Universe Race

Hi Ichthus,Just to compond on what has already been said, your analogy is further flawed because the expansion of the Universe is not due to objects simply moving apart - space itself is expanding. The dimensions length, width, and height are actually expanding, taking the matter that exists in space along with them.We know the Universe was smaller as time approaches 0 (we reach a mathematical singularity at 0, so we can't say a whole lot about the state of the Universe for a very tiny fraction of a second after T=0, but after that point we have a pretty accurate model), and that it is currently expanding. We know that the Universe is expanding (and not that the objects are simply moving apart) becasue of the redshift of galaxies and stars. You know that effect you hear when a racecar drives by, and the pitch of the engine changes? That's called the doppler effect, and it's the result of the speed of the car relative to you affecting the frequency of the sound waves. The same thing happens to light - the faster (relative to you) an object is moving away, the more the frequency of light it generates is "stretched out," shifting it farther into the red end of the spectrum.The oddest thing is, the farther away we see an object, the more redshifted it is. In other words, the farther away an object is, the faster it's moving away.The best analogy (but not a perfect one, of course) is to imagine space itself to be a balloon, and all of the matter in the Universe is a bunch of dots painted onto it (it's an old analogy, but that's because it works). As the baloon expands, the dots move apart - and since the "space" is expanding uniformly, and there is more "space" to expand between distant object as opposed to objects closer together, more distant objects will actually appear to be moving away from each other faster than closer objects.Exactly as we see with the redshift of distant stars.Now, gravity and other forces keep galaxies, globular clusters, and other such congregations of matter stuck together, so the expansion of space doesn't affect them (otherwise galaxies would be ripped apart). Perhaps we can imagine that, instead of dots on the balloon, stars are like tiny balls, and ones that are close enough together are tied together on strings. Each cluster or galaxy not bound to another will move apart from the others as space expands, but those not tied by gravity will move apart.So you see, the expansion of the Universe really has nothing to do with objects simply moving apart at any given speed. There isn't really a "center" to the Universe that we've been able to determine, and the evidence doesn't support the model your analogy illustrates.It sounds like you've only heard the "popular science" version of Big Bang cosmology - the version on the science channel and in magazines designed for consumption by the general public, and the tiny bit that is occasionally taught in high school. Unfortunately, these are "dumbed down" versions of the actual model, and they sacrifice accuracy in favor of something more easily understood. It's easy to dismantle the models presented on the Science Channel. It's not so easy to attack the actual model used by scientists - especially if the Science Channel version is all you know.Does my analogy help at all?

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When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.

Which betrays the fact that you don't know the first thing about stellar formation or the Big Bang.Stars were not created in the Big Bang. Matter didn't even form right away.Stars formed millions of years later from the slow gravitational attraction of gas clouds towards their gravitational center.Your concept of the Big Bang is that of a chemical explosive - that is not even remotely similar to the Big Bang.I note that you didnt even bother to reply to my last post. I thought that this meant you understood that your analogy was so far off the mark as to be in a different time zone, but this last post suggests that you simply ignored it.

Read my earlier post again, and read up a bit more on the Big Bang...from non-Creationist sources, and not from the Science channel.The Big Bang is a term coined by an opponent of the theory - it stuck because it had a nice sound to it, but I swear, the name causes so much confusion as to the nature of the actual model that I truly wish we could rename it.The Big Bang didn't have a purpose, Ichthus. It's just what we call the initial expansion of the Universe, a process that continues today. And it's not that the matter in the Universe is simply moving apart, as in a combustion-based normal explosion. Rather, it is space itself that is expanding. The Big Bang refers to those bare fractions of a second after T=0 where the dimensions of the Universe expanded from what was, essentially, a much smaller form. We can't describe much of the state the Universe was in at that exact moment because modern physics and mathematics reach a singularity at T=0, which basically means that the equations no longer apply, and we stick a big "I don't know" sticker on that particular coordinate of time.Because everything that is in the Universe was compressed into such a tiny space, it was incredibly hot and dense - essentially it was to hot for matter (as we see it today) to exist. Basically, all of the matter in the Universe existed as a quark-gluon plasma - it hadn't even formed into protons and neutrons and electrons or their antimatter counterparts yet.Note that there was no "creation" of matter suggested in the Big Bang - matter simply changed from one form into another, that's all. Actual creation of matter or energy is impossible as per the laws of thermodynamics, and there is no model that supports such an idea in current cosmology.The "creation" of matter and antimatter you're talking about is simply the assembly of the normal subatomic particles from their quark and gluon components, which basically happened as the Universe continued to expand and cool. There were more quarks than antiquarks present in the plasma, and so normal matter emerged as the most prevalent form of matter as opposed to antimatter. Matter/antimatter annihilation eliminated most of the remainder of the antimatter - what we see today is in particle accelerators or generated by high-energy cosmic phenomenon.All of this happened in less than a single second. Almost all matter existed as Hydrogen (with very few heavier elements). Stellar formation occurred much later, and the stellar fusion process was the genesis of all heavier elements. Yes, that means that we are literally made of stardust, the leftovers of an ancient supernova - which is pretty damned cool, if you ask me.

