Where did the material for the Big Bang come from?

Question

Don't give me any garbage that it was "just there". Nothing is ever just there.

Answer 1

GOD!

Answer 2

We don't know, but believe it or not there are some plausible ideas. The problem is that the ideas are probably enough beyond the typical education level of most people that most people will dismiss them, and instead think that "God did it" is the only possible answer.

Did you know that quantum physics is perhaps the most successful and accurate physical theory we have? It can be used to predict the results of experiments to more than 9 decimals places (1 part in a billion). And quantum mechanics says that even in a pure vacuum, there is a constant creation of matching matter and antimatter particles. Most of the time, these particles immediately cancel each other out. But sometimes they don't, and escape from each other, and the result is new matter, yet the net energy in the universe stays the same.

That is just one plausible explanation for how matter could have come from "nothing". There are others. In M-Theory (a generalization of String Theory) is it hypothesized that our universe is not just 4 dimensions (3 space dimensions plus 1 time dimension) but perhaps as many as 11 dimensions. Our 4D space-time could be just a 4D "surface" or "membrane" embedded in the higher dimensional space. There may be other 4D space-times that exist that are parallel to ours, possibly separated by a very small distance. Two such membranes may be moving relative to each other, and could possibly "collide". If that happened, there would be a tremendous release of energy in the form of matter and antimatter. The math says that the result could be very much like a Big Bang, producing radiation much like cosmic microwave background radiation that has been observed.

The truth is probably stranger than either of these ideas. But I bet the truth has nothing to do with the story of Genesis or the rest of the Bible.

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By the way, you yourself said "Nothing is ever just there." Do you really believe that?? If so, doesn't the statement apply to "God"?
I don't see how theists think they can have both sides of that argument.

Answer 3

It is impossible for our current formulation of the laws of physics to describe the universe for the split second (I forget exactly how long, but I believe it's an incomprehensibly small number) after the Big Bang. This is because we currently have two sets of laws: classical physics (Newton and Einstein) for the big stuff and quantum mechanics for the very small stuff (sub-atomic particles). They both work fine in their own areas, but can't be reconciled. There are two main times when this causes a problem--black holes and the Big Bang. So scientists are somewhat limited in answering your question.

One theory is that the universe has always existed, or has existed in cyclically. It's difficult to think about things existing without or outside of time, but that's just a limitation of our brains--remember Einstein found time to be just another dimension. It may not make sense to talk about time before a certain point, just as it doesn't make sense to talk about the dimensions we call height and width before the Big Bang turned a singularity into the universere (singularity is a complicated idea, but something with such great gravitational pull that spacetime is warped to the point where there is infinite density in zero space)

"Just there" and "always there" cause us to think about time. Thinking of things teleologically causes huge problems no matter how you cut it. If you believe the idea that nothing can be without a pre-existing cause you will have a hard time answering the question of where the singularity that exploded came from, or where God/gods came from. Cause and effect thinking have the same problem in both cases. Religion deals with the problem by ignoring such thinking and stating that God was "just there." For some reason this is easier for most people to accept than explanations of the origin of the universe.

Read the spectacular "A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking" or check out the citations listed below. It's a complicated but fascinating subject. Sorry I couldn't offer a better answer.

Answer 4

Where does the material for thought come from? Thoughts are not matter, they are events. The big bang was an event. The matter in the universe did not exist before the big bang because reality occurred with that event.

If this sounds confusing, it should. We don't possess evolved enough brains to think through this problem. A fish in a tank can observe the outside world. It can watch you talking on your cell phone, but that fish has no hope of ever understanding what you are doing, or how a cell phone works. It could never dial a phone number. It can see furniture in the room, but can never understand where that furniture came from.

It's not EVOLVED enough.

It can't understand what came before you set up it's tank, what will happen to it's tank when it dies, or what will happen if you die. It can't even understand the glass barrier that prevents it from swimming around the room it can clearly see! It can't comprehend life or existence at the level a human can.

We are trying to understand the universe the way that fish is trying to understand what it sees. We simply haven't evolved the brain power. We may never, but there is a bright spot... we may someday create a brain similar to ours in the form of a computer that can evolve thousands of times faster than ours, and perhaps ask it the question.

The problem is, it's doubtful we'd be able to understand the answer.

Answer 5

I think it came from the 2nd chapter of Genesis, where the mist came over the ground. This opens the door (wide) to all human confusion, including the material (seeming) universe. How can matter fill infinite space anyway? I do not believe that the stuff we call matter could have just been there and patiently waited to explode and be creation. That idea seems like a real stab in the dark.

Answer 6

There was nothing before the Big Bang. Think of it this way: if we look at the universe as if it were the earth, and going back in time is going south, eventually you get to the South Pole. Can you go further south? No, only north. You cannot go back in time before the Big Bang because there is no such thing. The Big Bang is like the South Pole in this analogy (though the universe is four-dimensional, not like our 3-D earth).

Answer 7

When something explodes you get different sized pieces of it, they are the planets and stars cause the bigger it is the more energy. Also we know that the universe is getting bigger because the planets are moving further from the middle, which had to be caused from some sort of force so that had to be a bang.

Answer 8

Why is nothing ever just there? Because you've never seen it from your point? Who knows? It does not confirm that God exists, if you are truly curious you would do some of your own research or go to the science section for answers.

Answer 9

George Gamow and Ralph Alpher were the two physicists that proclaimed this theory. The rest of the world just clung to their every word since they were educated in this field. Hate to think I would base my life on two from 1948. Notice it is just a theory or idea not concrete proof. Amazing huh.

Answer 10

No one really knows. There's a multiverse theory, (several actually) which you can look up on wikipedia. But it's kind of silly to just *call* the beginning of the universe God, don't you think?

Answer 11

Whats this "Big Bang Theory"??? Oh,.... you mean Creation???? Yeah, God did that. The first chapter of the Bible is a wonderful thing eh??

PS- If you do believe in that theory, and you cant prove it, it makes it just a unproveable as God right?????


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