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Atoms All the Way Down
The Cosmic Web
A good theory of the universe should start with some obvious and unquestionable things. For example, galaxies are very large. And, with the exception of our own, they are very far. Most galaxies also show striking, whirlpool-like spirals.
In the last half-century - long after George Lemaître proposed the "Big Bang" theory - astronomers also discovered that galaxies form enormous "superstructures." These structures, called the "cosmic web," resemble a honeycomb-like grid.2 In the words of one astronomer, the discovery "poses serious challenges for current models."3
Illustration of part of the "cosmic web" of galaxies (based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey "Map of the Universe," sdss.org).
Lord Kelvin's Forgotten Theory: On Vortex Atoms
In the late Nineteenth Century, Lord Kelvin (a.k.a. William Thomson) proposed that atoms have the structure of a whirlpool, or vortex. (Thomson, 1867.) Vortices resemble atoms in a number of ways, including that vortices naturally "suck" in everything around them, which resembles gravity.4 But like any theory of the atom, finding "visible" proof in support of Lord Kelvin's theory seemed impossible. After all, how do you "see" what an atom really looks like?
However, Kelvin's theory came decades before the discovery that most galaxies in the universe show large, vortex-like spirals - or that they form an enormous organized "grid."
Atoms may have a vortex shape, just as Kelvin thought. And galaxies may share it. The reason for why most galaxies show spirals may be that galaxies share atomic physics, including the atom's "vortex" shape. Galaxies may form organized structures in the same way that atoms do - i.e., molecules and supra-molecular structures - which may account for large-scale galaxy groups and superstructures.
Newton's "Lost" Theory of Light
Stars are found throughout galaxies and throughout space. In the main sequence of stars, the mass of a star generally corresponds to its color, with blue stars being larger and red stars being smaller.
Sir Isaac Newton was convinced that light is composed of very small bodies, or "corpuscles," whose different colors have different sizes.5 Newton mused that these bodies of light could even be seen using the microscopes of his day.6 Newton vigorously disagreed with the "wave" theory of light,7 and for most of modern history the scientific community was on his side.
Stars could be "light." And in a powerful piece of cosmic symmetry, the color of a star could correspond to its color of "light." If this is true, then Newton's intuition was always right-we can see exactly what "light" looks like, and how it behaves. We just have to use telescopes, not microscopes as Newton imagined.
The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of star luminosity compared to color. The color and mass of a star may correspond to its color and energy of "light." (Credit Richard Powell, atlasoftheuniverse.com)
An Endless Universe
Atoms emit and absorb light. If stars are "light," and galaxies behave like atoms, then galaxies must also "emit" and "absorb" stars. This means that galaxies create and destroy stars continuously. Clearly this theory is fundamentally different from the "Big Bang," because matter is created (and destroyed) all the time and not just at one "primeval" moment in history.
Black Holes and Globular Clusters
The idea that galaxies "absorb" stars could explain the activity that we observe in "black holes," where stars appear to be "eaten." Black holes may be where galaxies "absorb" stars in the same way that atoms absorb light.
Many galaxies contain tight concentrations of stars that are nearly all the same color, called globular clusters. They may be where stars are actively created and "emitted" from the galaxy. New stars could be ejected from galaxies and slowly travel in between them, in the same way that light travels in between atoms.
Globular cluster M5 (credit, sdss.org). Globular clusters may be places where stars are "emitted" from the galaxy.
The Galactic "Photoelectric Effect"
When atoms absorb light, they generate electrons (a.k.a. electricity or current). This effect is known as the "photoelectric effect." The opposite is also true: when atoms emit light, they "lose" electrons/current. In other words, atoms convert light (and other forms of radiation)8 into electricity, and then electricity back into radiation again.
If galaxies are "atoms" and stars are "light," then what and where are the galaxy's "electrons" or electricity? To answer this question, we must carry the "galaxy atom" analogy further.
What is Electricity?
First let us turn back to Lord Kelvin, who theorized that the atom was a vortex composed of a fluid. Atoms are composed of electrons, or electricity/current-which behaves substantially like a fluid. If Kelvin was right, then an atom may be a vortex composed of electric current. In other words, electricity is the "fluid" that composes the vortex-atom.
Electrons compose the basic structure of the atom and are therefore made of something much smaller than the atom. So like electrons in the atom, the galaxy's "electrons" or electricity must be made of something much smaller than galaxies.
In an "atoms all the way down" universe, there is one apparent answer to what these even "smaller" things would be. If galaxies are like atoms, then atoms must also be like galaxies; and so atoms must also contain their own little "atoms." These "atoms in the atom" - which we could call "subatoms" - would compose the atom's little "stars," i.e. light. In other words, "subatoms" would be the "quanta" that compose light-which are also known as photons. And as the next available "smaller" thing than atoms, "subatoms" (photons) may compose the galaxy's "electrons" or "current."
A Vortex of Light
This means that the galaxy is a vortex whose "current" is composed of photons, or radiation/light. Of course, if this is true then there should be obvious evidence of it: we should observe enormous "vortices" made up of photons, occupying the space in and around galaxies. Which we do. An underpublicized discovery of the last several decades is the existence of large vortex-like jets, loops, lobes, and corkscrews originating at the center of galaxies, including our own. These objects often appear in the invisible spectrum, i.e. as radio or X-rays, and have been variously termed "jets" or "active galaxy nuclei." See e.g. Dickinson (2018). These massive objects are evidence of what the "atoms all the way down" theory predicts: giant vortices composed of photons, occupying the space in and around galaxies.
Milky Way "loops" (Dickinson, 2018).
Radio galaxies (a) 3C31, (b) 3C353, (c) 3C288, (d) 3C465. (Banfield et al., 2015)(credit NRAO/VLA).
Radio source SS 433's "corkscrew" center (Migliari et al., 2002), which has an obvious and strong resemblance to a fluid vortex.
At the scale of galaxies, photons may behave substantially like a fluid: they are present nearly everywhere, but with a measurable general direction and magnitude/pressure. Photons may "flow" through the galaxy in the same way that current flows through an atom-or water flows through a vortex. This "fluid" of photons constitutes the basic structure, or "matter" in a galaxy, while the atoms and stars constitute its "energy" or "radiation." So when we view an image of the stars in a galaxy, it is like looking at the light surrounding an atom; and when we view images of galaxy jets and loops, it is like looking at the atom's underlying electron structure.
The Uroboros Universe
Finally, if a galaxy's "radiation" consists of atoms, and its "current" consist of photons, then when the galaxy converts "radiation" into "current" (a.k.a. the photoelectric effect), then it must be converting atoms into photons. When the galaxy converts "current" into "radiation," then it must be converting photons into atoms.
This is how an infinite, recursive universe must really work. It creates and destroys things constantly, by converting things of a larger dimension into things of a smaller dimension and then back again. And all "things" - whether they are galaxies, atoms, "subatoms" (photons) or beyond - share the same basic repeating vortex...
