The Big Bang AKA Where The **** Did It All Start?
 

Let me start with a disclaimer. I am not a student. I am not someone who particularly believes in conspiracy theories and I am not making this thread to prove or disapprove any particular theory. In fact a lot of the science aspect is not in my usual intelligence remit. However I have been interested more and more over the last couple of years in Science, Physics and essentially the universe.

The Universe beginning with a 'Big Bang' was long held as the explanation for the creation of the universe but with a deeper understanding of Quantum Physics and Mechanics, this idea is being constantly challenged almost to the state that is being debunked.

The problem I get is that each hypothesis for 'the beginning' convinces me until the next theory comes along which also sounds feasible enough.

Theories range from the universe bouncing to expansion and collapse to floating membranes (the M theory) and everything in between including the universe being in a black hole to it being a small bubble existing within another larger universe.

I have views on each of these theories and will expand upon them but just wondering if this subject interests any of you out there before I start rambling!

In my final year in school I was part of a physics class that went to see a lecture on string theory by some reknowned physicist, dont remember any details but i remember thinking it entirely plausible. I guess with a problem such as this where the solution could be any combination of an infinite number of components it does make it easy to theorise.

You know what I dont like, man it gives me chest pains from the rage - this new idea that the Universe just "sprung up" literally out of nothing.

That is a load of bull**** man. And really irrelevant - I know I didn't spring up out of nothing. So the question is still where the rest did the other **** come from

I like the basic mechanics of the big bang theory, it's good for thought excercises. Basically, this like collective all of the energy of everything that will be, and then it just ****ing explodes man. And from that, things grow, and duplicate, and split. Much like a single celled organism or AMOEBA


As for where it comes from...well here is the tricky thing. I've been doing some "philosophical ink work" thinking on this.

Well imagine a picture. Everything on the page is on that one page. Everything is made of ink.

THus - reality, and atom.

To get the ink on to the page...you have to intervene from a state equal to the page's state. Ie. reality. Then you have this contextual picture.

So if we are a contextual picture, then wherever our "inK" comes from, comes from something essentially very diificult for us to comprehened. Its like a picture trying to comprehend the artist and his world.

So big bang is a valid theory in my eyes...but really the question is how did that **** get there in the first place?

Was it always there?

well dude the ink was not always on the page...

or was it?


I think at the most basic level of all existence everywhere, there are two dots. Or rather, there is one dot, and one lack of dot. This represents the difference itself betwwen existence and annihilation. The eternal opposing sides of being and of nothing.

This one dot grows and splits etc. emits various forces and begins to grow into something unimaginably complex.

The "nothingness" the other dot, or the "lack of dot" weaves between it.

Reality is the fine line between the two.

At the extreme end of either - the dot, you have like a black solid state where everything is just squashed together

and at the other end, the lack of dot, you have absolutely nothing.

These two forces which are the very basic forces of any form of existence anywhere, intermingle and clash to create.

I think these two dots always have, and always will be. They are the 2 answers to the ultimate question -

to be, or not to be.

This is off topic but I think I know why I like your avatar so much now jackhammer. Do you see a slight resemblence?

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u...nteresting.jpg

It looks as though you're trying to keep religion out of this thread Jackhammer, and I respect that, however I feel obligated to respond to crukster at least once.

I believe Carl Sagan has put it most eloquently:

"If the general picture, however, of a big bang followed by an expanding universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the universe devoid of all matter and then the matter somehow, suddenly created? How did that happen? In many cultures the customary answer is that a god or gods created the universe out of nothing. But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: where did god come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or if we say that god always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed?"

source: YouTube - ‪Then where did God come from? (Carl Sagan)‬‏

:yeah:

Personally, I never bought the Big Bang as anything apart from a placeholder. I mean, it's possible, but the origin of the universe is so distant from human hands, we need something to run with for the sake of perspective.

I mean, after all, it's like as if we're drifting on a piece of plywood trying to figure out what direction the currents are taking us, and where land is. The fact we're shipwreck survivors, after all, is still just a theory.

of course God created the Universe

and the world is flat

and the Sun revolves around the Earth

any people who tell you otherwise, are just misdirections and misleading attempts

The Big Bang theory is somehow not a very strong basis for the beginning of everything if no implication that SOMEONE (GOD) started it.

The Big Bang hypothesis is a logical conclusion based on some observations, most notably the observation that our universe is expanding - drifting apart - which suggests it was all gathered in one place at some point and then something happened to spread it apart .. and microwave background radiation measurable in space which is regarded as energy leftovers from that explosion so many billion years ago.

