A Big Bang Misconception

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What's the point?

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Some people are curious.-

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First, we have absolutely NO idea how physics works in a situation like the proposed "Big Bang"...

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True. When we go back far enough, the densities and temperatures are high enough that we know that our present laws of physics won't work. That is why people are working on ideas of quantum gravity, string theory, and so forth, so that we will have a theory of physics that will allow us to understand the universe even further back in time.-

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second, how can we even begin to theorize about something that happened SOOOOO long ago?

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Like anything else in science: you use the known laws of physics to determine what the universe would look like if the ideas were true, and then check to see if the universe is actually like that. If the model predicts a very different universe from what we see, then you conclude that your model needs to be fixed or even discarded. If the universe looks pretty much like what is predicted, then we can conclude that you might be on the right track.-

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In my oppinion, the first logical question to ask someone who advocates any version of the Big Bang would be this: What is the rediculously, tremendously, ludicrously, unimaginable force required to break up all the matter, space, and time?

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There is no such force. The universe used to be in a very hot, very dense state. Space expanded. It was the way things were.-

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yet people insist that there must have been something to cause this space, time, and matter to explode.

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Some people insist on this. Scientists who study cosmology don't, since there was no "explosion".-

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However, I would assume that the typical pro-Big Bang response would be that there really was no matter.

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I suspect that this assumption is wrong.-

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To say that there was nothing and then a nanosecond later thare is EVERYTHING is so logically ignorant, that I wonder how scientists can even ascribe to it.

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First, no scientist says this. Second, even if they did, it is not "logically ignorant".-

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I really wish someone would please show me the scientific evidence for the Big Bang Theory....

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The red shift of distant galaxies that increases with the distance of the distant galaxy from ours; the Cosmic Microwave Background; the ratio of hydrogen to helium that we observe in the universe.-

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It would be so nice for me to quit disagreeing with every single scientist I run into on the subject of cosmology.

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I bet they would think it would be nice, too.-

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But I just can't take the leap of faith that they do...

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Why don't you have them explain the evidence that they have, and why it supports their views?-

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I have to believe that there must have been some type of creation event

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I don't believe there was a creation "event", at least in any reasonable sense of the word "event". I get the impression most cosmologists don't believe in a creation "event", either, but I may be wrong on this.

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"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

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If you cannot explain how it happened, then I suggest that it is not scientifically provable and is just as valid as the next theory.

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This is not completely true. As Percy noted, I gave three pieces of evidence for the standard Big Bang model. The red shifts -- this is consistent with an expanding universe, and, if one "runs the clock backwards", one sees that in the past the universe must have been hot, dense, and expanding.Another evidence I mentioned is the Cosmic Microwave Background. If the universe was hot and dense, there must have been blackbody radiation. If the universe has expanded, this radiation must have "cooled" or "red-shifted" into the microwave region. This is what we see -- microwave radiation with the characteristics of black body radiation.Finally, I mentioned the ratio of helium to hydrogen we observe in the universe today. If the universe was hot and dense, it would have been to hot for atomic nuclei to exist. As the universe expanded, it would have cooled enough for nuclei to form. What nuclei and in what proportions will depend on the density and the rate of expansion when the temperature finally reaches the correct point. We see a ratio that is consistent with the standard Big Bang model.Note that these are not ad hoc explanations of these phenomena. These phenomena occur as a direct consequence of the fact that the universe was hot, dense, and expanding. There is a multitude of other cosmological evidence for this as well, but these are the ones I know a little bit about. When all the evidence is examined, it is a natural conclusion that the universe was hot, dense, and expanding.There might be other theories about what the universe was like in its early stages, but I don't know of them. Do those theories explain the red shift, the CMB, and the cosmological ratio of the abundances of helium to hydrogen? Do these phenomena come out directly from these alternative theories, or must one add ad hoc explanations to the theory to account for these? As far as I know, there is no alternative cosmological model that is consistent with the data that we observe, or that can account for these phenomena without ad hoc explanations.Edited by Chiroptera, : Clarify the topic of the last paragraph.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

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But see, these are only evidence for the Big Bang if you assume that the universe is "billions of years old."

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Well, that's how science works. All science. You have a theory or a hypothesis. Then you ask, "If this theory is true, what would we see? We should see X." Then you check to see if you can see X. If you do, that counts as a confirmation. Then you ask, "If this theory is true, what would we see? We should see Y." Then you check to see if you can see Y. If you do, that counts as a confirmation. Then you ask, "If this theory is true, what would we see? We should not see Z." Then you check to see if you can see Z. If you don't, that counts as a confirmation. Do you see how this works? That is why the three observations that I mention count as confirmation of the Big Bang model.-

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what force was powerful to overtake all that gravity in order to get the universe to spread out?

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That comes out of General Relativity. I'm not an expert on it; maybe cavediver or Son Goku will see this and give more details.-

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If everything was at once a dot, and that dot spun really, really, really, really fast, then why are things spinning opposite directions?

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The universe may not have been a "dot". It probably wasn't spinning. As far as is known, the total angular momentum of the universe is zero.-

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First there was nothing? Then something?

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Who knows? So far, our current understanding of the laws of physics only allow us to know what was going on when the universe was very, very, very small and very, very, very hot. We do not have the tools, yet, to understand what happened at the very beginning.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

Yeah, I forgot to change the subtitle -- I was going to subtitle the post "Back to the same old PRATTs".

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

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The only misconception is what existed before the big bang. It is a misconception and a leap of faith to assume that the event that triggered the expansion that we see all around us in all directions did not have some initial velocity within its own relative frame of reference and that it therefore did not come into expansion within a larger pocket of space/time.

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Actually, it's a leap of faith (and perhaps a misconception) that there was an event that "triggered the expansion". It could very well be that the universe simply began to exist, and it began in a very small, very dense, very hot, and expanding state.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw