Based on how fast our universe is expanding, scientists were able to rewind back to when it began. Big bang theory is that about 14 billion years ago our entire universe existed at a point that exploded out to become what we see today, but for this to be true, several miracles had to happen.
The first was that everything in our universe had to come from nothing. It is a miracle because from nothing, nothing comes, so how can a universe come from it? This is the something from nothing miracle.
The second miracle was that our entire universe initially existed at a point, called a singularity. It is a miracle because by the laws of physics, matter at that density should immediately collapse into a black hole, from which even light can’t emerge, so the universe would be stillborn. This is the singularity miracle.
To avoid this, Guth proposed inflation theory (Guth, 1998), that an immense anti-gravity field expanded the singularity faster than light for 10-32 seconds, so it didn’t become a black hole. He solved one miracle by proposing another, because according to relativity, nothing can move faster than light. This is the faster than light miracle.
This huge field then vanished as suddenly as it appeared, for no reason, to play no further part in our universe. It is a miracle because no other fields of physics have ever vanished. This is the vanishing field miracle.
Instead of an all-powerful being creating the universe, physics now says that it came from nothing, to exist at a single point, that a massive field expanded faster than light, until that field vanished forever, leaving the universe to slowly evolve into galaxies, stars, and us. But how is trading one miracle for four an improvement, despite its scientific veneer? Is there any theory that avoids these miracles?
Quantum realism begins by stating that quantum waves exist, based on the evidence. A universe that began must begin from something, so the network that hosts those waves could have existed before our universe began, to start it. But how can one reality give rise to what isn’t itself? One way, for a network, is to create a virtual reality based on server-client relations.
A server-client relation is when one point of a network tells another what to do. For example, if I print this page, my laptop tells the printer what to print, so it is a server and the printer is a client. If a client job fails, the server can restart it so my laptop can resend the page if the print fails. Likewise, if a quantum wave is client events spreading on a network, it can restart again as quantum theory says. A server directing a quantum wave can restart it if it fails just as I can restart a print that fails. That the physical world began as server-client waves then avoids the something from nothing miracle.
Our universe as a server-client virtual reality should begin as our software environments do. When a Windows computer is turned on, it first loads a tiny CMOS program, that then loads a kernel program, that loads a bigger BIOS, that loads the full Windows environment, so the software starts in a step-wise manner, not all-at-once. If our universe did the same, the first event only needs to create one photon to start it off. That our universe began as one photon then avoids the singularity miracle, because one photon won’t collapse into a black hole.
To create a photon, which is one quantum wave, only requires one network point to give its activity to its neighbors, to became a server. Doing this would leave a Planck size hole in the network, so space also began when our universe did. This white-hot speck of light could then trigger other points to do the same, just as a little rip in a taught fabric quickly becomes big. Inflation was then the quantum fabric dividing itself into servers and clients, to give an initial plasma that was:
“… essentially inhabited by massless entities, perhaps largely photons.” (Penrose, 2010), p176.
In our networks, server events are faster than client events because directing an event is faster than doing it. Hence, if the initial creation of photons was a server chain-reaction, it would occur faster than the speed of light, which reflects the client rate of network transfer. That inflation was a server chain-reaction then avoids the faster-than-light miracle, but why didn’t it continue forever?
In the above, each step of the inflation chain-reaction produced both light and space. Adding space extended the wavelength of light to dilute its energy, so light that was white-hot at the dawn of time is now cold. The generation of light was exponential, as light begat light, but the hypersphere surface of space grew as a cubic function, which overpowers exponential growth if the resolution is quick (Figure 2.12), as physics says it was (Note 1). That space expanding stopped inflation by cooling the light causing it then avoids the vanishing field miracle.
It follows that the big bang wasn’t big, at first anyway, nor was it a bang, as initially there was no space to explode into. It was a little rip in the primal reality that made both light and space. The quantum network separated itself into servers and clients to create the quantum waves that cause physical events, so our universe was borne not manufactured. Space expanding then healed the rip, but not before all the photons in our universe had been created. In this view, our universe began as nothing but white-hot light, and matter came later, as Chapter 4 explains. After the initial act of creation, space continued to expand, cooling the universe down, so space expanding isn’t just an oddity of physics. We only exist because it cooled the universe enough to accommodate us.
In conclusion, our universe came from something not nothing, it was a little rip not a big bang, followed by an outward push not a pull, that was stopped by the expansion of space not a field disappearing. No miracles are needed, given only that quantum waves exist.
Note 1. In inflation theory, an immensely strong anti-gravity field pulled the entire physical universe from the size of a proton to the size of a baseball faster than the speed of light, then 10-32 of a second later that field conveniently disappeared forever.