Many people in Barbados believe that a grand person
called God made the Universe. Among that group there is a small difference of opinion as to whether He did so about 4000 years ago, as calculated by an Irish Bishop in the eighteenth century, or about 15 000 million years
ago, as seems to be fairly well agreed among astronomers and cosmologists. But astrologists, bless their little brains, seldom bother their pretty heads about such a small matter.Those who are willing to accept the earlier date
also tend to accept the idea that before that important event there was nothing at all, not even any space or time, just God bombinating around in vacuo.
However they all seem pretty well agreed about God's sex. It takes
a fellow to do a big job like that. The alternative suggestion, gaining ground in the Northern States of the US, that God might be an old whitish lady with blue-rinsed hair, does not yet seem to have reached Barbados. The American
supporters of Mrs. God have not so far settled whether She has the usual middle-aged spread or whether she might be unfashionably elitist, and therefore aristocratically thin. No plan to resuscitate the beautiful Greek Venus has
arisen so far. Maybe some lack of confidence in her mental capacity, or disapproval of the Venusian characteristic of wearing few or even no clothes.
In contrast, as pictured in the Vatican on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
God habitually wears a flowing white garment consistent with His origin in the Middle East and, naturally, rather resembling the Pope's dress uniform.That does seem a more reliable image. than soft-porn Venus. But when I
start to think of a rather Arabian gentleman, well-dressed, but floating around in nowhere, even before the first stars, I find I have reached a point rather beyond the edge of my imagination.
The cosmologists also
demand a lot from my creaky thought processes. The Universe as a Free Lunch is an entertaining idea.
Another idea about how the universe works was put forward by Arnold Gulko in 1979. I can haul it into my creaking brain
cells quite easily, though even an innocent nitwit like myself can think of at least one good objection.
Gulko's universe is infinite in extent and duration. It always was and always will be, and has no edges. However, galaxies
such as our own home galaxy, the Milky Way, according to Gulko, have a cycle of birth, growth, maturity, aging, death and rebirth, over very long stretches of time.This idea I can get along with.
Our Milky Way is a spiral galaxy
in a mature phase. In its centre is a Black Hole, and there is good evidence that this is so, even though it is invisible. Invisible because it is so massive and dense that light cannot escape from it. Gravity has been demonstrated
to bend light, the more gravity the more bending. The more mass the more gravity. And Black Holes grow by swallowing stars until light bends right back and becomes invisible. But the stars it swallows don't just disappear
like a fly in the mouth of a frog. They orbit around the Black Hole for an awful long time, breaking up into discs of matter and then , during their death throes, emitting radiation in the form of light rays, XRays, and, of
course, heat rays all of which can be detected by telescopes. The Hubble has found the right kind of radiation coming from the centre of our galaxy, which happens to be rather obscured by a whole lot of stars and dust.
Arnold Gulko's theory is that a Black Hole in a spiral galaxy gradually swallows the whole damn galaxy and then explodes "by particle annihilation in a gamma-ray burst to form a quasar" The quasar expands rather
more slowly to form an elliptical or spherical galaxy of maximum size. This is born rotating and as it contracts again the rotation speeds up, like a spinning skater who pulls in her arms. The spin breaks up the sphere or ellipse
so that its outer parts make spiral arms. A Black Hole begins to form at the centre. Neat, don't you think?
But if the black hole exploded by "particle annihilation" in Gulko's cosmology, where does Gulko find the 10 to
the power of 35 particles (very approximately), which are needed to set up a decent galaxy.
Another objection is that the galaxies are all moving away from each other, and it is this apparently undeniable fact which has allowed
astronomers to calculate the date (the very approximate date) of the Big Bang, when everything was squashed together to golf-ball size or less, and God, presumably, was hanging about in His Middle Eastern robes outside the
golf-ball.
Another objection, more theoretical than real, is that if the universe is infinite in size then the night sky should be as light as day, being lit by an infinite number of stars which could then have no darkness
between them. But we know that the brightness of a light source diminishes as the square of the distance, so if the distance is infinite then the brightness is infinitely small, squared. Lots of darkness is available, when
the intensity of light becomes absent.
