BS: What went Big Bang?

Subject: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 02:28 AM

In one of his novels, Ben Elton makes a character say that he has been told, by one of those who didn't really know either, that this is a question that only stupid people ask. I have read Stephen Hawking (for all the good it did me) & all that stuff. But I still don't know how we are any further forward until someone answers this question, & the obvious related one as to whence it appeared so that it could do it. So I ask again:

What went Big Bang?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Darowyn
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:13 AM

Everything and nothing.
From nothing to everything... Bang
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:21 AM

The whole universe, matter, space and energy, suddenly expanded from a singularity,i.e an infinitely small size.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:33 AM

... but a singularity, an infinitely small size of WHAT, precisely?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Micca
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:32 AM

" In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was.....





Aardvark"

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: 3refs
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:45 AM

Until they can figure out just exactly how gravity works, we'll not likely ever know!
I have read that the universe expands(the big bang)and then contracts, over and over again! Forever!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Micca
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:46 AM

Or alternately, words do not adequately describe Scientific concepts, The language is not precise enough, this is, and has been, an ongoing problem since the beginning of science, words in Science as opposed to words as everyday communication, have a PRECISE meaning i.e. Green as a word means anywhere between Blue and Yellow as a Science concept it means a precise range of wavelengths of light between 50*10^-8 and 57*10^-8m . Therefore The Big Bang is a very fuzzy "word" description of what Scientists Theorize happend at the very beginning of the Universe,(the moment of Creation for any of our closet Creationists out there, The second after "Let there be light") any the models they use are all mathematical.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Dead Horse
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:31 AM

I liken it to Pavarotti meeting Vanessa Phelps on a dating site.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 07:20 AM

First you have a thought. Then you have a manifestation of the thought...appearing as a physical something or other.

One possibility. ;-)

But now I hear you asking, "Yeah, but who or what thought that thought?"

Good question. I do not have the answer, because I'm only one cell in the jellyfish, and if you were to ask any one cell in the jellyfish to explain the entire jellyfish, it probably wouldn't have any idea even how to begin.

Then too, there's the ocean around the jellyfish...and what lies beyond the ocean???

Just accept the fact that you will never know and be calm with it. There's a great deal we will never know.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 07:59 AM

It used to be thought possible that the expansion might slow and reverse.
A few years ago it was found to be accelerating.
A new concept, dark energy, had to be made to explain that.

An infinitely small what? The universe. Space, matter, energy and time.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:02 AM

Everything is impossible. That's why it's so funny to me when people choose one set of impossibilities over any other and say that their's is the only possible truth and everything else is impossible (I speak here not only of people with specific religious dogmas, but also scientific dogmas).

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:19 AM

On the Disk World a there is a theory that the great A'Tuin, a giant turtle on who's back the world rests, is seeking for his mate in the infinity of the Universe. When he finds her (or possible when she finds him) is when the Big Bang will occur...

DeG

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:12 AM

Or alternately, words do not adequately describe Scientific concepts, The language is not precise enough, this is, and has been, an ongoing problem since the beginning of science....

Right!

Simply change "science" to "religion" and we're in the same universe of wonderment. (If one prefers, as I do, wonderment to arguing, that is.)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: bobad
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:17 AM

42

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:24 AM

What went Bang was all the current energy/mass/space/time going from very, very small in all of those "dimensions" to very, very large in all of them. That is, potential space-time and mass-energy became those very things, very suddenly.
But I thought the Big Bang was being discredited?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:35 AM

"...an infinitely small size of WHAT, precisely?"

stuff....in a philosophical sense, whatever Alfred North Whitehead's "Actual Entities" were.

More here

In his seminal book on Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl asserts that the absolutely basic question in Philosophy is: "Why is there something, rather than nothing?"

Humans tend to WANT an answer, whether or not it is even theoretically possible to either GET an answer OR frame the question correctly. This is why religion 'satisfies' so many.....they just say "In the beginning, God....etc" and presume they have covered it.

Science (read: those who DO science) wants to know all than can be known, and wants to to know why we can't know the rest.

Respecting science, but being of the philosophical temperament, I am content to shrug and take Whitehead's & Husserl's views, and 'assume' there was some basic 'actual entities', but admit that I cannot even conceive of how the process worked. Stating the conundrum in philosophical terms will do...for now.

Imagine that someone steps forward and asserts (in some context other than religion) that he 'has' the answer. How will we test his answer?
We are captives of our own intellectual limits and of the language we use to reference our own existence. We have FAR more words and 'concepts' than we do referents for them. (as...Unicorns...and ghosts...and 'actual entities')

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:40 AM

(I like to imagine Alice (in Wonderland) asking Humpty Dumpty "What went Big Bang?)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:41 AM

When I ponder on the concept of "nothing", I find myself thinking that even nothing is something. Which really makes any attempt to explain it all kind of fruitless. "Nothing" is an impossibility. But so is existence itself. Because if "something" exists, where did it come from? But if "nothing" exists, how can it be called "nothing"?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:41 AM

Bobad - yours is best answer so far. Some day let's meet for dinner at The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:47 AM

♫Nada, Nada ...nada, nada, nil,nil, nil♫

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:47 AM

Two possible answers that habven't been mentioned:

1. The tail end of some insignificant, warped pocket of leftover continuum from the universe before this one.

2.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:48 AM

Amos... #1 is a subset of Whitehead.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:49 AM

2. The matrix of Potential Realities held in suspension by universal Disbelief. (Sorry, I am waxing poetic).

Another: The mesh of a quintillion points of conscious about to make an Agreement.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Rasener
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:50 AM

Was it this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYgOlqinH7A&feature=related

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 12:16 PM

NO --- but LoL --- : >)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:16 PM

um - what cannot be known?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:17 PM

Oops, meant to say that since I can neither conceive of the universe as having always existed, nor of there being a time before time, so, usually, I don't go there. That is, I'll philosophize on almost anything, but this one fairly stumps me until we come up with some new verb tenses, or something...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:29 PM

YEah, the time thing is a wicked loop--proposing "before time" and "outside space" are oxymoronic propositions, defying their own terminology.

If there was any space before the Big Bang (assuming it was space as we know it) then it was not the beginning of Universeness. This leads to the serial or parallel multiverse model.

If there was none then we are left with (as far as our terms cover it) a sort of "Only-Potentiality" capable of generating inconceivable amounts of energy and matter from nothing. THis is also cognitively very trying.

I prefer a model which allows the Big Bang as a transition between serial Universes, the first of which was a long, slow accumulation of moribund attention units and energetic points postulated by consciousness.

Oh, and turtle from there on down.


A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:30 PM

*grin*...that's sorta what *I* said, Mrzzy...only I don't phrase it as simply/clearly.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 02:24 PM

I suspect that, several Universe models down the line, it will turn out that a very slight non- linearity in Hubble's Law will turn out to mean that the Big Bang happened... an infinite time ago.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 02:38 PM

I am always worried semantically by the idea of 'multiple' or 'serial' universes. If it is a UNIverse, then there can only be one of it, by definition — if there are various - what - parts? bits? entities? whatever - they will all be subsumed under the ONE, won't they? Which brings us back to my OP...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 02:57 PM

well,...ummm... not exactly, MtheGM...

When cosmologists say "multiple universes", they use that phrase to specifically indicate the possibility of entire realms that are not 'part' of where WE are. They talk of membranes which exist in some other 'place' than what we call normal space. (The italics are to indicate that even the words 'membranes' and 'exist' and 'place' aren't even accurate for the purpose.)

The distinctions use language that we can share to refer to concepts that are only theoretical. (If they said "multiple zprynxes", this would all get worse..*wry grin*)

There is some math and some theories, like "string theory" which can be played with to make some coherent sense of it all....once you accept certain premises...kinda like religion.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:05 PM

In his seminal book on Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl asserts that the absolutely basic question in Philosophy is: "Why is there something, rather than nothing?"

I think you'll find that was Heidegger, not Husserl. Heidegger makes that the central question of all his later work. He sees it as not so much a philosophical question as an existential one: the question everybody has to to ask and nobody is ever going to get an answer to.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:09 PM

(My Master's thesis in Philosophy (never finished) was to be about another hotly debated topic..the "Free Will" vs "Determinism" issue.)

DO we have free will? Or are our actions simply based on physics & chemistry? My claim was to be: that the only way of even approaching a substantive resolution was through some theory like A.N. Whitehead's, where each 'actual entity' had a certain latitude about what it could 'do'...which would allow the organism to actually 'make decisions'...in some circumstances.
So, I was essentially arguing that we can't know, ultimately, what the answer is...but we must continue to act as though we DO have free will, no matter what 'truth' is.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: bobad
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:13 PM

"Why is there something, rather than nothing?"

Because if there wasn't something, then there would be nothing. Easy!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:13 PM

Oh, lordy, Jack...of course.. Heidegger! *blush* (after the Heidegger class, I had a class in Husserl which was more 'interesting', and I had his name parked on 'later' brain cells, I guess. (ummm...1966-1969....some of those brain cells are worn about the edges)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:59 PM

On an impulse, I went down to the catacombs to see if any of the old text books were where I remembered...even there, Husserl & Whitehead were on top of poor old Heidegger in the box.

ah, memories!

(Now why do I keep all these? Haven't done serious reading in years)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:29 PM

When a massive star goes supernova and implodes into a black hole, all that is left behind is an immense gravitational field. Other than the gravitational field, there is nothing there. So—where did all that matter go!??

If I read theoretical physicist Michio Kaku correctly (Beyond Einstein, Hyperspace, Parallel Worlds, Physics of the Impossible, others), especially in Parallel Worlds, he hypothesizes that when such a star goes supernova, a Big Bang occurs—somewhere else (???)—and a new universe is created.

In this universe (the one we occupy), all the matter (and everything else) came from such a supernova in some other universe.

The word "universe" no longer means what it was originally intended to mean, i.e., all of Creation, or everything that is. A more accurate word would be "multiverse." Not unlike a bunch of grapes of infinite size. But with room to expand. More grapes popping onto the bunch all the time, any time a supernova occurs in any of these universes.

Then, of course, the matter of multiple dimensions. Eleven is the latest figure. Kaku says that this is a difficult concept to grasp, but the math is there to support it. All those other dimensions are interlaced, right where we are, but we are aware of only three (length, width, depth), with a concept of the fourth (duration, i.e., time).

Whimsical speculation:   what we (some of us) experience as paranormal phenomena may actually be real—"leakage" from one of the other dimensions.

