Does My Vision of the Big Bang Reflect Mainstream Scientific Theories?

[Waddi]

You can probably tell from my terminology that I am not a scientist, but I have a vision of the Big Bang that I have tried to summarise below (I will spare you the detail!). Could some kind cosmologist out there please tell me whether or not my vision reflects any main stream scientific theories?

Space is infinite, but because of our physical boundaries and concept of time, we have no way of comprehending this.
It is and always has been filled with all the particles we have discovered and ones we have yet to discover swirling and interacting in accordance with the laws that govern them. When two particles are attracted to one another (perhaps by what we call gravity) to form a group, a greater mass is created which then attracts other particles. Each growing mass continues to attract small particles until it has grown large enough to also pull in other groups of smaller size. Gradually and over a vast time scale, a critical mass is formed that pulls in larger and larger volumes of material until it is dominating a vast volume of space and all the various particles and smaller groups within its power are flowing towards it. The attraction between the various components is continually pulling them closer together so that this dominant group starts to increase in density to form a rapidly compacting mass with vast built in energy. Eventually the mass becomes too great to be contained and the guiding physical laws determine that the energy must be released. The result is an explosion; a ‘big bang’.
All the particles that have been stored within this dominant group are thrown out into space in all directions forming a rapidly expanding ball (our universe is one of these) that pushes away all other particles and groups of particles in its path. The released particles are propelled outwards by the force of the huge energy explosion, but retain their properties of attraction to one another. Some connect together to form the elements and entities we are now aware of, but most do not. The farther they travel, the distances between some of them increase, so the gravitational pull between them reduces and although their original velocity remains constant, the speed at which they separate increases. As the ball expands, the speeding particles and everything that has evolved from them will eventually separate sufficiently to come under the influence of other similar interactions that are continually occurring at different stages of existence throughout the infinity of space, ultimately to be drawn towards other dominant groups and a repeat of the whole process.

 

[Cosmo Novice]

You can probably tell from my terminology that I am not a scientist, but I have a vision of the Big Bang that I have tried to summarise below (I will spare you the detail!). Could some kind cosmologist out there please tell me whether or not my vision reflects any main stream scientific theories?

Space is infinite, but because of our physical boundaries and concept of time, we have no way of comprehending this.
It is and always has been filled with all the particles we have discovered and ones we have yet to discover swirling and interacting in accordance with the laws that govern them. When two particles are attracted to one another (perhaps by what we call gravity) to form a group, a greater mass is created which then attracts other particles. Each growing mass continues to attract small particles until it has grown large enough to also pull in other groups of smaller size. Gradually and over a vast time scale, a critical mass is formed that pulls in larger and larger volumes of material until it is dominating a vast volume of space and all the various particles and smaller groups within its power are flowing towards it. The attraction between the various components is continually pulling them closer together so that this dominant group starts to increase in density to form a rapidly compacting mass with vast built in energy. Eventually the mass becomes too great to be contained and the guiding physical laws determine that the energy must be released. The result is an explosion; a ‘big bang’.
All the particles that have been stored within this dominant group are thrown out into space in all directions forming a rapidly expanding ball (our universe is one of these) that pushes away all other particles and groups of particles in its path. The released particles are propelled outwards by the force of the huge energy explosion, but retain their properties of attraction to one another. Some connect together to form the elements and entities we are now aware of, but most do not. The farther they travel, the distances between some of them increase, so the gravitational pull between them reduces and although their original velocity remains constant, the speed at which they separate increases. As the ball expands, the speeding particles and everything that has evolved from them will eventually separate sufficiently to come under the influence of other similar interactions that are continually occurring at different stages of existence throughout the infinity of space, ultimately to be drawn towards other dominant groups and a repeat of the whole process.

I don't think any of this makes much credible sense to be honest. You should maybe look at some mainstream cosmological models and try to better understand current thinking.

You keep mentioning the big bang as an explosion, but it wasnt, this infers an explosion of energy within another space: the big bang was the beginning of time and space, consisting of different phases, none of which are proven before Plancke time and application of GR, of which I am sure someone on here can link the relevant articles.

The idea of a "ball" U topology just doesn't fit with current cosmological data, an n-sphere might although this is nothing like a conventional "ball" in the way you mean. It doesn't fit as CMB is the same in all directions so you can assume isotropy and homogenity at least with only local variance.

Anyway there are some good articles on here regarding this so worth a look.

 

[DaveC426913]

It is imporant to undertstand that we have a pretty good idea how the universe behaved all the way back to just a fraction of a second after the the BB.