You're still trying to comprehend this as an "explosion," like a bomb. What we've been trying to explain is that the Big Bang was nothing like a conventional explosion. Your "common sense" understanding based on normal explosions isn't going to apply here.The expansion also did not progress at the exact same rate since T=0. In the first moments, the expansion was exponentially more rapid. It slowed down before the first second had ticked by, but current data suggests that the expansion is actually accelerating.Keep thinking about the balloon analogy that we've mentioned several times in this thread. In a normal explosion, matter inside of a given space is basically forced away from itself as its density is forcibly reduced, typically by a very high and sudden increase in temperature. In the Big Bang, density was decreased becasue the space the matter exists in expanded. It's like the causality chain is reversed in the Big Bang versus a normal explosion. In a normal explosion, volume is forcibly increased because density decreases. In the Big Bang, density is decreased because volume increases as space itself expands. Does that help you understand?Now, because this expansion is of space and not simply an explosion of matter, there is no center to anything. It's just like Taz said in his version of the balloon analogy - everything is moving away from everything else, not from some single center location. Just like you'd see with dots painted on an inflating balloon.Stars and galaxies have enough gravitational strength to hold local objects close, but those didnt start to form for millions of years after the initial expansion and formation of baryonic matter. It took a long time for density irregularities in all that matter to result in slow compression towards gravitational centers to form the first stars. These stars burned through their lifecycle and eventually went supernova - a "normal" explosion of incredible force that scattered stellar matter all over the Universe. Basically all elements heavier than Helium are the result of stellar fusion, and were expelled in supernova explosions. Even the stars we see today are made of "leftovers" from that early period.But gravity, the explosive force of the supernovae, and the nature of Universal expansion mean that there is no "center," and we wouldn't expect to see anything like what you or Ichthus are suggesting.

Until the matter that is the cake batter changes phases. When you break down atoms and even subatomic particles, you can squeeze an aweful lot into a small area...especially when area itself was smaller. "Pure energy" is a poor term. There really isn't any such thing - energy, scientifically described, is the ability to perform work. You can say that a beam of light posesses energy, or that the light's energy was transferred into heat when it struck an object, but "pure energy" is a misnomer popularized by science fiction.The answer, ICANT, is basically "we don't know what state matter was in in that barest fraction of a second, becasue our math stops working. We do know that matter and energy can't be created, we do know that the matter in the Universe does exist, we do know that it existed as a quark-gluon plasma after the unknown moment and before T=1810^-16, and we do know that the Universe is smaller as you approach T=0. You neglect to consider gravity, which is the major force in play at such scales, as well as the fact that all of the gravitational interactions even before stars formed and supernovae afterwards cause things to move in all manner of different direction. We've done computer models based on exactly this scenario, ICANT, and what we see is eerily close to what we observe in the Universe. There's been a lot of time for the cat to tangle this ball of string.The balloon model is relatively accurate. Not perfect, certainly, but it works for describing that space expands, not matter. It's your comprehension that is the problem, ICANT.

Well, it didn't really "hold together," now did it. It expanded, literally for all of time.

Just as a word of encouragement, I learn a great deal from your exchanges with ICANT and Buz and others. You and others in various fields frequently answer questions I hadn't even thought to ask when trying to explain things to them.I think I have a halfway decent grasp for a layperson, but being able to actually talk to physics professors who have taught Big bang cosmology, or actual biologists who deal with evolution's predictions and consequences on a daily basis, is incredibly educational for me. It's half the reason I come to this site.So, you know...thanks.

It wasn't held - that part of the point. Remember, gravity is actually a very weak force compared to the others, like electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.The real problem here is that we don't currently have a model to describe the conditions of the Unvierse in the opening moment of the Bang. The math breaks down, and matter didn't exist in the form we see it today. The answe to your question is "We don't really know enough about the conditions of the Universe at that point to say that gravity as we see it even existed yet." Before the quark/gluon plasma that immediately preceded the formation of baryonic matter, we really don't know much at all.Aside from that, if the expansion of space exceeded the escape velocity for each of the small particles, gravity would have been a non-issue. The current model as I understand it includes an exponential acceleration in expansion over that barest fractiopn of a second, followed by the expansion slowing down to something mroe like the rate we see today (though slower - the current model is also that the expansion is currently accellerating). You mean no answer that you like."Infnite" is awfully hard to acheive. In fact, it shouldn't be possible to achieve an infinite gravitational field. This is part of the reason we have a singularity at T=0 - the math and current models simply break down, and we're forced to say "we don't know." Now that is quite a jumble of misused terms. Gravitational fields don't have "volume" for example. And again, "prior to the Big Bang" is not a phrase that makes sense, as the Big bang describes the expansion of the Universe, which has been occurring for literally all of time. You do know that things do eventually escape from black holes, don't you? It's called Hawking Radiation - it's small, but once they stop consuming new matter, even black holes eventually decay. The smaller the black hole, the more rapid the "evaporation."So since we know it wasn't an infinitely strong gravitational field, and we know that things eventually do escape even black holes, and since we do know that the Universe existed in a much smaller and more dense state than we see today, and we do know that it did expand...your suggestion doesn't make much sense.