(I'm getting a headache.)

Don Firth

P. S. "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
                                                                                                            —J. B. S. Haldane

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:37 PM

That's a great photo, Bill--it really brings home the fact that so much of our pondering is map-making without territory, or independent thereof!

There is one postulate which I continually come back to as a relief from the brain-strain, which is the notion that space-time-energy, the normal continuum, does not "contain" consciousness. It is a very clarifying model in many ways.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:52 PM

Clarifying? *grin*.... that one GIVES me brain-strain.

(Hey..maybe you & I are just programmed to see these things differently...hmmm? ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:00 PM

Thanks, Don [3 posts back]. Now your views on what went Original Supernova, please?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:04 PM

serendipity...from today's paper.

you just have to have the right approach

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:26 PM

I love it, Bill.

You will allow that one of the most fundamental errors in human reasoning is the assumption that htings are associated which need not be, or are not associated when they actually should be. This is the essence of critical discrimination, yes?

Perhaps less readily, consider also the principle that a problem is knotty and persistant in direct proportion to the misassumptions, false assumptions or other distorted data used to examine it.

Since the nature of life and/or the physical universe is one of the knottiest and most persistant problems in philosophy, one might want to ask which assumptions in it are so distorted, no?

A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:47 PM

"This is the essence of critical discrimination, yes?"

Why--yes, Socrates...of course. I have often said as much myself..

"...one might want to ask which assumptions in it are so distorted, no?"

Oh, certainly, Socrates! That is a commendable way to proceed..




Ummm....whom do I ask about these distortions? I seem to have a plethora of possibilities...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:47 PM

In my view.....

Think in more than 4 dimensions, then it all becomes plausible. So if the 'big bang' is no more than a multi-dimensional 'intrusion' - take comfort that if there is ever another big bang within the observable universe then it would probably be curtains in nanaseconds or even much much much shorter time.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:27 PM

"Nothing" is a mental concept. "Something" is also a mental concept. And the two require each other in order to even exist AS mental concepts because the one is dependent on the other.

You thus need a mentality first that posits and observes what it calls "something" before you have something...and when it thinks it sees nothing, it calls it "nothing", but how does it know that it's nothing? It doesn't. It merely assumes that because it knows what "something" is, then it also knows what "nothing" is.

But it doesn't. ;-) No one knows what "nothing" is...but we all know what the concept of nothing is...or we think we do.

Without an observer there can be no observed. They also are dependent on one another. One can theorize the existence of various "things" without any observer...but one cannot experience them that way, therefore it remains theoretical whether or not anything exists in the absence of an observer.

If you think it does, fine. But you can't prove it. You can only assume so. If you're basically a materialist, you will make that assumption automatically. If not, perhaps not.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 11:02 AM

I often hear (read) people saying, "But what was before the Big Bang?

That's like asking, "What was above the site of the Big Bang?"
(Or below, or beside).

The answer is, there WAS no "before" or no "above", etc. Because time and space both were originated at the BB. Remember that time is merely a measurement of change or movement, which depend on the existence of what we might call physical reality.

And none of those ways we have of measuring what exists (weight, speed--which is to say time--magnetism, light, and so on, could exist without all the others. All of those things are abstractions from the one great existence which is existence.

Yes, that's difficult if not impossible to get one's mind around, but that's because every concept we have and must work with is based on our experience with existence, and we have none of that that applies to BB, let alone "before BB", "above BB", "heavier than BB", "faster than BB" or the like.

We may speculate about a cyclic BB/existence alternation, and it might make us feel a little better because it tends to seem similar to our existence experience, but we have no conceivable way of testing the concept. We have neither the language nor data nor the kind of mind that would be necessary to deal with the question of "What went Big Bang?"

Relax and have a beer.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:19 PM

Exellent answer, Dave.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:45 PM

Question: what was before the big bang? Answere: Lots of stuff.



If you can accept that our universe was not the first universe but was spawned by two other universes floating in what physicists call 'branes' of existence in proximity to each other and "BUMPED" into one another... ,

then our big bang beginning of our universe was as simple as a fertilized egg that grew into larger and larger existence.

a universe can be spawned in different ways, one way is from a collision of branes and another is a super massive black hole concentrating mass to a sigularity that excapes into its own space-time.

Our universe alone has super massive black holes that can create a new universe, that in turn creates its own space-time separate from ours.

Possibly our universe came from a black hole from another universe somewhere. If it did we could say that in a sense we are living inside a past black hole. Weird huh?

If on the other hand you want to go back and ask how the first universes came into being I would ask you see it as an evolution of life starting from elemental building blocks that still had an earlier existence.

If you are asking what created those earliest building blocks, then I would have to say that those elemental building blocks were just there.

thus putting us back where we started.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:47 PM

proposing "before time" and "outside space" are oxymoronic propositions, defying their own terminology.

Hmmmph--I think this says in 13 words what Dave says in forty.

But it is a good answer,Dave!!



A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:49 PM

Basicly what I have just written is what Amos said but in terms that a 5th grader can understand.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:16 PM

A star up there goes nova---and we are here to see it and take note.

Here and now, we are simply "noticing" the results of the big bang. That, only because the bang, eventually, made our evolved presence able to perceive it's fallout.

If, on the other hand, our own sun would go nova, we most probably would be deprived of our ability to notice anything at all. A moot point then?? No. It would then be up to others 'out there' to see and make sense out of.

The big bang is just a larger cosmic occurrence.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:22 PM

Don Firth,

Regarding your idea of "leakage"

I thought you might be interested in a story of mine in which this 'leakage' is perceived best by certain people. Those who are good at it, go on to develop a free will ability to move over into the universe in which they continue to survive or be relatively more successful. Its sort of like the saying a cat has nine lives.
This could also account for the poor miserable souls we see since they may have died, or worse, in all the other possible dimensions, or simply because they did not have the ability to transmogrify.

Over millenia some intelligent beings aid their dimensional travel between or to other lives with technology, while some just do it "naturally". T

he story concerns the last remaining souls living their last dimensional lives and are all concentrated in one particular universe. Invention explodes exponentially and an epoch of incredible technology that advances beyond magic in just 100 years.

The quest for immortality for both the natural dimensional travelers and those aided by technology reaches a fever pitch but in the end, both must succumb to running out of turns and die. While those who relied on technology still pass away they pass into lives reliving the past which has aspects of the frustrations of hell, reliving lives that have no free will.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:35 PM

Interesting concept, Donuel. I can see where the things that Michio Kaku has detailed in his books can provide the basis for writers of fantasy being able to make a fair claim that what they are writing is not fantasy but hard science fiction.

Keep me posted on how it's coming along. Is it published anywhere?

####

Without an observer there can be no observed. They also are dependent on one another. One can theorize the existence of various "things" without any observer...but one cannot experience them that way, therefore it remains theoretical whether or not anything exists in the absence of an observer.

This was the philosophical position of Bishop George Berkeley (pronounced "BARK-lee") (1685 –1753).

This idea is sometimes enunciated as "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" By extension, "Does the tree exist if no one perceives it? Or the forest?"

The problem (one of the many problems) with this idea is that not only can one not know that a thing exists when it is not being perceived, but that other people may not exist as well. This must, of necessity, lead to solipsism, the belief that one is the only conscious entity in the universe. Or, for that matter, than beyond one's own consciousness, the universe itself does not exist.

Philosophical dilemma:   Either what appears to me as the objective universe exists for me because it is in the mind of God (necessitating a belief in God)—or that external to me, none of it exists, including God, leading to the inevitable conclusion that I am the only perceiver.   Ergo:   I AM God.

Therein lies madness.

Berkeley's denial of objective reality would render science and scientific pursuits meaningless, which was part of the idea. He felt that the work of Sir Isaac Newton, including his and Leibniz' work on calculus (not to mention the earlier discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo regarding a heliocentric rather than an earth-centered universe, along with more recent discoveries) tended to distance Christians from God. Tsk tsk! Can't allow that!!

Berkeley's philosophy leads to a complete scientific and philosphical dead end. Not to mention the potential for either megalomania or abject hopelessness.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:50 PM

The error, I submit, lies in not disentangling the realm of agreements from the realm of perception, and these from the quality of persistence which we attribute, by agreement, to physical forms.

The mechanism of agreement has a strong bearing on what reality CAN be perceived or not. This is why people sometimes get a whole lot better when they discover agreements they were sucked into under duress.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: 3refs
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 07:52 PM

"The problem (one of the many problems) with this idea is that not only can one not know that a thing exists when it is not being perceived, but that other people may not exist as well. This must, of necessity, lead to solipsism, the belief that one is the only conscious entity in the universe. Or, for that matter, than beyond one's own consciousness, the universe itself does not exist".

This is all under the assumption that "WE" are the only beings on the planet that are capable of awareness, comprehension and a beleif that something may happen in the future!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Peace
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:42 PM

I understand that chitty-chitty went bang bang. Or maybe that was James.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 10:31 PM

Jesse? or Frank? I think they both did. Robert Ford only went 'bang'.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 11:15 PM

Descartes in a bar is asked if he'd like a beer. He answered, "I think not." And he disappeared.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:13 PM

Naw, I have never published. I only have hard drives of story lines and plots that I know will never be expanded. When I have submitted I have seen parrallel screen plays come out the following year or two. These things are in the "leaking" wind I guess.

What I liked about that story line is that all the characters that are seen earlier as poor souls or the rich and powerful who were so ridgid they could not change their mistaken course despite the fact they knew many would suffer along with themselves. In the end you realize that they are the ones whose technology allowed them to relive a past with no free will.

I know of no actual physics that could justify this story line but if it is done well enough to suspend belief, then its worth the revelation at the end.




When discussing the big bang the thing that the Bible's Genesis got right is that the early universe was indeed dark and only after hydrogen atoms had cooled enough and condensed together from gravity did the first stars bring light.

The Tao, Hindu texts, and Buddist teachings also have many good outlines of grand cosmological probabilities/possiblities.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: sing4peace
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:16 PM

I once looked up at the stars, felt a brief moment of panic as I contemplated infinity and had a flash of understanding:

I have limitted RAM. I cannot compute an infinite sum.

So I started to ponder other ponders, currently: who put the bop in the bop she bop she bop?

Great thread Michael.

