State of the Universe before Big Bang

[_shankybro_]

We can safely assume that Big Bang is the accepted answer to the question "How did the Universe, as we know it today, come into existence ?"

I will split my question in two parts -

1) What existed before the big bang ? I know Time and Space came into existence AFTER the Big Bang ; but its very hard to imagine the state of things that existed / didn't exist before this event.

2) We can imagine a ray of light that shot-out from this event having traveled the current age of the universe , is at a certain point in space as of now. How farther can it possibly continue? Its like that ray is expanding the dimensions of space continuously. I know this is idiotic to ask, but to say that a particular entity is infinite in nature (space in this case) is in itself indigestible.

I am not a Physics Major, so I expect helpful answers

 

[CosmicEye]

1) This is always hard to argue because we just don't know for sure. In my opinion, I don't believe in the classical Big Bang Theory that there was nothing and then something that just popped into nowhere. It makes no sense.

A theory that I have heard and absolutely agree with and believe is that there are 2 membrane like sheets in Space. When these 2 collide at 1 point, it makes an explosion, thus, creating the Big Bang and it expanded out from there. Its hard to imagine but they explained it on the TV show 'Through The Wormhole' <-- Great show btw. Think of when you throw a rock on the ground and sparks fly. Or, in a super collider when 2 atoms or protons meet and everything bursts out. But, it is much more complicated than that dealing with matter and other energies we don't know, but I think we are connecting the dots..

2) This something else we don't know. It depends if the Universe is opened, closed, or flat, I think are the 3 terms. I think the light will travel forever until it dispurses so much that it undetectable or even just radiates away after tens of billions of lightyears.

Great questions to think about.

 

[phinds]

2) We can imagine a ray of light that shot-out from this event having traveled the current age of the universe

Photos that were banging around in the early stages of the universe ("early" in this case is < about 400,000 years) did not get very far because of the unbelievably dense nature of the U back then. They were created and annihilated very quickly. The photos that we CAN see were emitted at what I believe is called "the surface of last scattering" and thus were created about 400,000 years AFTER the singularity.

CosmisEye's part #2 looks to me to be correct concerning what happens to that light.

I think I have this right, but we have LOTS of folks here who know this stuff better than I do and someone will jump in if I have it wrong.

 

[_shankybro_]

I think the light will travel forever until it dispurses so much that it undetectable or even just radiates away after tens of billions of lightyears.

That is my very question. The fact that it will(or at least we assume it will) travel forever in space is not digestible. I have read about the spherical interpretation of the nature of space (which allows that ray of light to travel endlessly on the surface of the sphere but raises the question what is the nature of U outside that sphere).

 

[CosmicEye]

I saw somewhere that there was evidence on a large scale that there may be a multiverse out there. Large scale that a few million galaxies were looking like they were going in one direction, meaning that another U's gravity was pulling ours.

I don't know what to think. If you could ask the earliest photon or radiated particle on the wall of the U this question, I am sure they would tell you. Who knows if its pure black, if they can see something in the distance, or something like dark energy is holding them back at the wall of true complete empty space.

 

[PSz]

2) We can imagine a ray of light that shot-out from this event having traveled the current age of the universe , is at a certain point in space as of now. How farther can it possibly continue?

That is my very question. The fact that it will(or at least we assume it will) travel forever in space is not digestible.

Actually, it should be pretty digestible when you consider photon qualities as a particle. Just read about them in detail. Then, take into account the amount, or rather density of matter in the interstellar space, in between galaxies, etc. Of course, there is always a question about the light source and its intensity, I just assume we're talking about cosmology more than theoretical physics here. In the second case and with perfect vacuums, there is no stoppage at all (which should be obvious).

Also, our universe is not really expanding, it's increasing its scale. Word "expanding" may be somewhat misleading, as it adds a space component into equation. This can occur at rate which would be described as "speed greater than a speed of light", which really isn't. Therefore, light coming from a galaxy moving away from the observer on Earth at such speed would never reach him - longer it travels, more and more distance is there to cover. This is a great example of this infinite travel of light, not in hypothetical conditions.

 

[_shankybro_]

Actually, it should be pretty digestible when you consider photon qualities as a particle. Just read about them in detail. Then, take into account the amount, or rather density of matter in the interstellar space, in between galaxies, etc.

I do not find the fact that the light could travel for infinite time covering infinite distance indigestible; Just that there IS infinite space for it to travel that sounds impossible. I mean, how can one event result into something infinite in nature. I don't believe there is any other event which yields in an 'infinite' result.

