Big Bang

Does anyone else feel uneasy with this concept like I do?

The big bang is used as description of our universal origins, but it is something I have always felt uncomfortable believing. I appreciate the evidence for it, but there is also evidence that contradicts with it too.

I think it rather glib to say that time didn't exist before the big bang, making the concept of a time before the big bang moot. I find this concept too difficult to accept.

I realise that scientific minds are still searching for better answers and there are competing hypotheses that all seem to infer a state prior to the big bang. The problem for me is that concepts of eternity are equally hard to grasp and whatever answer one settles on will always raises more unanswerable questions.

The common misconception about the scientific theory, rather than the colloquial interpretation, that I too believed for a time, is that the big bang is about the "origin" of or universe. What the theory entails, scientifically, is the time from the first (tiniest fraction of an instant in time) AFTER the event that caused the big bang to present, and the expansion of space in that period of time. As with evolution and abiogenesis, the big bang does not comment about the actual origin, and leaves that up to speculation. There was, at one point in time, some "thing" of near-infinite mass and near-infinite tiny-ness, that expanded into our current universe and is still expanding. There is nothing else that the evidence can suggest, and my personal understanding of the theory, that can be inferred.Zeviander

Well big bang seems to be specifically about the origin of this universe, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Physicists studying the big bang don't purposefully restrict themselves to only investigate what happened thousandths of a second after the big bang. They only do this because universal laws break down at that specific time. Of course scientists are interested in causality and why those laws don't work and what laws would work. Rejecting this notion as speculation while adhering to a big bang as a certainty seems rather ill-conceived in my view.

Treating abiogenesis as an entirely seperate event to evolution is also rather a cop-out in my way of thinking. Those two events are obviously somehow linked, but there is no suitable evidence yet to validate this. 

Many physicists theorise about how the big bang was caused and seek evidence and mathematical structure to relate concepts of universal pre-existance and the like. The big bang theory isn't entirely problem-free:

Neil Turok, who heads the "Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics" leads a group of theoretical physicists who seem to share a concensus that the big bang was not the beginning of time or of the universe, but rather part of an n-dimensional system.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/qa_turok?currentPage=all

Conversely, people like Andre Linde hold to a model of universal inflation, which seems to me to be a mathematically complex fudge-factor to resolve horizon, flatness and magnetic monopole issues caused by the big bang theory and indicate a wider pre-existing cosmological system.

Treating abiogenesis as an entirely seperate event to evolution is also rather a cop-out in my way of thinking. Those two events are obviously somehow linked, but there is no suitable evidence yet to validate this.RationalAtheist

Hmmm.

Abiogenesis could have happened only once.Evolution happens with each successive generation.The evolution happening now has an incredibly dilute relationship with abiogenesis occurring ~3.5B years ago.

You mention your conclusion first that the two events are obviously linked, then mention a lack of evidence to support your conjecture. Well I never.

But RationalAtheist, I suspect your conjecture may one day be proven right. Adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine the four specific molecules which act as bases for DNA. Whatever the first self-replicating molecule was, perhaps getting to these base pairs was part of the key, for an organism which can evolve? I think if this is what you're getting at, then yes they're definitely linked. Abiogenesis had to produce an organism which could evolve.

As for the Big Bang theory, well, despite not having a working understanding of the theory in it's entirety (I understand some things like how light wavelength is used to determine everything's moving away from this point in the Universe suspected to be the origin of the singularity ... or something), it is much easier for me to accept than any religious tale. Plus, TBBT might get more interesting over time.

The point many people don't get introduced to with the big bang is that it does not serve to answer why the universe is here, but how. Asking wat came before is often seen as a silly question because there wasn't a 'before.' Time-space is believed to have come about from this expansion, so there was no time before it. It's like the center of a black hole, where time doesn't exist. If you threw a clock into a black hole, the closer you got to the center, the slower the clock moves/time passes, until eventually time stops.

Another point to note is the rapid expansion of quantum physics lately, and how particles can literally appear out of nothing. We may very well be one of countless universes that 'pop into existence' out of seemingly nothing. I might suggest Lawrence Krauss's "Universe From Nothing" book about this very phenomenon. There are some lectures from him around youtube as well.

Hmmm.

Abiogenesis could have happened only once.Evolution happens with each successive generation.The evolution happening now has an incredibly dilute relationship with abiogenesis occurring ~3.5B years ago.