Peace to ya,
Joyce

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 10:19 PM

The ex·pand·ing universe theory contends that the universe is expanding, based on the interpretation of the color shift in the spectra of all the galaxies as being the result of the Doppler effect and indicating that all galaxies are moving away from one another. This was from a violent eruption from a singularity that led to the formation of elementary particles, the subsequent formation of hydrogen and helium, and the dispersion of the galaxies from these elements. This supported The Big bang theory, that the universe originated from the cataclysmic explosion of a small volume of matter at extremely high density and temperature.

The formerly accepted "steady state theory" contends that the universe has always expanded at a uniform rate with no beginning or end, that it will continue to expand and have constant density, and that the distribution of old and new objects in the universe is basically even. The theory has been largely abandoned in favor of the big bang theory, largely due to the discovery of quasars and other entities that appear only at very great distances, suggesting an absolute relationship between the age of objects and their distance. The steady state theory was also discredited by the discovery of cosmic background radiation, which was predicted by the big bang theory but not by the steady state theory.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 10:26 PM

BTY, A singularity is point in space-time at which gravitational forces cause matter to have infinite density and infinitesimal volume (an object so small that there is no way to see them or to measure them, and space and time to become infinitely distorted).

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 10:27 PM

And....Singularities are also believed to exist at the center of black holes.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 11:48 PM

OK, thanks Ed — but, I still demand: a 'singularity', however infintessimal, of WHAT?

And thanks to you too for your kind words, Joyce xxx. We do out little best...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 11:55 PM

Talking of which — I think it might be OK here to reproduce a limerick which I have already put on the above-line limerick thread; AFAIK actually composed by a very brilliant former pupil of mine called David Williams at Chesterton School Cambridge in the 1980s for the newsletter of the school Astronomical Society he founded [he was that sort of pupil you get to your delight every now & then - all teachers reading this will know what I mean!]:—

Apollo to Mission Control
We are almost in reach of our goal
But this reading of G
Seems excessive to me
And I think we are near a black

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 06:17 PM

But back to my question of much earlier, isn't the Big Bang no longer the dominant theory for the "beginning" of the universe?

Nice limerick!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 06:26 PM

"...I still demand: a 'singularity', however infintessimal, of WHAT?"

Why not just something like Whitehead's 'actual entities'?

Since we are playing with theories, his comes as close to addressing the issue as most of the straight 'physics' answers.....maybe closer.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 09:57 PM

If one tries to understand the creation of the universe, in terms of what we observe every day on Earth, we get confused. Before the big bang, the smaller space was filled up with concentrated matter, which began to expand"
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/bigbang.html

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 10:39 PM

"Maybe There is no 'There' there"
Scientists cant tell us much about what happened during and before the Big Bang. Time itself may not have existed. All of our logicis based on time and chains of events or states.   'What happened before the Big Bang to start it, what made up the pre Big Bang Universe are questions with no firm answers. This is because we are theoratially exploring the extreme limits of our universe, our knowledge, our logic and our scientific theories.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,*.ripov
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 11:09 PM

Maybe what went bang was absolutely nothing and there's a positive bit going in a positive direction in however many dimensions there are which we think is us and a negative bit going in a negative direction and if you add it all up there's still nothing?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 10:03 AM

....maybe Alice really DID step through the Looking Glass.....

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 10:22 AM

What if it was like Groundhog day, the movie?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:35 AM

To expand on what Micca said,

The "true" language of modern science is mathematics.

Mathematics far beyond what the general public can ever hope to comprehend.

For examle, check out "Wave equation" in the wikipedia. Keep reading until your brain locks up.

What consistently amazes me is that modern scientists are masters of pr.

With some wonderful choices of terminology, e.g., "quark", "singularity", "black hole", "big bang", etc., their talk about this mind boggling abstruse mathematics is endlessly fascinating to the general publc.

They are also really good at benignly misleading the public. For example, they usually "forget" to make it clear that the time they are talking about is an item in a mathematical equation rather than the time we ordinary mortals have to deal with. This leads too all the delicious "paradoxes" that are also endlessly fascinating the to general public.

If this helps them secure funding, so much the better.

Russ (Permanent GUEST and former math major)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:42 AM

Heck...math is fine! If some abstruse theoretical implication can't satisfy the math, it has problems.

"If this helps them secure funding, so much the better"

Yup.... it's hard to make a Discovery Channel program based on complex equations!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:37 PM

Singularities need not be infintessimal. A super massive black hole could have an event horizon as big as our sun or larger but inside the funneling down to the singularity inside could be a rather large pipe indeed. Not to be mathmaticly accurate but the singularity in the SMBH could have the diameter of your head. Each cubic centimeter could have the mass of the Earth right before it passes out of our space time into...

A white hole somewhere else...a new universe of its own...an explosion some'when' else ????

they say you should never say never but,
there will never be a human witness to where 'it' goes.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 03:27 PM

"Singularities need not be infintessimal"
True

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 03:56 PM

The initial sound was more of a "BOIOIOIOIOINNNNGG!!!!!" with "SPLATTTT!!!!" harmonics.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:47 PM

MtheGM' asks, "What went Big Bang?" This is a bit like asking "where was MtheGM in 1066 and where will he be in 2066?" Some questions don't have answers.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:53 PM

There was likely no sound, as most of outer space has no atmosphere yo transfer it. But, likely many other variety of waves.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:23 PM

'"MtheGM' asks, "What went Big Bang?" This is a bit like asking "where was MtheGM in 1066 and where will he be in 2066?"

Sorry Shimrod. I perceive not the least similarity. Not even "a bit".

Pray expound.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Arthur Stiffy
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:56 PM

fun games to play:

1. imagine you can see every single atom that comprises yourself
and all surrounding matter as wide and far as your brain can cope with.

2. now focus your thoughts down on the mysterious nuclear centres of all of them godzillerions of tiny little bugger atoms..

3. just consider the possibility they all each contain an entire universe..

4. and you are actually sat right in the middle of one of them..

or several.. or all of 'em..

5. and them bloody great big distant black holes is the only way in or out, or between 'em..

6. stop thinking about it now before it sends you mental
and you suddenly disappear up your own black hole never to be seen or heard from again...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: 3refs
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 06:57 AM

Some very good theories and comments, but it's time to be honest!

It was building materials!

"In my Father's house are many mansions"

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 01:51 PM

Ed T's comment was:

There was likely no sound, as most of outer space has no atmosphere yo transfer it. But, likely many other variety of waves.

Waves in what medium? Everything that would qualify to transfer sound is part of the existence that the BB is making.

So yes, there would be turbulence (perhaps in the form of waves) in the matter/energy that was just now created, but not in anything else that might be in advance of the expanding BB-front.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 01:56 PM

Clarification, if possible:

When I said "to transfer sound" I really meant "to transfer something (energy?) in waves".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 02:04 PM

'And the future, especially after our deaths, is the same - no information. Does that make sense?"

Yes, Shimrod, ir makes perfect intrinsic sense. It provides a good answer; but I am not sure to which question — not quite to the one I began with [affording, as one might say, the BigBang to this thread - just call me Yahweh!] — or, anyhow, only tangentially. I think: ( ∴ This Thread Is... ??? )

;~)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 05:40 PM

"Sorry Shimrod. I perceive not the least similarity. Not even "a bit".

Pray expound."

Perhaps, MtheGM, what I was groping towards is something like this (pure speculation, of course): if you consider any period of history before you were born you can't really imagine fully what it was like to live at that time. You can build a good model, epecially if the time that you choose to imagine is within recorded history, but it can never be complete. If you go back even further, beyond the boundaries of recorded history you have less information and must rely to a greater extent on speculation; to take a rather crude example we know quite a bit about the physiology dinosaurs, from their fossilised remains, but we can't know what colour they were or what, if any, sounds they made - the information has been lost. Perhaps if you go far enough back ('before the big bang' - if such phrase has any meaning)there is no information available at all so we can't possibly 'know' anything.

And the future, especially after our deaths, is the same - no information. Does that make sense?

I think I'm going to have to rest for a bit now!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 06:30 PM

Imagine the initial explosion when everything that could get canceled out like matter and anti matter went bang.

The way things turned out seems to have left us with more matter left over than antimatter. Also there is more dark matter than matter.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 07:35 PM

"Big bang" is a metaphor. Actually, it was reputed to be soundless. It was a tiny element.

Since nobody was around at the time, there are no written records.

It has to be shown by scientific explanations through cosmology. Inferences
can be made through the history of cosmology and the development of the science.

The theories can be googled easily.

The "what" was not some metaphysical entity or "spirit".

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: 3refs
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 08:11 PM

The "what" was not some metaphysical entity or "spirit".

And why not?

As has been said many times "the absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence"!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 08:15 PM

Waves ( or perturbations) such as fluctuations in the density of subatomic particles and distortions in space and time (gravity waves) caused by cosmic inflation...as projected under (current) big bang theories.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:42 PM

Stringsinger — thank you for your last contribution. But I didn't ask what it WASN'T : I asked what it WAS.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 12:10 AM

Don't you people have any cupboards to clean out? Shoes to polish? Belly-buttons to de-fluff? Or maybe watch 'Stictly'? :-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 12:12 AM

@*%~ing Hell! S-T-R-I-C-T-L-Y!!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 07:37 AM

Further to my 'great thoughts' ('great thunks'?) on information and the Big Bang I would tentatively like to express my very, very, very limited understanding of the work of Stephen Hawking. Through considering the phenomena of black holes (gravitationally collapsed stars) Hawking explored the link between entropy (the thermodynamic measure of the amount of disorder in a system) and information. A completely disordered sytem has infinite entropy and no information can be extracted from it. If no light can escape from within the event horizon of a black hole then no information can escape either and we can't possibly know anything about whatever it is that lurks beyond the event horizon. Therefore a black hole (or rather the singularity within it) is identical to a system with infinite entropy. The region within an event horizon is like a piece of text in which all the letters which make it up have been completely scrambled and the meaning of the text can never be recovered.

What's that noise? Oh dear, it's lots of physicists rolling around on the floor making strange noises ... I can't make out whether they're laughing or crying ... ?

Anyway, if a singularity existed before the Big Bang it was probably a completely disordered system and we can't possibly know anything about it - there is just no information left.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 07:49 AM

I am infinitely exercised as to why my rejoinder to Backwoodsman's speculations about belly-fluff & reality tv should have been deleted.

What did I SAY, Joe, that was so intolerable?

