In the Beginning, there was not just one Big Bang, but countless smaller ones we now call “quasars”.... Actually localized points of entrance into the universe of all the electromagnetic energy that will eventually coalesce as the matter of each galaxy. This energy, mostly in the form of gamma radiation, comes from a source that will be discussed shortly, but as it pours into the universe (each galaxy in its own time) it is bound by (1) the continually increasing gravity-curvature that accompanies all matter-energy, and (2) the laws of electromagnetism that “shape” every energy-process in the cosmos. Some of this radiation escapes across the universe to provide us with a record of that epoch, the light now reaching us from these regions and events having traveled for billions of years, and telling us also of the same process that occurred in our own galaxy at its violent “beginning” (Fig. 5). The residue of these myriad primal explosions has left us the background microwave “whisper” mistakenly attributed to a Big Bang cosmogenesis.

Keeping in mind the gist of Jeans’s conjecture, let’s pick a point on the mobius-strip that can represent our own galaxy. When, exactly, is our arbitrary starting-point in time? Let’s call it.... Oh, what the hell, for want of a better word, let’s call it.... the “Beginning”.

If, indeed, our mobius-strip metaphor depicts a cyclical evolution of the universe, how does this define the nature and development of each individual galaxy, each moving “point-line” on the strip? Consider this quote from Sir James Jeans (1877-1946), late British mathematician and astrophysicist, who, in an amazingly prescient flash in 1929, wrote: “The centers of the nebulae (galaxies) are of the nature of ‘singular points’, at which matter is poured into our universe from some other, and entirely extraneous, spatial dimension, so that, to a denizen of our universe, they appear as points at which matter is being continually created.” This brilliant intuition has been rather thoroughly ignored by contemporary cosmology. Indeed, shortly thereafter, Edwin Hubble made his momentous discovery of the cosmological red-shift; universal expansion was falsely deduced; and Big Bang cosmology became the fashionable model of the time.

Light reaching us from all objects in space expresses a similar phenomenon: Light from objects moving toward us is blue-shifted as the motion of the object adds energy to the light (though not velocity, which, for light, is constant). Oppositely, light reaching us from an object that is receding from us is shifted in frequency toward the red end of the color spectrum as the recessional velocity of the object robs energy from the light. Such is the cause of the cosmological red-shift as defined by the Big Bang model. But recession is not the only way light can be red-shifted in frequency. Light from a super-massive body is red-shifted by the enormous gravity of that body, which “pulls” at the very light that it emits. For instance, a neutron star, or “pulsar”, with a surface temperature of perhaps billions of degrees Kelvin, may shine with a wan, reddish glow, the light and heat red-shifted downward by the massive gravitational warpage. (Fig. 4). Gravitational curvature affects the wavelength of all electromagnetic radiation. The light reaching us from any object far enough away from us in space-time (“down”) has climbed out of an increasing overall universal gravity-well to get to us (Mach’s Principle, again).... This exertion imposes a progressive “drag” on the light’s motion-energy, “stretching” its wavelength toward the red end of the spectrum.... again, as stated above, a natural consequence of universal curvature over a vast distance that gives the illusion of an expanding cosmos.

As the train passes and moves away from us, the whistle drops in pitch: The recessional velocity of the train is now subtracted from the velocity of the whistle’s sound, giving the lower pitch.

The Doppler (or recessional) red-shift of light can best be illustrated by the classical “train” analogy: We are at a railroad crossing, and a train is approaching us, whistle blowing. At this point the whistle is high-pitched, since the velocity of the train moving in our direction is added to the velocity of the sound of the whistle (about 1100 ft/sec).

This same ubiquitous curvature (called “Mach’s Principle”, after the late physicist, Ernst Mach) that so pervades the universal empyrean also causes the red-shift of all electromagnetic energy reaching us from far away from our point in space-time.... the more red-shifted, the farther the light has traveled and the more gravitational curvature the light has passed through, climbing “uphill” to get to us. This red-shift is proportionate to the object’s distance from us, causing it to coincide (and be confused) with Hubble’s Law of the Doppler red-shift (which does indeed exist for all objects rapidly receding from us). The distant universe is “down” to us, because in whatever direction we look across the cosmos, we see mass, energy and, hence, gravity. In effect, light climbs “up-hill” against this gravity as it moves across the cosmos (from any direction) and gradually loses energy in the process, shifting toward the red end of the spectrum, a natural consequence of universal curvature over a vast distance that gives the illusion of an expanding cosmos..