Also,if physics be applicable to the BIG BANG, then we can say that energy in one form got converted into another (which now exists in the form of our universe). My question is, before big bang, in what perceivable form could it exist ? I am just looking out for views from learned people like you as I know there is no single school of thought as of now. Thank you in advance.

 

[Cosmo Novice]

Just as food for thought,

Light may be able to travel for an infinite length of time, this doesn't mean it can always be percieved, eventually after traveling for an infinite amount of time, the light will have an infinitely long wavelength and so can never be observed fully except waiting another infinite length of time.

Talking about infinities in this context is almost popintless.

 

[Hobin]

1) What existed before the big bang ? I know Time and Space came into existence AFTER the Big Bang

Mu.

The question is faulty, as you have already figured out for yourself. Asking 'before' the big bang does not make sense, because time only came into being when the universe did. (Even here, this isn't exactly correct, as 'came into being' suggests something temporal, which is inapplicable here.)

but its very hard to imagine the state of things that existed / didn't exist before this event.

Then don't. ;) You shouldn't try to imagine something before this event, for the same reason that you shouldn't try to imagine a universe where both P and not-P are correct. It doesn't make sense.

 

[PSz]

I do not find the fact that the light could travel for infinite time covering infinite distance indigestible; Just that there IS infinite space for it to travel that sounds impossible. I mean, how can one event result into something infinite in nature. I don't believe there is any other event which yields in an 'infinite' result.

In fact, pretty much everything could be described as infinite in nature. Conservation of information.

Human kind, as a species, is biologically programmed to perceive the world surrounding him in a certain way, distinct for it. But as our intelligence grow, we struggle to see our world in more objective light. The fact is though, you cannot do it if you don't see and understand mathematics behind it. Your questions are not theological.

Also,if physics be applicable to the BIG BANG, then we can say that energy in one form got converted into another (which now exists in the form of our universe). My question is, before big bang, in what perceivable form could it exist ? I am just looking out for views from learned people like you as I know there is no single school of thought as of now. Thank you in advance.

As for now, there is simply no correct answer to this question. All you can say is that your theory has strong logical consistency.

 

[Chronos]

For discussion see
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html

 

[CosmicEye]

^Good idea

Ive heard of Hawking radiation and how tiny particles seem to emerge in space and destroy each other almost instantly. My question though is, well one is there proof, but also can that mean something as massive as the entire U also spntaniously emerge at the beginning? We may see particles of radiation but why can't plantes, stars, or BH do the same?

The one thing that bothers me most is that there must have been space-time to begin with to have a big bang emerge from it. Is he saying that Space-time and the U began at the same time simulatniously, instantly from nowhere? It doesn't make sense to me. Actual space atleast had to exist already because that's where we formed. It had to be at some specific point, in some blackness, but why that exact point?

Personally, I feel very very strong about the M-theory. It explains logically what happened at the point of the BB without magic happening. Space-time already existed, it explains at what point it all started, and explains the possibility of a multiverse. The only major thing left is the matter. Like I said it looks like the inside of a super collider except at the grandest scale. I guess the next question is that how big are the membranes, how many are there, and what made the rest of whatever we can't see. Those are the questions that when I try and think about them, I get dumber lol

You can't have something from nothing!

 

[Chronos]

Davies is asserting spacetime was an emergent property of the Big Bang. Something from nothing is no big deal in the bizarre world of quantum physics.

 

[Boy@n]

Why would you call quantum fluctuations nothing?

 

[_shankybro_]

@ Chronos - Please elucidate your response with some supporting explanations. Just mentioning Q. Physics bizarre is not enough.

 

[_shankybro_]

Mu.

The question is faulty, as you have already figured out for yourself. Asking 'before' the big bang does not make sense, because time only came into being when the universe did.

There are two ways you can take my question. Either you can find Langauge errors and discard the question; OR you can be a realist and perceive the question in the sense in which I have asked (and many others have understood), having accepted that there are some lingo errors. "Before" here does not imply a state on the time scale; just the state where you can faintly imagine nothing existed(not even time). You should not have a problem accepting the "existence" of such a state.

Mu.
Then don't. ;) You shouldn't try to imagine something before this event, for the same reason that you shouldn't try to imagine a universe where both P and not-P are correct. It doesn't make sense.

For a person with a scientific bent of mind, its hard "to not imagine" . At least in the world of physics, "try not to imagine" means the same as accept things as they are. May be you are correct in asking me not to, for time did not actually exist then, but personally , I can't oblige to that :-) I need some strong views why I should not "imagine" :-)

 

[CosmicEye]

Thats like saying 'just because'..

