Before the "Big Bang"...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070701/sc_space/glimpseoftimebeforebigbangpossible
____________
Account ...

The big bang itself is not proven or there is not any 2+2=4 on that.

So thing before BB might be something else 2+2=?
____________
Mandtugai!

Very interesting article and discussion on Bad Astronomy What happened before the Big Bang?
____________

Before the Big Bang, There was the big trigger pull....



Sorry, couldn't help myself.


They are still searching for an all in one theory. Personally, I don't think it's possible to completely explain the universe simply because there is no way to go back and watch it happening. You can look back fairly far in telescopes, but it's just not possible to view it happening.


That being said...I do believe that it is still the most plausible theory.


Bill

Very interesting article and discussion on Bad Astronomy What happened before the Big Bang?

A recurring theme here in many of these replies is that two things collided while the Universe was still in the Singularity state. This itself poses problems as Movement causes heat, "time" (as a property of the Universe as we know it) as well as the associated gravitational effects of the moving objects (be they dimensional "objects" or not) would impart onto other objects within the singularity.

Keep in mind: If in the/a singularity, nothing could move/have motion without itself becoming the cause of the big bang. Any energy displaced would cause the rapid expansion and impart (effectively) the laws of physics as we know them ( think at + 1x10-43 seconds from the moment the bang began).

Basically, if there was a Singularity, there was absolutely no motion within it, no heat and no "physics" (Quantum or otherwise) and nothing we could understand until, again, 1x10-43++ seconds after the event.

Hawkings "Bubbles not Bang" theory does allow for physics/Quantum Physics/Alternate Physics to take place by having Multiple Universes banging together (for lack of better terminology) and the resulting energy that creates new(er) Universes. (not that I subscribe to this, but it does allow for interesting theories for the Grand Unified Field Theory).
____________

here is something that may help understand the nature of the pre big bang universe. The shortest unit of time allowed by physics is the Planck Time, which is the amount of time it takes the speed of light to traverse the Planck Length (which is the smallest unit of distance allowed by physics and is equal to 1x10-34, or a decimal point followed by 34 zeros then a 1). The Planck Time equates to 1x10-44 seconds. Or decimal point followed by 44 zeros and a 1.

So, the earliest moment of time we can rewind to is the first Planck Time. that is 1 Planck Time after the big bang. at this moment the universe was the size of the Planck Length. No measurement could ever be made shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length because from which NO information can escape or be retrieved. For all intents and purposes anything shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length is a black hole.

Before the 1st Planck Time, the universe was an infinitely dense singularity. It was chaos from which nothing could be known or extracted. Having reached maximum entropy, it exploded to make room for more entropy. This is mandated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that everything progresses increasingly towards more chaos. If a body has more entropy than is allowed it must create some sort of local order to create room for more chaos. This is the basis of the something from nothing theory.

So if that makes any sense, basically before the first Planck Time, time itself had no meaning. So to ask how long was the universe in this state of maximum chaos is asking the wrong question. It is meaningless. We need to ask, HOW did the universe get to that chaotic singularity state. Which is what string theory is attempting to answer.

i thought it would be interesting to notate the Planck Time and Length.

Planck Time:
0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds

Planck Length:
0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 centimeters

anything smaller is meaningless from which no information is extracted. fascinating :)

a good analogy for the Planck Length is: Imagine a tree on earth, any tree it can be the tallest. take an atom and blow it up to the size of the solar system. Place said tree next to said atom. Now, shrink the atom (and the tree, maintaining scale) to its normal size. the tree represents Planck Length.

here is something that may help understand the nature of the pre big bang universe. The shortest unit of time allowed by physics is the Planck Time, which is the amount of time it takes the speed of light to traverse the Planck Length (which is the smallest unit of distance allowed by physics and is equal to 1x10-34, or a decimal point followed by 34 zeros then a 1). The Planck Time equates to 1x10-44 seconds. Or decimal point followed by 44 zeros and a 1.

So, the earliest moment of time we can rewind to is the first Planck Time. that is 1 Planck Time after the big bang. at this moment the universe was the size of the Planck Length. No measurement could ever be made shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length because from which NO information can escape or be retrieved. For all intents and purposes anything shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length is a black hole.

Before the 1st Planck Time, the universe was an infinitely dense singularity. It was chaos from which nothing could be known or extracted. Having reached maximum entropy, it exploded to make room for more entropy. This is mandated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that everything progresses increasingly towards more chaos. If a body has more entropy than is allowed it must create some sort of local order to create room for more chaos. This is the basis of the something from nothing theory.

So if that makes any sense, basically before the first Planck Time, time itself had no meaning. So to ask how long was the universe in this state of maximum chaos is asking the wrong question. It is meaningless. We need to ask, HOW did the universe get to that chaotic singularity state. Which is what string theory is attempting to answer.

here is something that may help understand the nature of the pre big bang universe. The shortest unit of time allowed by physics is the Planck Time, which is the amount of time it takes the speed of light to traverse the Planck Length (which is the smallest unit of distance allowed by physics and is equal to 1x10-34, or a decimal point followed by 34 zeros then a 1). The Planck Time equates to 1x10-44 seconds. Or decimal point followed by 44 zeros and a 1.

