As long as I'm writing about metaphor, a hot topic floating around these days is "how will the universe end", given recent observations that suggest that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating. Here's an article on how will the universe end that dumbs down the various theories enough for me to grasp. The title of the article, for those who don't want to bother with the link is: "How Will the Universe End?"

One of my attractions to my reading of Buddhism (aside from it being my reading) was how it didn't conflict with cosmology. Or was my attraction to cosmology that it didn't conflict with Buddhism? No, I was staring at the sky long before I was staring at my navel, and when I read the Lotus Sutra for the first time and about Buddha ages arising and ending, and these hyuuge spans of time between appearances of Buddhas, I was envisioning the oscillating model of the universe.

Back then, the search was for whether there was enough mass in the universe so that it would eventually stop expanding and the collective gravity of the universe would cause it to contract into a Big Crunch billyuns and billyuns of years down the line, or if there wasn't and the universe would expand forever. My money was on there being enough mass, and the cycles of Big Bang to Big Crunch to Big Bang acting as Buddha ages. All of it tasty metaphor, sure, fine.

But now the evidence points to a universe that is accelerating from the influence of some dark energy, which might potentially increase to a point where everything in the universe will be accelerating away from everything else so fast and so far, that information itself, saying nothing about matter, will eventually piddle out, leaving the universe a <reverb>cold, dark void-d</reverb>.

If I were to subscribe to that theory, I would think that it's not only matter that becomes so spread out that the contents of the universe is effectively zero, but the fabric of space itself would also lose cohesion to bring the universe to its final resting state.

(Even if the observations are correct that the universe is accelerating, I don't necessarily believe the universe is static and that it would remain accelerating. In fact, I would even suggest that we haven't looked deeply enough into what we mean by "accelerating". The acceleration theory/observation is based on the linear notion that the universe is a certain space that is expanding in some sort of fashion, and the velocity at which it is expanding is getting faster and faster. I think things might be much weirder way out there, and what we're calling acceleration might be something else. I mean, really, we have no idea what's going on in the White House, how can we have any certainty about something 10 billion light years away?)

But even with this change in leading theories regarding what's going on with the universe, another recent theory, featured in the cover story of the February 2004 issue of Discover, emerged that still fits the metaphor because it suggests a cyclical nature of the life-cycle of the universe. It even draws on ideas from Superstring theory, which is always a bonus these days.

Basically, our three dimensional observable universe is geometrically flat, and it exists on a "brane" that is floating around in a higher dimensional space, along with other universes, also on branes. These branes are like slices in a loaf of bread and may have different laws of physics and dimensional space.

Every trillion trillion years or so, enough time for our universe to accelerate itself out of effective existence, our brane interacts and collides with another brane. All the quantum and dimensional causes and conditions are just so that all the potential energy still stored in our universe reacts and is shocked or energized into something that looks, hey, something like the Big Bang.

Of course this model does rain on the fractal model I like so much, the one whereby new universes are created at the point of black holes in other universes in a higher dimensional space, but even that model contained a nice metaphor for the various and sundry infinite Buddha worlds.

But I digress. It's the metaphor that matters. It doesn't even matter which is a metaphor for which. One shouldn't say things like "Physics is finding only now in Superstring theory what the Buddha taught regarding formlessness 2,500 years ago". Theories change, and so should the metaphors; whatever aids in current understanding.

Besides, both "ultimate dimension" Buddhism (as opposed to historical or engaged Buddhism) and cosmological eschatology can be both read as mythologies (bringing it back to "Haibane Renmei"), explanations for things we just can't know, but help us along in feeling connected to something larger.

And at the very least, I like that physics can at least have a conversation with Buddhism, unlike with other theologies, as suggested by the aforelinked Slate article.