You mention your conclusion first that the two events are obviously linked, then mention a lack of evidence to support your conjecture. Well I never.

But RationalAtheist, I suspect your conjecture may one day be proven right. Adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine the four specific molecules which act as bases for DNA. Whatever the first self-replicating molecule was, perhaps getting to these base pairs was part of the key, for an organism which can evolve? I think if this is what you're getting at, then yes they're definitely linked. Abiogenesis had to produce an organism which could evolve.

psymon100

Hmmm indeed. I'm not concluding anything though, psymon100. I'm making an assertion that evolution required some form of basis to start.

How would you know if abiogenesis has happened only once, or more than once? The link between evolution and abiogenesis is simple - as you stated yourself in the above post. 

The point many people don't get introduced to with the big bang is that it does not serve to answer why the universe is here, but how. Asking wat came before is often seen as a silly question because there wasn't a 'before.' Time-space is believed to have come about from this expansion, so there was no time before it. It's like the center of a black hole, where time doesn't exist. If you threw a clock into a black hole, the closer you got to the center, the slower the clock moves/time passes, until eventually time stops.

wis3boi

The explanation of "how" rather than "why" is another total cop-out. For a start, physicists can not explain how the big band occurred. If they could, then they may also be able to explain why. Science does endeavour to answer both how and why questions, given evidence and discovery. The two issues are linked in discovery, understanding and knowledge. I can't understand why people separate the two ideas.

The idea about time not existing is one that I personally have never felt was a capable explanation. Modern scientific consensus is moving away from this idea now. The idea about throwing clocks into black holes seems like a pitiful and unprovable explanation. As if we know what happens inside a black hole! We also"know" about the relative nature of time in space...

There are no silly questions regarding the unknown, but there are silly refusals to acknowledge the lack of evidence for our universal origins that strikes me as almost a religiously styled denial of uncertainty in sticking to some rather meaningless ideas.

Hmmm indeed. I'm not concluding anything though, psymon100. I'm making an assertion that evolution required some form of basis to start.

How would you know if abiogenesis has happened only once, or more than once? The link between evolution and abiogenesis is simple - as you stated yourself in the above post.

RationalAtheist

True, you're making an assertion, a pretty robust one.

How would I know if abiogenesis happened only once or more than once? I guess I would be looking for evidence of organisms, alive or dead, which didn't use the 4 base pairs I mentioned as the backbone to their equivalent of DNA. Then again, this assumption could also be wrong. What if it is only possible for self replicating life with these four base pairs? Even so, considering the massive success of the A-T, C-G organisms, I think any evidence of unsuccessful abiogenesis (as in, abiogenesis occured but subsequent organism either could not evolve or was out-done by A-T, C-G organisms) is probably near on impossible to find. Also, a lack of evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen, it might just mean the evidence remains undiscovered.

[QUOTE="psymon100"]

Hmmm.

Abiogenesis could have happened only once.Evolution happens with each successive generation.The evolution happening now has an incredibly dilute relationship with abiogenesis occurring ~3.5B years ago.

You mention your conclusion first that the two events are obviously linked, then mention a lack of evidence to support your conjecture. Well I never.

But RationalAtheist, I suspect your conjecture may one day be proven right. Adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine the four specific molecules which act as bases for DNA. Whatever the first self-replicating molecule was, perhaps getting to these base pairs was part of the key, for an organism which can evolve? I think if this is what you're getting at, then yes they're definitely linked. Abiogenesis had to produce an organism which could evolve.

RationalAtheist

Hmmm indeed. I'm not concluding anything though, psymon100. I'm making an assertion that evolution required some form of basis to start.

How would you know if abiogenesis has happened only once, or more than once? The link between evolution and abiogenesis is simple - as you stated yourself in the above post.

The point many people don't get introduced to with the big bang is that it does not serve to answer why the universe is here, buthow. Asking wat came before is often seen as a silly question because there wasn't a 'before.' Time-space is believed to have come about from this expansion, so there was no time before it. It's like the center of a black hole, where time doesn't exist. If you threw a clock into a black hole, the closer you got to the center, the slower the clock moves/time passes, until eventually time stops.

wis3boi

The explanation of "how" rather than "why" is another total cop-out. For a start, physicists can not explain how the big band occurred. If they could, then they may also be able to explain why. Science does endeavour to answer both how and why questions, given evidence and discovery. The two issues are linked in discovery, understanding and knowledge. I can't understand why people separate the two ideas.

