What happened before the big bang?

[mark_d_s]

This is quite interesting... from the BBC's Horizon programme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bGx3UB-Slg

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Thanks for sharing ... watched several of the videos.

Roger Penrose's idea was by far the coolest, imho. Who knows if it's right, but it was pretty neat to think about anyhow.

I like how when he gets to play with that funky cube puzzle, he starts taking it apart instead :lol:

 

[mark_d_s]

It shows just how muddled cosmology really is, at least with reference to the big bang. Did it happen, or not...

 

[SpeedFreek]

As I often try to emphasise, the Big-Bang only makes predictions back to when everything in the observable universe was an incredibly dense state, then the Big-Bang theory can say no more about it.

Only in popularised interpretations of the theory will you hear things like "the Big-Bang came from nothing", "time didn't exist before the Big-Bang" etc. A few prominent scientists also interpreted the theory in that way too, but that is all it was, a possible interpretation. The actual theory itself says nothing about these matters, it leaves them open in the most honest way possible, by saying that our laws of physics break down if we try to go back any further. To most of us, that means we don't know all the laws of physics yet.

All we really think we know so far is that the observable universe has expanded from a very hot dense state to a cooler less dense state!

I watched that episode of Horizon when it was broadcast, and I liked Penrose's idea too!

And I was really hoping that none of the physicists would solve the puzzle, and then they could end the program with the credits rolling and some small child wandering into the picture, picking it up and solving it in a few seconds!

 

[darkmatter4brains]

And I was really hoping that none of the physicists would solve the puzzle, and then they could end the program with the credits rolling and some small child wandering into the picture, picking it up and solving it in a few seconds!

That would have been cool

 

[MeteorWayne]

Off topic Time discussion split to it's own topic in The Unexplained. (Time?)

 

[niebieskieucho]

Can't find continuation of discussion. Is it due to censorship of some topics? If so, we are in Medieval of XXI century and forums stopped playing role of sharing other points of view that are not concordant with official science. Discussion was on hypotheses and theories that are falsified after all.

 

[SpeedFreek]

Can't find continuation of discussion. Is it due to censorship of some topics? If so, we are in Medieval of XXI century and forums stopped playing role of sharing other points of view that are not concordant with official science. Discussion was on hypotheses and theories that are falsified after all.

As MeteorWayne said, he has moved the "time" discussion to the Unexplained forum, as it is off-topic for this thread. I found it within a few seconds of looking. Try here.

But no... rather than looking in the unexplained forum, you have to jump to the conclusion that you are being censored and compare it to medieval persecution! What do you think that says about you?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Can't find continuation of discussion. Is it due to censorship of some topics? If so, we are in Medieval of XXI century and forums stopped playing role of sharing other points of view that are not concordant with official science. Discussion was on hypotheses and theories that are falsified after all.

READ THE POST ABOVE YOURS:


Off topic Time discussion split to it's own topic in The Unexplained. (Time?)

 

[LahTera]

Hello, am new here, but I've always been fascinated about the Big Bang. Just wanted to mention something that may or may not have anything to do with it.

There are ancient texts that speak of the creation. While the Bible mentions dark, turbulent waters as being the only thing around before creation, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls go into further detail. The way they describe these dark turbulent waters reminds me of the description for the environment of quantum mechanics. The scrolls also mention a wall of light and this I haven't been able to put into context with physics, but according to the texts, something was created and placed beyond the wall of light into the dark turbulent waters. From this, creation of our universe began. (Could it be that our universe was here, but different, and that something else was introduced into it to cause the Big Bang?)

And then my mind goes to particles and waves. Could it be that we're only seeing part of the picture when it comes to the subatomic world? I mean, this is where you can have effect before cause, and they have trouble "mapping" particles because things don't fit into the theories developed for the larger masses. Could it be a combination of waves affecting particles?

Well, I admit I'm no physicist, but I'm surely having my interest peaked. If I'm just being silly, don't hesitate to say so ... I can take it!

Just thought I'd throw out something to ponder.

LahTera

 

[Jimmyboy]

With the Big crunch or Big bounce theory, is it the matter in the universe that is reversed in direction or is it the fabric of space as well as the matter in it that is re attracted??

Also with the big bounce and big crunch theory, if all the matter was reversed in direction back to a single point, wouldnt there be just loads of black holes everywhere as matter re-condensed, then potentially the universe would be just one big black hole? as with the big bounce why would it be a big bang again? are they suggesting there is a limit to how much matter a blackhole can contain before it creates a big bang?

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

With the Big crunch or Big bounce theory, is it the matter in the universe that is reversed in direction or is it the fabric of space as well as the matter in it that is re attracted??