So, the earliest moment of time we can rewind to is the first Planck Time. that is 1 Planck Time after the big bang. at this moment the universe was the size of the Planck Length. No measurement could ever be made shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length because from which NO information can escape or be retrieved. For all intents and purposes anything shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length is a black hole.

Before the 1st Planck Time, the universe was an infinitely dense singularity. It was chaos from which nothing could be known or extracted. Having reached maximum entropy, it exploded to make room for more entropy. This is mandated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that everything progresses increasingly towards more chaos. If a body has more entropy than is allowed it must create some sort of local order to create room for more chaos. This is the basis of the something from nothing theory.

So if that makes any sense, basically before the first Planck Time, time itself had no meaning. So to ask how long was the universe in this state of maximum chaos is asking the wrong question. It is meaningless. We need to ask, HOW did the universe get to that chaotic singularity state. Which is what string theory is attempting to answer.

Something had to be there surely??
you can't have a big bang from nothing, can you.

Big Bang
Big Crunch
Big Bang
Big Crunch

But which came first?

Big Bang
Big Crunch
Big Bang
Big Crunch

But which came first?

lol...its just like the chicken or the egg.

Unless there's some sort of mistake, the home page stated that John McCoy aka "jjemme" (thread author) has recently passed.

I just want to pay my respects and say RIP to you John. Hopefully you have now discovered the answers to the questions that we all continue to ask.

here is something that may help understand the nature of the pre big bang universe. The shortest unit of time allowed by physics is the Planck Time, which is the amount of time it takes the speed of light to traverse the Planck Length (which is the smallest unit of distance allowed by physics and is equal to 1x10-34, or a decimal point followed by 34 zeros then a 1). The Planck Time equates to 1x10-44 seconds. Or decimal point followed by 44 zeros and a 1.

So, the earliest moment of time we can rewind to is the first Planck Time. that is 1 Planck Time after the big bang. at this moment the universe was the size of the Planck Length. No measurement could ever be made shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length because from which NO information can escape or be retrieved. For all intents and purposes anything shorter than a Planck Time or Planck Length is a black hole.

Before the 1st Planck Time, the universe was an infinitely dense singularity. It was chaos from which nothing could be known or extracted. Having reached maximum entropy, it exploded to make room for more entropy. This is mandated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that everything progresses increasingly towards more chaos. If a body has more entropy than is allowed it must create some sort of local order to create room for more chaos. This is the basis of the something from nothing theory.

So if that makes any sense, basically before the first Planck Time, time itself had no meaning. So to ask how long was the universe in this state of maximum chaos is asking the wrong question. It is meaningless. We need to ask, HOW did the universe get to that chaotic singularity state. Which is what string theory is attempting to answer.

This is absolutely amazing. Thank you very very much. The beautiful thing is that I understand most of it and have heard and mulled over the terms, laws, and theories you have posited. It's not like total Greek to me any more. And all of this in about 2 years. I feel very good about my self education. I think I am beginning to understand, if indeed it can be, some of this "stuff."

This entropy and something from nothing, just when I think I see some sort of possibility, I get lost. I did state earlier in a post on this thread, I believe that something can be "created" from nothing. If we can someday "prove" this, what a quantum leap for man!!!

One last thing, so many questions we ask these days from our finite minds are becoming meaningless. This, I think, is what extremely bothers traditionalists. Another one is probability, not certainty.

I've wondered what took place before the big bang. The answer was looking me in the face and could have knocked me over. If time was created during the big bang, then time did not exist before the big bang. "Elementary my dear Watson."

What I should have articulated is that the current thinkinking of how the universe has got to where it is now has a "Second Opinion". The cyclic nature of Colliding Branes theory leaves no puzzle about what happened before .. There was always a universe --(sort of like the religious "uncaused cause") before the big bang there was a big crunch and so on. The universe "Always Was" I am not saying that I believe this--only that there are other ways--possibly better ways--of explaining what we now think we know about the Universe and it's history.

The current explanation which is in vogue involves--Big Bang from a singularity, Rapid inflation, the presence of dark matter and the existence of dark energy.

The inflation lasted only until 10 **-30 sec after the big bang, The universe doubled every 10**-35 seconds or in other words it doubled 100,000 times during this very brief inflationary period. The energy for this inflation was present at the Big Bang and then suddenly dissipated into radiation. Dark matter is indeed evident since visual mass does not fit with observations in galactic rotational spins--Apparentlly 5 billion years ago the expansion of space produced enough dark energy (the energy of the vacuum) so that this energy defeated the gravitational pull of matter and thus the universe is expanding.

Since space itself is expanding the dark energy grows and is not diluted like the gravitational force or the mass density of the Universe. Thus the universe expands with increasing acceleration producing more space, more vacuum and more dark energy.

What I was driving at is that there may be other theories (such as the Brane Collision theory) which also accounts for the state of the current universe. These theories may be more tidy in explaining current conditions rather than having to incorporate, with careful scaling, the theories of big Bang, inflation, dark matter and dark energy.

Just as Epicyles could account for planetary motion--having to add epicycles upon epicycles to achieve accuracy suggested that there was a more profound understanding which yielded a better model of reality.

I hope that this adds to the discussion.

Regards,

Bill
AKA DADDIO