The idea about time not existing is one that I personally have never felt was a capable explanation. Modern scientific consensus is moving away from this idea now. The idea about throwing clocks into black holes seems like a pitiful and unprovable explanation. As if we know what happens inside a black hole! We also"know" about the relative nature of time in space...

There are no silly questions regarding the unknown, but there are silly refusals to acknowledge the lack of evidence for our universal origins that strikes me as almost a religiously styled denial of uncertainty in sticking to some rather meaningless ideas.

You do know that if you got into a spacecraft and traveled near, at, or over (lol) the speed of light, you'd travel into the future, right? You'd go to the next solar system, and arrive in no time, and 1000+ years would have passed on earth. Time is relative and is fully related to black holes, speeds, positions, etc. You cannot answer what came before the big bang because it cannot be measured or observed in any possible way without breaking physics. You hit what is called the Planck wall, where our laws of physics do not apply at all.

You do know that if you got into a spacecraft and traveled near, at, or over (lol) the speed of light, you'd travel into the future, right? You'd go to the next solar system, and arrive in no time, and 1000+ years would have passed on earth. Time is relative and is fully related to black holes, speeds, positions, etc. You cannot answer what came before the big bang because it cannot be measured or observed in any possible way without breaking physics. You hit what is called the Planck wall, where our laws of physics do not apply at all.

wis3boi

Travelling at any speed takes you in to the future - you don't need a spacecraft for that. Only mass-less particles can travel at the speed of light and it is unknown if anything can go faster than that. Travelling at the speed of light to the next solar system (Alpha Centuri is known to have a planet) would take roughly 4.3 years from an Earth observer's perspective.

If you say you can not answer what happened before the big bang because of breaking physics, then it must follow that you also can't answer what happened at and immediately after the big bang because it breaks physics too. You have to bend physics quite a bit to relate out current known universe back to a big bang event.

I'm not sure where you get this information and how you combine it to produce such a certainty that is also peppered with mistakes and assumptions.

True, you're making an assertion, a pretty robust one.

How would I know if abiogenesis happened only once or more than once? I guess I would be looking for evidence of organisms, alive or dead, which didn't use the 4 base pairs I mentioned as the backbone to their equivalent of DNA. Then again, this assumption could also be wrong. What if it is only possible for self replicating life with these four base pairs? Even so, considering the massive success of the A-T, C-G organisms, I think any evidence of unsuccessful abiogenesis (as in, abiogenesis occured but subsequent organism either could not evolve or was out-done by A-T, C-G organisms) is probably near on impossible to find. Also, a lack of evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen, it might just mean the evidence remains undiscovered.

psymon100

I thought you said that abiogenesis could have only happened once. Wouldn't evolution include the sequencing of base pairs from simpler forms that we might consider non-life? In other words, when does what we consider evolution start? Given that evolution requires specific pre-conditions to work, wouldn't it be possible for those circumstances to have been present more than once?

If you say you can not answer what happened before the big bang because of breaking physics, then it must follow that you alsocan't answer what happened at and immediately after the big bang because it breaks physics too. You have to bend physics quite a bit to relate out current known universe back to a big bang event.

I'm not sure where you get this information and how you combine it to produce such a certainty that is also peppered with mistakes and assumptions.

RationalAtheist

I got it from astrophysics documentaries freely available on youtube, the history channel, science channel.....Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Michio Kaku. This isn't random assumptions, this is the physics we know. Right after the big bang doesn't break physics, because the physics we know had already been created in that instant. Not sure what's so difficult about this. I was learning these things as far back as a middle school classroom.

I got it from astrophysics documentaries freely available on youtube, the history channel, science channel.....Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Michio Kaku. This isn't random assumptions, this is the physics we know. Right after the big bang doesn't break physics, because the physics we know had already been created in that instant. Not sure what's so difficult about this. I was learning these things as far back as a middle school classroom.

wis3boi

Nice references. They're just like my ones! Great evasions there too. Middle school physics lessons oversimplify things to make them "easy" to understand for children.

Physics don't work just after and at the big bang which is why we need hypotheses like cosmic inflation to explain them. 

