Disclaimer: I don't claim to know much about astrophysics (After all, I'm taking Chemical Engineering), nor can I say that i have a graduate-level knowledge of relativity and its intricacies, so there. The following is a theory I've devised based on whatever understanding I can glean from the above, as well as several thought experiments (that make sense to me, at least). Also, the validity of my arguments are based solely on the assumption that dark matter doesn't exist. (And i kind of hope it doesn't. Dark matter is so terribly inelegant and contrived.) Lastly, I would like to stress the fact that I am in no way saying that I'm a qualified professor of physics or whatnot. Only that I am giving my thoughts on the matter.

I may continue adding stuff from time to time.


An Introduction:

I've always thought that the big bang theory was a bit iffy. Don't get me wrong, it makes sense, and it's elegant in a way, but I can't help but feel apprehensive at the regress: How did the Big Bang start? Current thought is that it all started with a singularity, a one-dimensional thingamabob. (i.e. a point.) And from there, all matter in the universe that ever was and ever will be, exploded. This is inescapable, however, as it's the only theory so far (at least, to my knowledge) that successfully explains the way galaxies and stellar objects always seem to be moving away from each other, and in particular, us.

So i've decided to produce this theory (Which, by the way, does away with all those nasty singularities[1]) which may explain everything without having to resort to singularities. Also, hopefully I will also be able explain the occurrence of stars and planets.


Part I. The General Gist

My idea is generally a rather large modification to the Big Bang Theory. Instead of treating the Big Bang as a one-time explosion, i choose to treat it as an ongoing component in a universal cyclic system that continually recycles matter, possibly reversing entropy in such a way that the net entropy in the entire system of the universe remains zero, and also solving several other problems inherent in the former.


Part II. Preliminary Explanations

My idea deals largely with the fourth and fifth dimensions (For an explanation on how these might really be like, scroll down to the footnotes[2]), but don't be afraid, I'll explain things so that this idea is easily understandable.

Let me borrow an analogy (slightly edited) used by einstein:
Imagine a HUGE bed mattress. (Let's call that the space-time fabric) If you place a basketball on it, you'll notice that the basketball will create a temporary dent on the mattress because of its weight. Let's call that dent: "Gravity". If you place a marble near that dent, it will start rolling - falling - into the basketball. If that marble is moving at a certain speed at an angle just glancing the dent, it will start moving around the basketball, in much the same way as a cyclist moving around an embankment. We can call that motion: "Orbital Motion". Thus, we have a familiar setup: It can the moon orbiting the earth - or the earth or any other planet orbiting the sun.

Now imagine this mattress being able to freely move around; eventually it would curl up on itself due to its weight, twisting and turning in a vaguely fractal pattern. Lets call this: Space-time curvature.

Let's go back to the basketball: suppose that basketball got heavier and heavier, but smaller and smaller. At a certain point, it will get so heavy that, with all its weight concentrated in a small area, it will finally punch a hole through the mattress, and also through all other parts of the curved mattress that get in the way and onto the floor.

We will call this hole: a black hole.

_____
But before I move on, allow me to explain one last thing.

Take a point (0 dimensions) and translate (move) it: it'll turn into a line. (1 dimension, length)
Now take that line and translate it: it'll turn into a square. (2 dimensions, length and width)
Now take that square and translate it: it'll turn into a cube. (3 dimensions, length, width, height)

Now take that cube and translate it, and you have a tesseract, or a 4 dimensional hybercube. In essence, it's a moving cube. Because it's moving, it has a time element, and thus, we have a fourth dimension. Length, width, height, and time.

Because length x width x height = volume (3 dimensions)= space
then multiplying space with time should result in what is commonly known as space-time[2]. (4 dimensions)

And it is this 4-dimensional place that is the same space-time that I mentioned earlier during the mattress explanation. Space as we know it has a time consideration. This means that when we talk about somewhere, we also talk about somewhen. This may be a bit hard to swallow, but please, bear with me.


Part III. The Details

This is where you'll have to stretch your imagination a bit more.

