In the beginning...

...was the word j/kwas a very small, very hot, very dense clump of matter of no particular shape and of no fixed abode and nothing else it appeared to be embedded in a "void" , this clump contained everything there ever is or was even life, then BANG for no particular reason......it's constituent parts expanded outwards in no particular pattern that could be discerned and as it did it left in it's wake space and the time it took for everything to become as it it is nowit continues to spread apart at astonishing speed and immeasurable distance even unto infinity some would say......and for no particular reason other than because it couldsomewhere along the way parts of it couldn't handle the size of the things they had become and collapsed into themselves forming holes in the expanding space/time......meanwhile life had evolved to the point where it could contemplate and comprehend all this but it life couldn't make any sense of it allI am that life......and it's more likely I've got it all wrong and that there is a simpler explanation, so please feel free to correct and enlighten methanx for your time, hit the light on the way out

Read, don't post. That is to say, read up on cosmology instead of repeating the same misconceptions over and over.

We are Star Stuff. -- Carl Sagan(:raig

I don't understand the above reactions to the first post. I know Ringo's a skeptic, but I thought it was very well written and evocatively poetic, and even more, it was accurate. I almost felt like I was reading the New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly.--Percy

It wasn't accurate, that's the point. Might as well get the facts straight, then worry about poetry.[This message has been edited by Beercules, 02-05-2004]

Hard to tell what you're taking issue with if that's all you're going to say. Care to elaborate?--Percy

...yes please beerculesand you might get a KISS from GOD...(keep it simple stupid)

I read the first seven posts in this thread...Actually, I think Ringokid's first post a rather good expression of the bewildering details of cosmology for someone both struggling to figure out what is going on and also impressed on a deeper level with the wonder and strangeness of it all. I enjoyed it.It would be a pity to insist that a poet can only try to express their feelings on the matter after they are assured of getting the details correct... apart from anything else, even if we finally understand the details of cosmological models, those models will eventually be superceded by better models that approach even closer to the strangeness of reality.I'm not inclined to try and pick "errors" in poetry; but I'll be inspired to make a parallel attempt of my own. I'll also try to incorporate a couple of things which might not have come through in Ringokid's original; specifically, that the "clump" was not really a clump in space like a particle, and also that the universe may not have been "small" even when it was dense. Specifically, if the universe is infinite then it was always infinite, even right back to the most dense and compressed states you can image. What would be "small" would be the limited region of space which included all the bits of the universe we can currently see (which now extended out to 13.7 billion light years). Long, long ago, all that space was contained within a tiny tiny region; but the rest of the universe still continues on beyond what we can see, and it still continued on beyond that tiny region even in the early universe.So here we go...

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It's just the common misconception about the big bang being a collection of matter exploding and flying apart, much like a bomb. This view seems to be more common than any other in physics.To be more precise:was a very small, very hot, very dense clump of matter of no particular shape and of no fixed abode and nothing else it appeared to be embedded in a "void" , this clump contained everything there ever is or was even life, then BANG for no particular reason...We know what this reference to a bang is, but this is a misconception about the classic singularity. The situation predicted here is not a very small ball of matter nor anything embedded in a void. The singularity does not have a size, and describes a situation where the density at each point in space becomes infinite....it's constituent parts expanded outwards in no particular pattern that could be discerned and as it did it left in it's wake space and the time it took for everything to become as it it is now
it continues to spread apart at astonishing speed and immeasurable distance even unto infinity some would say...Again, the explosion comparision doesn't work. The expanding universe is not about constituent parts flying apart from each other. Current models predict the volume of "space" is increasing.Any poem or story about where we came from is incomplete without modern cosmology.

No offence,But I think you are being a bit snootie,In this case I think you should take Ringos post as a "you know what I mean..." kind of sittuation. I don't think he was trying to push missconceptions or quibble over cosmological details, and the clarifications you posted do not negate the fundamental question raised by his eloquent pice of pros. Essentialy:That somehow, a non-sentient universe spawnd a creature (us) to look back at itself. That's a pretty facinating, and awe inspiring observation, and needs not be more specific than it's simplified form.Again, no offence, but I think your snipeing is unwarranted.[This message has been edited by Yaro, 02-05-2004]

quote:

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That somehow, a non-sentient universe spawnd a creature (us) to look back at itself. That's a pretty facinating, and awe inspiring observation, and needs not be more specific than it's simplified form.