I can't remember reading about anything that I thought made the Big Bang seem very unfeasible - at least it explains why we observe the stuff mentioned above, but I'd be interested in learning more about alternative hypotheses and what their logical basis are or what problems they help explain.

edit :

Should add that the existence of big bang background radiation was predicted/hypothesized first as a conclusion based on the big bang theory, then observed and measured after.

It's not unfeasible, at all. There's a good reason it's the dominant theory. Regardless, I think it's far outside of humanities scope of provability or unprovability.

There's certainly more we can learn, for example in quantum physics about how really small particles of matter behave under different circumstances. Because the universe was so small at the very start of time, knowledge about really small things might make the big bang hypothesis more or less feasible.

Well this is really a matter of reassessing the question of what God is.

Set aside Bible definition and all mainstream religious definition of God for a moment, and all the agenda that comes with it. Look at God as an unbiased, uncaring, unloving force of creation - the point of origin. Whatever that may be.

It's a very interesting and very valid question to say, well - what is the point of origin's, point of origin? How did it come to be?

Either it always existed, in some very basic form, and it set into motion all later events i.e. the act of creation and the act of creating the Universe etc. could be considerd "the hand of God" which have spun outward from one point of origin that always was and always shall exist.

OR, the point of origin of our Universe, comes from another "universe", which is not bound by our rules and laws of physics and is essentially unable to interact with our Universe save for that first act of creation

I.e. same as how, sperm fertilizes an egg, baby is conceived and the baby grows. The baby can never go back to being a sperm or an egg.

If it is the second, if, we come from some other realm, then of course you still have the question - where did THAT realm come from? And so on and so on and so forth.

Which again in my belief leads back to the first answer.

No matter how many multitude layers of answer you have, no matter how long the chain is, it still started from nothing/something.

There's a big difference between that and the Universe just springing up out of nothing.

But for me this is where my mind hits a wall. At it's very basic level...all existence... either conclusion is almost impossible to comprehend - either there was nothing, and something just came out of nowhere. Or something just always was.

That's why I think these two forces are two forces that always have been, I think the Universe, (or our Universe anyway) works in duality. And we exist, simply because it is plausible for us to exist.

This is of course a very crude definition and is influenced by my own dumb ape mind being unable to comprehend the ideas. But that's something I'll work on.

It is ignorant to "save a step" and call that the Universe. It ignores the possibility of what's beyond it.

Thus the idea of God, in my belief. Eternal growth, eternal question. etc

There is another theory about that.

There are two theories about gravity. One is that it's a static "consequential" force, a result of objects trying to keep a straight line of momentum across the curvature of space time.

The second is that it's dynamic, and a force in and of itself. And there are these things called gravitons, I wouldnt wanna misinform, but basically the theory here is gravity works because of gravitons and lack of gravitons, something like that; like a push and pull. These gravitons pass on a lot of heat and energy to masses. Masses are drawn to one another to shield from graviton flow. And the background microwave radiation of the Universe is basically a result of all this graviton activity.

I am a believer in certain versions of the "Multiverse Theory". As far as how it all began, that's where it all starts to go to shit. I believe that viewing space and time in unison as "Spacetime" is a step in the right direction. Here in this universe, we have 3 dimension of space: length, height and depth (comparable to the X, Y and Z axes of a Cartesian coordinate plane). We also have 1 dimension of time, which has been shown to be relative (the faster you go, the more time slows down) and linear (as far as we have seen, it can only go in one direction). These are the boundaries that we work within in this universe.

In the future, I believe that achieving speeds close to and possibly at or above the speed of light will be possible. What will happen if this occurs? Who knows, but many have speculated. Per Einstein's Theory of Relativity, time slows down as you get closer toward the speed of light. If this is true, does exceeding the speed of light actually REVERSE time? Again, who knows. And then you should factor in the spacetime in place of time. If time can be non-linear, can space, and thusly spacetime? This is where the "Wormhole" or the "Einstein-Rosen Bridge" should come into play.

If time can be non-linear, then by definition so could spacetime. The Einstein-Rosen Bridge is basically a place in spacetime where space is bent, making two distant places in Spacetime connect (so that the shortest distance between the 2 points is no longer a linear straight line, but instead zero, or no distance at all). Bending space would inturn bend spacetime.