Given that time is a function of place and that place is also a function of time, it must mean that "the beginning of time" is also a place. You don't only think of when the big bang happened. You must think of where it happened. Or is happening. Happeninged.

If it is a place, then one must be able to reach it, one way or another. This holds true even for the Big Bang, albeit in a less conventional way.

If one were to travel in a rocketship to the x-y-z coordinates of the Big Bang, one would not be able to reach it. At all. Why? Remember that space-time has 4 dimensions, and that space is a function of time. Since a rocketship is bound to spacetime as a 3-dimensional object, it's bound to the constraints of the flow of time, which is forward. Even if it travels at the speed of light, it will still be unable to travel through time.

This works in much the same way as how a line on a piece of paper can grow longer (because it's restricted to 1-dimensional movement), but is unable to move sideways.

Where am I going with this, you ask? Please, bear with me a bit longer.

Given the above, it must hold true that if one were to separate oneself of the fourth dimension, i.e. space-time, then one must be able to move freely and independently through it.

To illustrate, imagine a flipbook. If you flip through (assuming you can't control the flippage) it, you see a moving image. That's how you perceive things as a 3 dimensional being. Since you're restricted to the way the pages flip, even if you saw a dot at one point in the page, you won't be able to see that dot again, even if you go to that same x,y location (assuming the dot disappeared), because you're on a different page.

If you separate the pages, however, and line them all up, you have the liberty of seeing each and every frame of the flip-movie. You will be able to "travel" back and forth to the individual frames, in much the same way that you can travel into specific "times" in space-time.

So how does one separate oneself from the space-time? Simple.
Go into that black hole i mentioned in Part II. Through the rip in the space-time fabric.

That does, of course, mean that you will be crushed into your most constituent particles due to the gravitational stresses. But at least you get to travel through time.

Kidding aside, this is what i suspect happens when an object enters a black hole. Instead of a black hole being a singularity with infinite density, it becomes a tunnel leading towards - you guessed it - the big bang. Now this may be hard to swallow, but please continue suspending your disbelief a little longer. Even the original star that "turned" into a black hole, travels through the hole it created, goes in between the the folds of space-time, and exits through the big bang.

This means that the big bang is actually a gigantic white hole[3].

Thus we can say that the big bang is happening right now ("now" in our 3-dimensional terms) somewhere/when out there/then in what can be called a cosmic rock cycle.

It is also possible that stars themselves are Little Bangs, minor white holes from which weaker black holes spew their material out from. The highly crushed particles "condense" into the lightest, most stable form of matter, hydrogen. Due to the high energy at which these particles exit, the hydrogen ignite in nuclear fusion, forming a protostar.

Larger Little Bangs may have enough material to escape the initial nuclear fusion to produce massive clouds of gas surrounding the subsequent star, and eventually merge into planets much like our own.

Part IV. The Problem.

The more astute of you would realize that there is a glaring problem in my theory. That is, if the big bang depended on the black holes for all the matter it would send out, and not all matter gets swallowed by black holes, it must mean that for every "n-cycle", less and less matter would be expelled by the big bang, and as n approaches infinity, the matter expelled by the big bang would approach zero. And with a puff of logic, the universe ceases to exist.

I'm working on a solution to this, but I won't go into detail until i have it all figured out.

(It has something to do with the overall shape of the universe, and the 4th dimension imposed on the 5th dimension. An easily understood analogue is that of a 2d picture of an explosion wrapped around a 3d sphere. The outer fringes of the explosion end up touching each other in a singularity on the other end of the sphere, creating something like a torus - a donut - shaped cycle. Bump that analogue up two dimensions and you might get a picture of what's going on in my mind.)




[1] Singularities, having a volume of 0, are notorious. Why? It means that black holes have infinite density, and so does the big bang before it went bang. And infinity is very ugly.

[2] I can't say this reasoning is complete or accurate for that matter, but for the purposes of illustration, this will suffice.

[3] The theoretical opposite of a black hole. (and no, I did not make the name up) Essentially a matter fountain.