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Granted, but that doesn't warrent repeating the same misconceptions over and over again, even with all the readily available information on cosmology. That's especially true considering this a forum with the specific topic of the big bang and cosmology.[This message has been edited by Beercules, 02-05-2004]

My problem is in accepting the infinteness of it all before and now hence the "small" size thing being finite to start with......so from the top Beercules in your own words(If it helps visualise yourself getting divine inspiration to re-write genesis remember it has to have mass appeal for maximum impact yet still be fundamentally correct from now until eternity)In the beginning...

It is common, but misleading, to speak of the universe being very small near the start of the big bang.When people speak of the universe being a certain size (a pea; a basketball; an orange; an atom) they are actually referring to the "visible" universe. That is simply the region of the universe which we can see. It is a lot like speaking of the distance to the horizon on the ocean. The horizon is simply an artefact of how far we can see (which depends on the curvature of the earth, amongst other things); not a guide to the size of the whole ocean.There are things in the universe that are beyond the range of sight; which means that light from those things has not had time to reach us since the beginning. The visible universe is the region of the universe for which a light-path has had time to reach us since the beginning.One strange thing about expansion of space (which is one of the big differences between expansion of space and a simple explosion) is that you can have two points in the early universe which were very close together (millimetres) but which are carried apart as space itself expands, so that a light signal sent from one point to the other may only manage to be reaching the second point now, 13.7 billion years later. It did not take 13.7 billion years to travel a few millimetres. Rather, the space the signal to travel has been expanding. This expansion also stretches the signal itself!The static on a badly tuned TV set is roughly 30% or so due to cosmic background microwave radiation. This is quite "cool" radiation, like the heat given off by an object with a temperature of 2.7 degrees above absolute zero! (or about 270 below zero, Celsius). And yet that is radiation from an enormously hot stage of the early universe. The radiation has been stretched as it travels through an expanding universe. This radiation is one of the major lines of evidence for the big bang. It is light from the explosion! It comes to us from all corners of the sky, because as we have said there is no centre to the big bang, and every point in space is equally the centre.OK; the visible universe used to be very very small. What of the entire universe?We don't know whether the universe is infinite or finite. Different people seem to have strong intuitions, in both directions; and this appears to include professional cosmologists.Recent observations suggest that the universe is "open"; which means it will expand without limit, forever. The simplest open universe models are infinite, and the simplest closed universe models are finite. The measurement of curvature and expansion rates now implies open, and people who find an infinite universe more reasonable are greatly comforted.I'm in the category of those who find a finite universe more philosophically appealing; but there is no empirical evidence for this. It could still be a finite "open" universe, if the topology of the universe is more complex than the simplest models. I think; but I have to admit the recent results are a boost to infinite universe models.If the universe is infinite, then it was always infinite. But finite, or infinite, the region corresponding to the current visible universe (over 27 billion light years across) was once a pea sized region in a hot dense early universe. Not a particle; not a clump; just a region within the whole which we single out only because it incorporates all that we can now see. Beyond that region, the rest of the universe continues; either forever or perhaps curved in on itself somehow to be finite. In either case; there is no edge.Cheers -- Chris

If you could look at the universe from a spot outside of the universe and see that it is 13.7 billion light years wide/high...What would it have looked like from the same spot at 1 second before the xpansion of spacetime started and how big would it be ???...given that the unit to measure time and distance by speed had not yet been quantified

Eh, it's not possible to go beyond the beginning of time and get any meaningful answers to how things would look.Time, as we inside our universe know it, for all practical matter started at the point when the universe started expanding. We can't go further back.Also, if you could somehow look at the universe from outside, and see all of it at the same time, it would be much larger than 13-14 billion light years. We don't really know how much of the universe there is, because we can't see all of it.