Genesis and the tipping pencil; why the Universe is flat

Abstract

In a room with five cosmologists there there may easily be ten theories of cosmogenesis. Cosmogenesis is a popular topic for speculation because it is philosophically deep and because such speculations are unlikely to be proven wrong in the near future. The scenario we present here was intended mainly as a pedagogical illustration or toy model, but it turns out to possibly have a more serious and interesting result - a rationale for the spatial flatness of the Universe. Our basic assumptions are that the cosmological scale factor obeys the standard Friedman equation of general relativistic cosmology and that the equation is dominated by a cosmological constant term and a curvature term; the dynamics of the Universe is then (approximately) the same as that of a tipping pencil. The scale factor cannot remain at an unstable initial value of zero and must increase (i.e. the Universe must come into existence) according to the uncertainty principle, that is due to quantum fluctuations; in other words we propose in a precise but limited context an answer to Heidegger's famous question "Why is there something rather than nothing." The mechanism is the same as that whereby an idealized pencil balanced on its point cannot remain so and must tip over. If it is moreover assumed that the Universe expands at the minimum asymptotic rate consistent with the uncertainty principle then the result is spatial flatness.