User:Howbloom/Big Bagel Theory--the Bloom toroidal model of the cosmos

Big Bagel Theory: Bloom Toroidal Model of the Universe

Overview

Big Bagel Theory, the Bloom Toroidal Model of the cosmos is a theory of the beginning, middle, and end of the cosmos. A theory that explains Dark Energy.

Among the many conundrums in current science are these:

1. If matter and anti-matter are created simultaneously in equal amounts, why is there so much matter in this universe and so little anti-matter? (The parity problem.)
2. What is dark energy?

The Bloom Toroidal Model of the Universe, known colloquially as The Big Bagel, attempts to answer both of these questions. And it makes an ominous prediction. According to standard cosmological models, the end of the universe is roughly 100 trillion years away. But according to the Bloom Toroidal Model, the end may be a mere 1.68 billion years down the road.

History

Big Bagel Theory was conceived in 1959 by “multi-disciplinary scientist” Howard Bloom, who has been called “the next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Freud, and Buckminster Fuller.”. Bloom is the founder of three multi-disciplinary scientific groups: The Group Selection Squad, The International Paleopsychology Project, and The Space Development Steering Committee. In 1959, Bloom was sixteen years old and working at what was then the world’s largest cancer research facility, the Roswell Park Memorial Cancer Research Institutein Buffalo, NY . Bloom had met privately at the age of twelve with the head of the graduate physics department at his hometown university, the University of Buffalo (now known as SUNY Buffalo) to brainstorm 1955's most pressing cosmological issue, Big Bang versus Steady State theory of the universe. Now Bloom was brainstorming daily with his fellow Roswell Parkers on the implications of another puzzle in cosmology and theoretical physics, CPT (charge, parity, and time) symmetry. The CPT conundrum is this: if matter and antimatter are created in equal amounts at the same time, why is there so much matter in this universe and so little anti-matter. By the end of the summer, Bloom had conceived a toroidal model that answered this question. The word “toroidal” in the mathematical field of topology refers to a doughnut-like shape. But Bloom was convinced that a concept so simple must be comic book science. So he threw his toroidal model away.

Predictions

However Bloom’s discarded toroidal model implied two important predictions. And those predictions proved to be accurate.

Implicit prediction number one: Big Bagel Theory implied an extremely rapid expansion of the universe immediately after the Big Bang, then a slowdown to a more leisurely pace. In 1980, twenty one years after the Big Bagel was conceived, Alan Guth’s theory of inflation agreed with prediction number one…the prediction of an extremely rapid expansion followed by a decreased speed.

Big Bagel Theory also implied that at a certain point, the universe’s rate of expansion would begin to accelerate. In other words, the galaxies would fly away from each other at a steadily increasing speed. That prediction proved accurate in September 1998, thirty eight years after the Bloom Toroidal Model was conceived, when Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Adam Riess and his High-z Supernova Search Team found that the cosmos was, indeed, increasing in its rate of expansion. It was speeding up, accelerating. The discovery won Riess a 2011 Nobel Prize.

How Big Bagel Explains Dark Energy and CPT

Acceleration takes energy. Where did the energy powering the cosmos’ speedup come from? To answer that question, the physics community resurrected Albert Einstein’s Cosmological Constant and invented the concept of Dark Energy. But neither of those moves explained where the energy powering the cosmos’ speed-spurt comes from. Big Bagel theory does.

How does Big Bagel Theory work? Imagine a bagel with what Bloom calls “one of those anally retentive, infinitesimally tiny holes.” “Your bagel,” says Bloom, “is an Einsteinian manifold, a sheet of time, space, and gravity.”

In a YouTube animation that accumulated 747,000 views in twenty days in September, 2012, Bloom explains it like this:

It’s 13.72 billion years ago. An explosion spurts abruptly from the bagel’s hole. Rocketing up the bagel’s topside is a big bang of matter. But gushing from the hole on the bottom is an equal and opposite, a big bang of anti-matter.

That’s the solution to the parity problem, the problem of where all the antimatter has gone. Then Bloom tackles inflation:

In Einsteinian manifolds, the shape of space tells matter how to move. A steep slope says move fast. Rush. Race. Speed. The slopes that funnel upward and downward from the bagel’s hole are steep. That steep curve tells the matter and anti-matter universes to race upward (or downward) and outward at unbelievable speed, the speed known in cosmology as inflation.

Next Bloom turns to the problem of acceleration. He explains that:

The traveling orders that space gives to matter change as the two universes approach the flatness of the bagel’s upper and under hump. The leveling, horizontal curve of space dictates a more leisurely pace. Like a cannonball reaching the high point of its curve, the universe and anti-matter universe begin to run out of the energy that has shot them apart from each other.

Finally, Bloom turns to what he calls “the second physics’ question of the day,” the problem of dark energy. He asks:

What is dark energy? The two universes reach the bagel’s high and low point at the 7.7 billion year mark. Then the downward slope of the bagel tells them to speed up again. Why do they accelerate? Where does the extra energy that rushes galaxies apart from each other come from? The answer? Gravity.

Bloom explains that:

As it slips down the bagel’s outer slope, the normal universe falls under the seductive sway of the anti-matter universe’s gravity and speeds up. And the anti-matter universe is caught by the come-hither power of the matter universe’s gravity. It, too, speeds up.

Bloom tackles yet another question. A big one:

How will the universe end? At the bagel’s outer edge, the two equal but opposite universes will meet and do what matter and anti-matter always do. They’ll annihilate. But here’s the trick. They’ll annihilate in a burst of energy. And thanks to a topological trick, the bagel’s outer rim is also its center. So the explosion of annihilation will be, guess what? The next big bang.”