Such is the “binding force” of gravity.... actually just a higher curvature of the space between the Earth and Sun, or any two objects in space. There is no “rope.” As we gaze across space-time at any distant object, our vision does not follow a straight line, but rather this constant, gradual curvature. There are no absolutely straight lines in the universe, even if we are gazing through an empty vacuum, a volume of space containing no massive bodies. Einstein’s elegant equation for energy serendipitously tells us this: E=MC 2 , or the energy contained by a given mass is equivalent to the amount of the mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Matter and energy ultimately are the same phenomenon.... They merely change form, back and forth, eternally. They both also warp the directional matrix of space-time, revealing the dimension of gravitational curvature. Since all space-time is pervaded by matter and/or energy, this warpage is a (sometimes tiny, but) constant, ever-present attribute of the geometry of the cosmos. Matter-energy and gravity are therefore inseparable: Light not only follows the curvature of space-time.... Light causes the very curvature that it follows. It is a "chicken or egg" situation. Everything boils down to two yin-yang factors: MOTION (light) and DIRECTION (gravity), the warp and weft of creation.

But there is a more subtle conceptual approach: If gravity is the curvature of space-time due to the presence of matter-energy, then the Sun can be said to be at the bottom of a curved “depression” in space-time, or a “gravity-well”, with the Earth spinning around the “slope” at a distance determined by its own inertial force, or energy-of-motion. (Fig. 3)

The popular conception of gravity likens it to a rope, one end of which is fastened, say, to the Earth and the other, to the Sun. This so-called “binding force” supposedly prevents the Earth from hurtling outward into the cosmos due to the energy of its inertial force and velocity around the Sun. The two forces being equalized, the Earth would maintain a stable orbit indefinitely.

Acceptance of these two related false premises renders all Big Bang cosmology (no matter how brilliantly articulated) down to the level of “How many angels can dance on the point of a pin?” This acceptance is the underpinning of the standard Big Bang model, and the removal of these premises casts grave doubt on the veracity of the model itself.

The other main false premise of twenty-first century cosmology is the bedrock assumption that the cosmological red-shift is due to recessional velocity, rather than the constant, cumulative curvature of space-time-gravity over vast distance, which “bends” the wavelength of all light from distant objects toward the red end of the spectrum.

Dimensionality is a hierarchically nestled total, like the Chinese box puzzle with its box within a box within a box.... The first dimension allows only linearity, a point stretching into a line. The second dimension allows the plane, creating a higher reality that contains, but is greater than, the line. The third dimension allows the solid, a volume that contains, but is greater than, the line and the plane. The fourth dimension of time likewise contains, but is greater than, length, width and depth: As one walks across a room, one progresses through time as well, as a higher dimension of movement. All of these are hierarchically contained within the fifth and greatest, all-inclusive dimension of gravitational curvature.

This persistent confusion is at the root of the modern fixation on reconciling two unreconcilable fundamentals, Quantum Electrodynamics and General Relativity, into what is often called the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. The basic premise of this shotgun wedding, simply stated, goes something like this: When an object collapses into a black hole, its volume decreases rapidly into the realm of the microcosm, whereupon it, like all things in the world of particles, becomes subject to the laws of quantum mechanics. The premise, however, is false and is rooted in the same above-mentioned confusion: A black hole singularity is the ultimate dimensional resolution of gravitational curvature. It is the ultimate “pathway” for all matter/energy, rather than the collapsing matter/energy itself, and should best be thought of as a “tunnel” . At this point in the Eternal Process, Quantum Electrodynamics becomes totally subservient to General Relativity. The waist of an hourglass is not the sand passing through it.

