On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:50:38 -0500, 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.

Gordon

I appreciate all the very insightful responses that I've received on
this subject. I am still trying to get my thinking opened up enough to
let me conceptualize what went on when the spatial dimensions we now
perceive were in the process of being unrolled from their initial
"curled up to less than a Planck length" to their present state of
being uncurled...straight...still a bit curled...infinite radius of
curvature???

Was this dimension un-curling process actually what we now describe as
the Big Bang explosion? That is, would a meter stick, if somehow
contained within that initial point have been discernable as a meter
stick from a perspective within that initial point? Would that meter
stick now be what we perceive as one meter long, or would it be
galactic in size. That is, was that meter stick shrunk down by the
curled dimensions such that it was the same length relative to other
objects in that initial point?

What I'm trying to get settled in my mind is, was it an explosion, or
was it an uncurling of dimensions, with no actual explosion. The
uncurling effect would have produced the red shift we now observe,
just as effectively as an explosion would have.

Think of a two dimensional surface on a spherical balloon. Draw some
images on the balloon's surface. Next, inflate the balloon to a much
larger size. All those objects will have expanded by the same
percentage, and measurements of one object relative to the scale of
any other object would remain constant.

To clarify the above a bit more...draw a picture of a child one meter
tall, holding a meter stick in a vertical position, by his side. After
the balloon was further inflated, this child would still be one meter
tall, as measured by the meter stick in is hand.

Gordon