Bloom extracts one final prediction from his toroidal model. There are many alternative cosmologies in science at the moment, all vying to be the one that works. Most of these theories predict an end of the cosmos trillions of years in the future. Bloom’s Big Bagel says that we may not have that long to wait. The end may be closer than we think. As Bloom puts it:

Where are we on the bagel in 2012? We passed the bagel’s hump 6.02 billion years ago. Which puts us perilously close to the big smash at the bagel’s outer edge. Roughly 1.68 billion years from that smash.

Evidence for the toroidal model

Inflation, the CPT symmetry problem, and the acceleration of the cosmos all hint that Bloom’s toroidal model may be valid. But there other threads in current cosmological thought that lend credence to the Big Bagel. Here’s how Bloom puts it in his 2012 book The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates:

Is there support for the big bagel model? In 1984 at the Landau Institute in Moscow, Dr. Alexei Starobinski studied the data available at that point on the cosmic microwave background radiation and concluded, in the words of the New York Times, “that the universe could have been born as a doughnut.”

In 2003, Max Tegmark then a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania, now at MIT, used far more sophisticated data on the fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation, data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, to consider toroidal models in articles in Science and in one of the top journals in physics, the American Physical Society’s Physical Review D. Tegmark’s work and that of many others hit the New York Times in a March 11, 2003 story headlined “Universe as a Doughnut: New Data, New Debate.” But in the end, Tegmark “ruled out” what even he called the “bagel” model.

Then the cosmic doughnut hit the headlines again in 2008, this time on the prestige British science journal Nature’s news site. A German team led by Frank Steiner had run the data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe through four different forms of analysis and had concluded that “the doughnut gave the best match to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data.”

So the toroidal shape, the bagel shape, was being kicked around. Not in the form you proposed it. Not with two universes separating, then crunching together again. But nonetheless the bagel was in play.

Then there’s another aspect of your big bagel theory, your idea of two universes on two separate surfaces saying good bye to each other and eventually getting back together again. Your idea of the matter universe climbing from the bagel’s hole up its topside and the antimatter universe sliding down from the hole on the bagel’s bottom side.

Several concepts arose that support the notion of two universes on different but adjacent surfaces. Surfaces like the bagel’s bottom and the bagel’s top. One is the idea of a Saran Wrappish sort of surface that comes from string theory. It’s called a brane—named for a membrane. A brane is thin, like plastic wrap. And an entire universe rides on each brane, on each Saran Wrappish sheet.

Princeton’s Paul Steinhardt and the director of the Perimeter Institute, Neil Turok, have one brane-based theory that’s very reminiscent of the big bagel. In Steinhardt and Turok’s model, there are two of these plastic-wrap thin branes. There are two universes a hair’s breadth apart. They are separate universes, blithely unaware of each other’s existence. Unaware except for one small fact. Dark Energy is a force that pulls them together. Periodically they bump into each other. Yes, every once in a while they collide. And each time they collide, they set off a big bang whose energy sends them rushing away from each other again. So they alternate between big bangs and big crashes. Does this sound big bagelish?

Then Bloom turns to cyclic models of the cosmos for support. He writes in The God Problem that:

There are existing cyclic models of the cosmos. Models in which the cosmos annihilates, then is reborn in a new big bang. Martin Bojowald’s cosmos is one of these. The University of Pennsylvania loop quantum gravity cosmologist proposes a model in which “branes approach collision and bounce back without actual collision.”. That near head-on crash ends one universe and starts another one.

Bloom cites yet more support for the toroidal model in current science. He points out that:

New York University’s Georgi Dvali suggests that gravity may leak from branes, an idea that goes one more small step toward the idea that separate universes on separate branes may be able to communicate with each other. One small step toward a universe on the top of a bagel beckoning to a universe on the underside with gravity.

Then there’s Alexander Kashlinsky, a senior staff scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who has measured the motion of nearly eight hundred galaxy clusters against the backdrop of the cosmic background radiation and has spotted what he calls “dark flow”—a speed-rush of galaxies that seems to defy the assumptions of what’s called the “conventional model” of the cosmos. This rush of galaxies seems to be hurrying toward a goal, and, to Kashlinsky, it seems to hint at something “tugging” on them.

And cosmologists like Anthony Aguirre of the University of California, Santa Cruz, believe that if dark flow is for real, it could be evidence for what Aguirre calls “other universes.” Could Kashlinsky’s tug come from the pull of just one other universe—an antimatter universe on the bottom of the bagel? And could the antimatter cosmos on the underside of the bagel be responsible for the galaxy’s unaccountable speed?

Bloom’s bottom line, his conclusion, is this:

There are a lot of cyclic universe theories doing the rounds. But the big bagel appears to be alone in something crucial: explaining dark energy.

Supporting Opinions

NYU professor emeritus of physics Martin Hoffert says Big Bagel theory is "ingenious."

Dr. Gregory Matloff says, The Big Bagel "is very thought provoking. it takes on the asymmetry of matter/antimatter and is therefore worthy of future development by specialists." Matloff is emeritus associate professor of physics at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT), consultant for the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Fellow of the British interplanetary Society, and a Hayden Associate at the American Museum of Natural History.

Concludes Mark Lupisella, a systems engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and co-editor of the NASA book Cosmos and Culture, "I like the Big Bagel model. I'll never look at bagels the same way again."

External links

Big Bagel YouTube animation

Big Bagel webpage

Giulio Prisco, Book Review on Ray Kurzweil’s KurzweilAI: The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates

Nando Pelusi, “Howard Bloom,” Psychology Today, January, 2008.