[QUOTE="wis3boi"]

I got it from astrophysics documentaries freely available on youtube, the history channel, science channel.....Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Michio Kaku. This isn't random assumptions, this is the physics we know. Right after the big bang doesn't break physics, because the physics we know had already been created in that instant. Not sure what's so difficult about this. I was learning these things as far back as a middle school classroom.

RationalAtheist

Nice references. They're just like my ones! Great evasions there too. Middle school physics lessons oversimplify things to make them "easy" to understand for children.

Physics don't work just after and at the big bang which is why we need hypotheses likecosmic inflationto explain them.

I think you need to read my posts a little more carefully.

A) I started learning astrophysics in middle school. This does not imply I stopped there. (I'm 22 by the way) in fact I listen to/watch 2-5 hours of physics and philosophy lectures each night

B) I know about cosmic inflation, this doesn't have much to do with what I am discussing: what came before it. We cannot get to a 'before.' We know it expands rapidly from a dense area...what we fail to achieve understanding of is a cause/time before it.

The Planck Wall stops you from examning any period before this event

I think you need to read my posts a little more carefully.

A) I started learning astrophysics in middle school. This does not imply I stopped there. (I'm 22 by the way) in fact I listen to/watch 2-5 hours of physics and philosophy lectures each night

B) I know about cosmic inflation, this doesn't have much to do with what I am discussing: what came before it. We cannot get to a 'before.' We know it expands rapidly from a dense area...what we fail to achieve understanding of is a cause/time before it.

The Planck Wall stops you from examning any period before this event

wis3boi

That's exactly what I think you should have done with my posts.

A) I really don't give a stuff about any "credentials" you apply to yourself - they're meaningless and it's only what you say that matters. Perhaps you should watch a "Horizon" program from the BBC - "What happened before the big bang" in your own personal scheduling. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vdkmj (It's got your fave Michio Kaku in it!)

B) I have no idea about what you're discussing, aside from to say that it is impossible to theorise about a state before the big bang. I thought I dealt with that in my first post. But like much other stuff you've come out with already, and like your own video clip about the "Plank Wall" (did you even watch it?), your supplied "evidence" contradicts with what you say!

The Planck wall does not stop any examination - it generates more of it - for a theoretical physicist anyway! What it does is to highlight our lack of comprehension about what happened around a big bang event and show how such a simple "middle school" explanation does not really fit with our current evidence from observing our universe.

[QUOTE="psymon100"]

True, you're making an assertion, a pretty robust one.

How would I know if abiogenesis happened only once or more than once? I guess I would be looking for evidence of organisms, alive or dead, which didn't use the 4 base pairs I mentioned as the backbone to their equivalent of DNA. Then again, this assumption could also be wrong. What if it is only possible for self replicating life with these four base pairs? Even so, considering the massive success of the A-T, C-G organisms, I think any evidence of unsuccessful abiogenesis (as in, abiogenesis occured but subsequent organism either could not evolve or was out-done by A-T, C-G organisms) is probably near on impossible to find. Also, a lack of evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen, it might just mean the evidence remains undiscovered.

RationalAtheist

I thought you said that abiogenesis could have only happened once. Wouldn't evolution include the sequencing of base pairs from simpler forms that we might consider non-life? In other words, when does what we consider evolution start? Given that evolution requires specific pre-conditions to work, wouldn't it be possible for those circumstances to have been present more than once?

Sorry I took so long to respond. Yeah that's right. It could have happened once, or it could have happened more than once. Yes going from abiogenesis to standard base pair organisms may in itself be an evolution, assuming that abiogenesis did not result in an organism so complex as to include the DNA backbone as we know it today.

[QUOTE="wis3boi"]

You do know that if you got into a spacecraft and traveled near, at, or over (lol) the speed of light, you'd travel into the future, right? You'd go to the next solar system, and arrive in no time, and 1000+ years would have passed on earth. Time is relative and is fully related to black holes, speeds, positions, etc. You cannot answer what came before the big bang because it cannot be measured or observed in any possible way without breaking physics. You hit what is called the Planck wall, where our laws of physics do not apply at all.

RationalAtheist

Travelling at any speed takes you in to the future - you don't need a spacecraft for that. Only mass-less particles can travel at the speed of light and it is unknown if anything can go faster than that. Travelling at the speed of light to the next solar system (Alpha Centuri is known to have a planet) would take roughly 4.3 years from an Earth observer's perspective.

