Why do people refuse the idea that something caused the big bang?

[Aten]

I don't get it...even Guth from MIT who is one of the pioneers of the big bang concept says that "we know that something banged, but why it banged and what caused it to bang is another story" - quoted by memory but the meaning was like that.
So...some people think they are too smart to realize that since we don't have time before the big bang - then it makes no sense to measure anything prior to the bang. In a similar fashion if you were the only person in the world before the big bang you cannot ask "where is the big bang" since the word "where" would have no meaning with just you and some infinitely small object.
But that's not what bothers me...what really strikes me is the fact that the probability for the big bang to happen is actually...you are right: ZERO. There is no chance if something has existed forever to change its form just like that. However, badly enough this is how modern day physics describes the big bang - as something which exists forever and then out of nowhere decides to explode and change it's shape just like tht. It doesn't matter what probability distribution would you use to describe such behaviour - continous, discrete or whatever - the chance for this is always 0.
So something might have caused the big bang. In my opinion the best theory is a white hole. Problem is that I see no way to prove such thing with empirical evidences. Even then it is reasonably to abandon the idea that the big bang is caused randomly. Randomness means that you cannot predict when something is going to happen and not that there is no reason for one thing to happen.


Ps:
Yes I know it wasn't an "explosion" and it wasn't big. It's just known long ago so I didn't include these tiny details.
Other than that: te probability is zero. In layman terms: what is the probability if something has existed forever to die? One in infinity or one divided by infinite amount of numbers - which is 0.0... or actually zero.
So, the big bang problem is a problem of the limit of the human mind - people just desperately desire everything in the world to have a beginning and end - while it has NOT.
Just like the universe has no space where it begins and no space where it ends - if you take 2 bodies that have always moved in opposite directions - they WILL be in infinite space distance between each other. So infinity exists and it rejects the big bang all start theory.

 

[DaveC426913]

You need to remove ambiguous terms such as 'infinity' and 'forever' and 'random' before what you are trying to say makes sense.

 

[Aten]

You need to remove ambiguous terms such as 'infinity' and 'forever' and 'random' before what you are trying to say makes sense.

What is so ambiguous about "randomness"? I guess you are questioning the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty then... - which sounds slightly paradoxical, since you seem to stick to the traditional concept of the big bang as the beginning of all beginnings while still calling concepts like randomness and infinity "ambiguous".

 

[russ_watters]

The quote in your first two sentences doesn't imply what you said in your title (and what is claimed in the title is wrong anyway). That's a pretty rambling post that doesn't make a whole lot of sense while at the same time says a lot of wrong things. I'm not sure there is much we can do with it, but perhaps you could try clarifying and being more concise.

 

[Aten]

The quote in your first two sentences doesn't imply what you said in your title (and what is claimed in the title is wrong anyway). That's a pretty rambling post that doesn't make a whole lot of sense while at the same time says a lot of wrong things. I'm not sure there is much we can do with it, but perhaps you could try clarifying and being more concise.

Clarifying further...if you use a Levy distribution to estimate the probability for a big bang to happen, knowing that IF yo were able to measure with a watch the amount of time a singularity has existed prior to the big bang...and this time is obviously infinite - then you might ask: what is the probability that at least one big happen will happen. Which is simply the probability or the so called "probability density function" in the case of continuous probability distributions and namely here:

Whereas c is the scale factor = 0 and x is what you are interested in and namely at least a single big bang or 1.

Which is obviosly 0 with no scale factor and no change whatsoever as a "mean". Since the singularity existence would have no standard deviation and no mean.

In layman terms this is the same as asking: "if a 2 headed coin has been tossed infinite amount of times - what is the probability that a tail would occur". Well since the coin has no tail :)...you got it.

This is just untraditional approach to explain why the big bang cannot in any case be the beginning of the universe. Whether or not it violates both the first law of thermodynamics + Einstein's universe is completely different story.

