Some questions on the Big Bang...?

Question

Ok I understand most things about Big Bang but... here are some ruff questions about it.

1. What type of phenomenon is a singularity?
2. How is it possible that so much energy could be contained in such a small source of matter?
3. Newton's First Law of motion indicates that a object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. If there was only that singularity in the entire universe, what caused the catastrophic reaction that resulted in well... us?

Answer 1

1) A singularity is neither matter nor energy as we know it. It is best defined as a region in space where physical laws as we know them supposedly do not apply.

2) Given the nature of a singularity (as described above) the current physical laws supposedly did not prevail; hence it was supposedly possible to hold everything that we know of in a subatomic volume.

3) Objections such as yours are the reason that supposedly rational people have taken to assuming the existence of an infinite number of parallel universes separated by ‘branes’. They believe that this sufficiently answers the question by pushing it back a level.

The theory of branes and parallel universes to support the anthropic principle may be best illustrated by the story of a foolish old woman who attended an astronomy lecture. She told the lecturer afterward that she didn’t believe that the Earth was floating unsupported in space, but that it was resting on the back of a gigantic turtle. Upon being asked what the turtle was standing on, she said it was another, even larger turtle. And upon being asked what THAT turtle was standing on, she replied, “It’s no use! It’s turtles, all the way down!”

Stretching the assumption of the physical universe to the infinite point seems to me to be very similar to “turtles, all the way down.”

Some scientists are quite offended at learning that they themselves are capable of substantially the same kind of cognitive disconnects and logical contradictions which they had previously assumed to be the sole province of persons they regarded as ignorant or superstitious. But that is their own problem.

29 JAN 07, 1759 hrs, GMT.

Answer 2

1. The question doesn't make much sense and answers itself. A singularity is a phenomenon of type singularity. A gravitational singularity is essentially a place where measurements such as spacetime curvature and density become infinite. Very tough to wrap your mind around.

2. I'm not sure what you mean "How is it possible". In quantum physics the idea that huge amounts of energy - or even lack of energy - can be condensed accounts for the black holes and anti-matter. Even in our relatively non-quantum arena, very small amounts of certain explosives can spark huge chain reactions. The nuclear explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples.

3. An excellent question, and one that is philosophically debated still. It's something that tends to spark light in religious debates.

Answer 3

I'm going to go out on a limb here and postulate compression/expansion dynamics may have interplayed. The scope of a singularity, where gravity compression is so great even light can't escape, may have reached a point of intersection with an unknown element with the collision causing explosion. There is the 'rubber band' theory where things can only be stretched so far and must return. Perhaps, the opposite is true as well.