Question:
Is really the big bang considered the beginning of the universe?
2010-10-15 11:46:31 UTC
If so...this would be even mathematically impossible - for instance the probability for just one big bang to occur in the infinite empty space will be 1/infinity - which is zero or: 0.000... (which is again zero).
Other than that - it violates the first law of thermodynamics which basically states that nothing can arise out of nothing (or in physical language: "Energy can't be created nor destroyed") - lastly it violates simple philosophical context of determinism - that is every consequence should have a reason.
I think all these "quantum idiotics" is just a modern day religion - hopefully string theory will turn to be more reasonable (spaking of which - the idea of 2 branes colliding sounds better...). Personally I like the idea of a big bang as the "mother" of our observable universe and ouf earth of course - but saying that there was nothing prior to the bang is just wrong.

Thanks!
Twelve answers:
shah_253
2010-10-15 11:52:46 UTC
I think the key is in your description. The big bang is only the creation of "our observable universe". Who knows? Maybe there is a different sort of energy or matter which we can not perseve and prehaps advances in science, or perhaps just some time in the future, they will find this 'other enrgy/matter' and find that it actually created "our universe". But then, the question will simply rise again, 'what created the thing before the universe? and the thing before that? etc.'



In my opinion, it would be nice to have knowledge of how everything was created. But, if you are clever enough, then you can simply accept that there was nothing. Are you clever enough to understand the 'nothing' before the universe?
Loosey™
2010-10-18 19:00:16 UTC
You are not dividing by infinity, as that word has no meaning. I'm sure you've been told many times that size isn't everything. If you take the reciprocal of the "size" of the visible universe, it looks suspiciously like the Planck length, yet the physics in that tiny nugget would be the same as in the universe at large. Or so I've read. As much as I'd like to hold forth on spacetime weirdness, suffice it to say that if you balance the "plus" and "minus" energies of the universe, they perfectly cancel each other out. The quantum universe usually measures zero at any random measuring point, but it has the potential of any and all energies. Energy is created and destroyed all the time in the quantum field. The more energy that is created the quicker it has to be destroyed. Sometimes, though, the antiparticles "miss" each other and -- voila -- a particle is created out of nothing. It's pretty much established we live in a quantum universe ... which is to say a universe that defies all logic and is weirder than perhaps we can ever imagine.



I find the multiverse theory a bit too busy ... a bit too messy. But there is nothing in the math and physics as scientists understand it so far that says a multiverse *can't* exist.



Many famous physicists, including for example Stephen Hawking, have explored the idea of what was "before" the big bang. One consensus seems to be that the words "before" and "after" have no meaning on the quantum level. The arrow of time can go forwards, backwards, and sideways. You can't pinpoint time at that level, just like you can't pinpoint both the location and velocity of a quantum particle.



As for philosophical context ... if you didn't have a particular thought, does that thought exist? Some would say, Yes, it exists in some absolute state. I don't think so.
Raymond
2010-10-15 20:06:01 UTC
-- "Is really the big bang considered the beginning of the universe?"



Not quite. The Big Bang theory is a set of models and equations that explain the behavior of a universe where space itself expands and where the energy content remains constant (therefore, the energy density -- a.k.a. temperature -- goes down as space expands).



The theory itself does not even try to explain where the initial energy came from nor why space was (and still is) expanding. The theory can only be applied AFTER expansion is already under way.



The guy who came up with the theory was a priest, so he probably thought that the initial energy came directly from God. However, he was also a university professor and he kept reminding his students that the theory, being simply an application of scientific knowledge and methods, would work whether one believes in God or not.



The Big Bang theory cannot be used before a moment we call the Planck Time. At that moment, the energy density is so high that we don't understand (yet) how time itself could have flowed through it. That is why, for the moment, we call that the "beginning". From our frame of reference, we cannot gather any information from before that moment.



To boldly state that the Big Bang theory violates the first law of thermodynamics is, itself, a religious statement. The Big Bang theory, when applied after the Planck Time, does not require any matter or energy to be created out of nothing.



Throwing in the branes at this point simply pushes back the impossible questions: what created the branes, where did their energy come from, why did they collide, what was their purpose?



Saying that there was nothing prior to the Planck Moment (or to the moment of t = 0, a tiny fraction before) is not yet wrong. It is possible that there is such a thing, in space-time, as a position/particle of space-time (which Hawking calls the instanton) where all temporal directions are "future" -- just the same way as there is, on Earth, a point (North Pole) from where all the directions are south.



I personally don't like the idea, but I cannot prove it wrong yet.



And because I don't want to turn it into a religious debate, I will wait until I can prove it wrong, before... proving it wrong. Until then, I have to accept that the idea is going around.



---



The "Big Bang" has no direct connection to the formation of Earth.
Discover
2010-10-15 22:01:37 UTC
The very foundations of the big bang theory, i.e., the "primeval atom" disproves the big bang and indicates instead the universe has always existed.

If the entire universe existed as a point of singularity prior to the big bang, and since matter can be neither created nor destroyed, then all the matter of the universe, and thus, the very fabric and foundations of the universe, existed prior to the big bang.

Big Bang Theology dictates that the universe is homogeneous and appears the same everywhere in space; and it is isotropic and appears the same in every direction.

However, this is not true. Over 80% of the mass/energy of the universe is missing. Galaxies are not evenly dispersed but clump together in clusters, which vast regions of empty space separating them.