If you say you can not answer what happened before the big bang because of breaking physics, then it must follow that you also can't answer what happened at and immediately after the big bang because it breaks physics too. You have to bend physics quite a bit to relate out current known universe back to a big bang event.

I'm not sure where you get this information and how you combine it to produce such a certainty that is also peppered with mistakes and assumptions.

I'm by no means an expert but I brought a few who seem to agree with wis3boi

junglist101

Looking at pictures is easier than trying to understand what those people said! Appeals to authority are more common in the religious paradigm than with the scientific method.

Hawkings, in his Hartle-Hawking state hypothesis, actually has to split time up in to "real" time and "imaginary" time to explain his "no boundary condition". He said "I have proposed that space and imaginary time together, are indeed finite in extent, but without boundary". Isn't that a contradiction? And what of "real" time?

As for Einstein, you may like to watch this - particularly at the 1:50 minute mark!:

http://www.history.com/shows/the-universe/videos/beyond-the-big-bang-albert-einstein#beyond-the-big-bang-albert-einstein 

I'm not sure what he said abut the origins of the big bang and on the finite state of this universe. Could you enlighten me on this?

To be honest RA, you're sounding like the religious nuts on OT in here :P You aren't making a whole lot of sense and aren't reading other posts very well.

Appeal to authority? So you think we're taking those scientists word for it just because they are scientists? No, you're assuming.

Also, you History channel video didn't explain anything about what we actually know today, since he died long ago.

The universe is flat. WMAP, an orbiter taking data from an L@ orbit in space, did the examination that brought us to the conclusion of its shape and size.

If the universe were flat, the brightest microwave background fluctuations (or "spots") would be about one degree across. If the universe were open, the spots would be less than one degree across. If the universe were closed, the brightest spots would be greater than one degree across. The data came back and it was one degree. This is with a 0.05% degree of error.

And repeating myself again, we cannot deduce the complete age of literally everything in the universe, only the one we see with our eyes and tools because of the Planck wall. There could have been billions and billions of years of activity before the big bang, it could have happened many times, or nothing could have happened. We simply do not know and cannot know for the forseeable future until some breakthrough in astrophyics occurs to where we can peer beyond our own realm of physics. We do not possess the mathematical knowledge to even begin looking beyond the nanoseconds after the big bang started, and since Einstein died in 1955 way before much of our current knowledge of the subject came about, he had very little say on this matter

To be honest RA, you're sounding like the religious nuts on OT in here :P You aren't making a whole lot of sense and aren't reading other posts very well.

Appeal to authority? So you think we're taking those scientists word for it just because they are scientists? No, you're assuming.

wis3boi

I think I have read other posts here well enough. Your's for example, preferred to jusitfy your own knowledge without explaining any of it, after reciting some rather bizarre and incorrect "facts" that you still haven't defended against my rebuttals. Don't you know how to discuss things? Perhaps you should watch some programs on it, rather than being insulting and palming me off with falacious claims you knew all this in middle school.

The appeals to authority were your own fixation on justifying your knowledge through years of TV watching (rather than justifying anything of what you said) and another Junglist101 post made up entirely of pictures of scientists - who incidentally didn't concur with the lines of reasoning (if there were any) being presented here. Explaining ideas always carries more weight than posting pics or making claims of watching lots of TV about it.

What is so religious about claiming not to know and to be suspicious about evidence presented as fact that many leading astrophysicists doubt themselves? (See BBC1 documentary that I based this thread on for more information) If anything, your certainty about stuff seems more like a faith than my uncertainty and doubt. 

 

Also, you History channel video didn't explain anything about what we actually know today, since he died long ago.

wis3boi

The history channel link specifically referred to what Einstein understood and believed about this issue. I posted it as a response to someone claiming incorrectly (by merely posting his picture) that he was convinced of a finite nature of the beginning of the universe. That does not seem to be the case with Einstein, does it?

 

The universe is flat. WMAP, an orbiter taking data from an L@ orbit in space, did the examination that brought us to the conclusion of its shape and size.

If the universe were flat, the brightest microwave background fluctuations (or "spots") would be about one degree across. If the universe were open, the spots would be less than one degree across. If the universe were closed, the brightest spots would be greater than one degree across. The data came back and it was one degree. This is with a 0.05% degree of error.

