Our Universe: It’s Geometry and

Physical Laws
“ Strange is our situation here upon Earth.
Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why; Yet
sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.”

--------- Albert Einstein.

Special Theory of Relativity (STR):
There are two simple yet deeply rooted structures that form
the foundation of STR :

(i) Principle of Relativity

(ii) Properties of Light

(i): It concerns not with any specific physical law but rather with all physical
laws.
--- The concept of motion is relative. One can speak about the motion of an
object, but only relative to or by comparison with another. There is no
“absolute” notion of motion.
(ii): The constancy of the speed of light has resulted in a replacement of the
traditional view of space and time as rigid and objective structures with
a new conception in which they depend intimately on the relative motion
between observer and observed.
 To reflect the unchanging character of the speed of light, among other
things
----- “Invariance” theory.
• What is E = mc ??
2
 Energy and mass are convertible and exchange rate is ever a constant.

 The conflict between the “age-old intuition” about motion and the
constancy of the speed of light is resolved by Einstein through Special
Theory of Relativity.

 The dictum “nothing can outrun light” is incompatible with Newton’s

Universal Theory of Gravity.
 resolved by Einstein through GTR.

 Central feature of STR  the absolute speed barrier set by light.

This limit applies not only to material objects but also to signals and
influences of any kind.
 Newtonian Gravity:  m1m2 
F =G r
r3
The strength does not depend on how long the objects have been in each
other’s presence.

 Though Newtonian Gravity can be used to make highly accurate

predictions about how objects will move under the influence of gravity, it
offers no insight into what gravity is  By what means does gravity
execute it’s mission ?

 But what about individuals who are experiencing accelerated motion ?

According to Einstein, gravity and accelerated motion are

profoundly interwoven. This indistinguishability between accelerated
motion and gravity is called by Einstein as the Equivalence Principle – a
central feature in GTR.
 GTR finishes a job initiated by STR. Equivalence Principle put constant
velocity and accelerating frames within one framework.

Accelerated frame without a gravitational field Non-accelerated frame

with a gravitational field.

Hence one can say :

“ All observers, regardless of their state of motion, may proclaim that they
are stationary and the rest of the world is moving by them”, so long as they
Include a suitable gravitational field in the description of their own
surroundings.
GTR ensures all possible observational vantage points on equal
footing.

curvature of spacetime

Gravity Accelerated Motion

Revolutionary idea: Space and time warp and distort to
communicate the force of gravity.
Euclidean geometry does not hold – (Pseudo) Riemannian Geometry

Gravity

Warping of space and time

Accelerated Motion

Q. What happens to space if a massive object is present ?

Before Einstein, the answer was nothing. Space was thought to provide
an inert theatre, merely setting the stage on which the events of the
universe play themselves out.
According to GTR, the presence of mass causes the fabric of space
around it to warp.
 Space is not merely a passive forum providing the arena for the events
of the universe, rather the shape of space responds to objects in the
environment.

 This warping in turn, affects other objects moving in the vicinity of the
mass, as they now must traverse the distorted spatial fabric. This effect on
the motion of the object is referred to as the gravitational influence of the
mass.
 According to Einstein, the warping of space is the mechanism by which
gravity is transmitted.
 The gravitational tether holding the earth in orbit is not some mysterious
instantaneous action of the Sun – it is the warping of the spatial fabric
caused by the Sun’s presence.

 Two essential features of gravity :

(i) The more massive the mass is, the greater the distortion it causes in the
space fabric surrounding it  the more massive an object, the greater the
gravitational influence it can exert on other objects.
(ii) Distortion of spatial fabric gets smaller as one goes further from it 
the influence of gravity becomes weaker as the distance between
objects becomes larger.
“ Gravity must be caused by an agent”
------- The fabric of the cosmos.

GR vs QM
Central pt. of Black holes
GR
Massive
and
Micro
The whole universe at the
QM
moment of the big bang

violent catastrophe
Well-formulated physical problems elicit nonsensical answers when the
equations of both theories are commingled.
 Everything is subject to the quantum fluctuations inherent in the
uncertainty principle – even the gravitational field.
 Gravitational field undulates up and down due to QF – average value is
zero for empty space.
 On smaller regions of space, the size of the undulations of the
gravitational field gets larger.

Gravitational field ≡Curvature of the space-time

QF manifests themselves as increasingly violent distortions of the
surrounding space.
---- Severe warping of space that it no longer resembles a gently curving
geometrical object.