Also with the big bounce and big crunch theory, if all the matter was reversed in direction back to a single point, wouldnt there be just loads of black holes everywhere as matter re-condensed, then potentially the universe would be just one big black hole? as with the big bounce why would it be a big bang again? are they suggesting there is a limit to how much matter a blackhole can contain before it creates a big bang?

Two good questions !

1) I've really never given it much thought but I would opine that were it not for dark energy and if the density of the universe were great enough then gravity would cause the matter in the universe to "crunch". I don't see all of spacetime itself being reeled in. On the other hand such a crunch would seem to create the mother of all super massive blackholes and so create it's own subdivision of spacetime, separate from the remainder of the (previous) universe. Anyway that's my guess.

2) No doubt black holes would merge into 1 MoaBH. So why would such a monster "bounce" into another Big Bang ? Got me, maybe that's not a real possibility though I did read that some quantum gravity theory would allow it. I know nothing about such theories.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true

ABHAY ASHTEKAR remembers his reaction the first time he saw the universe bounce. "I was taken aback," he says. He was watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang. Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang "singularity", the universe bounced and started expanding again.

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[captdude]

Just a thought. But what if, after all the matter in the unverse condensed into a lone singularity, it did not bounce into a new big bang. Why coundn't it create a new pocket of space/time and a new big bang at the other end of the singularity? To throw even more spagetti against the wall - the singularity could be the bottle neck in an hourglass that recycles mass & energy from one side to the other.



I think, therefore I am.....constantly wanting to know why.

 

[Jimmyboy]

The only trouble I personally see when pple suggest that on the other end of a singularity is a white hole or big bang is that blackholes consume matter over time not at an instant, say your average blackhole could consume matter a billion ka zallion different times throughout its lift time, but as we understand the big bang happens in a instant, not over the life of a BH. So with a big crunch and the ever larging BH the same would be true?? in anycase we do not observe white holes, so you would think if there were a multiverse of universes which theoreticaly could connect with our own, one would have thought a white hole would have appeared by now?

 

[SJQ]

Absolutely zero expertise in cosmology, but the topic is interesting to me. Understanding that I'm "not married to it", how does this sound?

Let's assume that a Big Crunch is actually possible (although it seems unlikely, now), and implicitly, there is a "before" to the Big Bang. I don't know of any reason for space to contract into the Big Crunch, so I assume it doesn't. Although I concede that in the vicinity of the Big Crunch, should it exist, weird things are gonna happen. Creation of the next universe might be the least obnoxious choice....

From Mee_n_Mac's suggestion that the Big Crunch would cause a subdivision of space, the universe is then simply an infinite succession of empty voids inaccessible to us, each caused by a chain of preceeding Big Crunches (the "Turtles All The Way Back" theory). There's just no way to know/prove that "our" Big Bang was the first one. Since a discontinuity is generally harder to deal with mathematically, and we can't prove the assumption false, let's take the coward's way out and assume an infinite series of Big Crunches/Big Bangs (prove me wrong.....)

Both Mee_n_Mac and Jimmyboy speculate on the event triggering. We really don't know what goes on inside a black hole, any more than we know what happened at the Big Bang. We can only (in theory at least) get close - the event horizon in one case, something like 10[super]-43[/super] of a second in the other, and then the rules fall apart..... This falling apart is what allows us to speculate/engage in food-fights.

So after scraping Captdude's spaghetti off, let me throw this at the wall: We already know there is some degree of non-linearity associated with the creation event, if inflationary theory is correct. The (our) universe had to get big in a hurry, so something happened (unless it really was a collision between two full-size branes in another space.... I don't know). We see no evidence that the expansion is still continuing at the inflationary rate (if it was, by now, we probably couldn't even see the house next door....), so inflation stopped, it seems relatively abruptly. More non-linearity.

When the various forces separated from each other, post Big Bang, how abrupt was this? I suspect - don't know - that again, every instance of force separation was a binary thing: either there was energy enough to merge gravity in, or - bang! - there wasn't, and a symmetry got broken.

At the other end of creation, perhaps the Big Crunch coalescing of all the matter in the ("this") universe simply causes a giganto-bloody-normous black hole, one that is big enough that it exceeds some threshold value, causing the Big Bang next door (another turtle...).

But it seems to me that there might be an end to the creation instants in this theory. To guarantee the next Big Bang does occur, there has to be some minimum amount of mass in the preceeding universe to cause it, an amount that is guaranteed to exceed the threshold. This being so, not all of the matter in the prior universe gets back to the Big Crunch in time. It gets "left behind" (okay, so it's EMPTY Turtle Shells MOSTLY All The Way Back). Eventually, a universe will be created in which there is not enough matter to trigger the next Big Bang. End of creations.

Entropy always wins. Just sayin'.