And repeating myself again, we cannot deduce the complete age of literally everything in the universe, only the one we see with our eyes and tools because of the Planck wall. There could have been billions and billions of years of activity before the big bang, it could have happened many times, or nothing could have happened. We simply do not know and cannot know for the foreseeable future until some breakthrough in astrophysics occurs to where we can peer beyond our own realm of physics. We do not possess the mathematical knowledge to even begin looking beyond the nanoseconds after the big bang started, and since Einstein died in 1955 way before much of our current knowledge of the subject came about, he had very little say on this matter

wis3boi

So what does universal flatness have to do with this? Surely we should find some of the dark energy needed to ensure our understanding of the universe fits with our observation. Do you accept it as another certainty, rather than as a fudge factor for something unexplained that makes our calculations work? Why can't you deduce the age of everything in the universe? I thought you could if there was a big bang that created it. It is what came before it and how it came about that concerns me. It is how the explanation for the big bang does not seem to resolve outstanding observable issues about the universe that I'm referring to.

Perhaps you should be lecturing Junglists101 on Einstein and not me. 

I composed a carefully thought out post that I lost :evil: so I'll give the short version of what I was gonna say.

The pictures were mostly in relation to you not agreeing with what wis3boi was saying about time. Hawkings has said that it is plausible that time did not exist outside of the singularity, and that the laws of physics as we know them were created the moment of the big bang. Einsteins theory of relativity and special relativity prove that a person travelling at the speed of light would experience time much slower than that of an observer on earth. It also proves that time is affected by the mass of an object, making it plausible that time near the event horizon of a black hole would nearly stop.

Why are you arguing with us? Philoklia was up to his antics in OT earlier go mess with him:P

I composed a carefully thought out post that I lost :evil: so I'll give the short version of what I was gonna say.

The pictures were mostly in relation to you not agreeing with what wis3boi was saying about time. Hawkings has said that it is plausible that time did not exist outside of the singularity, and that the laws of physics as we know them were created the moment of the big bang. Einsteins theory of relativity and special relativity prove that a person travelling at the speed of light would experience time much slower than that of an observer on earth. It also proves that time is affected by the mass of an object, making it plausible that time near the event horizon of a black hole would nearly stop.

Why are you arguing with us? Philoklia was up to his antics in OT earlier go mess with him:P

junglist101

I'm sorry you lost your post. 

I guess you didn't click the link to the Hawking web site that discusses real and imaginary time, as I already explained. 

I guess you didn't watch the clip that showed how Einstein hated the idea of a finite universe that his theories helped create.

I fully realise that time and space are related, as is time to gravity. I understand the time is relative and have said this already. I know these things. I wonder why the point of my post has been missed so widely and responded to in such as way as has been done here. I'll understand if you don't want to generate discussion about how little we really know and what a splendid yet thinnest of veneers called knowledge people come to accept as the truth.

Why are you arguing with me? Why don't you go and argue with Phil? If what I'm saying here is contradicted by middle school science lessons and some of the greatest thinkers ever known, then why not answer the specific points I raise about what they say?

[QUOTE="junglist101"]

I composed a carefully thought out post that I lost :evil: so I'll give the short version of what I was gonna say.

The pictures were mostly in relation to you not agreeing with what wis3boi was saying about time. Hawkings has said that it is plausible that time did not exist outside of the singularity, and that the laws of physics as we know them were created the moment of the big bang. Einsteins theory of relativity and special relativity prove that a person travelling at the speed of light would experience time much slower than that of an observer on earth. It also proves that time is affected by the mass of an object, making it plausible that time near the event horizon of a black hole would nearly stop.

Why are you arguing with us? Philoklia was up to his antics in OT earlier go mess with him:P

RationalAtheist

I'm sorry you lost your post.

I guess you didn't click the link to the Hawking web site that discusses real and imaginary time, as I already explained.

I guess you didn't watch the clip that showed how Einstein hated the idea of a finite universe that his theories helped create.

I fully realise that time and space are related, as is time to gravity. I understand the time is relative and have said this already. I know these things. I wonder why the point of my post has been missed so widely and responded to in such as way as has been done here. I'll understand if you don't want to generate discussion about how little we really know and what a splendid yet thinnest of veneers called knowledge people come to accept as the truth.

Why are you arguing with me? Why don't you go and argue with Phil? If what I'm saying here is contradicted by middle school science lessons and some of the greatest thinkers ever known, then why not answer the specific points I raise about what they say?

because I've already answered them with the planck wall and the fact that nobody knows anything about the true cause of the bang or what came before it, all we know is that it happened and that it gave way to a flat universe. That it. Nothing more. We don't know enough about the quantum world or realms of physics beyond our own yet. We get your point, responded to it, but you seem to keep asking the same thing.

