostling, the more it cooled down, the less jostling and the more "space" then provided for the now coagulated elements to further inmix and syncretise.

It may be easier to picture it like this. If you've got a floppy balloon and you blow it up until it's nice and hard and round and as you're taking your fingers away to tie a knot in her a little air escapes. The escaped air allows the balloon to deflate a little, maybe loads if you do a sloppy job, but if you are well practised there should be a nice happy medium where your balloon will shrink back in upon itself lowering the amount of pressure and keeping its hide of sufficient toughness that it will not pop when scratched - as in when you go about looking for a Higgs boson (to pre-empt a little my concluding remarks) - but will remain a nice functioning softer balloon. The "hide" of the balloon is not made of rubber but is the capacity potential of the amount of "air" to fill up the space into which it has been forced. In the "air" then, composed of pure energy which having forced most of itself into the 'hide's carrying potential and dropping off it's "tail" (the escaped air) it eventually nestles itself into the environs of the carrying potential.

What happens when the door is shut behind it; ie. when the knot is tied in the balloon? The energy will be rushing around the inside of the hide carrying potential until it settles down. Now you've got two substances, and two will eventually always tango, especially when they're both trapped and there's nothing else for it but to mingle and co-habitate.

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