Quote:
Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA
Yes, I meant that space itself was expanding during the Big Bang (and continues to expand). That is the meaning of the quote about the universe expanding from the size of an atom to the size of a grapefruit in a tiny fraction of a section. I assumed we were all in agreement about space itself expanding, so I didn't emphasize it.
I am saying that perhaps the universe, at the time when people describe it as the size of an atom, a tiny pinpoint, was then composed of an infinite number of such tiny pinpoints. This would thus be infinite space. (The idea was suggested to me by a Scientific American Magazine article that I love, called "The End of Cosmology? An accelerating universe wipes out traces of its own origin," by Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer, March 2008: http://genesis1.asu.edu/0308046.pdf.)
Then, during the Big Bang, all those tiny pinpoints of space expanded, leading to an infinity of space that is expanding yet is no bigger than the space before, since it was infinite to begin with.  (Sounds paradoxical and weird, but so is the idea of space expanding, so I can roll with it.  )
One of those atom-sized pinpoints expanded to give rise to what we know as the observable universe.
My point was that I don't imagine the universe as a single, atom-sized space that expanded during the Big Bang, but as an infinite volume in which the space at all pinpoints within that volume expanded rapidly during the Big Bang. |
Ah. What you're describing isn't really a 'singularity' event, then.
I found that an extremely illuminating article, but I couldn't find anywhere in it that brushed on the idea that you're introducing. In fact, there wasn't much discussion of what happened during the initial phase of the Big Bang. The cosmologists go on to suggest that they really can't tell what happened in the beginning:
Quote:
|
Expansion probably accelerated early in cosmic history as well, erasing almost all traces of the preexisting universe, including whatever transpired at the big bang itself.
|
Other materials I've read that touch on it suggest otherwise (in other words, that the Big Bang was indeed a singularity event, both in matter and space), but I would be extremely interested in seeing a scientific journal that supports your hypothesis.