 The description of the frenzy revealed by such an ultra microscopic

examination of space (and time) – Quantum Foam (John Wheeler)

---- an unfamiliar arena of the universe in which the conventional notions of

left and right, back and forth, up and down (and even before and after)
lose their meaning – Fundamental incompatibility between GR and QM.
Ultramicroscopic scale:
The uncertainty principle (the central feature of QM) is in
direct conflict with the central feature of GR (the smooth geometrical model
of space).
--- The equations of GR cannot handle the roiling frenzy of quantum foam.

Quantum Geometry:

String Theory: A quantum-mechanical description of gravity –

a modification of GTR over Planck scale.

Riemannian Geometry – the mathematical core of GTR must be modified to

reflect the short distance physics

--- a new kind of geometry over Planck scale

--- Quantum Geometry

 A Cosmological Playground
Big Bang Model:
The whole of the universe violently emerged from a
singular cosmic explosion, some 15 or so billion years ago.
Today, we can see that the debris from this explosion, in
the form of many billions of galaxies, is still streaming outward – The
universe is expanding (Hubble).
Q. Will this cosmic growth continue forever or halt at one time?
Depends on the average density of matter
Critical density ρ ≅ 10 −29 gm/c.c.
c

ρ > ρc ⇒ leads to Big Crunch

ρ ≤ ρc ⇒ ever expanding universe

Studying the distribution of galaxies throughout space, astronomers can get

a pretty good handle on the average amount of visible matter in the
universe and it turns out to be significantly less than the critical value.
 The Standard Model of Cosmology
The modern theory of cosmic origins dates from the decade and a half
after GTR. Einstein thought that according to GTR, the universe is
neither eternal nor static.
Big bang solution to Einstein’s equations by Alexander Friedmann – a
solution that declares that the universe violently emerged from a state of
infinite compression and is currently in the expanding aftermath of that
primeval explosion.
Hubble observed with a hundred-inch telescope at Mount Wilson
Observatory that the universe is expanding – a confirmation of Friedmann’s
time dependent solution.
Later, Howard Robertson and Arthur Walker refashioned Friedmann’s
work in a more systematic and effective form – FRW Cosmology.
A detailed process of evolution:

• The universe erupted from an enormously energetic, singular event,

which spewed forth all of space and all of matter.
− 32
• At time 10 43 sec (Planck time): Temperature ≈ 10 Kelvin (some 10
trillion trillion times hotter than the deep interior of the sun).
• As time passed, the universe expanded and cooled, the initial
homogeneous primordial cosmic plasma began to form eddies and
clumps.
• At about a hundred-thousandth of a second after the bang, things had
cooled sufficiently ( ≈ 10 trillion Kelvin – about a million times hotter
than the sun’s interior) for quarks to clump together in group of three,
forming protons and neutrons.
• About a hundredth of a second later, conditions were right for the
nuclei of some the lightest elements in the periodic table to start
congealing out of the cooling plasma of particles.
• In the next three minutes, as the simmering universe cooled to about a
billion degrees, the pre-dominant nuclei that emerged were those of
hydrogen and helium, along with trace amounts of deuterium (heavy
hydrogen) and lithium --- period of primordial nucleosynthesis.
• For the next few hundred thousand years there were only further
expansion and cooling.
• When the temperature had dropped to a few thousand degrees, wildly
streaming electrons slowed down to the point where atomic nuclei,
mostly hydrogen and helium, could capture them, forming the first
electrically neutral atoms. This was a pivotal moment; from this point
forward the universe by and large , became transparent.
• Prior to the era of electron capture, the universe was filled with a dense
plasma of electrically charged particles – some with (+)ve charges like
nuclei and others with (-)ve charges, like electrons.
• Photons, which interact only with electrically charged objects, where
bumped and jostled incessantly by the thick bath of charged particles,
traversing hardly any distance before being deflected or absorbed. The
charged particle barrier to the free motion of photons would have made
the universe appear almost completely opaque, similar to the experience
in a dense morning fog.
• But when (-)vely charged electrons were brought into orbit around
(+)vely charged nuclei, yielding electrically neutral atoms, the charged
obstructions disappeared and the dense fog vanished. From that time
onward, photons from the Big bang have traveled unhindered and the
full expanse of the universe gradually came into view.
• About a billion years later, with the universe having substantially
calmed down from its frenetic beginnings, galaxies, stars and ultimately
planets began to emerge as a gravitationally bound clumps of the
primordial elements. Today, some 15 billion or so years after the bang,
one can marvel at both the magnificence of the cosmos and at our
collective ability to have pieced together a reasonable and
experimentally testable theory of cosmic origin.