Genuinely puzzled!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 10:58 AM

Maybe it was a case of an American Moderator not understanding daft British Humour? :-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 10:59 AM

A lot about the Big Bang is speculation, and evolving different theories.   My understanding, from what I have read,   is many theories speculate that a black hole and the big bang are/ were much different. The Big Bang is thought to have been a singularity extending through all space at a single instant (more like a white hole, if they exist). A black hole is a singularity extending through all time at a single point. With the Big bang, the space near the singularity is flat rather than being tightly curved with a black hole.

I don't believe researchers figured out what happens to the entropy of matter falling into a black hole, which involves quantum mechanics and strong gravity.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 01:26 PM

On the big Bang theory:

"For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe." Albert Einstein

"A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing at the big crunch. Its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory."
Paul Davies

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 01:46 PM

100

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 02:00 PM

No, 42:)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 02:13 PM

As Ali G would put it:
Who knows if dere wuz da massiv bone or not. let's face hit we should live life an' get layed, in case da world ends soon.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 12:51 PM

Just a bit of speculation that comes to me from a train of thought to T S Eliot, of the sort that an OP is entitled to [WHO SEZ? WHY, THE OP SEZ, THAT'S WHO];—

What if ---

This is the way it all began
This is the way it all began
This is the way it all began
Not with a BIG BANG but·an·itsy·bitsy·whimper?

What then?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: robomatic
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 10:16 PM

Carol C:

Your comment on nothing being 'something' i.e. "nothing" is quite correct.

In the mathematics of sets it is necessary to distinguish between {0} a set with '0' in it, from {}, a set with nothing, not even '0' in it.

This is known as the empty set.

On the high end, the German mathematician Kantor devised a way to think of infinity which proved that there are infinitely many infinities, one simple distinction being the counting set {0,1,2,3...} which is denumerably infinite, i.e. you can at least count from one to another, and the set of real numbers, e.g.: 0.12345898923............. etcetera, which are non-denumerably infinite (between any two elements of the real numbers are infinitely many real numbers).

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 10:52 AM

This topic has been revived by Spaw on the 'obsolescence' thread ~~

So refresh...

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 10:54 AM

... or, rather, the 'Adolescents or Obsolescents' thread.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 11:34 AM

I don't know what you might get in the UK, Michael, but here there are more & more programs on the "Discovery Channel" and such, asking these questions and postulating many 'adjusted' theories....with better graphics every year! Some of the imaginings of what the 'bang' might have looked like are worth watching, just like a fireworks show when you don't know the occasion.

There are some truly interesting ideas being kicked around, but seldom with any content that would change any minds ... except among mathematicians and physicists.

I see that they have added a few terms to the 'banging' recently...such as 'inflation', which seems to describe the first few seconds of the 'bang' as being unimaginably hot and fast...perhaps even beyond the speed of light. They are toying with words about "what went bang", but all they can do, of course, is say "it agrees with certain OTHER assumptions".

It's fun watching what computers and digital technology can do with the graphics.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: catspaw49
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 11:50 AM

Neat thread.....Sorry I missed it first time around but I was in the hospital as I recall. The only thing I'd comment on at this point is I think Heidegger's existential analytic would have been longer in coming or less likely but for Husserl's work which created the framework or building block for Heidegger to work from/in.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 01:10 PM

The Big Bang Bonger at the rear of course!
You know, the one on the Chinese Gong, behind the 76 Trombones.
Inexplicably, they miss the relevant verse out of this clip?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 02:21 PM

MtheGM

The real scientific answer is "We don't know What went Big Bang."
More precisely, we have no way of knowing (measuring) what was there. For those who believe in the Big Bang as an origin theory, we have a number of data points, back ground radiation, the paths of the galaxies etc that more or less point back to a single point in space in time where everything originated and expanded from and is still expanding from.

But the thing about a singularity is that it is so dense that to the observer, it only has one property, immense gravity. Nothing else can be measured. Nothing else is known.

There could be billion pound bunnies the size of an electron inside of a black hole (singularity) munching on trillion pound lettuce leaves. But from outside the singularity all were can detect is gravity. So for us, a point of gravity is all that there is.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: catspaw49
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 02:47 PM

Dense you say Jack? Well, yes, I'd love to.......Fox Trot or Tango?


Adding a bit of Groucho for Michael.............


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 02:56 PM

Speaking of Groucho...

Last year I shot an elephant in my pajamas. But I was fatter then and they had a stretchy waist so they fit him OK. Had to clean the blood out before I could wear them again; and take the waist in. Am I rambling again? Carol says I am a rambler. Always wanted one. You know with the fold down seats. That elephant sure stretched the seat of my pajamas..... Ever eaten elephant?   They don't even really notice you are there. They just brush you away with their tails now and then.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 03:32 PM

You sound a little trunk there, Jack

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 03:39 PM

How did you know I was a member of the Groucho Club? Don't think I have ever mentioned it on here before.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 03:47 PM

That informal club that won't accept YOU as a member? Or...ummm.. that will because there's no members? Nice bunch of folk.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 03:49 PM

I agree with Bill D.

In fact...

I wanted to join the Groucho club until they accepted me as a member.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 04:19 PM

Having pondered this question to unfathomed distances I have returned with the sorry conclusion that what went Big Bang was Us.



A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 05:15 PM

"...what went Big Bang was Us."

That sorta agrees with what Pogo said.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 05:43 PM

>>what went Big Bang was Us<<

Funny !!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 05:46 PM

I had a big bang once. Can't even remember her name.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: catspaw49
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 06:29 PM

Probably Rosie Palm wasn't it?

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 06:32 PM

One speculation I have seen is that a vacuum is unstable. It decays spontaneously into universes.

In the beginning there was nothing, which decayed.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 06:42 PM

♫"I got plenty of nothin',
And nothin's plenty for me."♫

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 07:20 PM

Probably Rosie Palm wasn't it?

No, Spaw, I doubt I've ever met any of the women you've met.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Dave Swan
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 08:55 PM

You know what they say, Spaw.

Big hands, big bang....

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 03 Aug 10 - 03:49 AM

Is that like Contract Bridge?
They say in that game, that you don't need a partner if you have a good hand.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: michaelr
Date: 03 Aug 10 - 07:01 PM

I've been told it was God clapping his hands.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Aug 10 - 01:23 PM

Here's my theory.

Think of all the objects in our world which disappear, get 'mislaid' suspiciously often, or multiply mysteriously. For example, socks, scissors, contact lenses, wire coat hangers.

These objects do not seem to obey Newton's laws. (I call them 'perverse objects.) The reason is that they are being sucked into anti-space to be material for the next big bang.

If you have ever sewn clothes, you will know what I mean. How can the scissors, which were lying next to the sewing machine, make their way to the other side of the room and then hide themselves UNDER A LARGE PIECE OF PATTERN PAPER?

It happens all the time.

When the gravitational field of perverse objects becomes large enough, it will suck everything else in. Galaxies, measuring cups, the Statue of Liberty, even you and me. When the final object (probably a shaky egg) is engulfed, there will be another cataclysm.

As they say on educational TV, 'And so the cycle begins anew.'

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 10 - 01:57 PM

Leeneia

May I be so bold as to invoke Einstein and Heisenberg?

Are these objects enfolded into and transported by relativistic and subjective singularities created by the mental state or lack thereof experienced by observer?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Aug 10 - 02:22 PM

Certainly. No doubt if a pair of scissors ever travels at a speed approaching the speed of light, something truly singular will happen.

Was Heisenberg the guy who kept his cat in a box? I advise you never to keep perverse objects in a black box. Who knows what would happen?

On second thought, when wire hangers are kept in a dark closet, we know what happens, don't we?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 10 - 04:08 PM

>>Was Heisenberg the guy who kept his cat in a box? I advise you never to keep perverse objects in a black box. Who knows what would happen?<<

No I believe that was Schrodinger (Be advised that it is dangerous to repeat my spellings of German surnames.)

Heisenberg was the guy withe the "Uncertainty Principle" that the mere observation of some events can determine the outcome.

Though Schrodinger may apply equally. Just as the cat is neither dead nor alive until one opens the box, are the scissors not lost or found until the observer perceives them to be in one state or the other?

Think of the area UNDER A LARGE PIECE OF PATTERN PAPER as the Box and the state of the scissors being there or elsewhere as the life or death of the Cat.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 05 Aug 10 - 07:43 AM

I once lost a small hacksaw in a workroom. Nobody left the room or even moved more than 3 feet between its last (well remembered)known use and its disappearance being noted. We spent an hour looking for it that day and checked everything leaving the room afterwards. The room was eventually completely gutted and we looked under all the floorboards. It was never found.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 05 Aug 10 - 10:50 AM

Douglas Adams' answer to the problem can be found in The Hitchhikers's Guide To The Galaxy: "Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life."

There may also be one for hacksaws :)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 12:07 AM

I know what Heisenberg meant when he said that observing a thing changes it. If you've ever tried to photograph your cat, you know that she tenses up and loses her adorable expression as soon as you point the camera at her.

I have two tuners, both of them in black cases. They appear and disappear constantly. Mere coincidence, or Schroedinger's black box in another guise?

I am convinced that somewhere in space there is a singularity which is being circled by a cloud of small, black tuners.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 12:17 AM

I am convinced that somewhere in space there is a singularity which is being circled by a cloud of small, black tuners.

This is funny if you consider that one meaning of "tuner" is a twenty-something male that spends entirely too much money tarting up a small foreign car.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: TheSnail
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 07:53 AM

I spent a great deal of time yesterday looking for a folder that has been known to disappear before. I eventually found it exactly where I expected it to be having already looked there several times. There was a price to pay; I can't find my reading glasses.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 10:42 AM

Thanks for the new definition, mousethief. I didn't know about that use of the word.

Snail, I know exactly what you mean. Maybe we need to say that "Matter is neither created nor destroyed, but it can change form behind our backs."

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Sheldon
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 02:36 PM

Bazinga!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 02:40 PM

They slip through a hole in the space time continuum

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 11:06 PM

I am convinced that somewhere in space there is a singularity which is being circled by a cloud of small, black tuners.

It probably started out as a solar system of tuning forks then branched out. That's the problem with tyne travel.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: beeliner
Date: 07 Aug 10 - 02:24 AM

Years ago in Germany I saw a cartoon postcard: God, pictured not as an old man but as a sort of mischevious prankster, is standing on a chair, leaning forward, arms outstretched and in one of them a large, inflated paper bag.

The caption is "Just before the big bang."

