Big bang question - Dumb perhaps

OK, now don't kill me on this, but what I'd like to know is this:

We know the Universe started with the Big Bang. That's all fine and
good. But I just can't help thinking that time had to exist before the
bang took place and whatever that thing was that exploded had to take
shape and form much before. If so, time really goes back a long way
before the big bang and so does the Universe. And technically, this
equation could go on till Infinity... which is the real kicker because
it practically means that nobody will ever know how it all began. Am I
making sense or simply missing something?

This may really sound amateurish (if a reasonable explanation exists
and I'm not aware of it), but I can see that there are people here
that may be able to satisfy my curiosity on this one.

Thanks a lot

Rohit

Graytown wrote:

OK, now don't kill me on this, but what I'd like to know is this:

We know the Universe started with the Big Bang. That's all fine and
good. But I just can't help thinking that time had to exist before the
bang took place and whatever that thing was that exploded had to take
shape and form much before. If so, time really goes back a long way
before the big bang and so does the Universe. And technically, this
equation could go on till Infinity... which is the real kicker because
it practically means that nobody will ever know how it all began. Am I
making sense or simply missing something?

This may really sound amateurish (if a reasonable explanation exists
and I'm not aware of it), but I can see that there are people here
that may be able to satisfy my curiosity on this one.

Thanks a lot

Rohit

First, your question is much better addressed to sci.astronomy or
sci.physics. Second, the Big Bang wasn't (according to current theory)
an explosion in the traditional sense of some large object going BOOM!
and scattering debris. There really isn't a "thing that exploded".
Instead, the "big bang" is a characterization of the early period of the
universe as being hot, with rapid expansion ("hyperinflation", where the
size is increasing faster than the speed of light.) We keep pushing back
our knowledge of the early universe, and have a pretty good idea down to
the first couple of seconds, but the physics doesn't imply the presence
(or absence) of something before the universe anymore than it does
outside the universe. It is unfortunate that the early characterization
of the Big Bang talked about the "primordial atom", or the "ylem", and
that something happened to cause it to explode. The modern view is that
the explosion occured. Other than some initial conditions, we really
can't tell about anything prior to the start of the Big Bang because the
conditions of the Big Bang pretty much wiped everything else out. In
fact, we know even less about the initial conditions than we thought,
since it appears that, due to hyperinflation, certain ratios of
particles will end up looking like they do now over a wide variety of
initial conditions.

It is contrary to "common sense", but when you get to cosmology, you're
really dealing with high-energy physics and quantum theory, neither of
which have much to do with "common sense" (which is really just our view
of how things work at the scale in which we live.) It's "common sense"
that heavy objects sink in water, but if you put an iron filing on the
surface of the water in a glass, the surface tension holds it up.

http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/acosmbb.html has a very nice FAQ
about the Big Bang.

I can't help thinking that time as we know it didn't exist when the
Universe didn't exist.
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.


"Graytown" wrote in message
om...
OK, now don't kill me on this, but what I'd like to know is this:

We know the Universe started with the Big Bang. That's all fine and
good. But I just can't help thinking that time had to exist before
the
bang took place and whatever that thing was that exploded had to
take
shape and form much before. If so, time really goes back a long way
before the big bang and so does the Universe. And technically, this
equation could go on till Infinity... which is the real kicker
because
it practically means that nobody will ever know how it all began. Am
I
making sense or simply missing something?

This may really sound amateurish (if a reasonable explanation exists
and I'm not aware of it), but I can see that there are people here
that may be able to satisfy my curiosity on this one.

Thanks a lot

Rohit

In article ,
says...
OK, now don't kill me on this, but what I'd like to know is this:

We know the Universe started with the Big Bang. That's all fine and
good. But I just can't help thinking that time had to exist before the
bang took place and whatever that thing was that exploded had to take
shape and form much before. If so, time really goes back a long way
before the big bang and so does the Universe. And technically, this
equation could go on till Infinity... which is the real kicker because
it practically means that nobody will ever know how it all began. Am I
making sense or simply missing something?

This may really sound amateurish (if a reasonable explanation exists
and I'm not aware of it), but I can see that there are people here
that may be able to satisfy my curiosity on this one.

Thanks a lot

Ami and Gene did a good job of responding to you, but basically the thing
you have to do is understand that there was *no space* in which the
primordial, microscopic Universe existed at the moment of the Big Bang.
It wasn't a little tiny ball sitting in the midst of an empty expanse
waiting to be filled. All of the particles that exist in the current
Universe and all of the energy that has existed and ever will exist, nd
most importantly ALL OF DIMENSIONAL SPACE were contained within that tiny
point.

Astrophysicists call the time before we can infer conditions during the
Big Bang a "discontinuity." Nothing that we know of physics and
cosmology will allow us to infer the conditions that caused the Universe
to exist in the form we infer for its first milliseconds. There is
another thing that is considered a discontinuity -- the interior of the
Schwarzchild radius of a black hole. Nothing we know lets us infer the
conditions there, either.

--

It's not the pace of life I mind; | Doug Van Dorn
it's the sudden stop at the end... |

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:51:38 -0400, "Ami A. Silberman"
wrote:

Second, the Big Bang wasn't (according to current theory)
an explosion in the traditional sense of some large object going BOOM!
and scattering debris. There really isn't a "thing that exploded".
Instead, the "big bang" is a characterization of the early period of the
universe as being hot, with rapid expansion ("hyperinflation", where the
size is increasing faster than the speed of light.)