Q. How much faith should we really have in the Big bang theory?

Possible Way: With powerful telescope, it is possible to see light, emitted

from galaxies and quasars just a few billion years after the
Big bang. So one can verify the expansion of the universe
with the prediction of the Big bang theory.
 To test the theory to yet earlier times, astronomers make use of the
most refined approaches known as “Cosmic Background Radiation”.

• After electrons and nuclei join together to form atoms, photons are free
to travel in every direction of the universe, i.e, the universe is filled with a
gas of photons (uniformly distributed). As the universe expands, this gas
of freely streaming photons expands as well and as a result the
temperature of this photon gas decreases.
• George Gamow and his students Ralph Alpher and Robert Hermann
(1950’s) and Robert Dicke and Jim Peebles (mid 1960’s) speculated
that present day universe should be permeated by an almost uniform
bath of these primordial photons, which through the last 15 billion years
of cosmic expansion have cooled to a mere handful of degrees above
absolute zero.
This was confirmed by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson (1965) of
Bell Laboratories by detecting this after glow of the Big bang while
working on an antenna for communication satellites.
• In early 1990s NASA’s COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite
collected data which have confirmed to high precision that the universe is
filled with microwave radiation, whose temperature is about 2.7 degree
Kelvin, exactly in accord withy the expectation of the Big bang theory (If
our eyes were sensitive to microwaves, we would see a diffused glow in
the world around us).
---- A confirmation of the Big bang picture of cosmology as far back as the
time that photons first moved freely through the universe, about a few
hundred thousand years after the bang (ATB).
• Can we push further in our tests of the Big bang theory to even earlier
times?
• Standard principles of nuclear theory and thermodynamics, physicists
can make definite predictions about the relative abundance of the light
elements produced during the period of primordial nucleosynthesis,
between a hundredth of a second and a few minutes ATB.
Theoretical prediction of about 23% helium in the universe is
supported from the measurement of helium abundance in stars and
nebulae. Also there is confirmation regarding deuterium abundance and
recently that of lithium.

• Beyond that: The arena of string theory

Planck time to a Hundredth of a second ATB:

“Super force”
Strong force
10 −35 sec
28 Weak force
Temp > 10 Kelvin
Electromagnetic force
strong force
Phase Transition: weak force
(Temp< 1028 Kelvin) Super force
electromagnetic force

Weak force
Phase Transition:
(Temp ≈ 1015 Kelvin)
Electromagnetic force
 A Cosmological Puzzle
The standard Big bang cosmology provides an elegant, consistent and
calculationally tractable framework for understanding the universe in
the post-Planck era.
• A detailed further investigation shows some problems – one is the
horizon problem.
• Detailed studies of the cosmic background radiation have shown that
regardless of which direction in the sky one points the measuring
antenna, the temperature of the radiation is the same, to about one part
in 100,000. This is quite strange. Why should different locations in the
universe, separated by enormous distances, have temperatures that are
so finely matched?
• A natural answer is to know that two diametrically opposite places in the
heavens are far apart today, but during the earliest moments of the
universe they were very close together. So it is not at all surprising that
they share common physical traits such as their temperature.
 Inflation
(Alan Guth, 1979, MIT)
• In this framework, the standard cosmological model is modified during
−36
a tiny window of time – around 10 to 10 −34 sec. ATB – in which the
30
universe expanded by a colossal factor of at least 10 , compared with
a factor of about a hundred during the same time interval in standard
scenario.
• This means that in a brief flicker of time, the size of the universe
increased by a greater percentage than it has in the 15 billion years
since.
• Before this expansion, matter that is now in far flung regions of the
cosmos was much closer together than in the standard cosmological
model, making it possible for a common temperature.
• Thus through Guth’s momentary burst of cosmological inflation –
followed by the more usual expansion of the standard cosmological
model – these regions of space were able to become separated by the
vast distances we observed today --- a solution to the Horizon Problem
as well as a number of other important problems.
 nucleosynthesis galaxies formed
(Big bang) inflation
grand unification
104 yrs 1010 yrs
10−45 10−30 −24 −18 10 −6

sy ad01
10 10

c es 1

y adot
Time: today
(in sec) 10−36 10−12

1025 K 1010 K 104 K

Temp: 1019 K

(in Kelvin) 16
1028 K 10 K 10 K 1013 K
22
32 107 K solar system

K01
10 K
atoms formed
formed
Planck time electroweak
unification

The meta-lesson of both relativity and quantum mechanics is that when we

deeply probe the fundamental workings of the universe we may come upon
aspects that are vastly different from our expectations. The boldness of
asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept
the answers.
Thank You