The German word is "Urknall", literally "ancient bang".

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 07 Aug 10 - 02:26 AM

It probably started out as a solar system of tuning forks then branched out. That's the problem with tyne travel.

Nicely turned.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 07 Aug 10 - 06:07 PM

"These objects do not seem to obey Newton's laws. (I call them 'perverse objects.) The reason is that they are being sucked into anti-space to be material for the next big bang."

This sort of reminds me of a story called, 'Dusty Zebra' by the late, great SF writer, Clifford Simak. It's years since I read this story - but, if I remember correctly, the protagonist finds a sort of portal to another dimension in some part of his house. He discovers that the inhabitants of this other dimension have a use for small, plastic, toy zebras, which disappear into the portal. The dwellers in the other dimension are willing to exchange the zebras for devices which act as very efficient vacuum cleaners. He sees a business opportunity ... but things go awry ... I'll leave you to read the story.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 Aug 10 - 04:23 PM

There must be a portal like that in my house, Shimrod. It's where the small phillips screwdrivers go.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 01:06 AM

For me, it comes down to this:

If we continue calling things that are more and more recent "nostalgic", pretty soon we will be forced to live in the present moment!

For me, it's a consummation devoutly to be wished. It is the reality we ARE a part of--and therefore it is quite reliable.

And it is also the only way to avoid wallowing in past wins and regrets and / or freaking out from anxiety brought on from putting all your mental hopes into embellished future fantasizing scenarios, wishful thinking, about stuff like life after death!

Yes this be the stuff of pure fantasy, me thinks!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 01:15 AM

Alas, most all deathbed conversions are really just a frantic cramming for finals!

Art again...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 02:49 AM

What went Big Bang?.....

Bud and Big Bertha?

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 04:44 PM

I just gave this some thought last month. I did a thought experiment regarding this question.

What I saw was dimensions enclosed within dimensions as simply as a sheet of paper enclosed within all the air around it in the room with the air touching the paper at every surface, and the room enclosed within a building that surrounds every wall of the room, yet it was a cosmic space picture with familiar features of galaxies and black holes.

The boundaries between these dimensions were like a turbulent mirror which allowed most of the stuff in its dimension to be reflected back yet allow tiny parts to pass through. The dimensions were not like parallel branes but more like various yet similar fractal dimensions that differed only slightly as the scale in size varied from one to the next.

As black holes swallowed up bright matter and sent it hurtling into another dimension with the power of immense gravity, that other dimension (which touches every part of our dimension like the air around the sheet of paper) grew in mass equally to the amount of mass leaving our dimension. As the black holes became more numerous over time, more dark matter and energy resided in the other enclosing dimension which gave it more gravitational persuasion over our dimension and began to cause our dimension to accelerate toward every point in which it is surrounded by the dark energy mass dimension.

Instability built up over a near infinite period of time until the other dimension exploded back into the other nearly empty dimension through a weak spot as if the cosmic pendulum stopped and began to swing the other way.

This great cosmic breathe or undulating pulse of the universe was envisioned a bit like progeny being born while the prior version passed away. Like a Klien bottle, one dimension passes into another as inside and outside are same, yet within another Klien bottle.   The dynamic image of the thought experiment however was like a multiverse in which each bubble universe might sometimes burst making more but smaller bubbles on a smaller fractal scale dimension like foam on an infinite beach with countless bubbles of sizes that were clearly seen, all the way down to the microscopically invisible. Some of the bubbles were even able to combine and make a larger bubble from two or more bubbles.

Let me pause here and acknowledge the usual warnings against using human perceptions to make sense of other dimensions such as the quantum scale which can be viewed as a smaller dimension where things seemingly do not make "everyday" sense or obey laws that are familiar to our day to day life and bodies. It does begin to make sense when you envision a person looking at the quantum scale dimension yet seeing its alien time scale of eons pass in our nanosecond. This is why sub atomic particles sometimes seem as though they could be anywhere in a possibility cloud but only when we look are they seen to be in a particular position.

For me what I think was seen was a finite number of dimensions that dynamically influenced one another in an ebb and flow between themselves and that time was not a dimension in itself for everything there is, but was different and special for each dimension depending upon its mass and scale. It looked like interescting dimensional fractals intersecting each other according to their energies.

The less mass and the smaller dimension the more impossibly fast time would become. It seemed that the spooky action at a distance was a result of the turbulent mirror between dimensions where virtual particles pass to and fro. There was no explosive Big Bang in the dream image but instead it was rather like a mustard seed to to budding flower and shrinking back into entropy within all the dimensions at various time scales.

I have made a static graphic representation of these space time dimensions which looks a bit like a Klien bottle on steroids that I can post after dinner. A dynamic animation would of course be much better, but would take about a month to do and I have yet to clear all the storm damage we have had over the last 6 months.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 11:39 PM

Here is a image I made today which might show you more than 4 dimensions/directions of the multidimensional universe.
experimental picture of multidimensional fractal universe

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 11:42 PM

Put your analyst on danger money. ;)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 01:09 AM

overlay of big bang background radiation

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,pete
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 07:53 AM

i recommend creation.com-to any willing to consider science from a theistic presupposition as opposed to a evolutionary pressuposition

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Uncle Rumpo
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 10:01 AM

"What went Big Bang?"


Big BANG Theory:


God farted and followed through...


Billions of years later


..that's how we now got me and you...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:44 AM

Hydrogen farts! Intriguing...

aww mousethief, you are usually a better sport. I think my relative time scale differences for different dimensions idea was rather clever.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 12:20 PM

I also do religious paintings...

The Earth at the moment of birth from the vagina of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:21 PM

aww mousethief, you are usually a better sport.

All I saw was a Chihuly glass ball superimposed with I know not what. Sorry to be negative.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 03:07 PM

I'm impresssed you know Chihuly's name, but I guess he's more famous up in your neck of the woods...


A

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 04:19 PM

Heck, *I* know Chihuly's name, and have seen both videos of him working (or directing his elves) & stills of some of his exhibitions.

I saw a very few items on display at the Seattle airport years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 04:26 PM

Chihuly calls Tacoma his home, and I live less than 10 miles from Tacoma. His art is all over the city, the most wonderful piece (in my eyes) being the one hanging from the central dome of the old Union Station (now a federal courthouse building). It is also the home of the international Glass Museum.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 05:05 PM

I'm impressed. I've heard of Chihuly, but doubt if I could spell it.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:06 PM

Musethief,
Art and new ideas are not valid or invalid based upon what an observer initially sees.
What I made had 5 distinct directions which can be interpreted as dimensions. Once one sees the sea shell spiral, one might then see other vectors going in different directions from the other vectors. The details of these directions are not clearly seen from a gestalt POV. Painting what is essentially a double Klien bottles inside double Klien bottles like a fractal, might be done better by you but it was the best I could paint in one sitting.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:09 PM

btw the NPR Chiluli documentary on his Venice works was very good.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:49 PM

Art and new ideas are not valid or invalid based upon what an observer initially sees.

I would never have said so. If I say I'm sorry again can we move on?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:59 PM

..perhaps you two can share a drink from one of those Klein bottles? ☺

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: TheSnail
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 07:33 PM

Ah, but is the Klein bottle half full or half empty?


(Sorry, it's late.)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 07:38 PM

I am used to witty remarks like:
I have seen better art on napkins, or My dog makes sculptures like that every morning.

One thing about dimensions is that each higher dimension surrounds the one before it in dimensions 1-3, yet when a dimension is so small as to wrap around itself, it really isn't bigger than the lower numbered dimension but still is everywhere around the prior dimension. weird huh

For string theory math to work they say you need about 11 dimensions.
Some super symmetry fans prefer 10 dimensions. Different things leak from one dimension to another such as virtual particles or gravitons.

Now there is even talk that a Lee set of 246 levels is the grand unifying number of dimension like vectors that compose the universe.

Still I would prefer an even 10 or even the Hitch Hikers #42.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 04:17 PM

Imagine that an 'exploding singularity' is not a unique event in, but happens frequently in cosmology terms, then take the thought further and imagine a vast number of 'unexploded singularities', maybe one in the beer that you just drank.... that could go off at any moment......

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: TheSnail
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 04:54 PM

Myself
I can't find my reading glasses.

Whilst looking for a wedding invitation, I found my reading glasses.... but not the wedding invitation.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 07:01 PM

More religio-cosmic crap:
After the big bang Mother Cosmos and child
Mother of all Cosmos

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 05:52 PM

I do feel it was a lot like a nocturnal emission---on a big scale.

I even think Hubble got a picture of it.
Check APOD!

Art

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 11:33 AM

It seems I was diverted by wordy minutia and trying to show a picture of this new cosmological idea (which is not crazy) so...
   IN A PLAIN SPOKEN NUTSHELL;

In my thought experiment I sought an answer to the question of why our observable universe IS ACCELERATING in its expansion at this time when it should have slowed from the measurable gravity of our universe which is surprisingly 10 times "heavier" than we expected with what we have chosen to call unseen dark matter and dark energy.

Picture a young universe that cools enough to have gravity create luminal stars and then later super massive black holes like quasars. As more stuff goes down the throat of a growing number of singularities within black holes in our aging universe, that stuff might just be entering a higher enveloping dimension.
As that higher dimension accumulates more stuff, the gravity in that higher enveloping dimension begins to pull the stuff in our observable universe faster and faster! Voila!!





That was it in a nutshell,
all the other ideas like time being relative to each dimension seperately implies time is not a 4th dimension but merely a relative directional movement, are just icing on the cake. If indeed the singularity is the door to enveloping higher dimensions of our universe, it may be like a growing sea shell that seals off chambers to entropy as higher dimensional chambers continue to grow.


I am continually interested in anyone's experience in picturing dimensions outside our traditional 3.
Have you seen a hypercube in 3D yet?

Subject: BS: The Big Bang Delusion
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 07:33 AM

How come scientists, have, for so long now, said that the universe began with the Big Bang, when they have no evidence of what caused The Big Bang, or where it came from?

I'm just kinda thinking of the damage they're doing to children, young people and adults in deluding them in this way, without having actual proof.

And whilst we're on the subject, would Darwin have been pro-God if his daughter had lived?

I mean, I'm OK with the evolution thing, but if you go back to the very first Evoluted Thing, well...from whence did it come?

I really think that without more *definite* evidence, the scientists don't really have a great deal on their side, other than delusion of course.....

Oh, and than Faith in their Belief..

