The Big Bang Theory: Was There No Space?

[K^2]

Asking a physicist what happened before the big bang is like asking what's north of the North Pole.

This is by far the best analogy I've ever seen, even if actual topology is likely to be a bit different.

 

[familia]

I think that the concept that we have of spacetime is true for our little spacetime bubble
but once we look at what is outside spacetime we will find that not all but most of the accepted laws of physics brake down except maybe time by itself

 

[skydivephil]

This is by far the best analogy I've ever seen, even if actual topology is likely to be a bit different.

Not at all. We have a lot better evidence the there's a north pole and ntohing north of it than we do there's nothing before the big bang. The latter statement is just an assumption.

 

[familia]

do we have any evidence o the universe spinning as whole relative to its event horizon

 

[Driftwood1]

can you disentangle time from space?

is nothingness something?

If the Universe expands forever and its average temperature approaches zero Kelvin, then nothing is happening - does time cease at that point?

Time needs to be defined clearly - and so does space (and infinity for that matter)

 

[skydivephil]

I believe that's what Roger Penroser Conformal Cyclic Model is about. As all matter becomes decays away there's no way to make a clock and hence no way to measure distance so the begning of the universe and thhe end are effectivley the same thing. But to be honest his new book "Cycles of TIme" is very hard to follow and I admit I was unable to do so.

 

[Driftwood1]

I believe that's what Roger Penroser Conformal Cyclic Model is about. As all matter becomes decays away there's no way to make a clock and hence no way to measure distance so the begning of the universe and thhe end are effectivley the same thing. But to be honest his new book "Cycles of TIme" is very hard to follow and I admit I was unable to do so.

Penrose is an astonishing writer - but he has no sympathy for the reader.

He published a giant telephone size book a few years ago - "Road to reality" (or something like that).

Your comment goes right to the heart of the problem - just because matter is indisguishable in an ever expanding cold universe, and there are practical problems with constructing a clock doesn't mean that the concept of time vanishes.

Mathematicians have never really bothered with reality - they are only interested in PROOF and logic - whether their theorems reflect reality is irrelevant.

thats why Pire Maths is more of a Philosophy rather than a Science

 

[Godswitch]

If the Big Bang did take place

Due to the infinite size of the universe there is a large number of possibilities, but

Before the Big Bang suggests there was some disturbance or instability in a non specified space. This was either instigated by a divine creator or is an instabilty that is inherent to large amounts of matter, the latter being more likely...!?

How everything got there is a complete unknown, what you can say though is the big bang is a convenient way of explaining what we see around us and what we can derive from facts, figures and calculations based on our observable universe seems to go hand in hand with the BBF [BIG BANG THEORY]

And what that tells us in a larger scale is...nothing, it does not tell us that the universe is infinite,only very big, it tells us that we cannot comprehend our immediate universe and that the science we have created around this, whilst very clever may only serve our purposes and not the universe we imagine is out there.

And the answer to that is - There is most definitely something responsible for the Universe!

 

[Driftwood1]

Hawking and co., considered time on an imaginary number scale, and described the big bang moment as a surface which avoids some of the problems assciated with a singularity.

Some models have more supporting evidence than others

 

[familia]

From what I understand and please feel free to correct me if I understood it wrong if the universe did start from a singularity basically the singularity would collapse under its own gravity until the point where matter can no longer be compressed now starting here and going back to before the big bang I think that the following happened and please this is just speculation on my part so please feel free to tell me I'm wrong : I think that there was a previous universe and that universe collapsed into the singularity now the reason that I think that is simple I believe that outside our universe is something that exerts pressure from every angle into the universe and that this force is responsible for the spin of the universe because objects don't spin by themselves and ultimately when our universe expands out where the gravity doesn't create any resistance to that force it will start pushing all matter back into a singularity again

 

[robsharp14]

im beginning to doubt that the big bang created space and time, but I am beginning to think that time and space was already in existence but once the big bang happened space began to expand outward and still is. Time was moving at an extremely rapid pace before the big bang but after the big bang time began to move very slowly. I don't know about this theory though it was kind of thought of at random

 

[marcus]

im beginning to doubt that the big bang created space and time, but I am beginning to think that time and space was already in existence ...

