Before the Big Bang

Dear Theclashfan,See my thread on Inflationary cosmology for what may have happened before the big bang.If inflatinary cosmology is correct our universe could have been produced from a lump of matter weighing a mere 20lbs. This matter (say a decaying black hole in another universe) then encounters, (by chance) an "inflaton" feild and expands extremely rapidly.The inflaton feild cuts out at the same time across the universe. But becase of quantum uncertanty it does not cut out at exsactly the same time. This explains why the matter in our universe is very uniformly distributed but not perfectly uniformly distributed.Now, granted infaltionary cosmology does not explain where this inital matter comes from or explain where the previous universe comes from. But it DOES explain a great deal about our universe.

You make it sound like there is a region of space where the big bang happened, when in fact the big bang happened everywhere at once. EVERY point in the universe is the point where the big bang banged and everything in the universe is moving away from that point.Our observations show that the universe is expanding, true. It seems like all the other galaxys are moving away from US at a faster and faster speed the farther away they are from us.But that is how it would look from ANY galaxy.You are going to confuse people if you aren't rigorus with your discriptions of these things.

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You make it sound like there is a region of space where the big bang happened, when in fact the big bang happened everywhere at once. EVERY point in the universe is the point where the big bang banged and everything in the universe is moving away from that point.

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You are absolutely correct, sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I should have said that the universe was extremely small, and all of the matter/energy existing today was packed into that small universe.

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You are going to confuse people if you aren't rigorus with your discriptions of these things.

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I sometimes find it difficult to describe events that I already understand. I tend to talk to myself which causes me to rely on my own knowledge instead of writing posts where someone's knowledge on the subject may be more limited than mine.

Don't worry about it.Sorry if it seemed like I snapped at you.

Time is merely a sequence ov events in a universe where every material event is predetermined. The universe cannot alter its course of relentless decay, neither was it capable of creating itself. Time is a concept entirely linked to the universe; beyond it is a meaningless concept.
The silent Big Bang was a sudden emergence of an unfathomable quantity of energy which is on an unalterable course of dilution only to end as a vast dark void where no more events take place. This process cannot be altered without the intervention of something as powerful as that which caused the Big Bang in the first place.
The universe is nothing but energy in various forms (matter, radiation). And what is energy? An invisible, abstract principle.
I might add a thought on evolution of life in its various forms on Earth. It is perfectly clear that there has not been anywhere near enough time on Earth for these complex life forms to evolve through random events.
This is described in my recent book "Oh My God: Entropy" (PublishAmerica).
I cannot say that Creationists are right, but I can say that Evolutionists are not.

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It is perfectly clear that there has not been anywhere near enough time on Earth for these complex life forms to evolve through random events.

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This is indisputably true. Fortuanately, Darwin suggested a mechanism that we term "natural selection" which is very much non-random.

I think you are making a mistake here in your logic. Before selection can take place, the species must have evolved, don't you agree?

Please, explain more of what you mean.

I am afraid that this may be continuing off topic for this thread, but no, I am not mistaken -- evolution is what produces species.If you mean the first indisputably living cell, the "first species", then that most likely was produced by natural selection as well. The first replicators were probably very simple -- very likely to form spontaneously (from "chance") in the environment that existed on the prebiotic earth, and then natural selection produced more, and more efficient self-replicators culminating in the what we would call a definite cell.Edited to add:I have just noticed that evolution and natural selection is off-topic here. If you want to continue this discussion, then I invite you to either join an existing thread on this topic or start a new thread.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 02-15-2005 11:23 AM

Natural selection occurs between more or less adapted species. The evelved species that are best adapted to their ever changing environment survive, those less well adapted become extinct. For this selection to occur, the species must have evolved, or come into existence, first. Thus your argument does in no way impact on my statement - there simply has not been enough time for the evolution of species through random events.
I hope that is clearer?

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Mihkel

I agree, this is definitely off topic - I only added this as an afterthought to my main message. Incidentally, how on Earth do you think the first single cell organisms came about through natural selection 3.8 billion years ago, just as water formed and made life possible at all? Selection between what? There was nothing to selct from.

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Mihkel

It's not totally clear waht you mean -- but either way, you're wrong.If you are really claiming that there has not been enough time for the evolution of species by random events, then that is sort of right, but since evolution of species does not happen by random events it's kind of irrelevant. There is a random component in evolution, but evolution also includes the decidedly non-random component of selection, which makes the overall process not purely random.If you are instead claiming that there has not been enough time for the original life to come into existence by random events then, sorry, you're just talking through your hat. Nobody has enough information to calculate any meaningful probability or required time for life to come into existence by chance. Nobody even has enough information to estimate a probability or required time. Not you, not me, not Jonathan Wells, not Jonathan Sarfati, not the late Sir Fred Hoyle, not Henry Morris, not anybody. We just don't know. We do know that life exists, that many key steps in possible ways that life could have come about are themselves possible and pretty likely under the right conditions, and we do not know of any key steps that are impossible or particularly unlikely. So the jury is still out, but none of the evidence we have indicates that it couldn't have happened.

How do you know there was nothing to select from?There are several plausible hypotheses. I kind of like the one in which naturally formed self-replicating molecules get trapped in naturally forming lipid bubbles, which turns out to be evolutionarily advantageous, and they start evolving toward being cells. But there are several other ideas.See The most primitive cells are too complex to have come together by chance?, Origins of Life, and The Beginnings of Life on Earth.

Speaking through my hat? UI can see that you have applied little thought to the problem. You list a few names as examples of the fact that we know nothing about the chances of instantaneous emergence of an extremely complicated life form the moment water existed 3.8 billion years ago. The late Fred Hoyle stated that this sudden emergence of life was as likely as a tornado ripping through a junkyard would produce a perfect jetliner. Francis Crick admitted that science could not explain it and proposed directed panspermia (the deliberate planting of life on Earth) as the only solution. I for one will not argue with these giants of science.
The funny thing is that having made the admission, science proceeds as though nothing had been discovered.

There was nothing to select from for the simple reason that as the first life form emerged there were by definition no previous life forms to select from.Yes, the hypothesis of random combinations of amino acids forming proteins, then cells, etc. was alive and well until the discovery of 3.8 billion year old fossils. The likelihood of such random events producing life so sophisticated that it carried the enormously complex genome on which all further evolution is based is nil.

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Mihkel