Not only is the universe behaving in a manner that contradicts the big bang, but there are rivers of galaxies flowing in directions that are incompatible with the uniformity of speed and movement that would be expected.

The big bang universe is a closed system. It is an expanding bubble which has no outside, no edge, no borders, and which simply ends 13.75 billion light years from where the Earth is now.

According to big bang theology, the most distant galaxies are the youngest galaxies. As one gazes further back in time, young galaxies become infant galaxies, then proto-galaxies, and then balls of luminous gas, and then beyond that, closer to the very beginning: there are no stars, no galaxies, just opaque light.

In a failed attempt to prove that galaxies ceased to exist at the theological edge of space, astronomers pointed the Hubble telescope at what they believed to be a completely empty patch of sky for approximately 280 hours.

The resulting Hubble Ultra Deep Field observations stunned the temple priests of science. Astronomers thought they were going to stare at the very edge of the universe, that they would gaze upon the very beginning, that their time machine in a telescope was going to peer back 13 billion years,

And then, to their astonishment, instead of nothing, over 10,000 galaxies were detected where none should exist.

What astronomers discovered is that instead of a decreasing number of galaxies as predicted by the big bang, they detected an increasing number of galaxies.

As the Hubble collected ever more faint and distant light, more and more galaxies were detected; fully formed galaxies of all shapes and sizes. As long as they stared, additional galaxies began to appear, tens of thousands of galaxies so far away it is presently impossible to even guess at their distance; galaxies and more galaxies as far as the Hubble eye could see.

And each of these tens of thousands of galaxies likely have anywhere from ten billion to a 100 billion stars similar to our own sun and solar system; findings which are completely incompatible with the theory of the big bang.

Yes, instead of nothing, they gazed into infinity,

The evidence indicates that galaxies and stars continue outward forever into all eternity.

The Big Bang is a myth.

The universe was not created.

The infinite and eternal Universe has no beginning and no end.
Bradley
2010-10-15 20:05:16 UTC
The Big Bang theory does not attempt to describe the beginning of the Universe. The theory explains what happened AFTER the beginning; something on the order of 10^(-33) seconds after the Universe was created. Before this time, we can only speculate.
?
2010-10-15 18:51:36 UTC
There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we tend to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion; there was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: an infinitesimally small balloon expanding to the size of our current universe.





Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.







Evidence for the Theory



First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.



Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.



Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit, -270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.



Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.
quasar
2010-10-15 18:49:48 UTC
The Big Bang doesn't discuss the origin of the elements or its components and where they come from. It simply describes a the moment when the singularity started to expand creating space and time. It's still expanding till now.

We don't know what was there before the Big Bang. I agree with you about string theory and branes collision. Scientists trying to explain the origin of the universe by quantum fluctuations in vacuum are-in my opinion- focusing more on proving the nonexistence of a creator than the origins of the universe.
2010-10-15 19:03:12 UTC
no, you've got the facts wrong.

before the big bang, there was NOTHING, and i mean NOTHING at all.

time and space had no meaning.

at the time of big bang, all the matter in our present universe was concentrated in a very small(infinitely small) POINT. to visualise it, think of the smallest thing possible( for me, a proton), now imagine something a million, billion, trillion, GAZIFILLAKKION times smaller than that and then you will realise just how small it was.(alright, i made up that word)



big bang is not the only theory out there.

please read all stephen hawking books to understand. your last statement is correct. big bang was the birth of the OBSERVABLE universe.



string theory is either too immature or too advanced for today's science.

come back after a few thousand years to get that answer.



science is NOT a religion, you'll get burned at the stake by rabid men in white coats for saying so. please desist :)



big bang theory does not violate any law, all laws break down at the time of big bang and before it(pretty convinient)

quantum theory is not bullshit, just as much bullshit is the theory of probablity, yet noone calls maths stupid.



determinism is a relic of the last century, today we have particles that are everywhere and nowhere at once. we can only percieve them as one frame, even in viewing them, we change their status.



please do get out there and read a bit.

you sound opinionated. good luck.
cosmo
2010-10-15 18:58:01 UTC
The Big Bang does not violate the first law of thermodynamics.



The total energy content of the Universe is observed to be near zero and may actually be zero.

Gravitational potential energy is negative.
chanljkk
2010-10-18 14:11:42 UTC
1.Principle of Causality. Cause and Effect take turns. If the Big Bang were one of the event, it should not be the final cause. It is similar to what you mentioned--determinism.

2. Conservation of mass and energy. There were sea of energy, not from nothing.

3. Newtonian mechanics and ordinary physics laws applied to the Big Bang, but failed.

It is understood.

I just gave my input.
Frst Grade Rocks! Ω
2010-10-15 19:05:41 UTC
Prior to the big bang, there was no space as we know it. Our universe is self-contained. This doesn't mean there was nothing. Just that whatever existed before the big bang is not reachable from this universe.



No violation of the first law of thermo. The net energy is zero. (At least without considering dark energy). See: https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20100512210123AAF2Iz8



Whatever your misgivings about quantum mechanics, it works. It is particularly good at explaining chemistry, electron orbitals, molecular bonds, the periodic chart, electromagnetic emissions, silicon chips, etcetera.
Ottawa Mike
2010-10-15 19:37:19 UTC
Many cosmologists consider the end of the Planck Epoch to be the beginning of the universe.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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