the big bang

Saiph · Apr 26, 2005

mass is a property of matter. Matter really is nothing other than a different form of energy (as it has slightly different characteristics). It is often thought of as a different phase of energy, much like ice is a different phase of water. In that line of thought, mass is "frozen" energy, put in a stable (non-dynamic) form that's really quite dense. In that state it has different properties from free flowing energy. It has inertia for instance. By changing energy to mass you store it, as a potential energy. So the conversion is sorta like: ____ cubic meters of ice make ____ liters of water. Except x amount of mass makes y amount of energy. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> --------------------SaiphMOD@gmail.com -------------------"This is my Timey Wimey Detector. Goes "bing" when there's stuff. It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually. I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

aetherius · Apr 26, 2005

Thanks that was very helpful. So in the first "instant" after the big bang is it correct to say that all the energy that is now in the universe was present at that time in the form of countless strings but with no force present to bind them together?

kmarinas86 · Apr 26, 2005

So in the first "instant" after the big bang is it correct to say that all the energy that is now in the universe was present at that time in the form of countless strings but with no force present to bind them together? That sounds about right, according to theory. In a universe that is said to be limited in size implies that there is a limited number of strings. As the temperature decreases, the forces between the strings are greater causing them to form larger objects. In theory, the upper limit to temperature is 10^32 degrees Kelvin which would be the point where you could have strings by themselves. http://www.google.com/search?q="string+theory"+"10+32..10000"+kelvin http://www.google.com/search?q="string+theory"+"particle+accelerator+the+size+of"

Saiph · Apr 26, 2005

well, they could have been strings (according to string theory...). But it was to hot for the matter to exist. Any energy that was concentrated enough to form matter...got obliterated by the rest of it, back into energy. If you put enough energy into matter, it disperses back into energy (photo-dissociation is believed to occur in supernovae for instance). So after the big bang, the energy levels were such that all 4 forces acted as one (we think, I've got a feeling gravity didn't...but that's me) and could be easily described by one rule (or set of rules) for all of them. As the universe cooled, the forces started to differ, and matter that was created, tended not to be smashed to smithereens. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> --------------------SaiphMOD@gmail.com -------------------"This is my Timey Wimey Detector. Goes "bing" when there's stuff. It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually. I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

aetherius · Apr 26, 2005

I was under the impression, (incorrect), that strings were the fundamental pieces of everything, matter and energy, but after checking a definition I see that it refers only to matter. (Which is actually a phase of energy.) OK, so given the fundamental building blocks of matter are strings of vibrating energy-- and given the idea of phase transitions-- If strings emerged from a phase transition following the BB then, theoretically, could an all-powerful collider generate collisions that would produce the building blocks of strings? What is the fundamental unit of energy in the same sense that strings are the fundamental units of matter? Wouldn't the existence of energy, more fundamental than strings, imply the existence of the building blocks of strings? It seems like either strings are fundamental or they aren't. Or does string theory come with a caveat with respect to this issue?

Saiph · Apr 26, 2005

first, string theory is relatively new, and hasn't been put through it's paces yet. Your basic question is: Can we find a more fundamental "thing"? I don't know personally. There are many things were you look at it, and wonder if we can go down another step, or if that's it. The Higgs field comes to mind. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> --------------------SaiphMOD@gmail.com -------------------"This is my Timey Wimey Detector. Goes "bing" when there's stuff. It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually. I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

kmarinas86 · Apr 26, 2005

The possibilities are endless!

alokmohan · Apr 29, 2005

Was there any big bang really is one of the possibilities.

spacehead · Apr 29, 2005

Hello guys, i'm new here. I've been a visitor to this site for quite sometimes and enjoy the front page articles alot. anyways this is what i've read <blockquote>In reply to:<hr />Hubble's observations that the most distant galaxies are receding from us faster than the closer galaxies can be explained if the universe is expanding in a way similiar to the way a giant raisin cake rises. If you picture yourself as sitting on a raisin, all the other raisins will recede from you as the cake rises. Since there is more dough between tou and the more distant raisins, the dough will expand more and the distant raisins will recede more rapidly that closer ones. Similarly, the universe is expanding. we have the same view mo natter which raisin or galaxy we are on, so the fact that all raisins and galaxies seem to be receding doesn't say that we are at the center of the universe. Indeed, the universe has no center. (we would have to picture a raisin cake exteding infinitely in all directions to get a more accurate analogy). Since the universe is uniformly now, we can ask what happened in the past. As we go back in time, the universe must have been more compressed, until it was at quite a high density 15 billion or so years ago. Most model of the origin of the universe that there then was a big bang that started the expansion. A widely accepted model --the inflationary universe --holds that the early universe grew larger rapidly for a short time before it settled down to its current rate of expansion. The big bang itself may not have occured; the first matter lhave formed as a chance of fluctuation in the nothingness of space. The temperatures were so high in the first microsecond of the universe that not even the chemical elements had formed. But as the universe cool, first basic atomic particles, such as protons (hydrogen nuclei), and then heavier atoms formed. Still, the universe was opaque until it cooled down to 3,000 o</blockquote>

newtonian · May 5, 2005

spacehead - Interesting you post where space will head - is the user ID a coincidence? Note the recent data indicating acceleration of expansion of our universe. Might the cause of this also relate to the cause of the big bang itself?

