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

In 4 Dimensional space-time Einstein's equations cannot traverse t=0. This is mathematically true but may not be physically true. If you look at KALUZA-KLEIN theory you may conclude that there was no singularity--maybe only a wave travelling along a fifth dimension which inserted itself into our 4 dimensional "manifold". There may have been no BANG only a BIG BOUNCE of membranes in higher dimensions.

I wish people would stop referring to the big bang as if it was a proven indisputable scientific fact.

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/Mav

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
(Carl Sagan)

I don't know if the universe is infinite or if it is finite. I will leave you with this though. Space has structure. Matter bends space. We can see light following the space bent by matter.

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I wish people would stop referring to the big bang as if it was a proven indisputable scientific fact.

I certainly don't hold that the Big Bang explains everything about cosmology. In that sense, it is not an indisputable scientific fact. A few hopefully connected ideas:

- The Big Bang model of the universe is backed up with concrete evidence and
probably the most important scientific achievement of the 20th century.
- The Big Bang is a model that explains the "creation," evolution, and
history of the universe.
- The Big Bang itself was an explosion of space and of time. Both space
and time were "created" at the "moment" of the Big Bang.
- There are still many questions about cosmological modeling that are still
unanswered, but the Big Bang is generally accepted to be the most coherent
and consistent description of our universe.
- The Big Bang is not an indisputable scientific fact, I guess, in the sense
that it is "The Correct Theory." A few cosmologists still hold out for an
"eternal universe."
- Fred Hoyle, for example, went to his grave in 2001 firmly believing that the
Quasi-Steady State model was correct and that the Big Bang model was wrong.

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It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. --- Enrico Fermi ---

There has been some interesting thoughts on that subject in the The String Cafe Table blog. It looks possible that the intersection of two branes could have been the culprit, rather than the singularity they told us about in junior high.
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Thanks for this, Bill. All I can say is, wow!!! Can you imagine the "imagination" it must take to conjure up this stuff? Then to make-up or find the words in the English language to fit their theories, must be an absolute nightmare. To think that we are looking for ETI's that are more advanced than our quantum physicists, makes my day.

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It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. --- Enrico Fermi ---

Quantum physics, according to the uncertainty principle, briefly stated: the universe could have started from nothing and for no reason.

Yeah, but they never bother to explain where *quantum mechanics* came from. They want you to believe that we start with this thing called "nothing", but that magically this nothing has the property of following quantum mechanics and being unstable, etc, etc..

Well, that's not really nothing. That's something. So where did THAT come from? Eh? Or more correctly (without reference to time): Why did *that* exist instead of an *actual* nothing, or instead of a little fully stable point that never does anything interesting.

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Quantum physics, according to the uncertainty principle, briefly stated: the universe could have started from nothing and for no reason.

Yeah, but they never bother to explain where *quantum mechanics* came from. They want you to believe that we start with this thing called "nothing", but that magically this nothing has the property of following quantum mechanics and being unstable, etc, etc..

Well, that's not really nothing. That's something. So where did THAT come from? Eh? Or more correctly (without reference to time): Why did *that* exist instead of an *actual* nothing, or instead of a little fully stable point that never does anything interesting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm basically with you, I think. I have a hard enough time understanding the English language (even harder our "body language" or reading "between the lines" as some say). I was trying to defend my stand on the Big Bang model, which I am finding is not an easy thing to do. I resorted to the uncertainty principle; who can understand that, really? But it "fits." Again, I think. You have to admit, this quantum stuff makes you realy dig deep, and at least, concentrate. It's good exercise for the mind, if nothing else, at least for me. At my age, I will take everything I can get.

So anyway, "reading between your lines," are you saying that nothing is something?

I like your *that*. We need to redefine *that*. That way people won't have to say, "what do you mean by that"?

When it all boils down inside our little finite minds, I think we have to say that infinity comes in at the bottom of everything; and until we evolve into creatures that have "higher powers," we are stuck. How's that for an astute explanation from someone who knows nothing?

One nice alternative to the idea of "before" the big bang is that time operates in a circle. Matter doesn't even have to "crunch" for another big bang to happen, just heat-death itself away. Space stops expanding, then another big bang occurs. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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One nice alternative to the idea of "before" the big bang is that time operates in a circle. Matter doesn't even have to "crunch" for another big bang to happen, just heat-death itself away. Space stops expanding, then another big bang occurs. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Another big bang, another big bang, another big bang, (heat-deathing itself away). If I understand you correctly, this has been going on in an eternal (our finite mind's idea) cycle, like you say, in a circle. So "before" the big bang is not necessary to posit. But you know what some one is going to ask: where does this matter that is heat-deathing itself away come from? I can answer that it, matter/energy, has always existed. It simply just is. To me, this makes sense and I thank you for this. I don't think I have ever seen it put just the way you did.

