IT was thought for many years that the existence of forces of gravitational attraction in the Universe would mean that all material substance, being mutually attracted, must eventually condense. Based upon this proposal it was further supposed by many intelligent people, that the Universe and even space itself was destined to collapse into a pinhead, or else that it was expanding somehow in order to avoid such an eventuality.
While such ideas were being spread far and wide, some other things were also observed which did not appear to be directly related to this problem. One was that energy and mass could be regarded as types of the same fundamental quality of matter. Another observation was the existence of a singularity or "Black Hole" in the centre of each galaxy, and further, the observation that spiral-shaped galaxies exist in all directions, to the very limits of observable space.
The mutually attracting propensity of gravity and the shape of galaxies strongly suggests that a very large amount of matter is being absorbed into the singularity at the centre of every galaxy. Matter may change from mass to energy, or vice-versa, but it cannot cease to be. Therefore, either the "Black Hole" grows in size, or it returns mass/energy to the Universe beyond. Supposing that the galaxies which we observe may be of great antiquity, yet tend to maintain the same size and elegant spiral shape, it is therefore reasonable to assume that each singularity returns mass/energy to the Universe at a comparable rate to that at which matter is crossing its "event horizon".
At least three mechanisms are possible for the singularity to return mass/energy to the Universe. In the first scenario, the returning mass/energy re-enters at a different location altogether, having been transdimensionally re-integrated in such a way that it either returns into space at a quite different location, or returns at a multitude of locations simultaneously.
In the second scenario mass is returned by being ejected from each singularity, perhaps as a beam of beta-particles. In the third scenario, energy is returned by being ejected from the singularity, perhaps as a beam of gamma-rays. In both the second and third scenarios beams or rays would extend from a singularity, presumably at right angles to the plane of the spiral galaxy. There is also the possibility of a hybrid of the second and third scenarios, where both mass and energy are projected from a singularity. The end result is that matter, which condenses in galaxies, would be redistributed by the singularity into intergalactic space, either constantly or periodically.
The foregoing account of the condensation, due to gravity, of matter in galaxies, its gradual passage into the singularity at the centre of the galaxy, and its consequent redistribution into intergalactic space, will suffice to account for the ongoing existence of the Universe without the need to invoke either expansion of space itself, or eventual collapse due to forces of gravitational attraction. Such an account validates the old idea that we live in a Universe which is infinite and unbounded in both space and time.
The redistribution of condensing matter, in the form of electromagnetic radiation of high energy, back into intergalactic space by the singularity or "black hole" in the middle of every galaxy is one very important part of the story of the eternal cycling of matter/energy in the Universe, yet it is not the whole story.
To appreciate the cyclic nature of the entire process it is necessary to recall that according to the quantum theory of small particles there is, throughout the Universe, a field for each fundamental particle, usually called a quantum field, and that a photon of sufficiently large energy has the capacity to interact with such a field, even in intergalactic space, to transform into the particle in question, whether it is an electron, or a proton, or whatever.
If we imagine a pair of high energy photon beams emerging from a singularity, it is not all that difficult to see that some of the photons in such a beam will change into electrons, protons, and so forth, from time to time. Since the photons in question are all moving at the speed of light, which is constant in a vacuum, the creation of matter, however small the amount may be, will continue even as the photon beam traverses vast amounts of nearly empty space.
The gradual conversion of all, or even most, of the photons will happen only after a very long time, and at a vast distance from the source. If the source is stationary the ray may remain in the same vector for a long time, and in such cases the result will be that extending from the singularity for a large distance there will form ribbons of diffuse matter. Closer to the galaxy and its singularity, scattering high energy photons will tend to repel incoming matter, forcing it into the plane of the galaxy.
Because a photon is both a form of energy and a form of matter, and because it has a fixed speed, its energy and its mass will both depend on its frequency. Energy is the main characteristic of a photon, as opposed to inert matter, and just as gravity is a law for mass, entropy is a law for energy. This means that photons must decay in energy over time, even though the half-life of a measurable energy decrease may be very large. When a photon has covered a very large distance it will have seen its energy level decay to a noticeable extent.
At this point we would describe such a photon as redshifted. At some point after it leaves the singularity, if it has not generated a quantum field effect, a high energy gamma-ray photon will have lost energy to the extent that it is no longer capable even of generating an electron, or even a meson for that matter. Further away from the singularity still, the photon will be reduced to the lowest rungs of the low energy spectrum, manifesting as cosmic background radiation.
Before it reaches the singularity at the heart of a galaxy, a small fraction of the condensing matter, which was originally mostly in intergalactic space, is shot out in the form of stellar and nebular radiant energy, some of which takes the form we know as visible light. Visible light will also redshift at a constant rate over very long periods of time.
This has been incorrectly identified by observers as a Doppler effect, but even in the 1920s when Edwin Hubble was first proposing the Doppler hypothesis, his associate at the Mt Wilson Observatory, Franz Zwicky, understood that it was a quality of photons themselves, unrelated to relative velocities.
It is a quantum effect rather than a Doppler effect, which increases relative to time and distance travelled, representing entropy. In order to conserve mass/energy, each time the photon decays it must produce either a very low energy photon or an extremely small particle, although our present state of knowledge has at this point, sadly, reached its limit.
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