arkady · May 5, 2005

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />The possibilities are endless! kmarinas=86=11+13+1+18+9+14+1+19 '86 - /> The magic number <hr /></blockquote> Bah! .. surely the magic number is 42. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "The choice is the Universe, or nothing ... " - H.G Wells </div>

alokmohan · May 6, 2005

Was there a big bang or big rip?

lewcos · May 6, 2005

Perhaps when it rips, lots of other universes will "fall" into our universe and will give us lots of new views.

main_sequence · May 6, 2005

Was there a big bang or big rip? Do you think the two ideas could just be different sides of the same coin?

biohazard · May 6, 2005

What are the modern observations say about the universe's expansion rate? Does it look like the big chill or the big crunch? Or something else...

newtonian · May 7, 2005

Biohazard- we don't have a complete view - we are limited by our light cone - i.e. our visibility horizon. The expansion appears to be accelerating. Distant portions of our universe are accelerating away from us - but this keeps us safe for future trillions of years. Meanwhile, in our local section of universe we are not expanding at all - rather we are on a sort of river in space heading for a great attractor along with thousands of other galaxies. As for crunch - No. As for chill - there is change. The IGM, intergalactic medium, oscillates in temperature and recently became much hotter. There is a good Scientific American article on this a couple of years ago. The question is, what has heated the IGM to millions of degrees kelvin? And ionized it? Supernovae?

god_lyke · Aug 26, 2007

Now i am not so smart with space and all. But when i was learning about the big bang and the suns and stuff in science class, my science teahcer told us that suns are made by alot of material and other stuff but it has to be alot. now the big bang as we say was all of the universe so couldnt the big bang be a sun. if everything was clumped together. and was 1 big mass object. could the big bang be a sun?

Aetius · Aug 26, 2007

No. The 'bang' in the Big Bang was caused by different forces, than what makes a star begin to shine.

derekmcd · Aug 26, 2007

The big bang did even start to shine until it was about 350-400k years old. Two totally and completely different processes at work. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div> <div>"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</div> </div>

weeman · Aug 26, 2007

First of all, the biggest difference between a Sun and the big bang is the size. If you are comparing the big bang to our Sun, there is a incredibly huge difference in the size of the two. Our Sun has a diameter of about 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles). The big bang is believed to have started as an infinitely small point. A single point of zero volume, yet infinitely massive. The universe may have started from a single point that was absurdly small! A point with a diameter of about 10^-33 centimeters. In other words, a 1 in the 33rd decimal place, 0.000000000000000000000000000000001 cm. Now, my math isn't so great (someone correct me if I'm wrong <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> ). That would be 1/100 nontillionth of a centimeter! A nontillion is a million trillion trillions. Also, a Sun has chemical composition and characteristics that either hadn't been developed at the time of the big bang, or were in the process of being developed. Check out this link, it is a timeline of the big bang. Hopefully the picture will load. http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/images/universehistory1.jpg <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Techies: We do it in the dark. "Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity." -Albert Einstein </div>

enigma10 · Aug 27, 2007

I'm always curious about measurements pre-big bang, before the universe set the laws we study and use today. Can't help but feel the term infinite to measure such pre-big bang constructs only reflects unknown, and nothing more. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "An organism at war with itself is a doomed organism." - Carl Sagan </div>

heyscottie · Aug 27, 2007

One major difference is that the sun shines due to the fusion of atoms. During the big bang, atoms had not even been formed yet, and probably the forces that allow fusion to occur had not even formed yet. Unfortunately, extending any classical physics back to the point of the big bang is generally doomed to fail, since it is likely that even the laws and constants that govern the universe had not been determined at that point.

weeman · Aug 27, 2007

Yup, that's just like my statement above. At the time of the big bang, nothing had formed yet, and classical physics that govern our universe had yet to begin. And to answer Enigma's post: Can't help but feel the term infinite to measure such pre-big bang constructs only reflects unknown, and nothing more. We can't really say for sure whether or not the big bang singularity was infinitely small or infinitely massive. Infinitiy might be used in this situation because we are talking about things that are at a scale that is completely unmeasurable with our current technology. We have no way of seeing a singularity through a microscope, or any other forms of equipment. A singularity is impossible for us to see, as well as the oscilating strings of string theory. So, as for now, a sinuglarity is simply a mathematical, theoretical occurence. A singularity, by definition, is an absolute single point in space. It is a one-dimensional point. The period at the end of this sentence is not a single point, an atom is not a single point, a quark, electron, or proton is not a single point. All these things listed should still be measurable in the familiar three spatial dimensions. In addition, who knows if the mass at the time of the big bang was actually infinite. It is another unmeasurable number, so we imply that it was seemingly infinite. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Techies: We do it in the dark. "Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity." -Albert Einstein </div>

enigma10 · Aug 27, 2007

Then that would be a "yes. What you said is right. It represents an unknown only." <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "An organism at war with itself is a doomed organism." - Carl Sagan </div>

derekmcd · Aug 27, 2007

"In addition, who knows if the mass at the time of the big bang was actually infinite. I think the very nature of the big bang makes it a closed system with a finite amount of matter (mass). I think you may have meant infinite density. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div> <div>"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</div> </div>

the big bang

Saiph

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aetherius

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Saiph

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aetherius

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