Re: the 'big bang' theory - where did the dust come from in the first place?

Question

As a normal joe bloggs, I can just about accept/understand that dust/gas accumulated and led to the 'big bang'; however, I am completely bemused as to the origin of the dust/gas . I am not particularly religious, but sometimes it's easier to accept the Christian version of Genesis as opposed to the scientists. Can someone explain, in laymans terms ?

Answer 1

Big Bang theory says at first there was no gas, only pure energy. For whatever reason ( like God said, "Let there be light" ) this point of pure energy decided to expand outwards in all directions at the speed of light. Very soon, this energy started "condensing" into the simplest forms of matter, such as hydrogen atoms. That's where e=mc^2 comes from: energy = mass times the speed of light squared...alot like f=mv^2 (momentum = mass times velocity squared)

Anyway, huge clouds of these simple hydrogen atoms gathered due to the gravitational attraction between them, and condensed into the first stars...HUGE stars that were immensely hotter than our own sun. They started crunching the hydrogen into more complicated atoms like helium. That's nuclear fusion. But when all the hydrogen fuel in the star's core was used up, the outer layers cooled and collapsed inwards from all sides. The enourmous squeeze from the sudden shrinking caused another kind of bang called a supernova.

The force from the exploding supernova fused the helium into even heavier atoms, and the debris was spewed outwards in all directions. In the same way the original stars were formed, this debris collected and condensed into smaller stars, which pressure-cooked the heavier atoms into even more heavy and complex atoms. If these 2nd generation stars were big enough, they went supernova as well, and made even heavier atoms. By now, atoms such as carbon, aluminum, oxygen, iron, gold, etc existed, and make up what most astonomers call "space dust". Asteroids and comets are good examples of this leftover debris...or "ash" if you'd like...and it's the stuff we are made of.

Answer 2

The Big Bang didn't ignite as a result of dust accumulating.

According to the Big Bang Theory, there wasn't even a universe here in the first place: all points of the universe were compressed into a single point, a Singularity as it were, where nothing you know of as "physics" applies.

All of the energy in the universe was also concentrated there, too, until the Big Bang, which saw the expansion of the Singularity into a whole universe. The energy scattered along with the expanding space, and eventually cooled, coalesced and began forming into the matter you see and sense and take for granted.

As for what conditions were like in that Singularity ... scientists haven't even got the maths for it. It all falls apart - and you know? When the science and the maths fails, scientists and mathematicians get excited, rather than despair, because it means they've got an Unknown they can work on - and quite possibly they could even come up with some new science and mathematics as a result of their investigations.

Answer 3

As I understand it the Big Bang theory was figured out backwards...

It has been observed by astronomers that every part of the universe is moving away from every other part of the universe... that is... the universe is expanding.

It is reasonably logical to work back wards and say 'well it must started small and have expanded into something big' and being mathematical types they have modelled this as the expansion beginning from a single tiny theoretical point. They call this magical point a singularity. It doesn't necessarily exist, except in mathematical models, but all the steps to deducing that a singularity must have existed are very logical.

The nature of singularities is not known, and this is very convenient for god botherers because you can place a god there if you like. In theory, the nature of a singularity is so peculiar that all the matter and energy in the universe must have been contained within it. The Sci Fi authors have a great time trying to guess what singularities might be, collapsed universes, doorways to other universes..... your guess is as good as theirs.

Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' has a lot more of this in layman's terms, I would recommend it.

Answer 4

You are misunderstanding the 'Big bang' model. The Big Bang is *not* an explosion in the usual sense. A typical explosion expands by sending matter through space. In the Big Bang, it is space itself that is expanding.

Second, the Big Bang model does not postulate 'gas and dust'. Instead, it follows the observed expansion backwards in time to see that the universe was incredible hot and dense just after it got started.

As for the material that was there at the beginning, there are several, very speculative, possibilities. The first is to simply notice that time is part of the geometry of the universe. The Big Bang represents a discontinuity in that geometry and it may well not be possible to talk about 'before the Big Bang. An analogy is to look at the latitude lines on the earth. There is no 'north of the north pole'. When Einstein's equations are used to model the early universe a similar thing happens with time.

When quantum effects are brought in, there are other possibilities. One is that the discontinuity gets rounded out, but that 'before the Big Bang' still makes no sense. Another is that there was a contracting universe before ours that underwent a 'Big Bounce' to produce ours.

Finally, in models involving string theory or brane theory, the Big Bang was sparked by a collision of 'membranes' in a higher dimensional space. This theory is popular right now, but has little evidence to back it up. The other theories are at least plausible extensions of what we have been able to actually verify experimentally.

Answer 5

From the movement in the universe, it appears that the universe had a beginning. The original question was, how do you create something from nothing?

Many scientists avoid trying to answer this question by saying that anything that happened before the big bang happened before time and is therefore meaningless. This is obviously a cop out because the question is too hard. With this statement, they also try to define time's existence with the appearance of light when it is very possible that the universe existed before light. Obviously, there were some events that occurred in the time leading up to the big bang and time is just another yardstick that mankind has created to try to measure and organize things. The appearance and acceptance of Singularity is just as theological as any other religion.

Other scientists are busy trying to create something from nothing by saying that there were waves, polarization, quanta of light, strings, or super vacuum bubbles in the vacuum. Of course, there is nothing to wave, polarize, or strum in a vacuum and there is no such thing as less of nothing and a vacuum is a vacuum. Anything else, like space, is a low pressure system.

Genesis is non-denominational. Christianity came along a lot later. Genesis is widely accepted and will stand in the absence of proof otherwise.

Answer 6

The Big Bang theory, as far as I know, does not have any explanative value before 10^-44 seconds (the Planck era). So no, it does not mean that enough dust accreted. Modern understanding of physics can't explain time from 10^-44 seconds and earlier.

Answer 7

Not a bad question, but one that is impossible for science to answer. Ever.

Scientist can make and test thoeries about what happened just after the Big Bang, but not what comes just before. That's a question for religion.

Answer 8

I don't know, which is what science should say more often.

Answer 9

each person can trust that the large bang is a good idea. Scientists do not commence via asking "who". at present scientists have a lot of information that the large bang handed off. you are able to study that in the reference. notwithstanding, technology does no longer have an answer as to what led to the large bang. yet.

Answer 10

The dust/gas you are referring to is simply matter.

Where does it come from? Well, if matter is a simple form of energy then it could be a derivative of a higher form of energy. A higher energy that humans cannot measure nor even comprehend.