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Author Topic:   Problems with the Big Bang theory
cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 31 of 303 (219404)
06-24-2005 5:48 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by notwise
06-24-2005 3:27 PM


A little harsh :-) I think we can fairly lay the blame for this misconception with just about every popular science program that has ever tried to depict the big-bang.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by notwise, posted 06-24-2005 3:27 PM notwise has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by Chiroptera, posted 06-24-2005 6:00 PM cavediver has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 78 of 303 (366746)
11-29-2006 8:27 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by DivineBeginning
11-29-2006 7:06 AM


Re: Something and nothing
So where did all that stuff come from that exploded?
As Yoda said, "you must unlearn what you have learned"
There was no "explosion", there was rapid expansion of the fabric of space-time. There was no "nothing" "before" out of which the universe sprang, becasue there is no "before". Time as we normally understand it only makes sense some moments after the initial expansion, and is just a feature of our bizarre 3 dimensional perspective on the universe. "stuff" as you call it is merely ripples in the various fabrics that make up the universe: space-time, matter, force... all are aspects of the same thing.
As far as the basic Big Bang model is concerned, there is the universe... and that is all. There is no "nothing" "outside" or "before" the universe. These concepts are totally meaningless. There is just a fixed 4 dimensional universe that contains all of time and space, and we have been given a curious 3 dimensional perspective on this universe (possibly by God) that gives rise to our notion of time.
There is a valid question of "why is the Universe here?" or better still "why do we have existence?" but these are questions that are firmly in the hands of theology and philosophy, and only a few of us try and make sense of this in science/mathematics. The Big Bang has nothing to do with such questions, it merely describes what the universe looks like at one end of its 4 dimensional existance.
And of course there is still the possibility that the universe does extend "backwards" through the Big Bang to a prior time, and could possibily be infinite in extent in the time dimension.
Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 73 by DivineBeginning, posted 11-29-2006 7:06 AM DivineBeginning has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 80 by DivineBeginning, posted 11-29-2006 8:30 AM cavediver has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 82 of 303 (366759)
11-29-2006 10:38 AM
Reply to: Message 81 by Chiroptera
11-29-2006 9:57 AM


Re: Something and nothing
I have done too much pure mathematics; it is way too difficult for me to believe these symbol manipulation games have any sort of reality behind them.
Heh, heh... I have done too much pure mathematics to believe that there isn't a reality behind it all But then it is the diversity of mathematical thought that makes it such a great subject.
Also, don't forget that it is not just GR that likes to think of time as a dimension... it underpins the entirety of quantum theory. After that, there's not much left!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 81 by Chiroptera, posted 11-29-2006 9:57 AM Chiroptera has replied

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 Message 83 by Chiroptera, posted 11-29-2006 10:44 AM cavediver has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 85 of 303 (366771)
11-29-2006 11:26 AM
Reply to: Message 84 by Son Goku
11-29-2006 11:09 AM


Re: Something and nothing
In the range 0.000006 meters to 7.3x10^26 meters time acts exactly as if it was another dimension
Apart from that really weird region from 2.7x10^22 to 3.2x10^22 meters of course.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 84 by Son Goku, posted 11-29-2006 11:09 AM Son Goku has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 88 by Son Goku, posted 11-29-2006 11:57 AM cavediver has replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 90 of 303 (366803)
11-29-2006 12:51 PM
Reply to: Message 88 by Son Goku
11-29-2006 11:57 AM


Re: That distance.
Is there something wierd I've missed at the sub-local cluster level?

