Dear Jonathan Doolin:
On Jul 16, 2:16*pm, Jonathan Doolin wrote:
On Jul 16, wrote:
On Jul 16, 5:50*am, Antares 531 wrote:
Was the "Big Bang" an explosive event, similar to a
thermonuclear bomb, or was it a matter of unrolling
the three dimensions we now perceive as identifying
our space?
Unrolling the dimensions, from a perspective within
this universe, may have been a smooth, gentle
process that would not have produced the
inferno that most Big Bang ideas are built around.
Not really. *Using the laws of physics we have now,
and compressing the Universe from its current
temperature / size, to a much smaller size... yields
very high temperatures. *Witness the CMBR radiation,
that indicates that the entire Universe was filled with a
glowing hydrogen plasma at about 3000K. *This
(CMBR quench) was supposedly 300,000 years after
the Big Bang, and it is reasonable to expect it was
much hotter than this before.
Inferno =/= Explosion
There is one detail of that explanation I don't understand.
*You're saying that the CMBR radiation is coming from
(or came from) hydrogen plasma.
That is what those that know say. It is consistent with the data.
*That plasma is out beyond all of the galaxies in the
universe,
No, the stuff-that-was-plasma is right here with us still. Some of it
captured into stars, but the rest is still scooting around in random
directions (locally).
and the most distant galaxies are traveling away from
us at nearly the speed of light.
See here is a problem with expressing it that way. Those distant
galaxies have relative motions to their neighbors that are similar to
us and our neighbors. The only similarity to "traveling away" is the
expansion of space between us (like the hallway in the movie
Poltergeist).
And the relative motions appear to exceed c. And so you might ask...
"how can we see the light?"
The light we are getting now, is trapped within our Rindler horizon.
We aren't seeing now, we are seeing light that made it just far
enough...
*Wouldn't that then suggest that that plasma is
traveling away from us even faster?
z is over 1000. A small z is "departing" at c
*And whatever is beyond that plasma is hotter still
and flying away even faster still.
But not actually moving, and had we divine vision, we could see the
back of our heads (so to speak).
I'm not sure it is justified in saying that a ball
of plasma expanding at the speed of light in all
directions is NOT an explosion.
It isn't as you describe, but it is part of the reason why the name
Big Bang has stuck.
The Universe is finite and closed. It appears the same in every
direction, in terms of physics. The CMBR was
- the last "burp" of a self-exciting plasma that quenched when the
Universe expanded enough to drop the intensity and density enough that
recombination no longer occurred, or
- it is a multi-folded surface through a Universe-filling globular
cluster, that devolved into lots of galaxies, or
- it is the surface of one super star, or
- even more weird stuff (some of which do not agree with observation).
The key is there was no pre-existing space, and everything on the
"left" can eventually be found on the "right", and this arrangement
will be the same for all those places too.
Here is some good reading material for you:
Many ways to "travel away from"
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/co...y_faq.html#FTL
Why are we still getting the CMBR light...
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/photons_outrun.html
Some highlights of cosmology and the Standard Model.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmo_01.htm
If'n you want to know.
David A. Smith