Big Bang...How Did it Happen?

Regarding antimatter... What is it that makes them annihilate just their 'twins'?Is there something that happens because they have opposite spin but the same matter, and if so, aren't there instances where more than one particle pair has the same characteristics?

Well, neutrons and protons has different masses...But for example, has two different particles been detected with the same spin and mass, but with for example different charge?

As far as we know, there is no anti-radiation. For example, when a particle and an antiparticle annihilates eachother, there is not a pair of energy and anti-energy from that.Similarily, we know anti-particles affects/is affected by gravity in exactly the same way as normal particles.There are some ideas that most likely, there are whole galaxies made up out of anti-matter, in other parts of our universe. It is just a matter of what is more common, locally.There can not exist any naturally occuring stable anti-matter in 'our' part of space, since there is WAY too much normal matter which would collide with it within a VERY short time of it being created. Though, most likely loads of anti-matter particles are created all over the place, but they don't stay long enough to affect us. For example, the radiation from black holes is thought to come from this.Also note that what we refer to as 'normal' particles is just the sort which is most common to us. If there were people created out of anti-matter, they would call us anti-people.

More like empty space is not the same as what most people call a void. Empty space has certain characteristics in it's geometry. It's the same way with an empty paper. While there isn't anything on it, it's not the same as no paper at all, and the paper itself has certain qualities.The universe technically doesn't need anything to expand into because it has no edges or outsides. Hence, for those of us who are inside it, it can expand forever without ever actually needing anything to expand into.And Darwin, in a true 2D sphere surface, there would be no curvature at all for any 2D observer. Since the 'space' curves, you could go in a totally straight line and still come back to the start.It's like a game of Pac Man or Asteroids. You can go out one of the edges and come back from the other side. You can go in one direction forever, and never encounter any boundaries. But it's still a totally 2D surface with a limited amount of 'stuff' in it.[This message has been edited by Melchior, 03-13-2004]

"Melchoir, I think misinterpreted it slightly."Eh, I thought that would be a direct implication of the 'no edges' thing... I certainly didn't mean to express the idea of a center of the universe, since it goes totally countrary to my examples.Care to point out this bit, since I obviously made an error somewhere if you had that impression.The baloon analogy also shows that as a 'side effect'... An observer on ANY point on the baloon surface would see every other point moving away, at a rate depending only on the distance between them.

quote:

---

I've never observed an explosion that created empty space before, have you? Or an explosion that acted like a balloon? And you are saying the definitions of science are ludicrous?

​

And dude, I didn't come up with the definitions of Scientific proof. If you don't like them, talk to the braniacs who came up with them. The real thing I want answered though, is this: The laws of physics...have they always been around, or did the come in with the Big Bang?

---

First of all, the Big Bang, despite it's name, isn't really like any bangs you can hear on earth. It's more like blowing up our analogous baloon, so that it expands very rapidly.Second of all, we DO observe that space is expanding, by looking at other galaxies.Plus there are several experiments being conducted with particle accelerators that provides very useful information on what would happen to particles at the beginning of time.But no, you can't do big bang all over again in your lab and observe it. It is not really required though, because we can see the after-effects of it.

Uhm, there can't be a second big bang inside our universe...Wether or not two universes can merge is unknown, because we can't detect any other universes. If they can ever collide, or whatever it would be that universes does, it would probably be something similar to two soapbubbles merging into one larger one. But, that's totally speculation.And you can argue everything with "God faked it" but you'll never get anything useful out of that.Regarding the 'mechanism' for the expansion of the universe, I believe that is a field which is currently being explored, but there seems to be something about space that makes it expand regardless of the events in it.[This message has been edited by Melchior, 03-14-2004]

