if the big bang was an expansion of matter then where did it come from?

Question

thanks for your help

Answer 1

First of all, matter is not expanding...space is. Matter is just going along for the ride. In fact, the galaxies are on average getting farther apart because the space between them is expanding. There are instances of galaxies colliding (like the Milky Way and Andromeda will do a long time from now), but overall they are getting farther and farther away from each other.

In the beginning (sounds like a popular book I once read) there was the big bang. In the first instances, there was no matter, perhaps only energy...although there are some who believe even energy did not exist at the very beginning. Only later, after the so-called inflationary epoch, did matter in the form of quarks and other subatomic particles pop out as the universe cooled. And, perhaps, as the matter congeled out, energy was also created. Check this out:

"The inflationary epoch
Between 10-35 seconds and 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang
Main article: Inflationary epoch
The temperature, and therefore the time, at which cosmic inflation occurs is not known for certain. During inflation, the universe is flattened and the universe enters a homogeneous and isotropic rapidly expanding phase in which the seeds of structure formation are laid down in the form of a primordial spectrum of nearly-scale-invariant fluctuations. Some energy from photons becomes virtual quarks and hyperons, but these particles decay quickly. One scenario suggests that prior to cosmic inflation, the universe was cold and empty, and the immense heat and energy associated with the early stages of the big bang was created through the phase change associated with the end of inflation." [See source.]

So the real question is, where did the stuff of the big bang that eventually became energy and matter come from? And perhaps even more interesting, what was that primordial stuff that became mass and energy, which make up the universe we know and love?

One string theory WAG, mere speculation, is that there are parallel universes separated by one Plank length (about 10-33 cm) along some space-time dimension above our standard four dimensions. [See source.] Then, the WAG goes, two of these massive parallel universes collide for a Plank second, changing their respective momenta.

That resulted in a force of unimaginable size and the universes moved to create the work/energy let loose by the big bang in our universe. We presume the same thing happened in the other universe as well. Allegorically, our universe is a bruise from that collision.

Anyway, the important physics lesson here is that space itself is expanding, not the matter inside it. In fact, the galaxies (concentrations of matter) remain pretty much fixed in their dimensions; which is why dark matter was supposed. Without it, the galaxies would have flown apart under their centrifugal forces.

Answer 2

I'm skeptic of the big bang theory, but you could probably compare the 'initial state' to an extremely super-massive black hole where matter is completely collapsed to a point. I've heard science shows say that the universe may go through cycles of expanding and contracting, but the current universe doesn't show any tendencies of repeating this process. Right now it's just expanding as far as we can tell.

Answer 3

It wasn't an explosion, it was an expansion. Like the difference between blowing up a balloon and popping one.

We're not sure where it came from yet. But we have a lot of theories, and many of them are testable, or will be in the next few years. Until then, look up Brane theory and M-theory.

Just because we don't know the answer yet doesn't mean we never will. Which is why we need more scientists.

Answer 4

it is the believe of scientests that big bang theory exists but you never know that either they are right or wrong because no one was there at the time of that expansion or explosion or if we consider that it exists then we know it too that at first small masses just gatherd to become a big mass and due to alot of heat the molecules of that big mass were in random motion so they tried to get out of there orbits and hence due to large heat capacity the big bang theory took place.

Answer 5

No one knows where the initial state came from. We can describe up to the first 10^-42 second, but not further. We don't know all the mass-energy got there.