The book behind the questions · God Plays Dice™ Volume One
What if the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning?
What if our Big Bang was the aftershock of a higher-dimensional blast? God Plays Dice follows that question into cosmology and sets out the evidence that could test it.
Author’s hypothesisA hypothesis, not a discovery claim. No equations required.
Yes, compared with people at home. At 80 percent of light speed, onboard clocks tick at three-fifths the Earth rate, as measured from Earth. NIST atomic clocks have detected the effect even at car-like speeds.
About 13.8 billion years. The most precise figure, from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, is 13.787 billion years, give or take 20 million. Established
Historical photograph · Einstein (left) and Bohr in Brussels at the 1930 Solvay Conference, where Einstein posed his photon-box challenge. Photo by their friend Paul Ehrenfest. Public domain
A hundred years after Einstein’s dice letter, the question keeps moving.
„Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt.“
“At any rate, I am convinced that He does not throw dice.”
Albert Einstein, in a letter to his friend Max Born · 4 December 1926
“He” is “the Old One” (der Alte), Einstein’s metaphor for the deepest laws of nature. It was an argument about physics, not a verdict on anyone’s faith. It is also where our name comes from.
On 4 December 1926, Albert Einstein wrote to his friend Max Born about the new quantum mechanics. He admired what it could explain, but doubted that its probabilities were the deepest possible account of nature. Near the end, he said he was convinced that the “Old One” did not throw dice. The familiar phrase “God does not play dice” comes from that thought. It was a metaphor in a physics argument, not a statement that settles anyone’s faith.
A century later, quantum physics has passed extraordinary tests. Experiments have also ruled out some simple ways of imagining hidden instructions beneath its probabilities. They have not ended every question about what the theory means. That is why this anniversary is a good time to ask carefully, rather than claim a final victory.
The book God Plays Dice borrows the metaphor for a different question: how did our hot early universe begin? Ricardo Maldonado’s HD-Blast proposal is one possible idea to examine, not something Einstein predicted or something already observed. Read the evidence, see where a proposal could fail, and bring the question that stays with you. Author’s hypothesis
Explore the questions
Where would you like to begin?
Seven short paths through the biggest questions, a few reads each, in order. Stop anywhere.
The oldest light in the universe, as mapped by ESA’s Planck satellite from its first 15.5 months of data. The warm and cool spots differ by tiny amounts, and their pattern is what lets cosmologists work out the universe’s age.
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, Mark Malanoski), from ESA and Planck Collaboration data, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Image source ↗
Physicist Abdus Salam in Amsterdam in 1987, at an event where children talked with Nobel Prize winners. He quoted the Quran at his 1979 Nobel banquet, and he shared that year’s physics prize with Steven Weinberg, an atheist, and Sheldon Glashow.
Bart Molendijk / Anefo, Nationaal Archief (Dutch National Archives), via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 NL · Image source ↗
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), painted around 1695 by Christoph Bernhard Francke. In 1714 Leibniz wrote that the first question we can fairly ask is why there is something rather than nothing.
Christoph Bernhard Francke, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Image source ↗
Hubble photographed 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, and showed a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy core. NASA said its dust behaved much like that of comets from our own solar system. The short streaks are background stars, smeared because Hubble was tracking the moving comet.
NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA); image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI), via ESA/Hubble and Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0 · Image source ↗
A southern-sky chart from Andreas Cellarius’s 1660 star atlas. Its zodiac figures include Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn. At top left, the legs of Ophiuchus (labeled “Serpentarius Ophiuchus”) stand on Scorpio. The Sun passes through Ophiuchus too, but the zodiac leaves it out.
Andreas Cellarius, star atlas of 1660 (Harmonia Macrocosmica), British Library, via Wikimedia Commons · CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication) · Image source ↗
See every path, step by step → We keep your place in five of these paths, on this device only. The faith-questioning and grief paths are never tracked.
About these pictures
What if the answers I was given stopped fitting? — Photograph · The Milky Way over Great Basin National Park, Nevada. U.S. National Park Service, Great Basin National Park; via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-USGov-NPS)
The first image of a black hole’s shadow, released April 10, 2019: the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, 55 million light-years away, with 6.5 billion times the Sun’s mass. The dark center is the shadow; the ring is hot gas whose light is bent by the black hole’s gravity.
Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (ESO release eso1907a), cropped by a Wikimedia Commons uploader, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0 · Image source ↗
A century after Einstein wrote to Max Born, the famous line is still a useful doorway into what quantum physics can—and cannot—tell us.
3 min
Image credit
Conceptual illustration · AI-generated conceptual illustration. Conceptual illustration of Einstein’s dice metaphor. The blank letter is not an archival document.
Distant light lets us look far into the past. But the earliest light we can receive arrived after the universe had already been changing for a long time.
3 min
Image credit
AI-generated conceptual illustration. Conceptual artwork. Telescopes collect ancient light, but this is not an image of the Big Bang.
EstablishedStrong, repeated evidence and broad scientific agreement.
Supported, still debatedGood evidence; the details are still argued.
Open questionNobody knows yet. Serious ideas compete.
Not supportedChecked, and the evidence does not back it.
Beyond sciencePhilosophy, values or belief. Science can inform it but not settle it.
Author’s hypothesisRicardo Maldonado’s own proposal. Unconfirmed, and testable.
Labels describe the evidence for a claim, not the people who hold it. “Beyond science” means evidence can’t settle a question either way; that is not a verdict against it.
Proof belongs to mathematics. Science offers evidence, and it keeps correcting itself.
Ricardo Maldonado, founder and editor of God Plays Dice.
Ricardo Maldonado was born in Guadalajara and raised in Las Vegas. He spent half his life inside the Church and half outside it, and he has been asking where everything came from since he was seven. He founded and edits God Plays Dice. You don’t have to agree with him.
I once considered this essay for God Plays Dice, Volume One. Here, I follow the book’s cosmic perspective into a more personal question: how do we treat one another when we see Earth as our shared home? If you read one personal piece of mine, I hope it’s this one.
EarthSpacecraft image, detail · Earth from about 6 billion kilometres: Voyager 1, 14 February 1990 (image reprocessed 2020). The gold ring and line mark Earth; they are not part of the image. NASA/JPL-Caltech · Public domain
Photograph · The cover of the Voyager Golden Record, launched in 1977. NASA/JPL, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
THE OCCASIONAL LETTER
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All Access
More depth, never more truth.
The short answer is always free. All Access opens every long answer: the evidence piece by piece, the strongest objections, and how to check it yourself.
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Follow your own questions through AI conversations, cited sources and Ricardo’s research (Author’s hypothesis).
Up to 5 questions a day while available. AI can get things wrong; check the sources.
The short answer, how sure we are and every source, on every Library answer
3 long answers a month, or 6 with a free account, except the long answers that explain Ricardo’s own research (Author’s hypothesis)
The status of Ricardo’s own research (Author’s hypothesis): what each idea proposes and what it does not claim, its strongest challenge, what would rule it out, and anything corrected or withdrawn
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Every long answer in the Question Library
The strongest objections, set out in full
How to check each answer yourself
Ask the Architect: questions answered with AI, with cited sources you can check. It draws on published Library answers, the book and Ricardo’s own research material (Author’s hypothesis), including unchecked or outdated drafts. AI can get things wrong or find no supported answer. Up to 5 questions a day while the service is available.
Keep God Plays Dice on your Home Screen: one tap to tonight’s question.
Grounded Wonder
We’re people who looked up at the night sky and kept asking. Some of us pray. Some meditate. Some stopped believing, and some never started. Wonder is where knowing begins, not where it ends.
Read the whole note
So we follow each question as far as the evidence goes, and we say “we don’t know yet” out loud.
We take people seriously and check claims carefully, including our own. Ricardo’s ideas are labeled Author’s hypothesis. They could be wrong, and you’re invited to say so.
We don’t sell certainty. Science offers evidence, tests and probabilities, and it keeps correcting itself.
We happened. That’s reason enough to pay attention, be kind, and keep asking.
God Plays Dice is an independent home for big questions, founded and edited by Ricardo Maldonado. Our editorial methods and corrections policy are published on the Editorial Standards page.