:0)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 11:43 AM

"How come scientists, have, for so long now, said that the universe began with the Big Bang..."

Not really a very long time as these things go...

But they say that because most of the evidence from the Hubble telescope and other recently invented technology....plus the math that describes it all...seems to point that way. And they keep getting 13.7 billion years as a date. When careful studies point that way, you go with it while you do MORE research.

Not very many feel they will ever be able to see back to 'before' the Big Bang...so folks just speculate.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 11:57 AM

Yup, speculation. Exactly! So why do so many scientists ridicule those who believe in God, whomsoever their 'God' may be?

None of us has the answer, nor ever will, so I fail to understand the arrogance of some..

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 12:15 PM

"...so I fail to understand the ..."

such a lot of things *I* fail to understand about how various folks think... ☺

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 12:28 PM

Yup, I noticed.. :0)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,erbert
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 12:51 PM

The Big Bang was the sound of God angrily slamming shut his front door

after he told us to turn the music down,
clean the sick off his living room carpet,
pack our bags
and eff off and look after ourselves..

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 06:43 PM

Carol, scientific dogma is an oxymoron. Science is antithetical to dogma because each
theory is subject to revision when it is tested. A true scientist is never dogmatic because
the process of discovery requires constant empirical revision. Theories and "theorums"
will be changed as new information is discovered.

From what we know now, the Big Bang was soundless. There were no soundwaves.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 08:04 PM

without having actual proof.

Nobody,ever,anywhere has had "actual proof" of anything.

All we've ever had is reasons why we should think one thing rather than another. That involves having some kind of decision- making process that says one thing is more likely than another. So we have ideas about evidence. Note the "we". Everybody is allowed to see. You just gave to educate yourself enough to see what is the difference between more likely and less likely.

"I'm just kinda thinking of the damage they're doing to children, young people and adults in deluding them.."

Kids ask "why"... "why"...

So do scientists. They have answers that fit the "why", with evidence. Holy basketfuls of it, including "what went before life" (they don't know, but the evidence shows it could have been...") and "what went before the Big Bang" (questions about what "before" means when time doesn't exist). And like kids, each answer only brings another "why"...

The only damage you can do to kids is by stopping the questioning, and scientists are really just big kids.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Slag
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 07:47 PM

Lulu

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Slag
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 07:48 PM

...or so the song goes.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 08:29 PM

no, the song says nothing about 'big'....just bang, bang

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Slag
Date: 31 Aug 10 - 07:23 AM

Do you know all the verses?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 10 - 08:08 PM

missed the response, Slag

no, don't know them all by heart, but I have a couple books with the verses, and I assume they can be found with Google.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 10:17 AM

The big bang came when I was brutally told at 8 years old that Santa did not exist. After all those years of putting out nuts, carrots and glasses of sherry and being good. Made it very hard to believe in anything after that.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 11:42 AM

y'know, Patsy.... I kinda got to mulling over that situation myself about 7-8... if no Santa, then what about...........the Easter Bunny!

I was the kind of kid who wanted to know 'why' & 'how', even to demanding explanations when told "tornadoes come from the Southwest".
The really BIG bang, I put off for several years, slyly conducting my own 'experiments' to see if I'd be struck by lightning if I did certain things.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Musket
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 08:39 AM

Always fascinated by those who say science doesn't have an answer and then try proposing a silly religious one...

So, what was the big bang?

Was it the little baby Jesus?

Was it a term guaranteed to mean nothing in the BANG sense but assured to wind Fred Hoyle up? (A bit of truth in that one, from what we read.)

Was it when time began so not really a bang as a bang is a result of something and this bang was a cause...

Tell you what, there are two related threads active at present; both with polarised views and bollocks spouted. Put this old thread into the debate and the usual suspects can type away merrily till Xmas.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 09:38 AM

Was it the little baby Jesus?
No.

Was it a term guaranteed to mean nothing in the BANG sense but assured to wind Fred Hoyle up? (A bit of truth in that one, from what we read.)
I thought it was his derogatory term for the theory.

Was it when time began so not really a bang as a bang is a result of something
Says who?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 12:44 PM

I have a friend who used to ridicule me by asking why, logically, there should be something rather than nothing.

One day I responded by asking why, logically, there should be nothing rather than something.

Something went bang. There is no logical reason why that something (which contained our later universe at the very least) should not have been eternal in itself, the end result of an eternity of earlier processes.

There's no particular reason to assume that the entire cosmos must have had a First Cause. Why not? Because the entire cosmos is different in kind than the individual elements in it, all of which do appear to require a previous cause.

A crowd of people is quite distinct from the individuals within it, and it follows different rules. A crowd, for example, can break up, then reassemble with some different members. No individual can do that.

A collective totality doesn't usually have just the same characteristics as its constituents. The same principle ought to apply to the cosmos.

Just sayin'.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 02:24 PM

The answer, technically and scientifically, as far as I have determined is that we don't know. More precisely we cannot know.

The one agreed upon fact about what went Big Bang is that, since it is the one point of origin of out whole universe, we cannot know what came before it we have no information about its nature before it banged. To know this we would have to have detecting instruments in some meta-universe, observing this one sending us signals from before time as we know it existing.

Can that happen?

Maybe. It is possible, I guess.

Is it probable?

Nope.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: olddude
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 02:43 PM

For me and many scientists
God

but that is just my opinion

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 28 Nov 12 - 03:35 PM

i was in the scottish museum on chambers street, edinburgh last december ('11) and watched a film about the big bang in the space section, explaining that the earth was formed following the big bang 13.7 billion years ago. i was back in the museum a few weeks back and the film is still claiming it was 13.7 billion years ago, even though it's - nearly -a year later! if they can't even be bothered to be accurate it leads me to think they don't really know. or -as ever- museum staff are just a load of lazy, lying ba****ds!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 10:30 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 01:41 PM

The problem is predicated on a time-stream that predates the big Bang, as though the universe was already in time. This is a primitive Newtonian idea. If there is any merit to the notion that the universe was born in the Big Bang, surely it implies that all space and time began then, as well? From this perspective the word "before" in a temporal sense, is semantically null.

Some possible answers might include: a previous universe that had condensed to near absolute zero dimension; a community of non-material viewpoints needing a game to amuse themselves; or a singular decision by one extraordinarily large viewpoint. This last strikes me as the least likely. I suspect an agreement by a very large number of viewpoints convincing each other. That interpretation leads tot he conclusion that spacetime as we experience it is merely an average of shared illusion. But who knows?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 01:42 PM

Pedant alert.

The thread title is grammatically clumsy. Tut tut.

Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple breasted whore of Eroticon 6 once described Zaphod Beeblebrox as the best bang since the big one. Does that help with your imagery Michael?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 02:00 PM

To 'go bang' is a perfectly familiar and comprehensible idiom, whichever·Popgun·it·may·be that is on idiot-of-self-making duty tonight. Any stylistic objection that any lamebrain might have to it would not be on any grounds of 'grammar', whatever else. The day you can teach me anything about our language, you petty ineffectual ignoramus, just listen out for Gabriel's Golden Horn. Meanwhile, go and -- uh -- service your physical needs, if you please.

☠ · ☠

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 02:07 PM

Not but what the reference to the work of my late good friend Mr D Adams could have been of service, for which my thanks. But, alas, he departed lamentably prematurely and is now doubtless dining in the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, and so is unavailable for consultation.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 02:45 PM

I rest my case.

What went hippopotamus?

What went Nurse!!!

If I had a fiver for everyone who "knew" Douglas Adams eh? Another fiver for everyone who reckons they were in the 'paras (or SAS after a few pints) and I'd be able to pay for English lessons.

You are wrong anyway. He's at The Big Bang Burger Bar. Having a listen on behalf of his best mate apparently. 😂

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 03:52 PM

Douglas Adams was an ambitious student revue writer and director at Cambridge while I was The Guardian's theatre critic for thereabouts, so he was constantly on the phone soliciting reviews for his revues. All v well with your 'if I had a fiver'; but some people must have known him, and one such just happened to be me.

A hint to your dear little self — nobody loves a smart·ɷ
Do you take pleasure in being a disagreeable smarmy sarky little oik, I wonder, or can you just not help it?

I was in the Royal Army Service Corps, as it happens -- real military glory for you there! Outrank the Paras and the SAS any day of the week -- just ask anyone who knows any military history. Though, as it just happens, the Paras chanced to occupy the next barracks along in Aldershot to the ones (Oudenarde Barracks) where I did part of my training; so who knows what dust from the red berets may have blown along & penetrated our far humbler quarters! But you're too young for National Service, of course, aintcha -- you young people today: don't know you're bloody born!
chunterchunterchunterchu

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 05:27 PM

Well Michael, all this discussion seems to to be a waste of our precious time.
The human race will be extinct very soon, and we will be no nearer answering your question.    I suppose the most possible and least destructive theory is "God".

Any other theory is bullshit as the human brain is simply not equipped to understand something so immense...and who is to say that "our" universe is the only one.....what if there is no beginning?......What if the universe is never ending?

I'm going for "God"......EW!!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Peter from seven stars link
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 06:16 PM

Akeneton, as I understand it, very few scientists believe in a universe with no beginning though it used to be the favoured idea , and when the Big Bang was bought forward there was some resistance lest it imply God.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Feb 16 - 08:22 PM

Gosh, such a troubled lot, aren't we, pete? :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 13 Feb 16 - 08:48 AM

Interesting to note that Akenaton's brain isn't equipped. Always said so myself.

Don't judge intelligent people by your own limitations eh? 👻 There are things people shouldn't know 👻 Been watching too many Hammer House of Horrors I see. As I said on the other thread, the nice thing about the Big Bang is that it doesn't need a god to kick start it.



Some say good old Michael. Some say fuck him. Me? I just like getting a reaction.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 02:32 AM

xxxkisskisskiss❤♥❤

For Saint Unohoo's Day

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 02:40 AM

See?

Mind you, that related to a problem. It's 7.30am. I'm in the bathroom typing on my phone. Mrs Musket is asleep but possibly dreaming of waking up to a Valentine card and Flowers.

Err. They are still in the ruddy shop. I need a plan.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 03:34 AM

Design one online & print it off, using the "Special Characters" menu if you have an  -- if not, your system will presumably have some equivalent somewhere. That is what I have done, & the resulting ♥♥xx greeting awaits Emma on her keyboard.