If you can think of a better word to use, feel free to suggest it. I don't want to promote any more misunderstandings on ICANTs part, because we all know he just loves to latch on to those and ignore the rest, but it's the only one that came to mind.

No. He's referring to the fact that all matter we see today is the result of stellar fusion - as in, the orginal Hydrogen and scant amounts of Helium that composed all matter in the Universe when the first stars began to form were transmuted into the heavier elements we see (and are made of) today by stellar fusion.He's not saying anything about creation ex nihilo. That's your bag. It was in a different form. Before the quark/gluon plasma, it would have existed in a form so exotic we don't even know its properties. "Pure energy" doesn't work as a descriptor, becasue there's no such thing. When we say we can't decribe the conditions of the Universe in that moment of initial expansion due to the singularity reached by the current model, we mean exactly that. We currently have no way to describe the state of matter, or even the phyisical properties of the Universe we describe with the laws of physics at that point. The math just doesn't work, so we won't be able to understand it until further research is performed.We do know with a reasonable degree of certainty the state of the universe all the way back to that barest fraction of a second.

You're talking about the same thing. The difference is that cavediver undertands the topic. You do not. Yes. No. No, it's not. It's a massive ball of Hydrogen and other elements compacted by gravity so tightly that nuclear fusion is continuous. The sun radiates energy from those fusion reactions, as heat and light and other forms of radiation. I think you really mean "mass," but whatever. ...it most certainly is not. It's mostly molten Iron. That's not energy, that's Iron. You don't understand gravity or other forces at all if you believe this statement. Irrelevant. There was no "packing." The Universe expanded - nobody is claiming it hat to be "wound up." Ecept you, but then you don't understand Big bang cosmology despite the best efforts of everyone here. I'm pretty sure you're still referring to gravitational force from all of teh matter in the Universe at once. And you're still treating this like an explosion of matter. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about space itself expanding, which is quite a bit different.

You're still approaching this from the perspective of being bound to time linearly. You can't conceptualize spacetime that way.Spacetime is a 4-dimentional "object" (sorry, I don't have a better word) that posesses a certain shape. As time increases from 0, the other three dimentions are larger.It's just like plotting a line on a graph, where y = 2x. In this case, as x increases, y would become larger still. There is no "cause" for y to increase - that's just the way the line is when it's plotted on a graph.So too is spacetime. As time (T) increases from 0, the other dimentions of length (L) width (W) and height (H) increase. I can't make a 4-dimentional graph visually, so let's just make 3 seperate 2-dimentional graphs. On each, the x axis will represent time, and the y axis will represent L, W, or H. Get out some graph paper, and plot these very simple lines:L = 2TW = 2TH = 2TIf you plot these out, you'll see that when T=0, so do L, W and H. As T increases, so do L, W and H. There is no cause - that's just the shape of the line.Now, none of our current math really makes sense if L, W and H are all 0. That's what we call a singularity - we're simply unable to describe the conditions of the Universe in that instance with our current models.You're having trouble because we humans of necessity only experience time linearly, from one moment to the next. It's hard to visualize spacetime because we're basically stuck in it. To reuse the balloon example, you're a 2-dimentional dot painted on the skin of the balloon, and you have no way other than mathematics to see the real shape of the balloon.In cosmology, if I understand correctly, we're more trying to look at all of spacetime at once, as a single "object," with various coordinates of T, L, W, and H. At the coordinate T=0, L, W and H are extremely small. At the coordinate T=now, L, W and H are much larger.Cavediver: please correct me as necessary for what follows. This is how I'm conceptualizing everything so far, but I'm certain there are gross inaccuracies. Hopefully I'm not as far off as ICANT You don't necessarily need a "cause" for the shape of spacetime to change as time moves. The shape of spacetime is the result of everything that affects the shape of spacetime (meaning primarily mass through gravity, as I understand), but this affects spacetime as a whole, not just in certain time coordinates.There's no "force" that holds the Universe in it's small state - it's been expanding straight from T=0. There isn't necessarily even a "force" that drives the expansion - spacetime simply has a certain shape, and our observation of L, W and H increasing as time goes on is simply the consequence of being "trapped" in a single direction of time to that we observe the shape of spacetime linearly, instead of as a discrete entity that simply exists.Cavediver, am I anywhere close?