One thing we do know is that it was far too hot for particles to exist. All there was was energy. Matter was only able to condense out of energy once the universe had cooled and expanded significantly.

 

[Waddi]

Thanks to 'Cosmo Novice' and 'DaveC456913' for taking the trouble to reply.
What I can't get my head around is the theory that "the big bang was the beginning of time and space". Perhaps it was the beginning of time and our universe as we know it, but what was there before? I accept the comment by DaveC that "All there was was energy", but my logic tells me that it must have existed within a space. However, I have read in another thread that discussion about 'before the big bang' is more theological than scientific.
So as no one is ever likely to find out the truth, I guess I am free to enjoy my own version
of 'before the big bang' events if it keeps me happy!
Thanks angain.

 

[phinds]

So as no one is ever likely to find out the truth, I guess I am free to enjoy my own version
of 'before the big bang' events if it keeps me happy!
Thanks angain.

You are of course free to enjoy your own version if it keeps you happy, but only if you are willing for it to have nothing to do with science.

I certainly agree with you that this whole thing is VERY hard to get your head around. I have only been reading serious cosmology for a few months and I'm barely past the point where half the new things I read send me off screaming obscenities (but generally not in public) at the utter nonsense of it all. The bottom line is that the universe doesn't care at all what you and I think and if you want to actually understand it, you need to read not just WHAT modern cosmology says about things but WHY those concepts and theories are so widely accepted by very serious and intelligent people.

 

[Drakkith]

I don't believe there are any models on the big bang itself nor anything on what could possibly have existed BEFORE the big bang. Such things are currently unobservable and our known science breaks down at that point. Any speculation is just that, speculation.

 

[marcus]

I don't believe there are any models on the big bang itself nor anything on what could possibly have existed BEFORE the big bang. Such things are currently unobservable and our known science breaks down at that point. Any speculation is just that, speculation.

There are testable models that extend back before the start of expansion. Proposals to test (and constrain parameters or falsify) involve mapping CMB polarization as well as temperature (i.e. future space missions.) There are 30-some papers about this which have appeared in 2009 or later.
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28DK+PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+DK+INFLATION+OR+DK+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

 

[Drakkith]

Interesting! Hopefully we get some good Info from those!

 

[marcus]

A lot of people are not aware that ways are being proposed and studied to test models that resolve the singularity and extend back before the start of expansion---if that includes you then you might be interested in reading some of the current papers. Here is one the journal JCAP (July 2010).
16) Constraints on standard and non-standard early Universe models from CMB B-mode polarization.
Yin-Zhe Ma, (Cambridge U., KICC & Cambridge U., Inst. of Astron.) , Wen Zhao, (Cardiff U.) , Michael L. Brown, (Cambridge U., KICC & Cambridge U., Inst. of Astron. & Cambridge U.) . Jul 2010. 41pp.
Published in JCAP 1010:007,2010.
e-Print: arXiv:1007.2396 [astro-ph.CO]
Cited 4 times

Here is a 2009 paper published in Physical Review Letters. It has been out there longer so has been cited more:
1) Cosmological footprints of loop quantum gravity.
J. Grain, (APC, Paris & Paris, Inst. Astrophys.) , A. Barrau, (LPSC, Grenoble & IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette) . Feb 2009. (Published Feb 27, 2009). 7pp.
Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.102:081301,2009.
e-Print: arXiv:0902.0145 [gr-qc]
Cited 34 times

Loop QG predicts a "bounce" with gravity becoming repellent due to quantum effects at very high density. This bounce triggers a brief inflationary period and leaves an imprint on the subsequent expanding universe. So this has attracted the attention of people whose profession is testing theories---the "phenomenologists".

One of the talks at the Loops 2011 conference tomorrow is "How to falsify Loop Quantum Cosmology". It is a real possibility. If they do not see the traces of a bounce in the CMB, with the appropriate space instruments, it would represent a serious challenge. Whether or not the theory would be completely shot down is still a controversial issue.

The authors of these papers are not LQG people. They are professional theory-testers. It's an interesting situation. Julien Grain, Aurelien Barrau, Wen Zhao, Michael Brown etc. are phenomenologists who may actually be pushing for a test of the theory more eagerly than some of the more cautious and deliberate LQG researchers themselves.

There is also the issue of getting funding for a new space instrument to map CMB polarization (not just temperature.)

 

[Drakkith]

Where can I find these papers? Is there a one stop shop or something for most papers that are released?

 

[marcus]

Where can I find these papers? Is there a one stop shop or something for most papers that are released?

