Big Bang...How Did it Happen?

That's because what most people ask about are things that, to get the whole picture, take a book's worth of words. None of us here are qualified to give you the Cliff's Notes on General Relativity if you don't already know something about it. Try as we might we're just going to wind up leaving out something important.It's like asking you "in ten words or less, describe the impact of the tactics of Nelson on the history of naval engagements. And don't leave anything out." A ten-world precis of the history of sea battles isn't going to be a good foundation for debate. Arguing in fun. Nitpicking is bullshit.The reason you're getting the answers you are is because you're asking us the wrong questions. We're here to pit scientific theory against religious dogma.What we're not here to do is argue about our own individual misunderstandings of scientific theory. It's fine for you to ask something like "what evidence is there for evolution?" But asking "what is evolution?" is going to get you pointed to a website or a book because relatively few of us are qualified to explain it to you. We leave that to the folks with biology degrees, because it's their theory.If you want a discussion of Big Bang cosmology, that's fine. Lay out your position and we'll discuss it. But we can't have the discussion until we're all on the same page about what Big Bang cosmology says, and you won't be on that page until you've done some reading on the subject from folks like Asimov or Hawking, who have some qualification in the subject.And if you already know what Big Bang cosmology says, then why the fuck are you asking us?What we think and believe about the Big Bang theory is not relevant. What is relevant is the evidence that supports the theory.

Much better questions. Sorry about my counter-rant. Firstly, remember that the universe is expanding from a point of zero size to the size it is now. That means that the universe hits each of those sizes on the way up. So it's not about how old your book is. It's about how old the universe is when you're looking at it. You may not be aware that, at an imperceptible quantum level, matter appears and disappears from otherwise empty space constantly. This causes an observable effect called the "Casimir Effect."Essentially, if the amount of anti-matter in the universe is the same as the amount of matter, then the total energy level of the universe is zero. A universe of zero net energy/matter could easily spontaneously form.

No more than I've seen any other atoms - anti-matter only exists on Earth as one atom at a time, when researchers make it. Both very good questions to which I don't have the answers.

That's bad for some reason? It's surprising to you to find out that the physical world is so complicated that it takes a lifetime of study to even begin to construct models about it? Well, I could muddle through, but why would you want to settle for my half-assed explanations when so many Ph.D'd scientists are itching to explain it to you? Why cheat yourself? Funny, I don't see it that way.The way I see it, what I'm doing and what you're doing are drastically different. What I'm doing is putting my trust in a methodology for the aquisition of knowledge - the scientific methodology - with proven results. And what you're doing is putting your faith in something that nobody anywhere has ever credibly seen do anything - God.It's trust vs. faith. Looks like a big difference to me. Ok. That's fine. Then take a position, and try to support it with evidence. The rest of us have no idea what you want to talk about, or where your expertise or interests lie, so it's up to you to set the topic of any debates you want to start.Here's an idea for you, though. You said you were a creationist but so far you've only participated in cosmology topics. I presume you oppose the Theory of Evolution so why don't you start a topic about that? Why don't you hit us with the evidence that evoution is false? (Remember cosmology and evolution have nothing to do with each other - evolution is a biological theory.)Anyway, take your time. I don't expect you to answer my every post, or even any of them, if you don't want. A lot of us have jumped into your threads simply because you're the first live wire to show up in a good long time. If you need to take your time you're more than welcome to do so.I look forward to some good discussions. You're obviously a person of intelligence.

No. But on the other hand, if I asked you "what does Matthew 5:22 say?" you might very well point me to the Bible, as it's not likely that you know the Bible so well you can quote chapter and verse at random, right?Well, that's the thing. If you want my opinion, that's one thing. But if you want to know the accepted scientific theory, that's something you're best served looking up.I guess the thing I'm most afraid of is that I'm going to wind up making science look bad because I made a mistake. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about the effacacy of science simply because my comprehension is not perfect. No, that's trust. You trust in something because of your experience - chairs don't usually let you down. You have faith in something in spite of your experience - you've never seen God, but you have faith that he exists.I choose not to have faith. That doesn't mean I don't have trust in trustworthy things. Done so. Within my limited expertise I'm comfortable concluding that creationism is false and evolution is supported by the evidence. It's neither trust nor faith that lead me to that conclusion but rather an honest look at the evidence. Negative. I do trust the evidence, however. Please don't conflate faith and trust. They're very different things. The reason that I'm not a Christian any more is because when I put my trust in Jesus, he let me down. Ergo I no longer trust Jesus.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-13-2004]

No, the empty space is a part of the expanding universe. Even today we observe space itself expanding. What's outside the space of the universe? Since it won't ever affect anything, who cares? Not to the beginning of the universe. But the split of energy into matter and anti-matter is caused by the expanding and cooling of the universe. The "cause" of matter is the cooling of the universe, just like the "cause" of an ice crystal is the cooling of water. No, it has regular mass. Anti-matter is like matter except that the charge and spin of the constituent particles is reversed compared to their regular counterparts.

If two particles have the same spin, mass, charge, etc, then they're the same kind of particle, and they have the same anti-particle, I would think.What would happen if, say, a neutron and an anti-proton collided? I don't know. I doubt that they would annihalate each other. Maybe somebody who knows more than I do could tell you.

