The Big Bang Never Happened

■ THE ENDLESS FLOW OF TIME ■where—energy flows are again captured. Since those processesthat capture energy the most efficiently grow the fastest and increaseenergy flows the fastest, there is a long-term trend awayfrom equilibrium.THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSEThe easiest way to understand what may seem to be rather abstractconcepts is to apply them to the actual history of the universe,so far as it can be reconstructed at present. (While the basicconcepts just described are Prigogine's, the examples I will discussare others' work.) To simplify matters I will ignore the importantquestion of the role antimatter may have played. Whilethis could radically change the story's details, it won't alter thegeneral form, and it will advantageously limit the description toprocesses directly studied in the laboratory.The story's beginning depends not on some "initial conditions"ordained by reason, but merely on the present state ofscientific knowledge. A convenient starting place is a universefilled with a more or less uniform hydrogen plasma, free electronsand protons. We'll also ignore whatever inhomogeneities exist asthe result of earlier stages of evolution that brought this plasmainto being. At present, we have no real knowledge of what suchprocesses were. It is reasonably certain that the plasma had motionand energy, thus electrical currents and magnetic fieldsflowed through it.This leads to the first stage of evolution (Fig. 7.3). As discussedIn the previous chapter, plasmas are generally unstable to fluctuations,and the first fluctuations were formations of tiny plasmafilaments or vortices. These vortices will attract others moving inthe same direction and will tend to grow, capturing larger andlarger flows of energy. Tiny trickles of electricity will flow togetherinto mighty rivers. Indeed, theoretical studies have shownthat force-free filaments capture energy more rapidly and releaseit as radiation more slowly than any other plasma structure.Over an immense period of time the plasma will develop aweb of ever-larger filamentary vortices, becoming less homogeneous,and will have increasing levels of energy flow. But, likeany single mode of growth, it has inherent limits. Filamentary295