Einstein had shown that energy is matter or that matter is energy, how we prefer (E=mc2), but he didn't tell us that energy could also be something else! For a very long time the scientific community was confronted with a big problem: the amount of matter counted in the universe was not equal to the quantity of energy liberated by the Big Bang. And the difference was not small, a ratio of about 1:2. Either there was the double of matter as estimated, or the Big Bang was twice less powerful than calculated, or they were missing some point. And yes, what a point! After years and years of controversy, brilliant quantum physicist Eugene Formaris finally cleared this enigma. In 2042 he discovered that energy was also existing in a totally immaterial state that he called the "S-State". In this non-physical state energy exists but in a totally invisible and non measurable form, at least not with conventional detection methods. Moreover energy in this state creates a space without physical dimension. So time and distances don't exist in this "parallel" space that Eugene Formaris logically called the S-Space. Practically, this means that this space is at the same time everywhere and nowhere! In other words, if we "enter" in the S-Space from anywhere in the universe, even the two extremes, we constantly reach the same single "point", that is a point without physical dimension but that contains half of the energy of the universe...

Eugene Formaris didn't name the S-State and the S-Space so by pure coincidence. In fact he had the strong intuition that he was actually discovering the existence of the spiritual space. And it's true that the behaviour of the S-Space was strangely recalling the old Christian concept of ubiquity: God is everywhere. Yes, why not putting God in the S-Space? For sure there was more room for him in that one than in the super rational physical space! That's why, soon a lot of people also recognised in this discovery the scientific proof of the spiritual dimension. Nevertheless Formaris preferred to keep the terms of S-State and S-Space in order to avoid controversy and give people the liberty of interpretation.

Another common thought provoked by this discovery was that it would open the door to instant travelling through the universe. This perspective of course sounded very exciting but further research showed that the transition between the physical state and the S-State was almost impossible. A huge energy barrier separates them both so converting matter into S-State would require an amount of energy almost equivalent to the Big Bang. Only photons, under some specific conditions, can pass from one world to the other. No chance to put a space ship through the S-Space!

Nevertheless those speculations opened the way to an even more significant discovery. In 2045 a group of researchers proved that an attractive force exists permanently between the material state and the S-State. They called it the Return Force (RF). In other words, the two spaces are mutually attracted by that force but they can't merge because of the energy barrier mentioned above. That's why the Return Force is constantly "working" to bring back the universe in its original state, that is a state where the density of energy is so high that the matter and the S-State can "jump" over the barrier and recombine together. In the physical space this "work" manifests itself by the presence of gravity. This omnipresent field is therefore a consequence of the Return Force, its manifestation in the physical dimension. Gravity opposes itself to the physical expansion of the universe in order to bring back all the matter projected by the Big Bang into a single point. The inertia of that expansion is so huge that this process might take another few billion years. But then at last the two spaces and the two energies will be one again. And this will also be the end of our universe: the Big Crunch.

From that point of view the whole story of the universe could be summarised as a big waiting of many billions of years between the Big Bang and the Big Crunch. Not very exciting, is it? Fortunately for us Nature found an amazing shortcut to recombine the matter and the S-State in a much quicker way:

Life!