Andy Einstein...

I’m spending a lot of time thinking these days. I think about all sorts of things. I won’t give you a list because it ranges from thoughts on mortality to what to have for tea, but one of the things I’m thinking about a lot is the nature of the universe. It seems that nobody understands it fully, not the astrophysicists, the cosmologists, not even Einstein apparently. The bit we do understand is less than ten percent of what is out there, the rest is dark energy and dark matter, so called not because either of them are actually dark, but simply because what they are remains in darkness to the physicists currently.

The universe is expanding and despite what Big Bang theory might have expected it isn’t slowing down as it expands, it’s accelerating. This has been proven but nobody understands why. Is it the effect of dark energy or dark matter or is it something else altogether?

Now I have a very hazy grasp of physics and I’m not good at maths and equations of any kind have always left me cold. If I could have my way numbers would be banned and those squiggly symbols the physicists use would simply be the names of pop stars. I’m a dreamer you see and whilst I have ideas I’d never be able to prove them with an equation. My mind isn’t built that way.

So why is the universe accelerating as it expands away from the big bang? Well, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s accelerating not away from it’s beginning, but maybe it’s being drawn faster and faster to its end. I’ve never been able to get my head around the idea that the universe is infinite. All space is enclosed by something and to my mind the universe is only space. What it the universe is enclosed and whatever encloses the universe is using gravity or magnetism or some such other force to pull the contents of the universe towards its edges?

Maybe it’s a box or a sphere; perhaps it has no fixed shape at all but is a solid border. Maybe the universe isn’t infinite after all. Maybe it’s finite and bounded by a shimmering energy field that everything and everyone is rushing - faster and faster - towards. Perhaps no part of the universe has reached it yet and the great race is not yet run, but what will happen when the first galaxy gets there? Will there be another big bang for it all to start again or will we break through to wherever?

Are we being pulled rather than pushed and where are we going?

I bet Tesla would know.