General Relativity leaves open the possibility of various resolutions, depending on one’s interpretation. Fundamental to an understanding of its true resolution, however, is the requirement that the mind recognize the difference between a “force” and a “dimension”. A “force” is propagated by a microcosmic quantum... A “dimension” is an expression of macrocosmic geometry. The distinction may seem subtle and counter-intuitive, but is quite profound. In “quantum gravity” or “superstring” theory, quantum bundles of energy (particles or strings) mediate all forces of nature, including gravity, just as in Quantum Electrodynamics. By this interpretation, gravity itself is made up of these quantum “gravitons” or “superstrings”. But according to General Relativity, gravity essentially is space-time. It is paradoxical to believe that quantum particles or strings can compose space-time curvature, yet at the same time operate within this curvature. Gravity is an expression of geometry, the outermost layer of the five-dimensional universal “onion”. A force is mediated by a quantum bundle of electromagnetic energy moving within the larger geometric context of this dimensional curvature. Confusing the two is rather like trying to establish the weight of an inch.

The term “gravitational curvature” begs this question: How does curvature manifest an “attractive” force? The quick answer: It doesn’t... It just seems to. The best illustration of this is from the late Guy Murchie’s wonderful science pandect, “Music of the Spheres”: Two ships are in the equatorial Atlantic, occupying adjacent longitudinal lines, moving northward. Their courses at first appear to be parallel, but as they progress toward the North Pole, their longitudinal orientations gradually converge. To the observers on board each ship, the two vessels seem to be drawn together by means of some “force of attraction” between them. This seems to make perfect sense if one is unaware of the curvature of the Earth ’ s surface. What seems to be an attractive force is really just convergent relative motion along an un-apparent curvature... the essence of General Relativity.

One of the two main false premises of twenty-first century cosmology is the persistent concept of gravity as a magnetic-like “force” (one of the Four Forces of Nature, along with the “strong” nuclear force, the “weak” nuclear force and electromagnetism), acting at a distance and thought by some to be propagated by a quantum, a proposed “graviton”, or a “superstring.” Gravity is not a force, or a “thing” at all, any more than the letters N, S, E and W are “places” on a map of the Earth. Gravity is a higher curvature of space and time, a directional orientation, a dimension of movement or travel for all matter-energy.... The fifth dimension, if you will, after the three dimensions of space and the fourth, of time. The “force” of gravity is actually the inertial force of matter/energy moving along this gravitational curvature, rather than any magnetic-like form of attraction.

Our model, reflecting our penchant for grandiose metaphor, can be called the “Cosmic Commode” model. It interprets the cosmological red-shift another way.... Cosmic Commode cosmology envisions a universal “granular” or “quantum”, texture, each quantum (or granule) being a galaxy: an involuting locus of matter-energy that eternally pursues a two-phased oscillation from quasar to black hole, from matter to antimatter, and back again, propelled by its own gravitational curvature along a temporal and relativistic path that is best illustrated metaphorically by the mobius strip.... A true dragon swallowing its tail.... An infinite system of quantum, cyclical self-absorption and rebirth, rather than expansion.

Acceptance of this augmented view of universal, relativistic geometry requires a reinterpretation and reappraisal of the so-called “cosmological red-shift” of all electromagnetic energy reaching us from intergalactic space. The Big Bang model maintains that the increasing red-shift of the light reaching us from increasingly distant galaxies is due to recessional velocity caused by the primordial explosion of an infinitely small “mass-point”, within which all this multi-galactic matter-energy originally was contained. According to this model, things are still moving apart. (Or, as some cosmologists like to say, “the space between things is expanding”.)

We are offering a cosmology which postulates that space, time and gravity form an interdimensional matrix that is best metaphored by the mobius strip, a universe that physically and temporally involutes on itself to form a never-ending, spiral cycle. In this view of the cosmos, there is no Big Bang, no End and no Beginning.... only an eternal, double-cycled evolution.

Flipping the strip over, we can see that there are two lines on opposite sides of it, paralleling one another in an involuted spiral but never meeting.... And yet, aren't they the same line? Where does the line really begin or end now, and what is the sound of one hand clapping? Imagine that our galaxy is but one point among an infinite number of points on the mobius strip, all describing their “world-lines” in the same direction along its length. Remember that these world-lines are only temporal paths, abstractions.... Galaxies are really evolving events of localized, spinning matter-energy. The width of the strip metaphorically represents the three-dimensional space of the universe, and the uniform movement of the points along the length of the strip represents the forward-only movement of time. The directional “twist” of the strip represents the universally cumulative effect of gravity: the distortion of space-time in the ubiquitous presence of matter and/or energy.