 

[zielwolf]

I think the question "what existed before the Big Bang" crosses disciplines into linguistics (grammar) and philosophy/metaphysics. The preposition "before" already denotes the existence of time, however, as you note time came into existence after the Big Bang. The preposition "after" also denotes a state of time, and "into" denotes a spatial state. The noun existence of course refers to a state of existence, "being-there".

The implication is that a question such as yours exceeds the boundaries of a functional grammar by default. Yet, it isn't meaningless in any sense, everyone understands the logical difficulty; we have this abstract conception, an intuition, a trace of this "not-state", if you like, which as it were, compels us to ask it anyway.

The question is fundamental. Lots of people have addressed it. The authors of Genesis explain it by way of God. More recently Martin Heidegger addressed it by a kind of crossing out of the word "Being" itself, whereas Derrida was so bold as to state, in reference to a science of differance "..it is impossible to have a science of the origin of presence itself, that is to say of a certain nonorigin." [Of Grammatology]

Derrida refers us back to "the trace' and a certain arche-language whose traces we archive.

Whether science can ever meaningfully answer this question depends on whether it will ever first come to construct the linguistic/symbolic capacities to describe the "not-state" to which you refer as a releveant hypothesis which can actually be tested against observable evidence. I'm not sure that's ever going to happen...

I think the question inevitably crosses the line between physics and metaphysics, cosmology and meta-cosmology. Maybe the moment at which the universe came into being is an eternal, infinite moment, as is simultaneously the "not-state" of the cosmos "before" that moment, as at that moment the concepts time, space and being came upon themselves as such.

It blows my mind. When I think about it too long my head wants to explode...

 

[phinds]

Whether science can ever meaningfully answer this question depends on whether it will ever first come to construct the linguistic/symbolic capacities to describe the "not-state" to which you refer as a releveant hypothesis which can actually be tested against observable evidence.

That might be true but it is by no means necessarily true. There are hypotheses that posit a different creation scenario than the one you are referring to (and I do NOT mean religious ones) and that do have an existence prior to the singularity that brought our universe into being.

They DO of course seem to fail to answer the fundamental question of what started THEM so with them It's turles all the way down and then back to your statement.

 

[_shankybro_]

@ zielwolf - Thanks for your insight.. I am in complete agreement with your view of the feasibility of any experiment to test the existence of that 'non-state'...maybe we will never be able to come across anything that might be in the wildest fashion related to that 'not-state'..hence, I demand views and understand there is no certain 'answer' to my questions.

I will be thankful if you can shed some light on the questions from a physics perspective. Thanks :-)

 

[drollere]

There are two ways you can take my question. Either you can find Langauge errors and discard the question; OR you can be a realist and perceive the question in the sense in which I have asked (and many others have understood), having accepted that there are some lingo errors.

in other words, you can either accept that a language error is nonsensical and cannot be given a sensible answer, or you can accept that a language error is sensible and leads to a fruitful substantive discussion.

the first position is the general posture of science and scientific discourse; the second position is professional attitude of literary critics talking about poetry and fiction.

For a person with a scientific bent of mind, its hard "to not imagine" . At least in the world of physics, "try not to imagine" means the same as accept things as they are. May be you are correct in asking me not to, for time did not actually exist then, but personally , I can't oblige to that :-) I need some strong views why I should not "imagine" :-)

the strongest reason? ... because, you're *confused*. you're correct that a person with a scientific mind is inclined to imagine. but the imagination is always disciplined by a few foundation considerations: can this imagined possibility be stated formally? can it be tested? can it be demonstrated by the test? will the test be replicable by others who wish to examine its validity? and so forth.

lacking those considerations, you're only asking a question within the realm of language and all its traps.

failure to get an answer to those certain language questions is often emotionally unsatisfying. but emotions and their gratification are excluded from the foundation considerations of science. that is one of its majestic strengths and beauties.

 

[CosmicEye]

^ absolutrly agree. The grammar nazi post was unnecissaryly annoying.

So any new opinions?

 

[_shankybro_]

To all those who think i should have had put the question in better words, i accept i wasnt able to put it in words you physicists would have done. But am glad you could still understand my question,and gave your valuable opinions..i would request all to overlook any lingo errors and continue sharing your views.

 

[CosmicEye]

We knew what you meant. Unfortunatly some people over analyze

 

[Chronos]

How do you over analyse abyssal ignorance?