There are several answers to that question. There is a one-stop shop called arxiv.org that gets just about all the physics and cosmology papers that come out, as "e-prints". But it is un-filtered and only very roughly categorized. It's all free online but like drinking from firehose.

The other way is to learn how to use the search-tools. The best one IMO is still Spires. It is based at Stanford SLAC, but the German mirror site is faster. Try it. Here is a sample search using the keyword "quantum cosmology".

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

It is easy to learn how to adjust the parameters to narrow down the search. In this example I just used one category "quantum cosmology" and set the date to be be "date > 2008", so we only get papers written 2009 or later.
I set the SORT option to be "citation count", so the more important papers will tend to be listed first---they tend to be cited more as references.

You learn by playing around with the parameters. Change the SORT option so it lists most recent papers first, change the date, then try different categories.

As a rule the papers that Spires lists are all free online. Click on "abstract" to see a summary. Click on "pdf" to see the full text. A paper may be largely incomprehensible but still have clear, simply worded parts at the beginning or at the end, in the introduction or the conclusions.

What takes the most work to learn is the system of keywords. There is a LIST of keywords that Spires uses, that you can find in the "help" section.

You can also try a new, beta-version, search tool that Stanford-SLAC has developed, called "InSpire". It seems easier to use, but the results are uneven.

To go directly to (German mirror) Spires:
http://www-library.desy.de/spires/hep/

To go directly to the firehose itself:
http://arxiv.org/

Spires help:
http://www-library.desy.de/spires/hep/help/

If you go to help, and scroll down, you eventually come to the section on "keywords". There you find a link to the list of "DESY keywords" that I use. Here is the full list:
http://www-library.desy.de/schlagw2.html
This is the thing that it takes time and experience to learn how to use.

There are shortcuts, but they tend to be sloppy, based on machine intelligence rather than human cataloguing. The DESY keywords represent human librarians classifying research papers "by hand". It is not just a computer looking for the appearance of words in the title or in the abstract summary. (Just because the author puts some words in the title/abstract is not a guarantee that the paper is really about that.)

If you do a Spires search using the symbol "DK" as in "DK quantum cosmology", you will get papers that the librarians classified that way. But if you use the symbol "K" as in "K quantum cosmology", you will also get papers that have those words somewhere in them.

If you use InSpire beta version, my impression is that you do not have satisfactory control over that aspect.
Here is an example of a more complicated Spires search using DK (i.e. DESY keyword) categories.

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28DK+PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+DK+INFLATION+OR+DK+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

It finds papers studying the possibility of observational tests of bounce cosmology. You can see in the box what DESY keywords I have used, in what boolean ("and/or") combination.
You can change what is in the box and repeat the search.

It can even be interesting to change the sort to be by date (descending order) so that you see the most recent first:

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28DK+PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+DK+INFLATION+OR+DK+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=ds%28d%29

 

[marcus]

Where can I find these papers? Is there a one stop shop or something for most papers that are released?

In the preceding post I tried to give a flexible range of possible options. The single best "one stop" answer, if I understand what you mean by "these papers", is just this:

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+%28DK+QUANTUM+GRAVITY%2C+LOOP+SPACE+OR+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY%2C+LOOP+SPACE%29+AND+%28PRIMORDIAL%2C+FLUCTUATION+OR+INFLATION+OR+COSMIC+BACKGROUND+RADIATION%29+AND+DATE+%3E+2008&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=ds%28d%29

Currently this link will get you a list of 33 papers, most recent first, written 2009 or later. All are about the phenomenology (what effects to look for in order to test a model that goes back before bang and does not suffer singularity.)

Some relate that model to inflation (the bounce produces its own brief inflation episode without further assumptions being needed and also helps get conventional inflation started on the right track.)

So that link is a kind of "one stop shop".

The list there will probably continue to grow as more papers appear.

You can also VARY the search yourself by editing what is typed in the box, and clicking on the "repeat search" button.

What is typed in the box right now is:
FIND (DK QUANTUM GRAVITY, LOOP SPACE OR QUANTUM COSMOLOGY, LOOP SPACE) AND (PRIMORDIAL, FLUCTUATION OR INFLATION OR COSMIC BACKGROUND RADIATION) AND DATE > 2008

To customize/edit it for your own individual interests, you have to string together valid DK keywords with AND and OR. Ask for help doing this, if you want.

 

[Drakkith]

Thanks Marcus!

 

[marcus]

I should thank you for posing an interesting question like that!
Please let me know if my response was somehow the wrong one. Too complicated. Unusable. Off-target. Say if you were interested in something else and I misunderstood. I can benefit from feedback like that.