What Came Before the Big Bang? Exploring Pre-Universe Matter and Energy

[McHeathen]

All the matter and engery making up the Universe could not up just appeared at a 'singularity' out of nowhere. It must have existed before the BB in a different format.

Can anyone recommend a list of good books which explores this topic?

 

[DaveC426913]

All the matter and engery making up the Universe could not up just appeared at a 'singularity' out of nowhere.

Why not?

Common sense?

 

[CyberShot]

Why not?

Common sense?

No, something deeper than common sense, I believe. Asking if something is created out of nothing is like asking if something can be taller than itself. Or, if there are square triangles. There are, I believe, certain inescapable truths about the universe, not limited to humans, which necessitate a cause of the big bang. Surely, this is somewhat akin to what Einstein's "little finger" must have been sensing.

 

[DaveC426913]

No, something deeper than common sense, I believe. Asking if something is created out of nothing is like asking ...

So, a simile. As in: making a comparison to something familiar.

See the problem?

What is analagous to creation? Nothing.

This is not just word play. There were no physics (as we know it) at the Big Bang, or even shortly after it. The "inescapable" rules by which the universe works were an outcome of the Big Bang, not the other way around.

The entire existence of today's universe falls out from exactly four fundamental forces. Those forces did not exist; they were set as the universe expanded. They are latecomers to creation.

 

[CyberShot]

So, a simile. As in: making a comparison to something familiar.

See the problem?

What is analagous to creation? Nothing.

This is not just word play. There were no physics (as we know it) at the Big Bang, or even shortly after it. The "inescapable" rules by which the universe works were an outcome of the Big Bang, not the other way around.

The entire existence of today's universe falls out from exactly four fundamental forces. Those forces did not exist; they were set as the universe expanded. They are latecomers to creation.

Couldn't the same be said of child birth? At conception, a child does not have self-awareness but sometime after infancy it develops this. Does self-awareness just "pop" into existence? Clearly, not. So, in this sense, the property of self-awareness was, by the conservation of energy, at heart really always there all along, it just took the shape of poorly developed/wired neurons. Can't the same also be said for the force carriers of physics, as being in some infant string-like state in the universe's infancy that developed in a theoretically predictable way we see them today?

 

[DaveC426913]

Couldn't the same be said of child birth? At conception, a child does not have self-awareness but sometime after infancy it develops this. Does self-awareness just "pop" into existence? Clearly, not. So, in this sense, the property of self-awareness was, by the conservation of energy, at heart really always there all along, it just took the shape of poorly developed/wired neurons. Can't the same also be said for the force carriers of physics, as being in some infant string-like state in the universe's infancy that developed in a theoretically predictable way we see them today?

I don't know how to respond to that.

It's wishful thinking. The universe is not obliged to make us feel comfortable about it.

 

[edgepflow]

If you have some background in physics, calculus, and differential equations, a great place to start is to download the paper: "quantum cosmology for pedestrians." If you are familar with quantum mechanics, you can manipulate the Hartle Hawking and Tunneling wave functions and see some interesting results (and limitations) of these models.

A few remarks on the previous posts:

In my opinion most of the mainstream cosmology theories are considered "past incomplete" meaning that time does not go backwards to infinity. This applies to a single universe or multiverses.

So there was once nothing and then something. Spacetime in some form sprouted into existence and dragged the laws of physics with it. Some physicists consider the idea of quantum tunneling from literally nothing but I am not sure how reasonable (or necessary) the approach is. You could also try to visualize the laws of physics embedded in literally nothing and causing the universe to exist - this does not work for me either. Thus, I feel there is minimal evidence that the universe is uncaused.

 

[Chalnoth]

All the matter and engery making up the Universe could not up just appeared at a 'singularity' out of nowhere.

Most physicists, in my experience, agree. But there are a wide variety of ideas as to what may potentially replace the singularity, and as yet no evidence to illuminate which, if any, are accurate. A few of the more credible ideas are:

1. The Hartle-Hawking universe (the no-boundary proposal), which treats the whole universe somewhat like the surface of a sphere, so that even though it is finite, there is no singularity.
2. Loop Quantum Cosmology. Some physicists are taking a speculative proposal for quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity, and applying it to a collapsing universe. Their calculations seem to indicate that such a collapsing universe should "bounce", producing one like our own.
3. Some theorists have proposed a universe where the "equilibrium" state is a state with a small but positive cosmological constant, where new "universes" are born out of the vacuum of others all the time. Sean Carroll and Jennifer Chen proposed one idea (which is an infinite universe). Andreas Albrecht has proposed a similar but distinct idea ("de Sitter equilibrium cosmology").

Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure about any popular books on this subject. It is, after all, quite hypothetical at this point, without evidence to show the way. All we have are ideas, and all of them could be wrong.

 

[Drakkith]

Couldn't the same be said of child birth? At conception, a child does not have self-awareness but sometime after infancy it develops this. Does self-awareness just "pop" into existence? Clearly, not. So, in this sense, the property of self-awareness was, by the conservation of energy, at heart really always there all along, it just took the shape of poorly developed/wired neurons. Can't the same also be said for the force carriers of physics, as being in some infant string-like state in the universe's infancy that developed in a theoretically predictable way we see them today?