....One recent theory that seems to solve the problem of hyperinflation
is that the universe as we know it exists between two other
dimensional planes that contacted one another over a vast area and as
matter and anti-matter they produced enough annihilation energy to
force back the two planes and provide enough room for the primordial
soup to congeal into the universe we live in. It's also spawned a
religiocosmological model where God/Yahweh/Roddenberry/etc didn't say
"Let There Be Light", but rather went "Clap On clap!"


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

(Graytown) wrote

But I just can't help thinking that time had to exist before the
bang took place and whatever that thing was that exploded had to take
shape and form much before. If so, time really goes back a long way
before the big bang and so does the Universe. And technically, this
equation could go on till Infinity... which is the real kicker because
it practically means that nobody will ever know how it all began. Am I
making sense or simply missing something?

Yep, this a problem of logical regression that has been around a
long time, is not limited to scientific paradigms, and has led to
various theological excursions such as "first cause" and "it's
turtles all the way down." Modern variants are steady-state/cascading
cosmologies that have, for example, universes like ours popping out
of nowhere as a result of quantum fluctuations in some sort of
Ueberspace. But where did Ueberspace come from? Ueberueberspace?
And where... you see the problem.

Basically, nobody has a clue, and it's very hard even to imagine what
a clue concerning this problem of regression would look like.

Me, I like the turtles.

In article ,
says...
(Graytown) wrote

But I just can't help thinking that time had to exist before the
bang took place and whatever that thing was that exploded had to take
shape and form much before. If so, time really goes back a long way
before the big bang and so does the Universe. And technically, this
equation could go on till Infinity... which is the real kicker because
it practically means that nobody will ever know how it all began. Am I
making sense or simply missing something?

Yep, this a problem of logical regression that has been around a
long time, is not limited to scientific paradigms, and has led to
various theological excursions such as "first cause" and "it's
turtles all the way down." Modern variants are steady-state/cascading
cosmologies that have, for example, universes like ours popping out
of nowhere as a result of quantum fluctuations in some sort of
Ueberspace. But where did Ueberspace come from? Ueberueberspace?
And where... you see the problem.

Basically, nobody has a clue, and it's very hard even to imagine what
a clue concerning this problem of regression would look like.

I know this is a common-sense idea, and like all common-sense ideas it
doesn't apply well to higher mathematics and cosmology. But...

As I said in an earlier post, another example of a discontinuous
singularity in astrophysics is a black hole. Just as we can't infer the
state of the universe just before the Big Bang, we (AFAIK from the
reading I've done about it) can't really infer the state of matter,
energy, physical dimensions and time within the Schwartzchild radius of a
black hole.

Could it possible be that the Universe is the interior of a black hole?
And that each black hole we see in our own universe is another universe?
And that the "expansion" we observe is actually the *compression* of all
the particles and energy within the black hole? How could you tell the
difference between space expanding and every particle and energy particle
compressing? Isn't it a relative thing?

Has this concept been rigorously disproven?

Me, I like the turtles.

Yeah -- they have a certain charm, don't they? "Ahhh, you can't fool me!
It's turtles all the way down!"

--

It's not the pace of life I mind; | Doug Van Dorn
it's the sudden stop at the end... |

In article ,
Mary Shafer wrote:

It's all magic and special effects.

The "Big Bang" is one particular model of what happened, based on the
data collected so far. If enough more data gets collected, either
your questions will get answered or a new model, probably even harder
to visualize, will be created.

Life is much easier if you just assume it's either Pixar or Industrial
Light and Magic.

Mary

Good article on Slashdot a few weeks ago linking to a mathematical
philosopher's arguments to the effect that the Universe as we know it is
just a simulation running on someone else's computer. The following
discussion ranged from "Deja vue is a glitch in the Matrix!" to serious
discussions that at the time of the Big Bang (and the Big Crunch - which
is looking increasingly LESS likely due to acceleration in the expansion
of the universe), energy and information density would be infinite -
ergo, enough processing capacity to literally "know all" and "see all"
(like an old carnival mind reader, I suppose). Anyway, the upshot is
that since information density was at one point (and maybe will be again
some day) infinite, we MUST all be simulations. My take on it is that it
may well be true, but the simulation is high enough fidelity to give me
a believable simulacrum of self-awareness. Ergo, death and taxes are
real enough for my purposes! On the other hand, Mary's theory that it's
either Pixar or ILM is attractive, too. ;-)

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

"OM"
...One recent theory that seems to solve the problem of hyperinflation
is that the universe as we know it exists between two other
dimensional planes that contacted one another over a vast area and as
matter and anti-matter they produced enough annihilation energy to
force back the two planes and provide enough room for the primordial
soup to congeal into the universe we live in

"Let There Be Light", but rather went "Clap On clap!"

Yeah, the contact between the two planes theory is an attention-getter, as it is
the first theory I have come across that attempts to describe anything prior to
the Big Bang, or Clap On. Perhaps similar to the Probabilistic explanation,
that the chance of the two planes coming in contact was astronomically small,
and then it happened.

Also worth noting that the Many Worlds theory has not been ruled out; that the
Universe is one of more than one.

"Kent Betts" wrote in message
...

Also worth noting that the Many Worlds theory has not been ruled out; that
the
Universe is one of more than one.

universe: n. 1. The aggregate of all existing things; the whole creation
embracing all celestial bodies and all of space; the cosmos. (Funk &
Wagnalls New International Dictionary of the English Language, Comprehensive
Edition, 1987)

There can be no such thing as more than one universe, since the word, by
definition, encompasses everything. If there were more than one "universe"
as you define it, then the sum collection of all "universes" would still be
*the* Universe. "Multiverse" is an imaginary word sometimes used as a
substitute for a lack of imagination, but in any case, it is synonymous with
Universe, since there is nothing in a "multiverse" that is not in the
Universe.

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