Problems with the Big Bang theory

Maybe, maybe not. Unfortunately our common sense notions, derived from our limited experience, often turn out to be wrong when applied to something far out of the range of our experience. We don't directly see anything coming from nothing, the principle of conservation of energy is inviolate ... but when you look at the very small and the very large those rules change some. In particular, one of several speculations about "where it came from" is that it literally did come from nothing ... the average energy of the Universe may be zero (positive energy from mass, negative energy from gravitation) ... and the entire Universe may be a sort of quantum fluctuation on an incredibly large scale, all allowed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle but incredibly unlikely.I don't know how seriously this idea is taken nowadays, and I don't know what the gamut of current speculation is, and I don't know what's currently the most likely candidate. People are thinking abut the question and trying to come up with testable hypotheses. It's difficult for many reasons.But don't trust "common sense" in this matter. It'll lead you astray.

Yup. And on cosmic scales it doesn't apply, and in quantum fluctuations it doesn't apply. Actually, it does; you don't understand what a quantum fluctuation is. See Quantum FLuctuation. The possibility being considered is that of a large and long-lasting quantum fluctuation generating the universe from nothing. Certainly theoretically possible. Common sense may or may not be the best way to provoke good debates; that's not the subject. But it's definitely not a good way to theorize about things way outside our range of experience; we know that things come from nothing, we've seen it in many differnt ways, and we are pretty sure that conservation of energy doesn't apply to the entire universe.From another message: Actually, we see it every day; if things weren't continually materializing from complete nothingness (and almost always almost immmediately dematerializong back into complete nothingness) the world wouldn't work the way it does. But you might want to look at the Casimir effect.

The equvalence of mass and energy is not the phenomenon we're discussing. We are talking about virtual particles that do indeed just pop out of nowhere.

The Casimir effect is a concrete example of matter coming from nothing. It's also the easiest esample to demonstrate and understand. There are plenty more, but they require a good deal more background knowledge than you have."Quantum fluctuation" isn't a particularly "big word", and if you don't understand what it means you don't belong in a discussion of cosmology.

Perhaps so. All I have to go on is your posts in this thread, and they strongly suggest a lack of relevant knowledge. The terms are the answers. I'm not going to compose or cut-and-past pages of technical explanations; I'm going to link to good explanations. If you don't understand the terms, follow the links and learn. You're not going to get answers without them.

Perhaps so. All I have to go on is your posts in this thread, and they strongly suggest a lack of relevant knowledge. The terms are the answers. I'm not going to compose or cut-and-past pages of technical explanations; I'm going to link to good explanations. If you don't understand the terms, follow the links and learn. You're not going to get answers without them.