Our stadium-metaphor has thus far envisioned time as an oval loop rather like Fig. 1.... Let ’ s toy with the loop by cutting it across in one spot, giving one end a half-twist and gluing the two ends back together. This, of course, gives us a “mobius strip”, a never-ending, involuted, spiral cycle (Fig. 2).... With a pencil, we can make a point anywhere on the strip. We can then extend the point into a line that moves around the strip in one direction only. If we continue the line far enough, we wind up where we started: at the original starting point, the end-beginning... without having lifted the pencil! The strip logically must have two sides, but where does one side end and the other begin? Where is the transition? Or does it have two sides after all? Or an end or beginning? Remember, we never lifted the pencil to make the switch from one side to the other.

One could expand the “wave” metaphor to represent the entire universe moving forward in time. This is impossible for us to experience more than partially, for to look outward into the universe is to see only backward in time (around the stadium). We can never see into the present state of distant space because of the vast time it takes for the light of these events to reach us. But the wave of the Eternal Present embraces the entire universe simultaneously, moving around the stadium of time. Only our limited means of perception (be-shackled by the speed of light) prevent us from experiencing the whole of it.

As we gaze at this flat page of the Great Book of the Earth, we experience a view of Life-history: We are in a metaphorical football stadium of vast proportions, gazing across at a “human wave” moving around the curve of the stadium, as spectators (1) stand up, (2) raise their arms, palms forward, (3) lower their arms and (4) sit down, all in a synchronized order that laterally propagates in wave-form. The fossils beneath our feet are simply the “earthen photographs” of organisms who’ve already “sat down” as the Wave of Life propagates forward in time. It is now our turn to be “standing up”.

I stand with my wife, Terri, on the magnificent fossil beds at the Falls of the Ohio River Park near Louisville, Kentucky, marveling at the interlocking fossils that totally compose the flat rock shoals beneath our feet.... a legacy handed down for perhaps 400 million years.

Besotted with the fear of death, perplexed as to our origin and ultimate fate, we stumble forward willy-nilly through space and time in the Great Process we call the universe. Awed and humbled by our apparent aloneness and the enormity of our surroundings, we cower behind these shells of memory and personality we call our egos, oft taking solace in the warm, fuzzy glow offered by surrender to opulent materialism, fundamentalist belief-systems, fashionable cults and therapies or the cold certainty and hard-edged materialism of an all too often fundamentalist Science.

This journey is brought to you by the author and is dedicated to the dual principle that (1) true adventure is found only off the beaten path, and (2) that the Creative Process can (and does) shape the world. Bon voyage.... All Illustrations by the author. Copyright © 1992 by Phil Mayhew. All rights reserved. For further information: Email: info@cosmiccommode.com

“You're so right in believing that a question doesn't answer itself. You have to state it and keep stating it, as you do. Best wishes.”

“I agree completely with your intuition that the universe is not expanding.... You are already far ahead of 99% of conventional scientists.... But you are trying to link the science with human emotion and spirit. A very tough and admirable project. Best wishes.”

Cosmic Commode cosmology views gravity as it is defined by Machian-Einsteinian relativity: a ubiquitous curvature of space-time in the presence of matter and/or energy. Gravity itself is not a force.... It is geometry.... and the universe ain ’ t expanding, it ’ s just curved a funny way.

The Cosmic Commode theory is an alternative cosmogony. Primarily, it rejects two false premises of the Big Bang model: (1) The cosmological red-shift of the light from all distant objects in space is due to an expansion of the universe, and (2) Gravity is a “force”, one of the Four Forces of Nature, thought by some to be propagated quantum-fashion by a particle, a proposed “graviton”, or a “superstring”.

The Big Bang theory of cosmological creation is now overwhelmingly fashionable in the world of astrophysics, though many feel that it is based on flawed reasoning, false premises, innate contradictions and glaring paradoxes. Yet it lingers on.... Many careers and much grant money are dependent on the perpetuation of the concept and its spin-off subsidiary theories of “super-strings”, “quantum gravity”, “inflation”, “dark matter” and so on.

