What caused the Big Bang?

Question

Maybe this is a stupid question, but if there is that much matter balled up in one spot, shouldn't its own gravity hold it together? What could cause such a massive explosion?

Answer 1

The explaination on the,"Big Bang" theory would run to pages.
But I am just giving a very small idea about it.

The,"Big Bang" is not an explosion as thought many people.

The scientists have observed,through minute calculations about the distances between celestial bodies,that the celestial bodies are moving away from each other.

They believe the bodies are not moving on their own accord or varying speeds or different paths.
There is consensus among scientists that the celestial bodies are relatively fixed in their orbits and locations in the space.
They are suspended in the space.Now this space keeps expanding outwards,and therefore pulling the bodies with it.

Imagine a rubber sheet(like a balloon).Paste some small beads in it.Now if you stretch the rubber sheet,the beads also move away from each other.The movement is not their movement,but simply the result of the stretching of the rubber sheet.

Here is where the proposal of the,"Big Bang" theory comes in.
Now the space is expanding outwards.We assume that this would have been happening for millions of years,although we are observing it only in the recent years.

If it is moving outwards,then we give a backward projection.Last year it would have been a little inward,and a little more the previous year.
We proceed this way and conclude that may be millions of years ago the celestial bodies were clustered together.

It only metaphorically means that like an explosion where things are thrown outward,the universe could be moving outwards from a cluster point.

But again it is only a projection.The bodies need not have been clustered together when they were formed.May be they formed in a scattered locations.

The theory does not explain why the outward movement started or how the celestial bodies were formed.

The,"Big Bang" theory did not suggest an explosion with a big bang.

Answer 2

This is an abstract answer that i actually think is pretty good. I was told that Roger Penrose said this:

1. Eventually everything in the universe will be inside a lot of black holes

2. Black holes evaporate by hawking radiation

3. When all the black holes evaporate the universe will be filled with randomly distributed radiation... NO matter!

4. There are NO observers.

5. These conditions are the same as the big bang singularity.

So, while the universe never actually collapses, there is some sort of cycle. Obviously this is an abstract theory, though i think it is the most complete one so far.

Answer 3

M-theory is a cutting-edge theory of physics that deals with the extension of superstring theory. It is somewhat contentious in the physics community, as it lacks empirical evidence. If ever experimentally verified, M-theory and string theory would represent remarkable advances in science.

M-theory has been the target of increasing skepticism as some (notably Peter Woit and Lee Smolin) argue that string theorists have overstated many of the theory's strengths while underplaying its weaknesses

Unlike more conventional views of creation in modern physics, that are Ex nihilo, the M-Theory vision, although not yet complete, is of the whole observable universe being one of many extended 4 dimensional branes in an 12 dimensional spacetime. Although branes similar to that representing our universe can co-exist in the theory, their physical laws could differ from our own, as could their number of dimensions. Some proponents of the theory now believe that a collision of two branes may have been responsible for the Big Bang.

thats said...

The big bang was not an explosion of matter; it was an explosion of energy

Using Einstein’s equation E=MC2 mater and energy are interchangeable. We have already turned mater into energy so the reverse would also be true.

The mater in the universe was transformed from the energy of the big bang.

Answer 4

We know the universe,at one time did not exist.
A primordial egg would have had nowhere to sit and no time reference when to explode.
The universe had to emerge from a finite potential.
The potential was nothing and it had to be finite or it could not have been triggered.
A single space-time pulse came into existence some time about 10 to the minus 95 seconds from zero.
The second pulse endowed it with three dimensions and all the rules necessary to evolve into a universe like ours.
It expanded,accelerating for one thirty-billionths of a second,the radial velocity reached the speed of light and the acceleration stopped.
We have a universe the size of a marble.
There was no electro-magnetism,no strong or weak forces and no gravity,but it had all the essentials to evolve into a universe like ours and into us.

Answer 5

Huh, c'mon give us a HARD question.

No one knows. But, in this recent M-theory stuff, there is the idea that parallel universes, called Branes, are floating around in hyperspace, and that two of them happened to bang together, sparking off an enormous amount of energy in our universe, hence the Big Bang.

Of course you could ask where the heck those Branes came from and what they're doing there. Anyway, most likely a bunch of horsecrap...

Answer 6

We don't know. But one thing I can tell you is that gravity as a separate force (of the 4 fundamental forces) did not exist. All the forces were combined into one. Since we don't have the math for that yet, we don't know what could cause it to become unstable.

Answer 7

It's one of the best question on Yahoo! It's not quite a explosion, more like an expansion of infinit amount of energy enlosed in an infinitly small partcle.

Answer 8

i bet before i can post this question, there will be at least 5 anwers that say "god"...
as far as i remember, the cause is unknown. there was some not understood law of physics or so, and it caused all the matter to be converted into energy. or the other way round, like it was all energy at the beginning and the energy became matter? sorry, i don't really know...

Answer 9

You'll have to ask Al Gore. He invented the universe.

Answer 10

Nobody knows.