Did the child have self awareness before it developed neurons during gestation? I doubt it. Self awareness is a result of a complex nervous system that is grown from a single cell after conception and is NOTHING like the creation of the universe.

 

[Chalnoth]

So, in this sense, the property of self-awareness was, by the conservation of energy,

Stop right there. Self awareness has nothing whatsoever to do with energy, nor does energy conservation have anything to do with it. And even if one could possibly make use of conservation of energy in relation to something like self awareness, a living organism is not a closed system: animals need to ingest other organisms to survive, and obtain their energy in that way.

Finally, if your analogy held, then a house would have to "really exist" in the trees before they are cut into the lumber used to make said house.

 

[Cosmo Novice]

All the matter and engery making up the Universe could not up just appeared at a 'singularity' out of nowhere. It must have existed before the BB in a different format.

Can anyone recommend a list of good books which explores this topic?

If all matter/energy must have existed somewhere else prior to the big bang all that does is push this question back a level. Assuming that all matter/energy that exist in our U was in faxt in existence prior to our U in a different stae or dimension etc then where did the energy come from to exist within that other system?

If systems are closed but new U systems can be created then can this question ever be answered as either two things are true:

1. The matter/energy or potential to create all matter/energy in the U has ALWAYS existed
or
2. It came into existence at the moment of BB.

I also tend to agree with Dave_C that you cannot apply laws of physics to prior BB as the laws of physics and GR did not yet apply in the early very early BB - who knows what kind of exotic laws can apply in this state - prior to universal GR, creation of energy could be one exotic law, who knows?

 

[smartie18]

A lot of books explore it from an Evolution standpoint. There are some scientists which say that this point can be only proved from a Creationists point of view...those scientists are of course Creationists themselves.

 

[Chalnoth]

A lot of books explore it from an Evolution standpoint. There are some scientists which say that this point can be only proved from a Creationists point of view...those scientists are of course Creationists themselves.

An evolution standpoint? That doesn't make any sense. And if they're pushing creationism, they're either not scientists (the usual case), or really really horrible ones.

 

[mdmaaz]

I have my own theory about this. All the matter in our universe today was previously in a different universe. It traveled through a wormholes and exploded into our universe.

 

[Chalnoth]

I have my own theory about this. All the matter in our universe today was previously in a different universe. It traveled through a wormholes and exploded into our universe.

The thing is, matter isn't conserved, regardless of what you may have heard in chemistry. Essentially all of the matter in our universe was produced during inflation.

 

[Cosmo Novice]

The thing is, matter isn't conserved, regardless of what you may have heard in chemistry. Essentially all of the matter in our universe was produced during inflation.

Chalnoth would you mind clearing something up for me?

Matter/energy isn't conserved, is this because we are in a closed system? So energy and heat can become diffuse? Due to expansion?

 

[Chalnoth]

Chalnoth would you mind clearing something up for me?

Matter/energy isn't conserved, is this because we are in a closed system? So energy and heat can become diffuse? Due to expansion?

No, energy itself isn't conserved (at least, not by the usual definitions...). See here for a description of energy conservation in General Relativity:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html

Basically, what happened early on is that during inflation, the inflating universe took a nearly constant energy density and expanded it many times over, creating nearly all of the energy in our universe. Then that energy decayed into radiation (at an extremely high temperature), which then cooled off to become all of the matter we know and love.

 

[Drakkith]

Chalnoth would you mind clearing something up for me?

Matter/energy isn't conserved, is this because we are in a closed system? So energy and heat can become diffuse? Due to expansion?

Energy is conserved, however matter is not. We create and destroy matter all the time in particle colliders around the world. However, the energy is always conserved.

The only thing that "might" violate this is the expansion of space.

 

[Chalnoth]

Energy is conserved, however matter is not. We create and destroy matter all the time in particle colliders around the world. However, the energy is always conserved.

You may also benefit from reading the link in my previous post. In General Relativity, it isn't.

 

[Drakkith]

You may also benefit from reading the link in my previous post. In General Relativity, it isn't.

I read it, and from what I can tell, it agrees with my post. Did I misunderstand something in it? If so, please elaborate. (It was kind of hard to understand, I don't ever deal with vectors, pseudo-tensors, ETC)

 

[Chalnoth]

I read it, and from what I can tell, it agrees with my post.

It most definitely doesn't say that energy is always conserved. And in an expanding universe, energy is most definitely not conserved in the usual formulation of General Relativity.

You can rewrite that with the Hamiltonian formulation and say that the extra energy is coming from gravitational potential energy, but since gravitational potential energy can go as negative as you like, it amounts to the same thing.

 

[Drakkith]

It most definitely doesn't say that energy is always conserved. And in an expanding universe, energy is most definitely not conserved in the usual formulation of General Relativity.