 

[Mute]

I don't get it...even Guth from MIT who is one of the pioneers of the big bang concept says that "we know that something banged, but why it banged and what caused it to bang is another story" - quoted by memory but the meaning was like that.
So...some people think they are too smart to realize that since we don't have time before the big bang - then it makes no sense to measure anything prior to the bang. In a similar fashion if you were the only person in the world before the big bang you cannot ask "where is the big bang" since the word "where" would have no meaning with just you and some infinitely small object.
But that's not what bothers me...what really strikes me is the fact that the probability for the big bang to happen is actually...you are right: ZERO. There is no chance if something has existed forever to change its form just like that. However, badly enough this is how modern day physics describes the big bang - as something which exists forever and then out of nowhere decides to explode and change it's shape just like tht. It doesn't matter what probability distribution would you use to describe such behaviour - continous, discrete or whatever - the chance for this is always 0.
So something might have caused the big bang. In my opinion the best theory is a white hole. Problem is that I see no way to prove such thing with empirical evidences. Even then it is reasonably to abandon the idea that the big bang is caused randomly. Randomness means that you cannot predict when something is going to happen and not that there is no reason for one thing to happen.


Ps:
Yes I know it wasn't an "explosion" and it wasn't big. It's just known long ago so I didn't include these tiny details.
Other than that: te probability is zero. In layman terms: what is the probability if something has existed forever to die? One in infinity or one divided by infinite amount of numbers - which is 0.0... or actually zero.
So, the big bang problem is a problem of the limit of the human mind - people just desperately desire everything in the world to have a beginning and end - while it has NOT.
Just like the universe has no space where it begins and no space where it ends - if you take 2 bodies that have always moved in opposite directions - they WILL be in infinite space distance between each other. So infinity exists and it rejects the big bang all start theory.

1) You seem to claim that the probability of something which has always existed and is unchanging to suddenly change is zero. What basis do you have for this claim? It sounds to me like it's based on some sort of intuition you've developed about the world, but really you should have no intuition for physics at such extremes, and intuition is not a strong enough rational for stating such strong claims. Relativity and Quantum defied all intuition people had about the way things worked based on their experience; one should learn from this that sometimes intuition fails. Even worse, one should not only expect their intuition to fail for this particular subject matter, one could expect it to fail spectacularly. You're talking about the start of the known universe where all of our current theories fail!

2) Even if your claim that the probability is zero were correct, something having a probability of zero doesn't mean it can't happen. In any continuous system the probability of a specific point turning up as a result is always zero, but it could certainly be the case that you do indeed get that point.

 

[marcus]

...
This is just untraditional approach to explain why the big bang cannot in any case be the beginning of the universe. Whether or not it violates both the first law of thermodynamics + Einstein's universe is completely different story.

To address your main point, I don't know of any rational or scientific reason to assume that the big bang was the beginning of the universe.
Some models break down there, and don't go back further in time. Other models do not break down, and evolve further back in time before the start of expansion. An effort is under way to derive predictions that we can test, so as to distinguish between the various mathematical models.

I don't know if you are interested in other people's research about this. I haven't followed your arguments in this thread, so can't respond in detail. If you want to scan over the most-cited current research in non-singular cosmology, or bounce cosmologies, a lot of it is in the general heading of "quantum cosmology" and a keyword search at SLAC/Spires will turn it up.

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+DK+QUANTUM+COSMOLOGY+AND+DATE+%3E+2006&FORMAT=www&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

This is recent (date > 2006) keyword "quantum cosmology" and ordered by citation count so the most widely referenced papers show up first.
You can change the terms, say change it to (date < 1990) and see who the main authors and research lines in quantum cosmo were back then. For comparison. The field has change a lot in the past 5 years or so.

Also try looking at Einstein-Online, their essay "A Tale of Two Big Bangs" is written for general audience, but reasonably up to date. It is the outreach website of the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, a top research institution. The link is in my signature, or you can google it.

 

[DaveC426913]

What is so ambiguous about "randomness"? I guess you are questioning the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty ...

No, I am questioning your ambiguous use of the terrm. It seems like you're applying the word anywhere you can't see a reason for something to occur.

As Russ says, you were kind of rambling, though your second post is better.