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SEPTEMBER 24

click on the picture below to see a larger image

BIG BANG BOX, 2015

22" x 30",  Acrylic on paper, $7,500 

           

KALTENBACH ANNOTATIONS:  This piece is not only bad but it is ridiculously bad. As the Big Bang theory represents the beginning and evolution of physical nature, there existed nothing before it. Just plain no matter. This makes materials to fashion a mold hard to come by. Being before time, there is also no time to make it no matter how fast one might work, making it impossible no matter how you view it. The scale isn’t necessarily a problem, as the container could be very small if it were in place early enough (during the first fraction of a millisecond), but whatever the size it would have to be very strong.

This impossibility is the best part of this really terrible idea because the balance of the nature of existence is so finely tuned that changing its shape would have inevitably altered the physical character of the universe, probably rendering it uninhabitable. It would have made life and therefore also biology, chemistry, and astrophysics, impossible. This observation that the universe is perfect for us was realized in two phases. The first was that the way our Earth and its immediate environment are laid out is supportive to human life. Many things had to be just as they are for this to be, and  therefor for us to be.

An abbreviated list of the requirements for life on our world includes: a suitable solvent (water), a pleasant climate (a Goldilocks Orbit), energy (the sun and some chemicals), time (to get our cellular organization together - unless you are a creationist as I am), CO2 recycling via plate tectonics to support global warming (yes, we need a certain level of it to keep us thawed), a civilized sun that gives us a nice steady level of solar radiation, plus our magnetic field which further shelters us from our star’s occasional bursts of extra energy. For more detail see internet.

To those who want this to all be an effect of chance, this serendipity has been explained by assuming that the universe was so large that it was inevitable that a friendly environment would happen somewhere and we, as luck would have it, live there. If you want to avoid faith this is not a bad excuse. But then…

Then the second phase where a much bigger problem arose, that of the Higgs boson. This is a situation which requires an even bigger coincidence. Apparently its tiny mass which allows big, complex structures like the galaxies and us to form is quite a bit too small. I admit that I don’t have the understanding to explain this, but I read that the energy required to create the things that we need like solar systems and galaxies is 100 quadrillion times short of what is necessary. 100 quadrillion times less. That’s one in 100,000,000,000,000,000. That’s seventeen zeros. Not a good bet.

This may be where the religion or hypothesis of the Multiverse was born. There had to be so many chances for this perfect balance of energy to happen that not only did we have to be in the select neighborhood in the universe, but we had to have an infinity of universes from which to choose that sweet spot, due to the long odds. The Multiverse is an idea that requires a lot of faith to elevate it from hypothesis to theory because applying the empirical method to the problem is not currently possible and may never be.

To believe or not to believe, that is the question, and it comes down to a choice. For Christians it seems that the answer is to go for it no matter what people think. For atheists the answer seems to be avoiding it at all costs, which I believe are considerable.

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