Over billions of years the galactic center becomes ever more saturated with matter-energy from the fading quasar, and the stars forming there become densely packed. Many stars evolve to the neutron-star stage (the process of fusion having run its full course), further gathering all matter in their paths and ultimately coalescing inward toward the ever-denser core region, to merge at last with the relentless, ravenous black hole that gradually forms at each galactic center.... following the quasar phase. Gravity is always the winner at last, ultimately confining and swallowing the entire galactic mass. From quasar to black hole.... Our own galaxy is now roughly midway between these two extremes. As our (or any other) galaxy ultimately evolves from exploding quasar to self-consumptive black hole, it will have traveled (through time) one half-circuit of the mobius strip (perhaps hundreds of billions of years), reaching a point that is precisely opposite the initial beginning point (or quasar) on the opposite “side” of the strip. This is a “cosmic instant”. It now begins the second half of its eternal circuit (Fig. 6).

The quasars eventually evolve from roundish, elliptical star- and dust-clouds into condensing, spinning, flattening spirals with enormous electromagnetic fields, (Seyfert-class galaxies), and the Life inside them evolves as well.... a beautiful, disorderly “fungus” on the star-shit.... moving, wave-form, around the mobius strip of time in keeping with its own unique nature and destiny: The Cosmos expressing awareness of Itself.

All of the ninety or so stable elements in the universe are merely the by-products of the nuclear fusion process of matter-formation and energy-release, the “basic metabolism” of the cosmos.... “star-shit”, so to speak.

Many of these stars possess enough mass to carry them through the six levels of fusion above that of hydrogen, producing (step by step) in their innards the elements of the periodic table, and releasing them (via novae and supernovae) into the galaxy to form second- and third-generation stars. These stars, in turn, possess the essential elements (in their primordial dust-clouds) for the formation of planets with carbon-based Life, inevitably, and the Wave propagates onward....

The super -saturation of gamma radiation in the heart of each quasar results in the formation (from this colliding, spinning energy) of positive and negative charge-masses of ordained (by the laws of parity and symmetry) distribution, mass and spin: the protons and electrons that join one another to form hydrogen atoms. (Under “normal” conditions within our universe, such as those which exist in particle accelerators on Earth, such collisions always produce paired matter/antimatter particles. Not so within the black hole/quasar interuniversal mechanism: In goes matter, out comes antimatter... or vice versa.) These, driven by the point-counterpoint phenomenae of gravity and electromagnetic attraction, seek one another in vast hydrogen clouds that ultimately coalesce into those nodes of greatest density we call stars. Hydrogen fusion processes ignite as these nodes reach a density and pressure that produces the magic temperature of twenty million degrees Kelvin, and the countless stars of each galaxy are off and running....

The effect of gravity, then, can be viewed as a means of traveling ahead in time for a certain area within its immediate sphere of influence (its “event horizon”). Velocity corresponds to mass corresponds to gravity corresponds to relative time-passage.... all or none, the field being a unified one. All of these qualities interpenetrate , reducing down to different aspects of a total process if examined closely enough. To illustrate (Fig. 7)....

We would offer a slight compromise in conceptualization.... to the effect that the inertial field of gravity (or space-time curvature) generated by the spacecraft’s velocity allowed time to “pass by” around it but not inside , having the paradoxical effect of slowing down the aging process within the craft from the relative point of view of observers on Earth, but in actuality serving to propel the craft into the future in a “differential cocoon” of gravity.... So, after a six-month voyage on-board ship, they return to find that they have actually traveled ahead twenty years by sliding forward on a faster, separate, inertial-gravitational “treadmill”.

There is a big argument at the spaceport upon the return of the astronauts (who have aged six or so months to their colleagues’ twenty years) concerning who is correct. The observers on Earth insist that time slowed down on board the spacecraft during its journey.... The astronauts argue just as insistently that from their relative point of view, nothing at all changed during the trip. In fact, they might further insist (with equally convincing proof available to them) that the rest of the universe sped up! But majority rules, and physics has decided that time, for the astronauts, does indeed slow down. (One must ponder the confusion in the pay-scale: If the astronauts were wise, they would take twenty years’ pay and not argue too loudly about “time dilation”.)

The reason for this is that the increased velocity of the craft toward light-speed gave it increased inertia (mass times velocity), hence, more relative mass, hence, more gravity (or space-time warpage). According to General Relativity, gravity slows down the passage of time within its immediate vicinity.... the more intense the gravitational warpage, the slower the subjective time-rate. Time is an irreversible companion of mass, inertia, velocity or gravity.