May I also suggest this lecture on the subject? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUe0_4rdj0U or perhaps the actual book that gave way to this lecture.

because I've already answered them with the planck wall and the fact that nobody knows anything about the true cause of the bang or what came before it, all we know is that it happened and that it gave way to a flat universe. That it. Nothing more. We don't know enough about the quantum world or realms of physics beyond our own yet. We get your point, responded to it, but you seem to keep asking the same thing.

May I also suggest this lecture on the subject? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUe0_4rdj0U or perhaps the actual book that gave way to this lecture.

wis3boi

The planck wall, as I've already explained, hides what happened just after the big bang.

The flat universe idea relies on dark energy - used as a fix to show a flat universe. No-one knows what dark energy actually is. This is another point I made to you that you purposefully ignore.

We? How many of you are there? Why not just speak for yourself? After all, you seem to have some disagreement with Junglist101 about Einstein. You don't seem really to get my point and have made some of the most fundamental (and fundamentalist sounding) mistakes in your gross generalisations. You also ignore the direct responses I make when you answer someone else's post while ignoring responses to your own post.

Have you watched my BBC Horizon program yet? Get back to me when you have. It shows interviews with Linde (an author of the inflation theory idea) and he says his hypothesis requires pre-existing conditions (akin to a cosmic space arrangement like a Jarlsberg cheese). When you've watched that, I'll watch your link, but I warn you that your last one only served to confirm my perspective and contradict your own position. This link you've provided now features Richard Dawkins, who is an evolutionary biologist, rather than a theoretical astrophysicist. Most of it is absolutely nothing to do with the origins of the big bang and talks about monkeys, politics, creationists and perceptions of atheism. I think you make a category error in showing me this video. Find one that's about what we're discussing, then watch it yourself.

Better still, rather than posting links to two-hour long irrelevant videos, post ideas, criticisms and justifications from your own mind - if that's possible for you.How many hard-core religious folk have you seen in OT resort to posting links to long videos, using "we", dodging questions, jumping in on other people's posts, etc?

[QUOTE="wis3boi"]

because I've already answered them with the planck wall and the fact that nobody knows anything about the true cause of the bang or what came before it, all we know is that it happened and that it gave way to a flat universe. That it. Nothing more. We don't know enough about the quantum world or realms of physics beyond our own yet. We get your point, responded to it, but you seem to keep asking the same thing.

May I also suggest this lecture on the subject? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUe0_4rdj0U or perhaps the actual book that gave way to this lecture.

RationalAtheist

The planck wall, as I've already explained, hides what happened just after the big bang.

The flat universe idea relies on dark energy - used as a fix to show a flat universe. No-one knows what dark energy actually is. This is another point I made to you that you purposefully ignore.

We? How many of you are there? Why not just speak for yourself? After all, you seem to have some disagreement with Junglist101 about Einstein. You don't seem really to get my point and have made some of the most fundamental (and fundamentalist sounding) mistakes in your gross generalisations. You also ignore the direct responses I make when you answer someone else's post while ignoring responses to your own post.

Have you watched my BBC Horizon program yet? Get back to me when you have. It shows interviews with Linde (an author of the inflation theory idea) and he says his hypothesis requires pre-existing conditions (akin to a cosmic space arrangement like a Jarlsberg cheese). When you've watched that, I'll watch your link, but I warn you that your last one only served to confirm my perspective and contradict your own position. This link you've provided now features Richard Dawkins, who is an evolutionary biologist, rather than a theoretical astrophysicist. Most of it is absolutely nothing to do with the origins of the big bang and talks about monkeys, politics, creationists and perceptions of atheism. I think you make a category error in showing me this video. Find one that's about what we're discussing, then watch it yourself.

Better still, rather than posting links to two-hour longirrelevant videos, post ideas, criticisms and justifications from your own mind - if that's possible for you.How many hard-core religious folk have you seen in OT resort to posting links to long videos, using "we", dodging questions, jumping in on other people's posts, etc?

And at this point I conclude you have no idea what is going on and have clouded the argument with preconceptions on varying areas in the subject. If you wish to have an actual discussion like I would wish to have, you'll need to stop assuming things and pulling random things out of your ass. Good day.