You can rewrite that with the Hamiltonian formulation and say that the extra energy is coming from gravitational potential energy, but since gravitational potential energy can go as negative as you like, it amounts to the same thing.

Sorry, I edited my post right after I posted it. Did I misunderstand something in your link?

 

[Chalnoth]

Sorry, I edited my post right after I posted it. Did I misunderstand something in your link?

Well, I don't know, because I don't know what you understood. But the basic gist of it is that in special cases, sure, energy is conserved in General Relativity. This only happens, however, when you have a static or periodic space-time. For example, if you just consider the Solar System as a periodic system, then energy is conserved exactly in General Relativity (note: the solar system isn't exactly periodic, but this is a very good approximation). Energy conservation also works for a flat space-time. But it simply doesn't work in an expanding one.

 

[Drakkith]

As I said in my other post, I believe that the expansion of the universe is about the only way to get around conservation of energy. Everything in that article other than that seemed to tell me energy was conserved.

 

[Chalnoth]

As I said in my other post, I believe that the expansion of the universe is about the only way to get around conservation of energy. Everything in that article other than that seemed to tell me energy was conserved.

It isn't, however. Even if you just have a cloud of self-gravitating gas, you won't get conservation of energy. In order to get energy conservation, you need time invariance. Which you just don't get in general.

 

[Vespa71]

What about a pulsating universe? Expanding to a limit, then retracting and banging again. Like a clock. Over and over again. At a low frequency, obviously. Would energy in such case be conserved, if all radiation and matter and black holes, and what have you, returned to origo for a new explotion? It would answer the question "what was before our universe?": -More of the same, actually, indefinately..

Is that theory proved false? Would it conserve energy, or would entropy increase beyond the universe?

 

[Chalnoth]

What about a pulsating universe? Expanding to a limit, then retracting and banging again. Like a clock. Over and over again. At a low frequency, obviously. Would energy in such case be conserved, if all radiation and matter and black holes, and what have you, returned to origo for a new explotion? It would answer the question "what was before our universe?": -More of the same, actually, indefinately..

Is that theory proved false? Would it conserve energy, or would entropy increase beyond the universe?

If every expansion phase were identical, then sure, you would have some measure of energy conservation, in that you could connect the energy at the same time in each phase. But within a phase, energy would still vary with time.

In general, though, such bouncing universes are basically forced to be asymmetrical through entropy considerations.

 

[Drakkith]

It isn't, however. Even if you just have a cloud of self-gravitating gas, you won't get conservation of energy. In order to get energy conservation, you need time invariance. Which you just don't get in general.

Why wouldn't you get conservation of energy in a cloud of self-gravitating gas?

 

[Chalnoth]

Why wouldn't you get conservation of energy in a cloud of self-gravitating gas?

Well, at first the gas is pretty spread-out and cool. Then, as it radiates energy and the particles of the cloud fall closer together, it heats up. So you've not only got the cloud emitting energy, but the individual particles end up with more energy par particle as well!

Of course, as I mentioned, you can make sense of this by defining some sort of gravitational potential energy, but this is not the usual way things are done in General Relativity.

 

[Drakkith]

Well, at first the gas is pretty spread-out and cool. Then, as it radiates energy and the particles of the cloud fall closer together, it heats up. So you've not only got the cloud emitting energy, but the individual particles end up with more energy par particle as well!

Of course, as I mentioned, you can make sense of this by defining some sort of gravitational potential energy, but this is not the usual way things are done in General Relativity.

Care to elaborate? I don't know why you wouldn't use something like potential energy in this situation.

 

[Chalnoth]

Care to elaborate? I don't know why you wouldn't use something like potential energy in this situation.

Well, since you'd usually use Newtonian gravity in this situation, you probably would. But my point is that when you work with General Relativity, there simply isn't any potential energy term there, and furthermore there is not even any good way to define one in general.

 

[Drakkith]

Well, since you'd usually use Newtonian gravity in this situation, you probably would. But my point is that when you work with General Relativity, there simply isn't any potential energy term there, and furthermore there is not even any good way to define one in general.

Alright, then is this even an issue in GR?

And is GR the only thing to look at here in regards to conservation of energy?

 

[Chalnoth]

Alright, then is this even an issue in GR?

And is GR the only thing to look at here in regards to conservation of energy?

Well, it's a conceptual issue, to be sure, as many people have a hard time understanding that conservation of energy is only an approximate, local law, one that simply does not hold globally.

The main issue here is that conservation of energy stems from invariance in time. That is, if you can take a system and examine it at two different times and the system remains the same in some specific mathematical sense for those two times, then energy is necessarily conserved between those two times.

Most of the physical laws we know and love, whether they be Newtonian physics, or electricity and magnetism, or quantum mechanics all are unchanged in time, and so they all follow energy conservation. General Relativity throws a wrench into this whole thing because it makes the time coordinate arbitrary: if you can change your very definition of what you mean by "time", then the very idea of "time invariance" ceases to have meaning, and so while you might be able to write down a specific system where energy conservation holds, in general it just won't.