The mastery or creation of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge would allow for the specific fine-tuning of space, and therefor spacetime, and therefor time travel itself. In theory, one would be able to travel to any place and to any time. With such travel possible, one could go as far ahead into the future or as far back in time as they wanted. (Cue up the "Grandfather Paradox" right about now). Since time would now be non-linear, does it actually have a beginning or an end? Think about a clock. Does it start at 12:00:00am and then turn off at 11:59:59pm? No, it rolls around and keeps on ticking. I believe that this is how time works. It can have no beginning and no end (only reference points). The "Big Bang" is just a reference point, possibly caused by the implosion of another universe within the multiverse, which was itself caused by the explosion of another universe (and so on, and so forth). It is a never ending cycle. With energy being constant, it behoves us to believe that the never-ending cycle never began in the first place. With so much energy in the universe, and the energy being constant, it could not have grown from nothing (or zero energy) into the massive amount that it is now. With the energy being constant, and the speed of light being constant, the following is how I see it going down:

e = m * (c^2) (where e=energy, m=mass, c=speed of light), therefor:
m = e / (c^2)
With the energy of the universe being virtually infinite, we get:
m = infinity / (c^2) = infinity
Therefor, the mass of the universe is infinite.
d = (m / v) (where d=density, m=mass, v=volume)
The volume of the multiverse is finite, it has an exact and unchanging volume.
With mass being infinite, we get:
m = (d * v) = infinity
Since (d * v) is infinite, and v is finite, then that makes d infinite.

In summation:
Mass is infinite and constant.
Volume is finite, but not constant.
Density is infinite, but not constant.
Energy is infinite and constant.

It's just a constant cycle that has always been, and always will be. This is a hard theory to wrap your head around, but no harder than religion or "God." I doubt that this will do much to prove or even get us any closer to getting the answer that we are looking for, as I'm probably just talking out of my ass, but that's my shot at it.

It can never end, thus, it never began. It just "is." Makes no sense, but just as much sense as everything else.

Carl Sagan was the first one who I heard use the concept of three dimensional objects being observed by a universe of a flat plane when he illustrated the concept of dimensions and intersects.

My only problem is that if there are other dimensions that things are coming from into our reality, than that doesn't solve the problem of "where did we come from", because the question then becomes, where did that which we came from come from.

The only thing that has ever made sense to me, is that the universe is infinite, cyclical, and meaningless.

Sigmund Freud is the most interesting man in the world?

What kind of logic is this? How is matter in the universe in any way infinite?

i actually do have a working knowledge of the theory behind all this (or did have)

i think the quantum mechanical theory of things just appearing out of nowhere feasible for me (I can't exactly remember the quantum physical mechanics behind this)

The Hindu concept of Brahman is fascinating. It's the concept that God does exist, but is also what everything in life is comprised of.

Take out the mystical crap plus God Hierarchy, and it sounds a lot like 'existence = God' which, to my knowledge, is a point Carl Sagan has argued for, and pretty much conforms to the concept that the laws of nature ARE God.

Of course Hindus still worship, and revere existence, as many other deities. In essence 'pray' to gravity. However, it's a bit more feasible than the magic man in space that Judaism, and religions born from it present.

I mean, if you ask me, I think the fact we have an entirely self dictating universe is astounding in it's own. Like God, it's mysterious, and beyond human's understand of function. Unlike 'God', it's really just an autonomous force without a human-like method of deduction. IE. has no motive.

That's why I think it's a tad pretentious to concrete the Big Bang as a fact. It doesn't mean throw it away, or throw away the discoveries from it. Just means, it's out of our grasp for the moment, but should remain in place as it's the leading theory, and really sort of benefits us to have.

I wouldn't call laws like gravity God because they behave in a predictable way and as far as we know do not have a will that allows them to do anything differently - which is why we call them laws in the first place. Gravity affects all matter, f.ex it doesn't allow a select few of us to fly. God to me implies a will, an intention and a power to non-predictably change stuff (f.ex defy laws like gravity).

Well, what you have to realize is that gravity is one dimension in a million that constitutes life. I think basically what Carl Sagan was trying to say is the fact that if you take way the mystical, loving, consciousness of God, you have nature which forms on it's own, and constitutes what God is in every other way.