Good luck

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: akenaton
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 04:36 AM

Is anyone intelligent enough to come to terms with "for ever"?
I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence, the limitations are surely on the viability of human life on earth.

You scientists are so good at guessing games, how many centuries have humans got left? If we accept the evolutionary theory we have only been here a very short time and have made an excellent job of fucking up the environment, now we have moved into the realms of genetic engineering, building deadly viruses, manufacturing shedloads of drugs to protect ourselves from the results of our stupid behaviour.

The clock is ticking for humanity, but the universe will always be there, any attempt to rationalise the unknowable is time poorly spent.
Would we not be better to spend our last few hours fighting back?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: akenaton
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 04:57 AM

BTW, maybe I am unintelligent, but I find it difficult to make sense of any of Ian Musket's posts.
It seems to be a strange writing style akin to TV comedy around twenty years ago.....attempted sarcasm without the wit, peppered with outdated references to science fiction series, long and thankfully forgotten.
The only saving grace is the padding of usually crude insults, which throw a little illumination on the character of the poster.

I think I rather agree with Michael in his erudite definition.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 05:02 AM

Pete, it is true that Hoyle rejected the big bang partly because it seemed an irrational process, and implied a creator (also partly because Martin Ryle supported it, and Hoyle and Ryle didn't get on). But Hawking and Penrose showed that the big bang could start from a singularity, which could be mathematically described. This was Hawking's first great achievement, his second being pair production near the event horizon, and eventual evaporation of black holes. But when you say that initially the big band was rejected because it was seen to imply a creator, this was largely one man (Hoyle).

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 09:04 AM

The computer idea had merit I suppose. Of course, using Apple everything I do have special characters although your Apple seems unable to display them? 👬

In the end, I grovelled and washed her car for her, I'm making her a nice meal tonight, then having put a fire in, cuddle up in the lounge to watch the Ski Sunday programmes we missed when we were err.. Skiing.

Oh, and I'll make her a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster as an aperitif.

For now, the Yorkshire mix is made up ready, the beef has had a dry rub of paprika, Demerara sugar, garlic, salt and pepper, (and will be going in the bottom oven shortly) and I'll be roasting spuds, carrots and parsnips in goose fat and mebbe some curly kale steamed. The meat juices with the rub ingredients makes the base for a smashing gravy. Possibly serve with a bottle of Chateau Reynella '96. Still got a few laid somewhere.

In answer to a question posed above, humanity has a future, although hopefully bigotry doesn't. The universe meanwhile will deal with entropy.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 09:29 AM

"You scientists are so good at guessing games, how many centuries have humans got left?"

I think you're being very optimistic framing all this in centuries.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 10:08 AM

My now expunged digital picture that I posted was basicly a glass looking Klien bottle inside a Klien bottle times 10 like a fractal Klien bottle.

A Klien bottle is a structure which loops on itself leaving no inside or outside.

Interesting idea but far from the actual curvature of space.

It was primarily pretty but petty.

My envisioned big bang thoughts have evolved along inflation lines in which big and small are relative.


Hawking has written that the initial state of energy in our universe
was zero. It seems to me that space may have had a slight advantage of energy at the big bang.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: akenaton
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 05:54 PM

#    :0)......I think you are right.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 07:47 PM

We know a few similarities regarding pre bang conditions and black holes in our cosmos.

We know there was no progress of space time/ time was stopped prior to a big bang.

We know the space curvature is so severe at the center of a black holes that there seems to be a total halt of spacetime.

If they are related, we may have a very fertile universe compared to other possible universes.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 01:20 AM

But none of this really engages with the primary & essential ??? of what this 'singularity' or 'particle' or whevs actually WAS & whence it came. So the basic postulate to all these theories is absent, and without it all is shadow-boxing &, as the Ecclesiasticist כהלת put it, 'vanity & vexation of spirit'...

So, I ask again — v thread title...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 01:27 AM

'your Apple seems unable to display them? 👬'

.,,.,.

Yay, I know. Great annoyance to me and no-one I have consulted seems to have any explanation for this. Must be coz the little men toiling away inside the works know that I am a technological moron & are holding their bloody sides having a kingsize laff at poor old Michael...

I repeat my fave wise mantra:- Just coz I'm paranoid doesn't mean that the buggaz ain't out to GET me...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 01:33 AM

Don't know BTW why the King James version translates כהלת
as "the Preacher" which SFAICS is not what it means at all.

But a bit late to ask them at this time of day, wot-wot...

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 02:45 AM

Apparently, it started approximately six feet due west of your electricity meter.

And in a sense, that isn't a flippant answer.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 04:22 AM

Guest Dave,
This was Hawking's first great achievement, his second being pair production near the event horizon, and eventual evaporation of black holes.

I was ware of that second achievement, and he laid it out again very clearly in his Reith lectures in recent weeks.

There is something I have not understood that I think you will be able to explain. One of each pair goes off to infinity as Hawking radiation, and the other falls into the hole.
How does that result in a loss of mass from the black hole?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 05:04 AM

Keith, in very simple terms because that photon which escapes carries away energy, the energy for both photons originated inside the black hole, and energy and mass are equivalent. Its more complicated that that of course, if you look up "Hawking Radiation" on Wikipedia there is a detailed description complete with semi-scary equations (to be truly scary these equations would have to involve magnetic fields as well).

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 08:40 AM

They originate outside the event horizon with zero net energy.
Something enters, nothing leaves.
I am obviously missing something.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 08:45 AM

Wiki,
"As the particle-antiparticle pair was produced by the black hole's gravitational energy, the escape of one of the particles lowers the mass of the black hole.[11]"

Ok, but I thought that such pairs appear in normal space.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 09:20 AM

http://minerva.union.edu/diiorios/physics123/hawkingradiation.html

The diagram on the left is useful. Sure they appear in normal space, but they annihilate again. However if they appear near to the event horizon one of three things happens, they annihilate as they do in normal space, they both get pulled within the event horizon, or one gets pulled in and one escapes. Only in the last case does the black hole lose energy/mass. Although they are created just outside the event horizon, the energy comes from the gravitational energy of the black hole.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 09:28 AM

Wowie! But has my nice general-interest accessible thread ever gone




B I G    B A N G !!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 11:45 AM

The great Cosmic Balloon went Big Bang when it got pricked with the needle of self-awareness.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 11:47 AM

Thanks for your patience Dave.
In school physics, gravitational energy must involve the movement or potential to move through the field. When a pair form close to a gravity-well they will acquire gravitational energy, but until they form there should be no GE, according to old physics anyway.

I clearly have not the new physics needed to explain how gravity could provide energy at some point in the field, and as you say they are able to form without a nearby black hole anyway.

We are only considering your "last case" pairs.
The escapee will gain GE, resulting in mass loss of the hole.
The plungee will lose GE, but it will all be gained by the hole, increasing its mass.

So my sticking point now is "They use some of their gravitational energy to create these particles"

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 12:25 PM

The mass of both particles has been created from the energy of the black hole.

It only gets one back.

Again, in very simple terms, particles can be created outside the event horizon from energy which belongs to the black hole because of the uncertainty principle.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 04:02 PM

Virtual particles appear in deep space. They appear anywhere in space. They appear near mass or away from it. They are generally accepted as a product of the energy inherent in space.

They pop into existence like suddenly appearing in our observable universe. Two could appear inside your eye at night and you might even see it annihilate with a photon release.

[These enigmatic curiosities may be one of the few means of seeing space interactions that are invisible to us.]

As you know I have recently become a proponent of space existing as a duality, in which we have not recognized as being two opposing forces but only one. This would explain some big contradictions classical physics still wrestles.

Look up pair production and there are clues pertaining to dimensionless properties. This is the same aspect I ascribe to anti space.


Virtual particles and actual particles can do the same things. The differences can concern their birth. Words fail me here but math shows a clearer distinction. and no I am not a kooky birther.

Virtual particles are often popularly described as coming in pairs, a particle and antiparticle, which can be of any kind. These pairs exist for an extremely short time, and then mutually annihilate. In some cases, however, it is possible to boost the pair apart using external energy so that they avoid annihilation and become actual particles.

This may occur in one of two ways. In an accelerating frame of reference, the virtual particles may appear to be actual to the accelerating observer; this is known as the Unruh effect. In short, the vacuum of a stationary frame appears, to the accelerated observer, to be a warm gas of actual particles in thermodynamic equilibrium.

Another example is pair production in very strong electric fields, sometimes called vacuum decay. If, for example, a pair of atomic nuclei are merged to very briefly form a nucleus with a charge greater than about 140, (that is, larger than about the inverse of the fine structure constant, which is a dimensionless quantity), the strength of the electric field will be such that it will be energetically favorable to create positron-electron pairs out of the vacuum or Dirac sea, with the electron attracted to the nucleus to annihilate the positive charge. This pair-creation amplitude was first calculated by Julian Schwinger in 1951.


As far as Hawking Radiation goes it is but a candle compared to the bonfire neutrino creation and radiation of black holes.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: olddude
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 10:07 PM

That burrito left me with a big bang... Wooo not good

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 05:08 AM

Does the uncertainty principle apply to energy, except in particle form?
What energy does the black hole have that tunnels out?
More often, both particles escape, so why are they a less significant drain on the hole?

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 05:56 AM

1) Yes, one of its explicit forms is (ΔT) (ΔE) ≥ ℏ/2

2) Energy and mass are equivalent

3) Because they immediately recombine and annihalate, and there is no net effect.

Now you need to be careful how you interpret the time, T in 1). Its complicated, see an article by the cousin of a well-known singer:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/uncertainty.html

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 08:54 AM

1. That equation explains how energy can be borrowed from the vacuum briefly (time t) create the pair. It in no way explains how energy from the hole (what kind of energy?) creates pairs beyond the event horizon.

3. So when they annihilate, their energy, zero, tunnels back into the hole?

2. Patronising? Likewise, no need to "simplify" thank you.



Not doubting the fact of the radiation or the explanation, but I just thought I had missed something obvious. It clearly is not that obvious and not just me.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 10:34 AM

It can be borrowed from the vacuum inside the event horizon to create a pair outside the event horizon. In most cases its given straight back as in your 3. But occasionally one escapes and one re-enters the event horizon before this happens. So some energy/mass is not paid back.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Rain Dog
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 10:52 AM

It was a bodhran

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 11:24 AM

That was more of a thump.