And at this point I conclude you have no idea what is going on and have clouded the argument with preconceptions on varying areas in the subject. If you wish to have an actual discussion like I would wish to have, you'll need to stop assuming things and pulling random things out of your ass. Good day.

wis3boi

Tell me, in the interests of having an actual discussion, why you'd think I have no idea what's going on, what things I have assumed, how I've clouded any arguments and what those preconceptions were. I'd also like to know why you think i have a donkey.

Your continued evasion, unsubstantiated generalised criticism and your final resort to insult would make you an excellent theological adherent. Would a leaned astrophysicist throw such a hissy-fit as your's?

Some news in today raises doubts over the ideas behind dark energy, dark matter and "super symmetry".

"Supersymmetry theorises the existence of more massive versions of particles that have already been detected.

Their existence would help explain why galaxies appear to rotate faster than the Standard Model would suggest. Physicists have speculated that as well as the particles we know about, galaxies contain invisible, undetected dark matter made up of super particles. The galaxies therefore contain more mass than we can detect and so spin faster.

Researchers at the LHCb detector have dealt a serious blow to this idea. They have measured the decay between a particle known as a Bs Meson into two particles known as muons. It is the first time that this decay has been observed and the team has calculated that for every billion times that the Bs Meson decays it only decays in this way three times. "

If superparticles were to exist the decay would happen far more often. This test is one of the "golden" tests for supersymmetry and it is one that on the face of it this hugely popular theory among physicists has failed.

Prof Val Gibson, leader of the Cambridge LHCb team, said that the new result was "putting our supersymmetry theory colleagues in a spin".

The results are in fact completely in line with what one would expect from the Standard Model. There is already concern that the LHCb's sister detectors might have expected to have detected superparticles by now, yet none have been found so far.

A Bs Meson decays into two muons: a rare event that undermines physics's favourite theory

If supersymmetry is not an explanation for dark matter, then theorists will have to find alternative ideas to explain those inconsistencies in the Standard Model. So far researchers who are racing to find evidence of so called "new physics" have run into a series of dead ends. 

bumping this with two quotes to put things in perspective.

"Now days we don't have any trouble telling time, we just look at our watch and see that it's a quarter after four. And time seems like an obvious concept, but in the 20th century, a lot of the things that seemed obvious, when you looked more closely, were not so precisely defined. So, 100 years ago, a particle seemed like it had a definite position and velocity, but then with quantum mechanics it turned out that that was fuzzy. And now if we try to combine quantum mechanics and gravity, the notion of time gets fuzzy. So this fuzziness won't really matter in everyday life, because we don't tell time accurately enough for this quantum mechanical fuzziness to matter. But as you went back toward the big bang, the quantum mechanical fuzziness would become more and more important. I'd probably speculate that near the big bang, the notion of time really breaks down and so the question of what was the beginning and what was there before the beginning, that kind of question will ultimately turn out to not quite make sense."

- Edward Witten

"All of the Friedmann solutions have the feature that some time in the past (between ten and twenty thousand million years ago) the distance between neighboring galaxies must have been zero. At the time, which we call the big bang, the density of the universe and the curvature of space-time would have been infinite. Because mathematics cannot really handle infinite numbers, this means that the general theory of relativity (on which Friedmanns solutions are based) predicts that there is a point in the universe where the theory itself breaks down. Such a point is an example of what mathematicians call a singularity. In fact, all our theories of science are formulated on the assumption that space-time is smooth and nearly flat, so they break down at the big bang singularity, where the curvature of space-time is infinite. This means that even if there were events the big bang, one could not use them to determine what would happen afterward, because predictability would break down at the big bang. Correspondingly, if, as is the case, we know only what has happened since the big bang, we could not determine what happened beforehand. As far as we are concerned, events before the big bang can have no consequences, so they should not form a part of a scientific model of the universe. We should therefore cut them out of the model and say that time had a beginning at the big bang."

- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Please do watch this  documentary I've been banging on about. I finally found it on Facebook videos, but you don't need to join up to view it, only click these links (hopefully):

(BBC Horizon) What happened before the big bang?

Part 1: 

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=288131614548752&set=vb.145108762209383&type=3&theater

Part 2: 

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=288141471214433&set=vb.145108762209383&type=3&theater

Part 3: 

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=288152671213313&set=vb.145108762209383&type=3&theater