That's literally the same question as "what casued the expansion." Time is just another dimention like length and width, the only difference being that our consciousness is of necessity limited to experiencing the time dimension in a single direction. You're having trouble becasue of human perception.Time simply is, just like the other dimensions. At different coordinates of time, the other dimensions have different corresponding values - that is, length and width and height increase as time increases.But there's no "cause." It simply is.Perhaps this will be something you can understand. Mark it on your calendar, because I'm going to use God in an analogy.Let's pretend that you get to see the Universe from God's perspective. He is supposed to be eternal, and not bound by time or the space of this Universe, since He created all of it, right? So how would the Universe appear to a being from the outside, not bound by the dimensions that make it up?The Universe would exist as a single, discrete entity floating in whatever super-dimension God exists in. Let's just say the Universe looks like a globe, and the North/South axis is time. The other two dimensions represent the three spacial dimensions we're used to. The whole Universe simply exists. You and I each exist for a certain length of the North/South axis. God sees the whole thing, including the coordinates of time you and I are and are not present for, as a single discrete object.Certain coordinated of time have a larger circumference than others. To those of us inside the Universe experiencing time as a sequence of events, it appears that the Universe is expanding. But to God, it's not really. It just is, and it has a certain shape. To God, the concept of "time" is meaningless - he sees it as simply traveling from North to South in the globe.Now, we mere humans, being trapped inside the Universe, can't directly observe the Universe the way God can. Instead, we observe the properties of the Universe, describe them in what we call the laws of physics, and use our model of reality to make infrences about those coordinates of time for which we were not present.We see that, as we go farther towards the North pole of the globe of the Universe (back in time), the other three dimensions of teh Universe are smaller. Mathematically, we begin to see what God sees - the real shape of the Universe. So far we have determined the shape from now all the way back to just scant millimeters from the actual North Pole, where our model finally breaks down into a singularity.When you ask what came "before" the Universe, it makes no sense - the globe that is the Universe is inclusive of time. For the purpose of this visualization, time literally is the North Pole, and there isn't any such thing as farther North than that.If you asked God what "started" time, He'd say "Nothing started it. I made the whole thing, including what you'd call the past, the present, and the future. I made all of time just like I made all of length and width."If you asked God what caused the Universe to expand, He'd point to the globe and say "It didn't. It just has a certain shape. You see it expanding because you are tied to time, but the reality is you can't look at it from the perspective of someone inside the Universe if you want to see what the Universe is."Those like cavediver who have done the math are now trying to explain it to you through a series of easy-to-understand analogies.Does that help?

...those things are this topic. Could you please show me the respect of reading my explanation, and giving it a good-faith examination? We're all trying very hard to help you understand what we're talking about.The topic regards the expansion of the Universe, ICANT. Can we please talk about my previous post a bit to see if you're understanding what we're saying? Leave aside arguing for a moment, put aside debate. Stop trying to poke holes and save it for just a bit later. Try to understand what the actual position of science is. After you understand what we're talking about, you can feel free to criticize all you'd like...but if you're going to simply dismiss entire posts and repeat yourself, there's no reason for this thread to continue.

Becasue you'd bring the Bible into it, I'm sure. And you're right, that's off-topic - but it also compeltely misses the point of using ananalogy. I'm not trying to get you to buy into a cencept of God. You already have one of those. What I'm trying to do is help you look at the Universe from the outside, the way physics models help us see it. You're having trouble grasping time as cosmologists see it, and that's perfectly understandable - we don't experience time that way, so it's counterintuitive.Everything else in your response is tied to your misunderstanding of this basic premise, ICANT. Until you can view time as just another dimension, you won't understand this. We're basically working outside of causality at this point - causality requires a sequence of events in time, and without a "before" for the Universe, we really can't examine "causes." The whole concept breaks down at this point. It's yet another part of the reason modern physics reach a singularity at T=0: nothing makes sense at that point under our current models.Please, try to follow us here. We've given you a few dozen analogies, but it really seems like you're too focused on either taking the analogies farther than we intend, or picking them apart without understanding them first. Let's try to use this as an educational thread - right now, you don't understand the Big Bang model. You think you do, but experts like cavediver are telling you that you do not. Let's trust them, and try to learn first. Until you understand, any model you argue against is just a strawman. We know you dont understand becasue you suggest such things as the Universe expanding at the speed of light - the model doesn't say that.So let's keep trying. Go back to my God example, and take it as I meant you to: look at the Universe as an outside observer would see it, an observer who is outside of time. Again, until you understand the model, there's no point continuing.