When my old Marshall combo's circuit board caught fire on stage, the initial sound from the cones was definitely Big Bang.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 12:04 PM

T for a virtual particle is no time at all.
If the annihilation of virtual particle happened in a heavy medium it might take more time than zero. at any rate Dave a black hole does not power virtual particle. A black is a neutrino factory compared to the negligible loss of mass by half of a virtual particle now and then.

Hawking was still trying to defend his loss of information via a black hole theory when he came up with his 'virtual mass loss' idea.

When black holes over eat, the amount of energy from the reaction of matter is annihilated into energy we see as gamma ray energy blasting out the poles of black hole. Why the poles? Because of the convection currents of energy reduced to energy and neutrinos unable to compress beyond neutrino size.
Neutrinos at a near massless particle are able to escape an event horizon well enough to be concentrated around the entire black hole.

There will always be more :neutrino radiation" than theoretical "Hawking radiation".

What to carry away is the fact black holes will be around a long time in increasing numbers to reshape the sponge like foam of all the mass in the universe. Today the universe is like a sponge with small holes but in another 15 billion years the universe will look like a sponge with LARGE holes all due to black holes and space expansion.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 02:21 PM


It can be borrowed from the vacuum inside the event horizon to create a pair outside the event horizon.

Thanks, but what I asked was how.

But occasionally one escapes and one re-enters the event horizon before this happens. So some energy/mass is not paid back.

Thanks, but more often they annihilate and none is paid back.

Thanks anyway for trying Dave.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 03:51 PM

Ok Keith, here is Hawking's own popular article on this topic, though its pretty old.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 05:42 PM

What banged could have been a white hole


A black hole is a one-way door to oblivion. According to general relativity, once anything crosses its boundary—the event horizon—it cannot return to the outside. For that particle, the black hole is the entire future.

We'll never actually get a chance to see the particle live out that destiny: Any light the particle emits (which would be the only way for us to observe its death plunge) will be stretched to longer and longer wavelengths with correspondingly less energy, until it fades beyond detectability. In fact, the story is even more strange. If we observe the particle falling in, we could never live long enough to see it reach the event horizon. The extreme gravity of the black hole makes time appear, to an outside observer, to go more slowly there; in fact, the particle would seem to us to take infinite time to reach the event horizon. That's true even though from the particle's reference frame, it crosses the event horizon unremarkably, with no unusual effects on time and space.

If a black hole is a one-way door to oblivion, you might wonder if there is any way to go the other way through the door—and it's a good question. General relativity, which has been our standard theory of gravity for nearly 100 years, makes no distinction between past and future, time running forward and time running backward. (See physicist Sean Carroll discuss the time-symmetry of physics in his interview with Nautilus.) Newtonian physics also is time-symmetric in the same way. So the idea of "white holes"—black holes reversed in time—does make theoretical sense.

Like its opposite, a white hole has an event horizon, one which cannot be crossed from the outside. But white holes' event horizons lie in the past: Particles originating there will appear to "fade in," with increasing energy and wavelength of any light they emit. If a particle somehow came into existence inside that event horizon, it would be expelled to the outside.

In fact, everything about white holes just looks like black holes in reverse. General relativity has absolutely no problem predicting such a thing and describing it mathematically.

But do white holes exist in nature? And if they don't, what does that say about the symmetry of time?

Seeing nothing vs seeing something


Black holes are common in the cosmos—nearly every large galaxy harbors a supermassive one in its nucleus, not to mention smaller specimens. However, astronomers have yet to identify a single white hole. That doesn't rule out their existence entirely, since it might be hard to see one: If they effectively repel particles, there's a small possibility they could be lurking out there somewhere, invisible. Nevertheless, none of all the diverse objects astronomers have observed seem to resemble what we'd expect from white holes.

An even larger problem arises when we consider how white holes could form. Black holes are the end result of gravitational collapse. When a star at least 20 times the mass of the Sun exhausts its usable nuclear fuel, it can no longer produce enough energy to balance the inward force of gravity. At that point, the core collapses on itself, reaching ever higher densities until its gravity is so intense that not even light can escape. That results in a black hole with a mass comparable to a large star.

Supermassive black holes, which are millions or billions of times heavier than that, form by some currently unknown mechanism. In any case, they still are the result of gravitational collapse, whether from a huge super-star born in the early days of the Universe, a huge cloud of gas at the heart of a primeval galaxy, or some other phenomenon. Forming a white hole, however, would require something akin to a gravitational sewer explosion, and it's not clear how that sort of event could ever occur. One possibility is that white holes might be "glued" to black holes. In this view, a black hole and white hole are two sides of the same thing, connected via a wormhole, a concept familiar from many science-fiction stories. Unfortunately, as with forming white holes from scratch, this doesn't really solve the problem: According to theory, any matter falling into the wormhole will cause it to collapse, closing the passage between the black and white holes. (It's also technically possible to create a stable wormhole if "exotic matter" exists with negative energy—a similar principle proposed for a "warp drive"—but no evidence for such material exists.)


A matter of time

So we're left with the probable conclusion that our Universe contains a multitude of black holes but no white holes. That's not because of a fundamental asymmetry in time—general relativity still works just as well either way time flows—but due to the nature of gravitational collapse: It only works one way.

This parallels the situation with the entire cosmos: There was a Big Bang, an initial expansion of all we observe, apparently from a single point. But the evidence points pretty strongly against the possibility of a Big Crunch, a re-collapse of all we observe into a single point sometime in the distant future. If current trends continue (specifically if dark energy doesn't drastically change its character), the Universe will continue to expand forever at an ever-faster rate. It seems there will be no symmetrical end to the Universe, where everything gets sucked back into a tiny singularity, just as it started.

The Big Bang actually looks like a white hole in many respects, and may be the closest our Universe ever gets to having one. It lies in the past for any observer in the Universe, and all we see expanded outward from it. However, it didn't have an event horizon (meaning it was something called a "naked singularity", which is far less kinky than it sounds). Despite that, it resembles gravitational collapse in reverse.

Just because the equations of general relativity allow white holes and big crunches, warp drives and wormholes, doesn't mean these things actually exist in nature. The asymmetry of time in gravity isn't inherent, but seems to arise from the behavior of matter and energy: gravitational collapse at the end of time, initial expansion at time's beginning. The deep meaning of that is something physicists are still trying to comprehend.




Matthew Francis is a physicist, science writer, public speaker, educator, and frequent wearer of jaunty hats. He's currently writing a book on cosmology with the working title Back Roads, Dark Skies: A Cosmological Journey.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 02:20 AM

Well done Dave!

He says, "The
forsaken particle or antiparticle may
fall into the black hole after its partner.
but it may also escape to infinity, where
it appears to be radiation emitted by the
black hole.

That does not explain the mass loss, but he offers this alternative,
"Another way of looking at the process
is to regard the member of the pair of
particles that falls into the black holethe
antiparticle, say-as being really a
particle that is traveling backward in
time. Thus the antiparticle falling into
the black hole can be regarded as a particle
coming out of the black hole but
traveling backward in time. When the
particle reaches the point at which the particle-antiparticle pair originally materialized.
it is scattered by the gravi- .
tational field so that it travels forward
in time.
Quantum mechanics has therefore allowed
a particle to escape from inside a
black hole. something that is not allowed
in classical mechanics."

I no longer feel embarrassed that I did not think of that!

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 04:21 AM

There is a link to a youtube video of a BBC explanation of this, it features amongst others Bernard Carr, now Professor at Queen Mary, but Hawking's student at the time he did this work. Most of it is quite sensible, well at least the bits where Bernard Carr is speaking. But the explanation on the voiceover is that a particle and an antiparticle are created outside the horizon, and the antiparticle has negative mass and falls into the black hole reducing its mass.

This is utter nonsense, as a number of commenters on youtube have pointed out, antiparticles have the opposite charge to their corresponding particles, but have positive mass. No particles have negative mass, at least none yet discovered. I got the link to Hawking's article from one of the comments.

They cannot have let Bernard Carr have sight of that before putting it out, nor Hawking himself.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 03:12 PM

Dark Matter also has an ability to escape a black hole region.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 16 - 06:20 PM

Sorry, this thread is closed.

Here is the text of your post:


They say we can not count how many black holes are in the observable universe. Swift is too narrow a field to do a decent count, Webb is similar but can detect gravity deformations very well. Future eyes on the universe will give a better count. The rate of black hole creation is to my knowledge about one a day. Knowing if this rate is currently steady or not would be interesting.

The personal passion to learn more about the universe is obviously shared by a swarm of religionists from every era. Of course the curiosity of where we come from, what are we made of, what are the forces in are bodies that we share with the universe. First the simplistic answers and absurd ideas are explored disproved and we move on to more cohesive ideas. Some of these ideas are out of bounds to intuitive thinking and some are not. The iron in our blood fused in stars is the fatal poison for stars. All the rest of the elements essential for our life are all created by different sized super novas all serve to be star dust
essential for our life. Heady stuff for people who need simple answers to creation.

Old Dude ; Math is not the stuff or building bocks of the universe, the universe is.
A mathematic description of a hexagonal plane is that of a bi dimensional shadow without a dimension of width and is not the thing that exists in the universe that displays that shape. In the same way , multiple dimensions can be expressed in math with ease while perceiving them in human vision is virtually impossible. Math is not the perfect predictor mathematicians often think it is. So far super computers are giving us valuable insights after trial and error.

insights I expect many to discover and prove is the "uncompactability of neutrinos " in neutron stars and black holes. It is beginning to look like the neutrino is the final stage of gravity compaction and demolition of matter.
This would make the concept of singularity different than it has been.

That's enough spare ideas for now that form my perspective which is afterall limited.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 04:06 AM

"Dark Matter also has an ability to escape a black hole region."

Sorry Donuel, do you have a reference for that? Seeing as we have not a clue what Dark Matter is composed of, or even in my view whether it exists, that is a very strong statement to make.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 05:42 AM

We do know that it interacts with normal matter by gravity, so it could not escape from the event horizon.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 07:56 AM

Or it couldn't get near it, which as twee as it sounds, follows a similar logic.

Either that or the quality of reading on the back of my cornflakes packet is getting worse.

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: olddude
Date: 21 Feb 16 - 02:56 PM

The big bang was me, shootingmy 50 cal

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 05:13 PM

Correction edit

I noticed I persisted in saying Web when I meant to say Kepler


In the future I will keep Kepler close and worry about Webb

Subject: RE: BS: What went Big Bang?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 12:42 PM

Kepler is looking for extrasolar planets, not black holes.