Because if you shrink a baloon, it is physically impossible for it to turn into two smaller baloons.If you at any point of the coming explanation doesn't follow my reasoning, please say so.If we 'play' the universe backward, space would contract instead of expand. Like letting the air out of a baloon.Galaxies would come closer and closer together. The baloon gets smaller and smaller.If we can rewind time for long enough, there would eventually come a time when the universe is really small but still contain all the matter and energy. That is, the amount of rubber in the baloon is always the same, but it gets 'thicker' the more air you let out.Rewind time further, and the universe would get smaller and smaller. If there is no limit to how small it can be, it would inevitably contract into a singularity. This gets a bit tricky to do with a baloon, though.The big bang can't happen at any random time. It can only happen at the beginning of the universe, and there can only be one such starting-singularity per universe.

quote:

---

God created something, and it starts drifting around. That should not be confused with the idiotic reasoning that God would fake it. You should not confuse my argument with that stupidicy.

---

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word faked. That's really a discussion for your Appearant Age thread, so I'll mention this once because it ties in lightly with the subject, then leave it for that thread.If God created the universe in 'mid-time', with the illusion of a past, but made it in such a way that it's impossible to tell it appart from a universe with a past, I see that as for whatever reason decieving anyone using their reasoning and observational abilities given by God to examine the universe.If God REALLY wanted people to know about such an universe, he would put undeniable scientifically testable clues in it. Otherwise we can't ever tell the difference.[This message has been edited by Melchior, 03-14-2004]

The chain of evidence has been brought up before, but I can summarize it as this. If you want specific information on a point, and google doesn't turn anything up, please ask about that specific bit.Observation: Almost all galaxies are red-shifted, which means they are moving away from us. Their red-shift is directly proportional to the distance from us.Conclution: The space-time expands continously. (Insert baloon allegory).Logical derivation: If the space-time expands as time passes, it must have been smaller the further back in time you go. However, since the universe can't have a negative volume, there must be a limit to how far back you can go.Prediction: At one point, slightly after the limit, all mass and energy should have been compressed together, hence hot and more or less evenly spread out. We should see this as a background radiation, no matter which direction we look in.Experiment: This was confirmed in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.Additional test: If there is a backward limit on how far back we can go before space is too small to sustain stellar objects, we should never get correct measurements which shows objects to be older than this limit. Hence, if someone shows that a certain process in our universe takes, say, 25 billion years and never any shorter, but we still see the results of it, we need to think things over.

We look at other objects in space, in this case other galaxies. Do you know how red-shift and blue-shift works? If the universe was static, galaxies wouldn't have any prefered direction and speed, relative to us, right?But it has been measured that in more or less all cases, galaxies are moving directly away from us, and with a speed that depends on their measured distance from us.For this to work out, it can't be that the galaxes are moving, because then they'd all move at about the same speed.So, the explanation is that it's the fabric of space-time that expands. It expands equally all over, because the speed/distance ratio is uniform no matter which galaxies you look at.

quote:

---

And you still haven't answered my question. In what ways do the Big Bang and the Bible disagree? Be specific.

---

I'll take the liberty to give you one example of an answer on this.Expansion of space is observed. It is explained in two different ways.- 6000 years ago, God created the universe, and set it in motion by starting the expansion of space. Hence, the big bang is impossible because it requires the expansion to have occured before God set it into motion.Or- The universe has been expanding since the big bang. Hence, the bible can't be correct because it requires a specific minimum size of the universe which is that of 6000 years ago.It's mostly a matter on if you think the christian God did it exactly like that based on the bible, or if you think it's better to observe the universe and put trust into experiments and empirical evidence instead.Of course, this is all dependant on a specific interpretation of the bible, which is exactly what he argues is the correct one, regardless of observations.

It's not so much that there isn't a working model, but the model we have is not all encompassing, and as you probably know, it's a field where a lot of new 'ideas' are being suggested.There is nothing wrong with the big bang theory as such, and it's useful in itself. But there are parts where it don't have an answer for us, which *might* be possible to find sometime in the future if we expand the model.The current divisions are more of a "we got a sound foundation, but where do we go now?". It's not obvious what works and what don't.