That much of what you are saying is certainly in line with an active area of research these days.

On the order of a hundred research papers get written each year about this idea.
There are new ideas and models mostly post-2000 or post-2005. The older idea of Hawking (which is pre-2000) where there was no pre-bang universe does not get studied much anymore.

The trouble is, there is no popularization or almost none, of the mainstream current work in quantum cosmology.

A popular book came out this month, but I haven't seen it yet so can't say what I think of it.

Maybe someone will glance at it in a bookstore and say how they like it:

It is called "Once Before Time"---which sounds like it's a "once-upon-a-time" story of the universe. There really should be 5 or 6 popular books to choose from, so everybody could find one to his or her taste and level of knowledge.

As I say, I can't recommend this not having seen it yet, but here is the amazon page:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307272850/?tag=pfamazon01-20
It just came out, so it is the expensive hardcover version. The cheaper paperback will probably appear in about a year.

The author is part of a group at Penn State where they run computer models of an earlier universe that collapses (not to a point, not to infinite density) to very high density which then by quantum effects generates an expansive force which causes it to re-expand and undergo a period of very rapid expansion, inflation. The model has some explanatory power, it can help explain some of what we see. But still needs a lot of testing. For now just one of several competing ideas.

 

[Eyelegal]

I think time is likely to have been going on for a very very long time before the "big bang", probably similar to the rate that we experience it, but disturbed by matter. I like to picture this on the wavy 2d sheets postulated by m theory, and have always thought they resemble einsteins view of spacetime as a sheet with mass causing distortions in the form of gravity, similar to the waves on the 2d sheet in m theory?

What robsharp said is interesting, time could exist forever but is redefined in each universe created, possibly by the amount of matter present/gravity produced. Time could move slower or faster here than it does outside of universes and inside others.

This could mean that say outside universes is a 4d space, 3 spatial 1 time, sheets float in 2d space inside this 4d space (with another dimension for the strings that make up the sheet), and the sheets define their own 4d space with time having the same general property as before but moving at a different rate depending on the structure of the universe. So they exist in their own space and time within another space and time?
I don't study or understand the mathematics behind these theories, just my random thoughts on current knowledge. Forgive me if it makes no sense.

 

[Kevin_Axion]

I agree with marcus, mainstream media focuses too much on ideas like string cosmology, where as quantum cosmology (LQG in particular) has been having much greater success in this subject area. I'll also admit that M-Theory actually explains more about what possibly exists beyond our universe and lacks an explanation of the one we live in.

 

[Eyelegal]

I agree with marcus, mainstream media focuses too much on ideas like string cosmology, where as quantum cosmology (LQG in particular) has been having much greater success in this subject area. I'll also admit that M-Theory actually explains more about what possibly exists beyond our universe and lacks an explanation of the one we live in.

We have a reasonable idea of how our our universe was formed up to an instant after the big bang don't we? We just don't understand what happened before that? If its a multiverse like m-theory predicts won't there end up being two theories which communicate in some way, one for our universe and one for the space in which universes are created? Or is one theory really meant to be able to explain everything?

 

[Kevin_Axion]

The Big Bang says nothing about the creation of the universe, only fractions of a second after.

 

[familia]

I guess were looking for one theory to explain everything but as time goes by we keep finding new facts about the physical reality we live in therefore we keep proving and disproving the theories and refining one to explain all phenomenons found to date right now if I'm not mistaken
we have two theories that explain almost everything from black holes to quanta but all physicists are trying to combine the two to create one

 

[Chronos]

The holy grail of physics [at present] is to unite general relativity with quantum mechanics - quite a challenge. I think both theories are good approximations, but, incomplete. Until we figure out the incomplete parts, unification is not possible.

 

[yoda jedi]

im beginning to doubt that the big bang created space and time, but I am beginning to think that time and space was already in existence but once the big bang happened space began to expand outward and still is. Time was moving at an extremely rapid pace before the big bang but after the big bang time began to move very slowly. I don't know about this theory though it was kind of thought of at random

there are theories and theories of time so maybe...
there is not only a beginning of time, there is also an end...


...But the very fact that time was born has a fascinating corollary: it may disappear. In billions of years time could cease to be, according to Prof José Senovilla of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, and his colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Physical Review D...

 

[robsharp14]

this makes me think of a theory that stated the energy pops in and out of our dimension without any cause or something like that. I can't remember what this theory is called...oh well

 

[familia]

i think u r referring to quantum theory

 

[universe11]

Most of the radiation energy in the universe is in the cosmic microwave background...

Do you know the value of this energy?

 

[marcus]

Most of the radiation energy in the universe is in the cosmic microwave background...

Do you know the value of this energy?

I've calculated it several times but don't know it by heart. You can calculate it if you want.

You probably know the Stefan-Boltzmann law for black body radiation.

Find the watts/square meter power density of a surface at 2.725 K.

Then divide by c/4.

Dividing watts/m² by c/4 should give joules/m³.

The overall mass energy density of the universe is in fractions of a nanojoule per cubic meter and the CMB energy density is a small part, so it should come out femtojoules per cubic meter, I guess. Or fractions of a pico. You can find it with Stef-Boltz.

 

[robsharp14]

i wonder if your able to use this energy...maybe not yet becouse of the entropy

 

[universe11]

I found it is 6*10**(-5) of the density of the Universe!

This means is 6*10**(-5) of the mass of the Universe ( 10^53 kg)

 

[yoda jedi]

i think u r referring to quantum theory

me two.

 

[universe11]

The new model, developed by Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University in the US and Neil Turok at Cambridge University in the UK, will be controversial. It requires that time existed before the Big Bang, assumes that the universe is older than the 14 billion years we think it is, and says that the universe regularly undergoes repeating "cycles" of big bangs and big crunches (Sciencexpress 1126231).
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/24844

How were explained the Big Crunches?

 

[robsharp14]

that's the one! thanks

 

[Imax]

Before the Big Bang, time and space did not exist. Trying to ask what happened before the Big Band is like trying to ask what’s north of the North Pole?

 

[marcus]

Before the Big Bang, time and space did not exist. Trying to ask what happened before the Big Band is like trying to ask what’s north of the North Pole?

Penrose says that this was precisely the prevailing expert view before 2005.
You might like to listen to his talk at Cambridge in fall of 2005.

Anyway, fashions change. Cosmologists no longer think that (what you said) on the whole. There are a number of newer models that go back pre-bang. At least one is approaching the test stage (assuming NASA can get its next microwave background mapping mission funded.)

Say if you would like some links to professional research papers or any help navigating the literature.

The main overview you can get by scanning the list of recent papers in "quantum cosmology". Here's a keyword search. They are almost all about cosmology that goes back pre-bang and has no singularity. At least the first 50-100. I haven't looked at the whole list.

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+cosmology+and+date+%3E2006&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

I defined the search to find all "quantum cosmology" that appeared after 2006 and to order them with the most highly cited first. So you get the papers first which other researchers have most often referred to in their papers---a rough measure of how valuable/important the paper is.
The first 50 or 100 in some sense defines the field.

 

[alphachapmtl]

marcus seems to be right about "quantum cosmology".
See this fascinating article:
The Birth of Time: Quantum Loops Describe the Evolution of the Universe
ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2010)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101216095014.htm

... a new theoretical model of quantum gravity describing the emergence of space-time from the structures of quantum theory.
... loop quantum gravity (LQG). The theory holds that space is weaved from one-dimensional threads.
... The starting points for the model are two fields, one of which is a gravitational field, the other a scalar field.
... time emerges as the relation between the gravitational field (space) and the scalar field - a moment in time is given by the value of the scalar field.
... the passage of time emerges as the property of the state of the gravitational and scalar fields and the appearance of such a state corresponds to the birth of the well-known space-time.

 

[jtbell]

I see no science in this discussion since it was revived in March. Thread closed.