The Big Bang is NOT Scientific

If only Descartes hadn't given them that name people wouldn't have half the trouble they usually do.Imaginary numbers are just as real as real numbers.
And the system they form together, the complexes, is also very real.
The unfortunate thing is that when they come up in education (even at the undergraduate level) they are never really justified or explained.At best to most undergrads (at least in most universities) they're just a set of numbers of the form (x + yi) where i^2 = -1.They are, at their most basic level, a way of handling 2D geometry without thinking about the geometry.

We've already learned from General and Special Relativity that there is no such things as a universal "before", upon which all observers agree.Let us say there is a rotating neutron star with two planets.
Let us say there are two events A and B.
On the planet closer to the star A happens five seconds after B, and both events occur in the same location.
On the planet further from the star, A happens before B and at a small angle away from B.Since two observers can disagree on what is "before" and even "in the same place", these words don't operate on a universal scale.And this is still only a discussion of what observers see, not spacetime itself, where the word really doesn't apply. All we're saying is that words like "before" and "after" don't apply to the universe. There is no universal past and future.
Our discussion are about the extreme relativity of time.
The Big Bang is often viewed as a high energy environment, but nobody claims it is the origin of the universe.

There is already no universal "before" anyway.If we then attempt to discuss a construct like the universe, that has distance and time has observer dependant fields sitting in it, I think the words "before" and "after" have lost their usefulness.In any discussion of this kind, I think humans will have to get rid of the idea that everything is measured by a giant universal grandfather clock sitting somewhere out there.However that doesn't mean the Universe isn't a result of some process or thing or......e.t.c........
Simply that, whatever the Universe is a result of, causal language can't apply to it. Quantumist?
I would simply say I adopt the view of the world suggested by the experimental success of Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity.

Alright: I'm saying the universe is a 4 manifold, with distance and time as just another field in it.
Whether it is the end result of some process, I do not know. However that process would certainly not be explainable with a human conception of time. Particularly limited words like "before" and "after". Whose before are talking about, what way is this observer moving............e.t.c.
and even then I would say no there is no "before" the Universe because the word has no meaning on the scale we're discussing. No. My whole point is that our language just doesn't apply at this scale.
I originally had a paragraph length response to this which contained the word "already". However I eventually abandoned the paragraph because the word made no sense in context, even though it would appear to at first glance or to the untrained eye.As nwr said:

Now that'd be a thread to behold. Hopefully we could start to leave the swamplands of analogy behind.This message has been edited by Son Goku, 04-04-2006 09:50 AM

Well time and distance is just another field and that is unlikely to change so I assume you are referring to the 4-manifold part.Of course the universe mightn't actually be a 4-manifold, that is more a non-speculative way of refering to the fact that we have the "base space" first and then a metric field is added to induce clocks and rulers.
Whether the base space is actually a 4-manifold or not I don't know, but we at least know it is excellently approximated by one which is why I used it.

I actually mean something very mundane. In essence time and space aren't there "first" or prior to the universe and that they aren't a part of the universe if you get my meaning.In case I'm being vague some exposition might be in order.
What I mean is at the bottom (at least for this discussion) we have the universe.
Lets approximate this as a 4-manifold. We know observers categorize the universe according to notions of distance and time. However distance and time depend on the observer, i.e. it isn't a universal categorization. We also now that observers can find themselves "at" any part of this 4-manifold.
So distance and time is an observer dependant field sitting atop of spacetime. Atop in the sense that it is added and not fundamental.
(Again not to imply inanimate matter actually categorizes things, but you get my point.)In this sense, in a way, I think Kant is missing the point. Distance and time are real, because the universe is categorized by matter.
(Albeit differently for each piece of matter)In essence:
We have thing and we know dudes look at it and look at it differently, but the looking isn't part of the thing.
(I hope this made even an iota of sense.)This message has been edited by Son Goku, 04-04-2006 10:34 AM

Peskin and Schroeder, in my opinion is the best modern text.
Most others have little bit of a tendency to skip QCD and prefer either the canonical or path-integral approach.Martin and Shaw may be the best to begin with, but it only covers standard topics in QED.After that your into the vast landscape of topics that QFT covers and subdivides into.(One of my old professors actually had a flow chart of the different sub-areas of QFT.) Don't worry too much about that. Introductory material to any subject remains the same over a long period of time. It's only sub-areas that suffer.So a book on QFT will still be as good as it was ten years ago, but a book on Topological QFT might date very quickly.This message has been edited by Son Goku, 04-07-2006 11:27 AM

I've heard it's very good for emphasising the importance of groups, unfortunately I've never read.
Does it lean more toward the canonical or path integral approach?Have you read Weinberg's three volumes?

Not only does the Big Bang still stand up to experimental evidence, but extensions of that until recently were speculative are starting to be confirmed.
(And the expansion of spacetime is one of the more mundane predictions confirmed quite a while ago.)

WMAP study

This study is the most extensive set of cosmological tests ever carried out.
Regardless of what you conceive spacetime being like, based on your own intuition, I can almost guarantee that your intuitive "common sense" idea of it won't match these results.