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 Message 88 by Son Goku, posted 11-29-2006 11:57 AM Son Goku has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 103 of 303 (367146)
11-30-2006 3:05 PM


There is no nothing!!!
This has now cropped up a critical number of times in this thread and I must step in. The Casimir Effect, virtual particles, vacuum/quantum fluctuations... none of these are an example of something from nothing, despite what popular science may say.
All are "simple" features of the underlying quantum fields. In fact, the Casimir Effect precisely proves that even in its vacuum state, a quantum field cannot possibly be regarded as "nothing".
If the universe is a zero-point quantum fluctuation, then it is a fluctutaion of something... and this simply pushes back our definition of the universe to the covering physics of which our universe is just a fluctuation. The question remains: where does the physics come from?
Nothing is something of which we have no knowledge and no experience... the universe is a self-contained whole, how ever far out we have to stretch the definiton of universe.
The first scientist to mention this is the context of answering "why is the universe here?" should have been shot. It merely ducks the question.

Replies to this message:
 Message 104 by Percy, posted 12-01-2006 10:17 AM cavediver has replied
 Message 107 by DivineBeginning, posted 12-01-2006 10:28 PM cavediver has replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 109 of 303 (367410)
12-02-2006 6:18 AM
Reply to: Message 107 by DivineBeginning
12-01-2006 10:28 PM


Re: There is no nothing!!!
Common sense was telling me that even with quantum fluctuations, you have to start with something.
True, but be careful of that common sense. More often than not, common sense will lead you down a road to complete ignorance of modern physics. In 99% of cases it is not to be trusted.
Anyway, the simple summarisation of all this is as follows:
The universe (by which I mean all that which is open to scientific discovery) either*:
Extends back a finite amount of time.
Extends back an infinite amount of time.
There is no "something from nothing" in either case. In both cases the Universe exists, that is all. In neither case is God precluded from being the creator of these universes. From the current standpoint of physics, in neither case is an act of creation necessary. In neither case do we have a reason for why there is existence.
{* actually, it's not quite as simple as this, but it will do to make the point}

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 Message 107 by DivineBeginning, posted 12-01-2006 10:28 PM DivineBeginning has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 110 of 303 (367414)
12-02-2006 7:17 AM
Reply to: Message 104 by Percy
12-01-2006 10:17 AM


Re: There is no nothing!!!
Let me first follow the digression into the Casimir Effect. I'm going to be pedantic at this point just to tighten your definitions up a little...
if we describe the Casimir effect in terms of the all-pervading energy field of the universe
Yes, but at the moment we still have *several* fields. The observed Casimir Effect is a function of the photon and electron fields of QED. And be careful of the term "energy"... you'll be talking about "vibrations" and "balance" next Energy is an emergent concept from the fields... it's not what they are "made" of.
which means that what we've been describing as nothing, namely the vacuum between two closely positioned plates, isn't really nothing. The tiny space between the two plates is still filled with this energy, and so it isn't nothing.
Hmmm, there's that E word again. The whole point of the Casimir Effect is to show the existence of -ve energy state, or a state below the vacuum. Hopefully you picked up from the Wiki article the idea that only certain wave-modes will fit between the conductors (as the wave-modes have to obey the boundary conditions imposed by the conductors), and thus there are less vacuum wave-modes between the conductors than in free space so less of them gives less than vacuum... in other words, -ve energy states. This in turn leads to the inward force of the true-vaccum on this restricted vacuum.
From that paragraph you may start to realise - what the hell does that have to do with any questions regarding the Big Bang and "something from nothing"? Answer - absolutely zilch (for fear of using the N word and it being taken out of context)
And so saying that the Casimir effect is an example of something coming from nothing is not accurate, because there isn't nothing between the plates.
Absolutely.
So back to
"If the Big Bang is impossible, it isn't because something can't come from nothing...
I know what you're saying here, and I agree with the sentiment, but I would like to go further and say "something from nothing" should never be mentioned at all, other than to say such an idea is not part of physics. It all comes back to immense (and completely understandable) lack of comprehension of our modern understanding of time. To me, there is as much of a beginning to the Big Bang as there is to the Steady State.
Perhaps we should say that we don't know where the matter came from, but that we certainly don't know that there was really nothing before there was matter.
This f'ing obsession with matter... arrgghhh!!!
Matter is simply excitations in the fields of which the space-time is the master field. The fields are all intrinsically linked and one day we will probably discover that they are all one superfield (which we thought we'd found long ago with N=8 SUGRA). There seems to be this idea that we have the universe and into it we inject some matter... NO! That is certainly how GR works, but we are 100 years beyond that now.
The general idea is that existence is a field. The large scale topology of the field is what gives shape to the (4d) universe. One aspect of the field gives what we call distance and time. Small scale variations in that aspect give gravitational waves. Another aspect gives rise to long range electromagnetism. Small variations in this aspect give rise to photons. Other aspects don't have long range behaviour but on the short scale, their variations manifest as electrons, quarks, etc.
Of course, I'm not claiming this is the final story. But it is the step in understanding that has to be taken to get away from this idea of matter being stuff "in" the universe.
To ask "where does the matter come from?" is to ask "where does the universe come from?" Conservation of energy is a statement concerning local symmetry of the field. It has nothing to do with matter "appearing" at the Big Bang. All that is required is that the entire 4D field with all of its curvature, e/m, matter, etc is consistent.
Why do we have such confusion? Simple. It is down to the biggest mystery of all, something that Chiroptera alluded to a couple of days ago. We have this wonderful 4d view of reality that makes complete sense. It is utterly static, lifeless, permanent, fixed... yet us, as humans, have this experience we call time, which is an evolving viewpoint on this fixed 4D universe that gives the impression of dynamics, movement, life, conciousness. What is all that about? Is it a natural consequence of the universe and large scale emergent complexity such as thermodynamics? This is how I see it.
Anyway, the result is we have this peculiar concept called "time" and we seem to think it has dominance over every other aspect of reality, leading to "how do you get something from nothing?", "what came before the Big Bang", "the Big bang breaks conservation of energy?" and "where does the matter come from?"
But this "time" appears to be just a high level emergent concept, and we are terribly confused...
{apologies - written in a hurry and probably makes for very poor reading!}
Edited by cavediver, : Apology added