So the world we live in right now, is in one of those wash rinse cycles. We don't experience going from one to the next because it is in this circle that we can't escape, so it is like an ant crawling around a basketball wearing himself out because he never gets to finish his journey.

This thread is too juicy not to post a few comments. Time may well be an illusion that helps us order events in our lives. What if one or more of the "extra" dimensions were time-like instead of being spatial.

In my mind the extra dimensions, if they exist, don't have to be compactified. Just as two dimensional creatures living only on the surface of a bubble or spherical balloon cannot see the third dimension does not mean that it dosen't exist--all they could know with careful measurement is the shape of their space or universe and the wonderment of what their universe is curved into.

The vacuum or "nothing" is not necessarily "nothing" in the physics sense. The vacuum has energy associated with it. The vacuum contains the "Higgs" field which is thought to create what we call "Mass" The Large Hadron Collider will most likely confirm the existance of the Higgs Boson in the next few years.

Heisenburg's uncertainty principle I think is being misunderstood. When I studied theoretical physics, the mathematics of this was not so strange. Basically you cannot know wthin a well-known limit exactly what the position AND the momentum of a "particle" are at a given TIME. the measurement of one perturbs the actuality of the other--big deal, but Plank sneaks in here and all sorts of consequences are seen --Einstein felt that since there were disparities between Quantuum Physics and Relativity that our understanding and models were not complete --he was most probably right.

Einstein apparently felt that Matter was also a consequence of Geometry just like Gravity. Higher dimensional physics may prove this to be exactly right.

William, thanks for the ideas. I happened to have your post up on my computer as I was talking on the telephone to my son in Boise Idaho. He is a young electrical engineer just out of college 3 years or so. I mentioned what you said about time being an illusion, the dimension stuff, and the uncertainty principle. He enjoyed clearing the fog for me. After talking to him, I did understand a little better what you were saying. I find my brain in a state of disarray right now. You really have to slip into a different gear to discuss quantum physics etc. Speaking of Einstein, one wonders how he negotiated back and forth from the world of ideas to the world of cleaning the toilet.

Quantum physics, according to the uncertainty principle, briefly stated: the universe could have started from nothing and for no reason.

Yeah, but they never bother to explain where *quantum mechanics* came from. They want you to believe that we start with this thing called "nothing", but that magically this nothing has the property of following quantum mechanics and being unstable, etc, etc..

Well, that's not really nothing. That's something. So where did THAT come from? Eh? Or more correctly (without reference to time): Why did *that* exist instead of an *actual* nothing, or instead of a little fully stable point that never does anything interesting.

Quantuum Physics started from a few very simple observations. In the Bohr model of the atom the electrons appeared to travel in a nest of orbits (hence chemistry). The orbits were discreet and exact--they also represented different levels of energy or "excitation" of the Atom. When an atom decayed--an electon would fall into a lower orbit and the resulting energy difference would be emitted as a photon at a unique energt level (frequency or color).

Also the real start also included the spectrum of emissions from an ideal "Black Body" as it was heated. Classical physics predicted sort of a continuous relation between the energy going in (heat) and the energy going out (light) Planck however noticed that this was not the case and developed a model that light was emitted onlt in discrete packets or quanta. These occured oonly at certain frequencies and not all frequencies were in evidence only specific ones. hence the start of "Quantuum Theory or Quantuum Mechanics"

Quantum physics, according to the uncertainty principle, briefly stated: the universe could have started from nothing and for no reason.

Yeah, but they never bother to explain where *quantum mechanics* came from. They want you to believe that we start with this thing called "nothing", but that magically this nothing has the property of following quantum mechanics and being unstable, etc, etc..

Well, that's not really nothing. That's something. So where did THAT come from? Eh? Or more correctly (without reference to time): Why did *that* exist instead of an *actual* nothing, or instead of a little fully stable point that never does anything interesting.

Quantuum Physics started from a few very simple observations. In the Bohr model of the atom the electrons appeared to travel in a nest of orbits (hence chemistry). The orbits were discreet and exact--they also represented different levels of energy or "excitation" of the Atom. When an atom decayed--an electon would fall into a lower orbit and the resulting energy difference would be emitted as a photon at a unique energt level (frequency or color).

