Banging In Cycles

The Big Bang. Whether its cause is the will of God or natural cosmic forces is your own choice, but whether it took place isn't up for discussion at this point unless you know a lot more about astrophysics than I or anybody standing near me.

From a singular point, all of the matter in the universe explodes outward with inconceivable force.

Then what?

Setting aside, for a moment, trivial things like the creation of planets and the entirety of Earth's and humanity's history, the only effect so far of the Big Bang is an outward expansion.

Imagine setting a lit stick of dynamite in a bucket of golf balls. The dynamite explodes, the balls travel outward in all dimensions until their force is conquered by other forces like gravity and drag. If you were to pretend that explosion of golf balls was our universe's origin, where we are right now is about half a second after the initial explosion. Stuff is still expanding outward from the origin point of the bang. Currently, the universe is expanding just like spread of those golf balls after the explosion. What happens, though, in the long run?

There are two major theories. One is that the force of the Big Bang cannot be stopped. Matter will continue to travel outward from the origin point forever. As this happens, galaxies spread farther and farther apart, then solar systems spread apart, then planets pull apart, then molecules themselves are pulled apart until eventually every atom in the universe is equally spaced from every other. This is called the Big Rip.

The other theory is that the force of the Big Bang will eventually be overcome. There isn't much drag in outer space, but gravity becomes a factor. As the universe expands its own gravitational force expands. Eventually, the universe itself is so big that it starts to pull itself into itself, and the force from that initial explosion is overcome and begins to run in reverse, as if after the dynamite in the bucket of golf balls triggered a black hole, so that once the golf balls had exploded outwards they were then sucked back inwards to where they started.

The universe stops expanding and begins to contract toward its origin. Galaxies are pulled into eachother and gravitational orbit patterns are thrown into complete disarray, solar systems all cram together, planets cram together, and molecules cram together until every bit of matter in the entire universe has contracted into one sphere. Everything that ever was or will be is condensed into a singularity packed together so tightly that it would be smaller than the head of a needle.

This theory is known as the Big Crunch. It's considered less likely.

I like it, though, partly for its elegance but moreso for the possible after effect.

After the Big Crunch, every atom and particle of the universe exists in a tiny dot. The amount of potential energy in this singularity is enormous. So enormous that after what you could call "a while" but would effectively be instantaneous, it could explode outward. A big bang. Every molecule of the universe explodes outward once more. The universe is born anew for another X-trillion years until it contracts again and explodes again.

At first thought this sounds like an elegant scenario of a cosmic "second chance," but you have to understand that with forces like this there are no variables. No matter can be created or destroyed in the universe, so the quantity of matter at the end of the universe will be exactly the same as there was in the beginning. The singularity at the end of the Crunch would be identical to what existed immediately before the Bang, and so the laws that governed the outcome of the Bang would also govern the post-Crunch Bang. The universe would end up exactly as it was the first time.

The Earth and every other planet, solar system, and galaxy would form just as it did before. Humanity would spring forth just as before. History would play out just as before. For all the inhabitants of Universe 2's Earth new, they would think exactly what we think, that everything is happening for the first time. There would be a new you and a new me and because the environment and situations would be the same we'd all do the same things exactly as we did before. I'd be writing this sentence and you'd be reading it, trillions and trillions of years from now.

For that, then, it's reasonable to assume that our universe isn't the first at all. Our Big Bang could just have been the after-effect of a previous Big Crunch. This could be the 2nd or 19th or three-hundred-billionth time the universe erupted from that singularity and unfolded exactly as it had every time before.

It would be as if life, the universe, and everything were a video tape and once it reached the end it just rewound to the beginning and started over.

Imagine that this theory were proven true. Imagine it were scientific fact that the universe were looping over and over again, that everything you will ever do has been done by an identical iteration of yourself living your exact life on your exact planet in your exact universe. Would this change your day-to-day behavior or your outlook on life? Keep in mind that whether it did or not, it already did (or didn't) an infinite number of times before. There would be nothing you could do to break the cycle.

Do you think there would be a greater change within humanity as a whole? Would violence decrease and the global populous move toward enlightenment in the face of the fact that everything is much, much bigger than they thought?

I say no, or at least not for a while. Why? Because the people who are holding humanity back wouldn't believe it because it would contradict a literal interpretation of their favorite really old book.