This message is a reply to:
 Message 104 by Percy, posted 12-01-2006 10:17 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by Percy, posted 12-02-2006 10:16 AM cavediver has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 111 of 303 (367417)
12-02-2006 7:48 AM
Reply to: Message 104 by Percy
12-01-2006 10:17 AM


Re: There is no nothing!!!
The danger is that providing more detail about quantum issues could be even more confusing to someone who in another thread might well be arguing that you can't get a cat from a dog
Yes, this is the core issue. You can see why someone once resorted to the qunatum fluctuation argument just to shut someone up. And I can't really blame them. I couldn't go along with
we don't know where the matter came from, but that we certainly don't know that there was really nothing before there was matter
as this is really downplaying our understanding. But how do you explain that mumbo-jumbo I expounded in the post above?
Got to go...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 104 by Percy, posted 12-01-2006 10:17 AM Percy has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 174 of 303 (369064)
12-11-2006 3:30 PM
Reply to: Message 172 by vitalprikalist
12-11-2006 2:56 PM


Re: Big Bang
Here are a couple of definitions of the big bang.
I count three... the first vague but fairly indisputable, the latter two erroneous and inadequate in their own way. The Big Bang has NOTHING in common with an explosion. As Percy recently pointed out, the term Big Bang was introduced as an insulting derogatory name by one of the leading opponents of the Big Bang. At that time, the principle complaints against the Big Bang were by atheists who thought that it smacked too much of Creation and seemed far too theistic. Interesting, huh?
Flaw : when something explodes, the particles that fly off all spin in the same direction.
Really? I've never heard that, and I'm a physicist! Have you any evidence that this is true? Who told you this? There's no known physical process that would suggest that it should be true... very strange. I'm sure you're not going to mention conservation of angular momentum, as obviously that would only insist that the sum of all the ang moms of all the debris would equal the sum of the original ang mom. Of course it says nothing about the individual ang moms. So I'm truly confused...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 172 by vitalprikalist, posted 12-11-2006 2:56 PM vitalprikalist has not replied

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