ATOMS ALL THE WAY DOWN: WHAT IF GALAXIES WERE “ATOMS” AND STARS WERE “LIGHT”?

By J. WILENCHIK

Based on the lost theories of Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin, "Atoms All the Way Down" explores an alternative theory to the "Big Bang" in which galaxies are "atoms" and stars are "light." The book offers explanations for everything from spiral galaxies to black holes, galaxy "jets," the "cosmic web" (galaxy superstructure), and the relationship in between mass and color in the "main sequence" of stars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350934274

Book preview

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Contents

Cover

Preface: The Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

1. Atoms All the Way Down

2. How the Big Bang Goes Bust

3. The Ultimate Question: What is the Known Universe?

4. What the Atom Really Looks Like: Observations of Radio Galaxies

5. More Thoughts on the Vortex Atom Theory

6. Other Implications for Current Theories

7. Who Says that Space is 3D? How to Use a Curvilinear Spiral Coordinate System to Express 3D in Only 2D

Coda

General Scholium

Bibliography

About the Author

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Third Edition

©2023, Mad Scientist Publishing LLC

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35093-427-7

For the dreamers

Preface:

The Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened.

-Douglas Adams

In his introduction to A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking told the story of a well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) who gave a public lecture on astronomy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down!’ (Hawking, 1988.)

The point of the story was that while [m]ost people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, why do we think we know better? Where did the universe come from, and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? Someday, our answers to these questions may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun—or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. (Id.)

Many people have serious doubts about the Big Bang theory – including Albert Einstein when he first heard about it.¹ The theory says that the universe began in a unique event, for which there was no cause and therefore no explanation. But science strives to provide an explanation for everything, and a cause for every effect. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking: is there a better, or more obvious answer to where the universe came from, and where it is going?

Even the Jesuit priest who came up with the Big Bang theory nearly a century ago, George Lemaître, had an intuition that galaxies and atoms are fundamentally related. His original theory was that a primeval atom had expanded to form the galaxies. (Kragh, 2012.)

This book is about a new theory named atoms all the way down (in honor of Stephen Hawking and a nameless little old lady). The theory is simple: what if galaxies are atoms, and stars are light? It aims to provide a simple explanation for the most obvious phenomena in space, like stars and spiral galaxies, as well as more recent discoveries like galaxy superstructure and jets—all things that the Big Bang theory struggles to fundamentally explain. The atoms theory also describes a universe that is without beginning or end.

To the mind of a standard (Big Bang) cosmologist, the atoms all the way down theory may seem disruptive, radical, or even lacking in scientific basis. But we must keep in mind Stephen Hawking’s warning about the relativity of such things. After all, a theory that seems ridiculous to one person may be obvious to others.

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¹ Einstein’s initial reaction to the theory of an expanding universe was to express his disapproval; according to the creator of the Big Bang theory (Georges Lemaître), Einstein commented to him that [y]our calculations are correct, but your physics is atrocious. (Deprit, 1984.)

1.

Atoms All the Way Down

The Cosmic Web

A good theory of the universe should start with some obvious and unquestionable things. For example, galaxies are very large. And, with the exception of our own, they are very far. Most galaxies also show striking, whirlpool-like spirals.

In the last half-century – long after George Lemaître proposed the Big Bang theory – astronomers also discovered that galaxies form enormous superstructures. These structures, called the cosmic web, resemble a honeycomb-like grid.² In the words of one astronomer, the discovery poses serious challenges for current models…³

Illustration of part of the cosmic web of galaxies (based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Map of the Universe, sdss.org).

Lord Kelvin’s Forgotten Theory: On Vortex Atoms

In the late Nineteenth Century, Lord Kelvin (a.k.a. William Thomson) proposed that atoms have the structure of a whirlpool, or vortex. (Thomson, 1867.) Vortices resemble atoms in a number of ways, including that vortices naturally suck in everything around them, which resembles gravity.⁴ But like any theory of the atom, finding visible proof in support of Lord Kelvin’s theory seemed impossible. After all, how do you see what an atom really looks like?

However, Kelvin’s theory came decades before the discovery that most galaxies in the universe show large, vortex-like spirals – or that they form an enormous organized grid.

Atoms may have a vortex shape, just as Kelvin thought. And galaxies may share it. The reason for why most galaxies show spirals may be that galaxies share atomic physics, including the atom’s vortex shape. Galaxies may form organized structures in the same way that atoms do – i.e., molecules and supra-molecular structures – which may account for large-scale galaxy groups and superstructures.

Newton’s Lost Theory of Light

Stars are found throughout galaxies and throughout space. In the main sequence of stars, the mass of a star generally corresponds to its color, with blue stars being larger and red stars being smaller.

Sir Isaac Newton was convinced that light is composed of very small bodies, or corpuscles, whose different colors have different sizes.⁵ Newton mused that these bodies of light could even be seen using the microscopes of his day.⁶ Newton vigorously disagreed with the wave theory of light,⁷ and for most of modern history the scientific community was on his side.

Stars could be light. And in a powerful piece of cosmic symmetry, the color of a star could correspond to its color of light. If this is true, then Newton’s intuition was always right–we can see exactly what light looks like, and how it behaves. We just have to use telescopes, not microscopes as Newton imagined.

The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of star luminosity compared to color. The color and mass of a star may