Also the real start also included the spectrum of emissions from an ideal "Black Body" as it was heated. Classical physics predicted sort of a continuous relation between the energy going in (heat) and the energy going out (light) Planck however noticed that this was not the case and developed a model that light was emitted onlt in discrete packets or quanta. These occured oonly at certain frequencies and not all frequencies were in evidence only specific ones. hence the start of "Quantuum Theory or Quantuum Mechanics"

Quantuum Mechanics, not quantum physics. Quantuum (singular) and quanta (plural), all dealing with subatomic particles. Probability not certainty. Instantaneity not intervals of time or space. This is a start.

They want you to believe that we start with this thing called "nothing", but that magically this nothing has the property of following quantum mechanics and being unstable, etc, etc..

Well, that's not really nothing. That's something. So where did THAT come from?

Well, it's possible that something and nothing are the same thing.. just viewed from different perspectives.

Something/nothing duality is no different than wave/particle duality in quantum physics (which has been mentioned here) where the wave (particle) exists and does not exist depending on how you look at it.

<img src="http://www.donnee.com/r-d.jpg">

Wittgenstein's rabbit/duck drawing helped me understand the paradox of both existing and not existing. (Hint: the rabbit's ears are the duck's beak.) The rabbit (duck) exists and does not exist.

Does this mean the universe does not exist? Yes and No.

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Sometime, somewhere there will be another Bang. And it will continue in all eternity!? :)

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If you look at the big bang part in the Branes part of string theory, before our universe started, our own universe was nothing more then one of the uncountable strings of energy out there, which was energized by the collision of existing branes to become a brane itself, creating our universe.
(Branes are said to be strings that are able to stretch as huge as a universe depending on the energy they have.)

If you look at it like that, the problem of physics collapsing at the scale of the energy of our entire universe being focussed into a miniscule point, doesn't exist anymore. Because most of that energy wasn't there before the collission because it was energy that was part of the branes that initiated the big bang.

Same goes for black holes. If energy can be brought into our universe from other branes, it can also be transfered from our brane to another or to whatever dimension the branes exist in.

Most fun about it is that it complies with all laws of physics, because no energy is destroyed or created, its just moved about to another place.

Now, as the religous part of all this, it could well be that our universe is somehow a part of an extra dimensional being which has an intelligence of its own.

I doubt that there was any deliberate creation of our universe, but it wouldn't be surprising to me that there is something bigger then us that "created us" as a part of its physiology, just like cells are part of ours.

this is a really interesting thread....just a thought if i may...

consider this analogy...

imagine if you will that your kitchen table represents everything that you know, all theories, all beliefs, all of your knowledge.

You are the kitchen table only, so, becasue of that, you are unaware of the kitchen, the living room, the walls etc.

In the middle of that table is a 25mm hole, which affords/allows you, to see a section of the carpet that lies below the table.

Based on the knowledge that you, as the table have, would you believe me if i told you that the litttle bit of carpet you can see throught the hole is actually part of something that covers an entire room, that lies beyond your current concepts/ideas/theories and reality?

Would you even entertain the idea that i might be correct?

Some of the hindu/buddist concepts say that there are 84 universes to this one (of five) existence/levels alone.

This is posted in reply to JS's comment "just like cells are a part of ours".

Is the ant in your back yard aware of the rest of the world? I think not.

Maybe, this existence is no more that us being at the atomic level of something greater that ourselves.

Based on that, could I not postulate that the big band is no more than part of an act of procreation, yes a possibly sexual thing, and that it is nothing more than the creation of "a life" ie sperm meets ova and BANG, life, as we know it begins?!

It is no more than a thought, please don't condem me nor flame me...just a bilateral opinion

Maybe, this existence is no more that us being at the atomic level of something greater that ourselves.

;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Interesting read:

Evidences are becoming very clear based on research by Indian Scientists in the Indian Institute of Science that Universe is in its fifth cycle of “birth and death “. Just like in case of the stars (known as Super Nova), Universes are also created and destroyed periodically in Billions of years. Many Universes are actually contained by mega-Universe. These Universes are born and they die over billions of years. The mega-Universes are contained by super-mega-Universe and they are also born and die. This goes on and on till we reach the multidimensional infinity. Those who are religious may at that stage interpret God as that invisible “multi-dimensional infinity” that really created everything and controls everything.

More Here

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The india daily is like a weekly world news it just for entertainment.

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