This scheme was inspired by reports from the Astronomy Congress, heard on the radio program “Quirks and Quarks” at noon on January 18, 1997, CBC Toronto, 740 AM. It is, however, supplemented by information from other sources.

The assumption behind this is that we are in an “open universe”, i.e. that it will not stop expanding and never contract back to a “Big Crunch”.

The initial phases are hardly “eons”; they are the tiniest fractions of microseconds. But the last phases are extremely long, far longer than geological eons. So much happens at the beginning, where changes and events are crowded together; so little happens near the end, when the slow events like proton decay become significant. It is a time curve of a downward sloping exponential – very steep at first and almost horizontal at the last. (plotting density of events against time.) But “time” is not necessarily linear as we know it.

The scheme is represented below, in tabular form.

Now the comments on this table. In a way the progression is like “The Temperature Zoom” from the very hot to the very cold (see essay in Section III), but with an important (though hypothetical) difference; as the extremely cold turns into the extremely hot, we get “the Great Wrap-around” as if time was circular, not linear. The hypothesis is only mine, and very shaky, but nevertheless attractive and “elegant”, which some consider to be a criterion (though only one of several) for the acceptance of a hypothesis. It is also in accordance with the classical Hindu theory of the very long cycle of repeating universes.

The symmetry breaking of the unified field refers to the separation, one by one, of the four forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetic, weak, and strong) as the temperature drops. “Quark confinement” means the formation of protons and neutrons, together called hadrons. Before this time they could exist as free quarks, but never again afterwards. “Decoupling” denotes the separation of matter (fermions) from energy or radiation (bosons), with the universe becoming transparent and with free space, instead of a “soup” of interacting particles. The initial nucleo-synthesis (of the two simplest elements only) could then occur. Thus we get, first, whole nuclei rather than separate protons and neutrons, and secondly, whole atoms when the nuclei bind electrons. (perhaps I should have separated these two stages.)

Then we get to our present aeon, the “stelliferous”, when macro-clumping begins. Attention turns from sub-atomic particles to huge structures – first galaxies, then stars within galaxies. Gravitational forces begin to overcome the action of entropy, which would keep things dispersed. As the first generation of big and bright blue stars come to the end of their lives, they explode as supernovae and give rise to all the other elements in a second wave of nucleosynthesis. I have marked this eon with a prominent “You are here” asterisk, as in a map in a shopping mall.

What presumably will follow is a universe in which there are only stellar remnants: white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes; as well as possibly red giants which have not yet ended, and brown dwarfs which have never begun as stars. The age of “living” stars (those on the main sequence) is succeeded by an age of stars who are dead and those who were never born. There will never be a “You are here” sign at this stage, or in any succeeding ones. But note that the time horizon is very long. As someone quipped “time enough to clean up the basement”; to which my friend remarked “You haven’t seen MY basement”.

“Finally” (but not finally) there will be only black holes (very dense objects) and radiation (a very diffuse phenomenon). I call this a bifurcation into extreme clumping on the one hand, and extreme dispersion on the other hand. This is a bipolarization in which all the intermediates disappear. Both gravity and entropy have triumphed and become the two superpowers of the universe.

But this is not the end. Black holes “evaporate” over a long time span, as has been shown by Stephen Hawking. And even protons decay. So “finally” (?) we have only highly dispersed radiation at a very low temperature; the end of matter as we know it, and the triumph of one of the super-powers, namely entropy. This has been called “the dark era” (reminiscent of the Dark Ages following the end of the Roman Empire), and called by thermodynamicists the heat death of the universe: complete equilibrium in which nothing can ever happen again. But wait! This outcome is after all not final, according to the most recent story.

According to the initial assumption, the universe, now dead, continues to expand. I will now hypothesize that this will produce adiabatic cooling without any limit, approaching absolute zero of temperature. Helium (both isotopes) and perhaps even hydrogen would form superfluids – if there were any left. As I have assumed above, there is no matter left, only radiation. Now radiation is composed of photons, and photons are bosons. What bosons (but not fermions) can do at extremely low temperatures is to slump into a Bose-Einstein condensate, because bosons, unlike fermions, can occupy the same space at the same time.

So now we suddenly have this very different kind of clumping together in the middle of the still expanding, by now much bigger universe. Perhaps this B-E condensate is actually infinitely hot rather than infinitely cold. Note the analogy with the magnetic “temperature” (alignment of elementary magnets) or “spin temperature” (proctor). The heading of this article states “negative absolute temperatures are not colder than zero, but are hotter than infinity”.) It then becomes a candidate for a new Big Bang, from a tiny region within the old huge, but cold and spent, universe.

One problem with my far-fetched hypothesis is that the B-E condensate is made up of bosons and the super-hot pre-Big Bang fireball singularity is probably made up of fermions (quarks and electrons).

For the super-cold to pass to the super-hot would involve a supersymmetry transition. But while we are dreaming, why not?

Bosons can happily coexist in one and the same spot in space-time, but fermions cannot. So when the super-symmetry transformation occurs (its cause unknown), the fermion singularity must explode.

I have called the “macro-coherence” of very cold matter “life as we DON’T know it”, because it seems to me to be a kind of order in the midst of all this entropy. Perhaps we need to radically widen our notion of what we mean by life. Just because there is no “you are here” asterisk, it does not mean that God is absent.

This scheme does not give any important role to humans in the cosmic drama. Well, we have been demoted before – by Copernicus, by Darwin, by Freud…But wait; let me diverge into a far-fetched theological analogy.

In the Kabbala mythology, there is the story of “the breaking of the vessels” as the Emanations were issuing from the Godhead (Armstrong). This is very similar to symmetry breaking during the creation of the universe. The sparks of the divine essence (ousis) dispersed like so many photons, quarks, electrons, stars,…even people. They issue from the Unified Field and will be reunited in the B-E Condensate. Macro-coherence restores En Sof’s unity. He is immanent in all of His creation, but much bigger than this — He is also transcendent over it, because creation — the Universe — is only part of Him.

Still, as long as the sparks from the broken vessels are missing, He is not complete. Some of our personal sparks (souls) are reunited with Him after the end of physical life; but those who have erred (sinned) are missing, and there are tiny black holes in the overall design. But black holes evaporate after a long time, sinners are forgiven (there is a loss of information when black holes leak — perhaps this is forgiveness), and the boson condensate makes the design into a perfect pattern again.

But then En Sof wants to create again, and initiates a new cycle. The Word is not “let there be Light”, but “let there be Matter”.

The super-symmetry transformation is the result of the Word. (While above I said “cause unknown”, I now say “First Cause”.) At His behest, all the integral spins (0, 1,2…) of the bosons change into the half-integral spins (1/2, 3/2) of the fermions. He is incomplete (non-integral) again, but His creation lives.

There is no one here but He.