The Big Bang is the origin of time, remember? And there's no "before" before time, remember? Didn't we cover this? Since you can't leave the universe, you'd first see all the galaxies in the universe rushing towards you. It doesn't matter where you travel to, it looks the same - all the galaxies are rushing towards you because space itself is contracting.Eventually it starts to get pretty hot, because the entire energy of the universe is being spread out over a decreasingly small area. It gets hotter and hotter until all the atoms break apart into a hot soup of energetic charged particles. Eventually, as the temperature increases, even these particles are torn apart into their constitutent quarks.Right near the end it gets so hot that you can't tell the difference between the four fundamental forces of the universe. That's where our models of the Big Bang actually end, because we don't have the theories to model what happens after that. The speculation is that the shrinking of the universe continues as far as it can go - all the way down to a point of zero volume. At that point there's nothing for you to see because there's nowhere for you to be to see it - everything in the universe, including you and your time machine, are compressed to zero volume. (Assuming somehow you survived the awesome temperatures in the first place.) And then that's it. Anywhere you go in the universe, that's where.

Up to the part where the fourth fundamental force is unified with the other three, it's the accepted scientific model, supported by observation and experiments in high-energy physics. (That's what they're doing with those expensive supercolliders.) After that, it's speculation. We don't have the model to describe accurately what's happening when the four forces unify. That's that "Grand Unified Theory" that you might have heard of. But the speculation is guided by the theories that we do have.

Right. And, in fact, you can repeat every single observation and experiment that lead scientists to develop the Big Bang theory. Um, no, it's a model based on evidence. And like I said, you can repeat the experiments and make your own observations. That's clearly ludicrous. By that standard you can't scientifically conclude that Abraham Lincoln ever existed, or that you were even born. After all your own birth isn't repeatable, right?So clearly your definition of science is at odds with how science is actually used. Clearly there's a method for science to assess historical claims. And it's via that method that science constructs narratives about events in the past. Surely not - I doubt that you make the same claims about history books, for instance. Is it "religion" to say that George Washington was the first president of the US? It must be, according to you.

Nope. Why would you expect to? By all indications it's only ever happened once. Of course not. Simply that you've misunderstood the definition of science. "Repeatablilty" doesn't refer to repeating history. It refers to repeating observations and replicating experiments. Anyone can look and observe the cosmic microwave background and it's uniformity in all directions. Anyone with a supercollider can approximate conditions nanoseconds after the Big Bang. Anyone who observes the redshifts of distant objects can come to the conclusion that all galaxies in the universe are retreating from each other in a manner consistent with an expansion of space.Big Bang cosmology is science because it's based on repeatable observation and experiment, just like all other scientific models. Maybe you could cite the source you're using for your definitions? I can't imagine how this question could be settled. How would you possibly know what conditions are like before/outside the universe?

It would be more accurate to say that, since few (none?) of us are cosmologist or high-energy physicists, our casual understanding of the theory is permiated by our own misunderstandings. Among actual astrophysicists you'd find considerably greater agreement.The other thing is that we're trying to explain the theory to you without the math. The theory is the math. Without the math all we have to offer you are analogies of varying accuracy. You could poll the astrophysicists for explanations - if you asked for analogies they all would differ slightly; if you asked for the math they'd all give you the same equations. I think you'll find considerably more agreement among the scientific community than among Creationists. Certainly it's not lockstep agreement - it's differing viewpoints involved in constant dialogue. That's what makes science work. When was the last time there was "dialogue" between Answers in Genesis and Kent Hovind, for instance?

Don't you think that ultimately, all narratives about the formation of the observable universe are going to be, at least on some level, similar? There's only a few ways to tell a story about the beginning of something.The question isn't which scenario is the most or least similar to other mythologies, but which is best supported by the evidence. And that's simply the inflationary universe model. You'd have to ask a particle physicist. But you must have heard of "E=MC^2"? Maybe you didn't know what that means, but that's an equation describing how matter and energy can be transformed into each other. This is experimentally proven. We ended WWII with two of the experiments. And you reach this conclusion from exactly what expertise? I wasn't aware the Navy was handing out degrees in high-energy particle physics. Except in your view, God is uncaused. And in my view, since time doesn't extend beyond the universe, there can't be a "cause" because there's no "before" before time. So this isn't really anything but a smokescreen. After all, if you really believed that there were no causeless effects, you couldn't believe in God, the ultimate Uncaused Cause, now could you? I don't understand why you keep ignoring me when I tell you that there's no "before" before time. Are you having reading problems, perhaps? How could the universe be "caused" if there's no "before" for the cause to happen in?

I guess I just don't see the fruitfulness of trying to speculate about what happens before the universe. One this is clear - conventions and conclusions based on the presence of time just aren't going to be valid before time exists.But one thing is clear: the universe exists. The god of the Bible does not (though cosmology is not the reason I conclude that). Since we don't know what it takes, if anything, to cause a universe to come to be, we just can't make any conclusions about what made this one happen. The existence of the universe simply doesn't neccessitate the existence of your God.Have you considered that perhaps it's impossible for a universe not to exist? How do you know that non-existence is even possible for a universe?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-16-2004]

They're kidding you. Or rather they're doing funny stuff with limits (as I recall) that bears little relation to the discreet entities that we think of as numbers.It's like a kind of mathematical joke.