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Wrinkles in Time
by George Smoot
1994, Avon, New York, NY
ABSTRACT - A story, by
perhaps the greatest living cosmologists, of his discovery, which Stephen Hawking called
the "most important of the century, if not of all time" confirming the big bang
theory and leading to an understanding that matter is not distributed uniformly throughout
the universe. As he traces the development of the universe from the moment of creation
until the present, he outlines some of the most basic principles of life, such as phase
transitions and the increasing complexity of life’s systems.
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"The most far-reaching
implication of general relativity, however, is that the universe is not static, but is
dynamic, either contracting or expanding." p. 36
"The evolution of the
universe is effectively the change of distribution of matter through time - moving from
virtual homogeneity in the early universe to a very lumpy universe today, with matter
condensed as galaxies, clusters, super-clusters, and even larger structures. We can view
that evolution as a series of phase transitions from one state to another under the
influence of decreasing temperature (or energy)." P.284
"At a ten-millionth of a
trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth (10 -42 ) of a second after the big
bang - the earliest moment about which we can sensibly talk, and then only with some
suspension of disbelief - all the universe we can observe today was the tiniest fraction
of the size of a proton. space and time had only just begun...By 10-34 second
inflation had expanded the universe (at an accelerating rate) a million trillion trillion
(1030) times...The strong nuclear force had separated, and matter underwent its
first phase transition, existing now as quarks...The next phase transition occurred at a
ten-thousandth of a second, when quarks began to bind together to form protons and
neutrons...When the temperature fell to about 3,000 degrees, at three hundred thousand
years, a crucial further phase transition occurred. the photons were no longer energetic
enough to dislodge electrons from around hydrogen and helium nuclei and so atoms of
hydrogen and helium were formed ant stayed together." p. 284-285
"Had all matter been
distributed evenly, the fabric of space would have been smooth, and the interaction of
photons with particles would have been homogeneous, resulting in a completely uniform
cosmic background radiation. Our discovery of the wrinkles reveals to us that matter was
not uniformly distributed, that it was already structured, thus forming the seeds out of
which today’s complex universe has grown." p. 285
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"There is a clear order to
the evolution of the universe, moving from simplicity and symmetry to greater complexity
and structure. As time passes, simple components coalesce into more sophisticated building
blocks spawning a richer, more diverse environment. Accidents and chance, in fact, are
essential in developing the overall richness of the universe. In that sense, Einstein had
the right idea: God does not play dice with the universe. Though individual events happen
as a matter of chance, there is an overall inevitability to the development of
sophisticated complex systems." p. 296
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