 

[jackmell]

Whether science can ever meaningfully answer this question depends on whether it will ever first come to construct the linguistic/symbolic capacities to describe the "not-state" to which you refer as a releveant hypothesis which can actually be tested against observable evidence. I'm not sure that's ever going to happen...

I believe we will come to know and the reason we will is intimately connected to what the pre-existence perhaps was and what may have caused it to give rise to our Universe. Since the thread author is asking for other opinions, I'll give a purely mathematical view:

As you probably know, in our Universe, there are many phenomena that exhibit jump-discontunities (shock phenomena), process which do not evolve smoothly but rather reach a critical point and then change often abruptly and qualitatively. For example, the melting point of a solid, the sudden collapse of a bridge when a critical bolt fails, an avalanche, waring nations, the emergence of man from ape, fission and fusion (I think), many other processes. That's not a coincidence but rather I think a reflection of how our Universe came into existence: I conjecture that whatever existed before, the pre-existence I call it, may somehow have reached a critical point of it's own, a catastrophe ensued and abruptly and qualitatively changed into the Universe we now observe with all the shock phenomena we now observe being "ripples" of that one large catastrophe. And since many of these types of phenomena we see in Nature often evolve into qualitatively different states, I would argue that the pre-existence may likewise be qualitatively different than the physics we now observe in the Universe. Concepts like time, mass, energy, gravity may be entirely inapplicapable to describe this before-state in the same way albeit more simplistically, that the concept of swimming is no longer applicapable across the critical point of freezing.

Now getting back to why I think we'll grow to understand it one day. Likewise to physical phenomena that exhibit jump-discontuinities, human knowledge also exhibits these abrupt changes when a certain point is reached. For example, the invention of the transistor changed the world qualitatively. Darwin did too. The concept that the world is round was another jump-discontinuity in our understanding of the world. Human knowledge is like this. So I think one day our understanding of the Universe will likewise reach a critical point where we will one day be able to understand what existed before our Universe and what caused it to come into existence. Something qualitatively new will be invented by the human mind and that will push us through another critical point of understanding, and give rise to a better view of the world once again.

. . . Cambrain explosion too. And the reason I say this is a purely mathematical view point is that jump-discontinuities in the form of catastrophe are very precisely described mathematically, with the canonical form given by the cubic differential equation: $x'=a+bx-x^3$

 

[phinds]

Uh, Jackmell, I don't know about the mathematical explanation you end up with but I think your whole concept can be boiled down to just saying that you think the singularity represents a state-change and that we don't know what the previous state was but may some day. That's a reasonable statement but doesn't require so many words. Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

 

[jackmell]

Uh, Jackmell, I don't know about the mathematical explanation you end up with but I think your whole concept can be boiled down to just saying that you think the singularity represents a state-change and that we don't know what the previous state was but may some day. That's a reasonable statement but doesn't require so many words. Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

Ok, that'll work too. I just like giving empirical examples to justify my thesis since I know you guys are so experiment-driven in here.

 

[An Open Mind]

1) This is always hard to argue because we just don't know for sure. In my opinion, I don't believe in the classical Big Bang Theory that there was nothing and then something that just popped into nowhere. It makes no sense.

A theory that I have heard and absolutely agree with and believe is that there are 2 membrane like sheets in Space. When these 2 collide at 1 point, it makes an explosion, thus, creating the Big Bang and it expanded out from there. Its hard to imagine but they explained it on the TV show 'Through The Wormhole' <-- Great show btw. Think of when you throw a rock on the ground and sparks fly. Or, in a super collider when 2 atoms or protons meet and everything bursts out. But, it is much more complicated than that dealing with matter and other energies we don't know, but I think we are connecting the dots..

2) This something else we don't know. It depends if the Universe is opened, closed, or flat, I think are the 3 terms. I think the light will travel forever until it dispurses so much that it undetectable or even just radiates away after tens of billions of lightyears.

Great questions to think about.

I've heard that theory as well, however I'd love to know what these 2 sheets were in, what are they made of, how did they collide into each other to cause a big bang, and if they did hit each other like 2 pieces of paper flapping in the wind, they would of hit more then 1 time, there would be ( insert number here ) universes.

The human mind has never experienced any type of force outside of earth, except for zero g. There has to be so many other super natural light waves, sound waves and forces out their.

The force that made the universe, time and space, would be something that can only ever happen once. I don't want to say or even think it but I doubt we will ever find the answere to the beginning. - Just a thought from a 16 year old kid.