According to Special Relativity, any moving object possessing a velocity (relative to our frame of reference) that is an appreciable fraction of the speed of light undergoes this time-dilation. This results in the old “clock paradox”, wherein two clocks, identical in design, are set precisely together. One stays on Earth, and the other goes on board the spacecraft for a journey that involves enormous interstellar distance and relativistic velocity. Upon returning to Earth, it is found that the clock on board the spacecraft has progressed at a slower rate.... to a degree that is directly proportional to the maximum velocity reached by the spacecraft on its voyage. Likewise, the astronauts have aged less than their colleagues on Earth.

So.... Here we have a curious “bootstrap” situation that can be summed up in this manner: Space, time and gravity are all dimensions of “movement”, each automatically increasing in rate or degree proportionately with the others in a five-dimensional continuum. If we are astronauts in a spacecraft accelerating toward the speed of light, our relative mass increases accordingly, and we move forward in time relative to the rest of the universe .... the “time-dilation” of Special Relativity Theory.

Admittedly, this is difficult to envision (like trying to pick up a ball of mercury with the fingertips), but General Relativity properly regards gravity as an inertial frame of reference in a direction (or dimension) not obvious to us.

So, inertia is directly proportionate to velocity, as is gravity, and is also manifested in the opposite direction. (For instance, Einstein’s “other” Principle of Equivalence concerning inertia and gravity, which states that for an object to escape from the surface of another object [such as the Earth], its “escape velocity” must exceed its “gravitational velocity” inward, imposed by the mass of the larger object.) From this we can see that inertia and gravity are ultimately the same phenomenon, and indeed, they are treated the same way in physics. Nothing is ever truly “still” in the universe. Everything is constantly moving in the dimension of gravity.

Relative mass and inertia are correlative terms: When an object increases in velocity (relative to its environment), its inertial force increases as well. It then occupies a different inertial frame of reference than its previous environment. Its mass also increases relative to that which existed in its previous inertial frame. Obviously, the word “relative” is key here, but this is not just simple semantics: From the relative point of view of the above-mentioned concrete block (which still exists in the original inertial frame), the inertia of the bullet has the same effect as a massive weight suddenly resting on the block, focused on an area no more than a half-inch across... The block shatters in either case.

To travel through three-dimensional space, one must travel through time as well (a phenomenon called “interpenetration”). One must also have velocity. When an object increases in velocity, it increases in relative mass as well. (Which is why a high-velocity rifle bullet with a rest-mass of only a few ounces can shatter a concrete block.) When we accelerate in a car, our increased mass is expressed in the opposite direction (inertia) as our increasing weight pressing against the seat with a sensation that is indistinguishable from gravity.

In a central-galactic, black hole-singularity, space-time itself turns “inside-out”, causing all accompanying matter-energy to follow suit by ultimately becoming its own antimatter , following the total conversion of the galactic mass into gamma-photons as the mirror-reversal process takes place: An exploding quasar of pure electromagnetic energy once again.... From the End of Time to a new Beginning, and representing the only form of gateway between them.... A dark “tunnel” with a strange, illogical “twist” on the inside. Light is its own anti-particle, and can exist on either side of the mobius-strip, in both the matter and antimatter halves of the cosmos. This first circuit is one-half of the cyclical Process of Creation that our universe goes through in one “kalpa” (a Hindu word used here to denote the full double-circuit).... From quasars to evolving galaxies to central galactic black holes, through the “looking glass” (the twisted time-tunnels of their singularities) bursting into the antimatter universe that cyclically “follows simultaneously” each matter-universe phase, repeating the same evolutionary process as antimatter, anti-quasar, anti-galaxy and anti-black hole.... back and forth eternally, each galaxy an oscillating component of an oscillating cosmos.

As the matter-energy is crushed to impossible density in the black hole, it emerges on the other side of the “universal coin” at the beginning of time .... and the beginning of the second half of our mobius-strip circuit, around the “other side”, the ultimate destination of the “direction” of gravity. (Did you ever wonder where the commode led to when you were a kid? Wow.... is this all just an expression of “anal retention”?)