Whether or not you consider that 'God' or not comes entirely to a debate of semantics.

nah the laws of physics are already set by God

he needs it to be immutable so's to have some sort of order in the universe

He makes an interesting point, but I often see people on MB make posts suggesting that God (capital G) is synonymous with nature. The word "God" with a capital G has been defined many times, but I've never seen a definition which allows it to be used as a synonym for nature or natural laws (definitions typically include a spirit or an infinite will) so I think people should stop doing so. If people are not writing about God as something sentient, then they should be using a different term to describe what they're thinking of. If they don't think of God as something sentient, then I don't think they should write that they believe in "God".

If I'm not mistaken, you're referring to how subatomic particles "pop" into existence... what was interesting to me is scientists actually measured this activity in a vacuum that used very sensitive equipment to measure fluctuations in the path of (I forgot what it was, but I think it was a laser).

Theoretically, there are not supposed to be any particles in a vacuum. It's supposed to be the absence of anything. Yet, while light can travel through "nothing", it was still being interfered with. The only way to explain the interference was by the energy produced when these subatomic particles popped into existence very briefly, and (according to theory) collided with its anti-particle and destroyed. So what the scientists were beginning to realize was that these tiny events were happening all the time, in what we previously thought was empty space. So in a grand scheme of things, this suggests that not only can something come from nothing, but that it happens all the time and is a practical fact of nature.

Anyway, I'm not sure if that's what you were referencing, but I thought I'd talk about it anyway, as it's pretty interesting stuff.

To some extent I would say Existence=God, I think that is pretty accurate. I think the difference between what I believe and what Carl Sagan is saying is that he's approaching it from the other direction.

What I am saying really is that all of the religious teaching of the Abrahamic faith is valid, it just so happens that over the years people have misunderstood what is actually meant by God, whereas maybe I've misunderstood but I get the idea he is saying all religious teaching is essentially invalid because God is an omnipotent force and not a Human.

Of course God is not a Human. I can't create a Universe of my equals. If anything or anyone were to say to me, "I am God" well I would not really believe them.

I am, or have the capability to be better, stronger, smarter than any living creature bound by the same laws of physics as me. Everyone does, and everyone should believe that - thats your basic ego there.

God to me is an idea, like I said, the point of origin and the point of eternal growth.

If you say God is nothing more than Existence, well it then becomes very easy to limit your understanding of that existence. There is always another question to be asked, that to me is the pursuit of God. If you ever find the absolute answer, well, in my belief, you have found God. In my belief, God is not the laws of nature in absolute, because where did the laws of nature come from? I would call the laws of nature and the forces of the Universe, God's messengers. Gabrial, Azrail etc.

There's something...I can't quite define. Like this wavey sort of..something between the lines I dunno. We can all talk to each other we can all interact, we all must share some commonality...however the Unvierse started, well we are all in the same one. That is evidence to me of God. Not neccessarily of so called "intelligent design" but not neccessarily manic chaos either. SOme sort of equilibrium between the "flaw" of intelligence and the irresponsiblity of chaos.

I believe the Universe was started by what we could call some act of intent...but only because comparing what we think of as intent to this original intent, is like comparing a fish to a galaxy, sizewise, by comparison.

TO be quite frank, outside of this...mainstream media line where everyone tries to fit in around each other, it is my experience that there are very few Jews, Christians and well I can say for certain Muslims because I grew up with them, that actually think of God as a literal magic man in the sky.


I think the mystical crap is a place holder for what we don't yet understand.

Yes this has been observed which could lend credence to the big bang theory in that there truly was nothing to begin with but particles 'borrowing' from their negative self's.

I think that until things like dark energy and anti matter are actually figured out, we are still a long way off from many many answers.

I have noticed religion being mentioned in posts and that is inevitable regarding this subject as we are no closer to a definitive answer (if ever) to the eternal question but I will abstain from any religious debate within this thread as I am much more interested in the science and physics aspect but by all means - talk amongst yourselves!

This doc is excellent as are most of the others collected by the same user and well worth a watch if you get the time:

YouTube - ‪Horizon - What happend before the big bang (full version)‬‏ (preferred to not clog up this sites bandwidth and link straight to YT).

yeah something like that

i think it's feasible that the entire universe could have just randomly appeared from nothing

The laws of nature come from nowhere. They existed before matter, we know this because all matter adheres to them. They're not literal laws written in a book. In fact, the explanations of how they work is rather an abstract idea, not an existent thing.

Laws of nature dictate nothing more than how matter reacts to a circumstance, time, and place. Nobody wrote these laws, because they are not written, they're just the deeper functioning mechanics of the universe, if they don't exist, nothing exists.

Therefore, nothing could have existed to 'write' them.

That's why they are 'God' because they are the absolute.

