Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla.

– Thomas of Celano, Dies Irae

That day, the day of wrath,
will turn the universe to ashes.

– Mediaeval Church chant for the dead

In the same way they cannot agree on the origin of the universe, so they also disagree on how it is all supposed to end up – except that they all agree that it will end badly! According to one school of thought, the expanding universe will eventually be brought to a halt by the force of gravity, whereupon the whole thing will collapse in on itself, leading to a “big crunch”, where we will all end up just where we started, back inside the cosmic egg. Not so! exclaims another school of big bangers. Gravity is not strong enough to do this. The universe will simply keep on expanding indefinitely, getting thinner and thinner, like “Augustus who would not have any soup”, until eventually it fades away into the black night of nothingness.

Decades ago, Ted Grant, using the method of dialectical materialism, showed the unsoundness both of the big bang theory of the origin of the universe and the alternative steady state theory put forward by Fred Hoyle and Hermann Bondi. Subsequently, the steady state theory, which was based on the continuous creation of matter (from nothing), was shown to be false. The big bang theory therefore “won” by default, and is still defended by the majority of the scientific establishment. From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, it is arrant nonsense to talk about the “beginning of time”, or the “creation of matter”. Time, space, and motion are the mode of existence of matter, which can neither be created nor destroyed. The universe has existed for all time, as constantly changing, moving, evolving matter and (which is the same thing) energy. All attempts to find a “beginning” or an “end” to the material universe will inevitably fail. But how is one to explain this strange regression to a mediaeval view of the fate of the universe?

While it is pointless to look for a direct causal link between the processes at work in society, politics and the economy, and the development of science (the relationship is neither automatic nor direct, but far more subtle), it is hard to resist the conclusion that the pessimistic outlook of some scientists in relation to the future of the universe is not accidental, but somehow related to a general feeling that society has reached an impasse. The end of the world is nigh. This is not a new phenomenon. The same doom-laden outlook was present in the period of decline of the Roman Empire and at the close of the Middle Ages. In each case, the idea that the world was coming to an end reflected the fact that a particular system of society had become exhausted and was on the point of extinction. What was imminent was not the end of the world, but the collapse of slavery and feudalism.

Just take the following quote from The First Three Minutes by Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg:

It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more or less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. As I write this I happen to be in an aeroplane at 30,000 feet, flying over Wyoming en route home from San Francisco to Boston. Below, the earth looks very soft and comfortable – fluffy clouds here and there, snow turning pink as the sun sets, roads stretching straight across the country from one town to another. It is very hard to realise that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.[59]

We have already seen how the big bang theory opens the door to religion and all kinds of mystical ideas. To blur the distinction between science and mysticism is to put back the clock 400 years. It is a reflection of the current irrational mood of society. And it invariably leads to conclusions of a thoroughly reactionary nature. Let us take just one apparently remote and obscure question: “Do protons decay?” As we have said, this is one of the predictions of one of the branches of modern particle physics known as the GUTs. All kinds of sophisticated experiments were conducted to test this. All ended in complete failure. Yet they persist in putting forward the same idea.

Here is a typical example of the type of literature issued by the advocates of the big crunch theory:

In the final moments, gravity becomes the all-dominant force, mercilessly crushing matter and space. The curvature of space-time increases ever faster. Larger and larger regions of space are compressed into smaller and smaller volumes. According to conventional theory, the implosion becomes infinitely powerful, crushing all matter out of existence and obliterating every physical thing, including space and time themselves, at a space-time singularity.

This is the end

The ‘big crunch’, as far as we understand it, is not just the end of matter. It is the end of everything. Because time itself ceases at the big crunch, it is meaningless to ask what happens next, just as it is meaningless to ask what happened before the big bang. There is no ‘next’ for anything at all to happen – no time even for inactivity or space for emptiness. A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing at the big crunch, its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory.

The question that follows is a classic of unconscious humour: “Should we be depressed by such a prospect?” Paul Davies asks, presumably expecting a serious answer! He then proceeds to cheer us up by speculating on various means whereby humankind might escape destruction. Inevitably, we immediately find ourselves in a kind of never-never land half way between religion and science fiction.

“One might wonder whether a superbeing inhabiting the collapsing universe in its final moments could have an infinite number of distinct thoughts and experiences in the finite time available.” So, before the final three minutes are up, humanity casts off its crude material body, and becomes pure spirit, able to survive the ending of everything by transforming itself into a superbrain.

Any superbrain would need to be quick-witted and switch communications from one direction to another as the oscillations brought more rapid collapse in one direction and then another. If the being can keep pace, the oscillations could themselves provide the necessary energy to drive the thought processes. Furthermore, in simple mathematical models there appears to be an infinite number of oscillations in the finite duration terminating in the big crunch. This provides for an infinite amount of information processing, hence, by hypothesis, an infinite subjective time for the superbeing. Thus the mental world may never end, even though the physical world comes to an abrupt cessation at the big crunch.[60]

One really needs a superbrain to make head or tail of this! It would be nice to think that the author is joking. Unfortunately, we have read too many passages of this kind recently to be sure of this. If the Big Crunch signifies “the end of everything”, where does this leave our friend the superbrain? To begin with, only an incorrigible idealist could conceive of a brain without a body. Of course, we are here in the presence, not of any old brain, but a superbrain. But even so, we assume that the presence of a spinal cord and a central nervous system would be of some use to it; that such a nervous system ought in all fairness, to possess a body; and that a body (even a superbody) generally requires some kind of sustenance, especially since the brain is known to be somewhat greedy, and absorbs a very high percentage of the total calories consumed even by a mere mortal. A superbrain would logically possess a superappetite! Sadly, since the big crunch is the end of everything, our unfortunate superbrain will evidently be placed in a rather strict diet for the rest of eternity. We can only hope that, being quick-witted, it will have had time to snatch a quick meal before its three minutes was up. With this edifying thought, we take our leave of the superbrain, and return to reality.

Is it not astonishing that, after two thousand years of the greatest advances of human culture and science, we find ourselves back in the world of the Book of Revelations? Engels warned more than a hundred years ago that, by turning their backs on philosophy, scientists would inevitably end up in the “spirit world”. Unfortunately, his prediction has proven to be all too accurate.

  1. Quoted in Lerner, E., op. cit., pp. 164-5.

  2. Davies, P. op. cit., pp. 123, 124-5 and 126.