So why are you guys trying to define what God is anyway? If there is this much dispute over what the word means, than is it a useful word at all? No.

Cause it gives perspective to those who believe that the world needs a creator to function.

So what do you think of Georges Lemaître?

I don't. It doesn't make any sense to me. I believe in God and believe he created Earth and the Universe.

As a "non-believer", I'm free to accept any truth assertion about nature that can be reasonably argued for. I don't believe that cups, chairs, or people can pop into existence from nothing. And indeed no evidence supports that claim. But once we look closer at the objects deeper into their structure, we see their micro components--the components all things we see are made of. These are the atoms of course. And the sort of world atoms inhabit is quite different than the one we live in. One mindboggling fact about them is that they are nearly pure empty space, but yet once they're bunched up together they can become hard, tangible objects (and liquid and gas). Looking even more closely, we see that an atom's nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of electrons (and these are virtually massless!). At this level, the weirdness of reality is truly apparent. No use of common sense could help us imagine what nature at bottom would look like. It takes complex technology, astute observation, and scientific creativity and imagination to try to come to an understanding of how to make sense of all this. Going even more deeply now, we see that electrons themselves are made up of even smaller particles. We've now entered the domain of hardcore quantum mechanics. Here, you must leave your common sense at the door. It will not help you. Quantum physics represents the furthest humans have gone in understanding the most fundamental aspects of nature. As of now, humanity does not yet have a satisfactory explanation for the observations of these quantum particles we are able to detect. We can see how they behave. We can see how they interact. But we don't understand the underlying cause, yet. In experiments these quantum particles DO pop into and out of existence. We SEE it happening. We're trying to understand the mechanisms that govern this strange behavior, but it is very hard and difficult.

And now I'm brought back to your initial claim that I believe things can come from nothing. As I have tried to illustrate (hopefully well enough), our universe, in it's most basic parts, is very, very weird and mysterious. It's crucial to appreciate this when thinking about what sort of thing the origin of the universe would be like. As of now, it's origin is thought to be some kind of crazy quantum event in which, yes, out of nothing something arises. BUT, it's based on observation and everything else we know about how the universe at bottom works. Trusting the method of science is the most intellectually honest stance to take. Accrediting things to god is the same thing as cheating yourself, and the rest of us, of knowledge.

Not much, really. I haven't read any of his articles, nor have I really checked out his background or scientific career. Why do you ask?

Matter comes from energy, not nothing. Something we know happens. Energy changes matter.

IE. Fire turns water into mist.

In fact, all organic matter is converted from sunlight. Sunlight is a type of energy, and matter comes from it.

As for what your saying, this line of thought is just pretentious. You're saying it's an absolute necessity that God be human-like, and must create with a humanlike pattern.

Labeling God as 'he' indicates an attempt to humanize the concept of the universe, which has shown 0% evidence of ever assuming a human-like entity, or will to work in a sense that benefits the motives of a human-like lifeform.

Could you go into any greater detail as to what quantum particles "pop" into and out of existance? As matter can neither be created nor destroyed, aren't these appearances just the result of interaction between other particles?

I have been looking for sources regarding the Big Bang Theory that go into greater detail regarding matter and antimatter. We know that when the two come into contact, they react and produce immense amounts of energy. With them being so reactive, it's hard to believe that they were created at the same time and at the same place without annihilating each other and everything around them.

The question is where did it all start. Which to me means that you can't stop at the beginning of the universe, although it's apparently impossible to predict anything farther back than those first moments of the big bang, or whatever it is you choose to call it or believe happened.

Even if we could agree that the big bang was the start, we wouldn't have answered the question. What caused the creation of the universe, where did that cause come from.

If you're content to say that nothing created God/god/gods, or that God/god/gods have always existed, than why not save a step and apply the same lazy reasoning to the universe?

Because an eternal God is not created, an eternal God is not made of matter, it's the matter in the universe that is created. An omnipotent eternal God created the matter in the universe. I'm too lazy to explain it any further. [yawn - stretch]

If you look at things in the sense the universe itself is God, and has no particular humanlike aspects, then there's truth to this. However, from a Western point of view, what makes God different from Existence is a 'motive'. There is no centralized motive to the universe. Therefore, Judeochristian theories of God are unlikely.

The big bang MAY be the birth of existence, or a continuation of a cycle.

Then again, I'm beginning to lean to the possibility that time is a human invention and the universe has no beginning or end. In terms of dimension, or time.