What part of the Big Bang Theory has "something" coming from "nothing"?

Question

I ask this in R&S because the only people I've heard claim "The Big Bang says that something came from nothing" are creationists. I've never heard a single astronomer say that.

So what part of the currently accepted Big Bang model of the Universe makes that claim? (I say "currently accepted" because I don't want somebody digging up an old version of the theory that has already been discredited.)

Can anybody give me a citation as to where it says this? Scientific literature would, of course, be ideal.

C.L. Richardson: Why is "nothing" the only logical conclusion? Why is that more logical than "we don't know because we can't test any hypotheses of what happened before the big bang?"

Just to clarify (if anyone cares): When I said "before the big bang" I was using "before" in the sense of "causally prior" and not "temporally prior."

Answer 1

My cat's name is mittens!

Answer 2

Our current math and tools falls to bits at a point 1e(-43) seconds after the big bang event at t0. At that point the singularity already exists, and is 1 Planck length in diameter, unspeakably hot, and as dense as you would expect with the entire universe stuffed into such an unimaginably small volume.

The four forces (gravity, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces) were previously unified into a single superforce, which may be Quantum Supergravity. We don't know enough about this, so we can't do any further calculations to get closer to t0.

At the point where our current math starts working again, gravity separates from the other three unified forces. We have to wait until the Superunified force is described before we can go deeper.

Exactly what happened at t0 is still cloaked, so all that's available are hypotheses based on other developing ideas in very freaky maths. Branes suggest, for instance, that the Singularity that formed the universe appeared when two branes intersected at a point - the point was the Singularity.

Another angle on this described the Singularity as a virtual particle. These particles pop in and out of existence all the time in the normal world, and such an event on an extremely large scale could have formed the universe. Note that the 'you can't get something from nothing' objection is already blown by virtual particles, and although such a huge virtual particle is probabilistically unlikely, such probabilities may not be a problem in a pre-universe environment of no-time/no-space.

There's no way to make this stuff much more palatable. Nobody really knows yet, and there are only a lot of cool ideas with no way to establish which, if any, is The One. You can even shoehorn God in there if you must - though he's never been anywhere looked in previously.

CD

Answer 3

There is some current theory that the big bang material actually did come from somewhere else called the "Multiverse". But in any case, the Big Bang refers to the unbelievably fast expansion of the Universe that would be similar to the matter flying out from an explosion. There was no atmosphere so there would not have actually been any sound. The Big Bang was not the appearance of matter into an existing space. Matter and space were created at the same time. Before that there was nothing. Not even a vacuum. The Universe is still expanding. It most likely doesn't expand into anything because new space is most likely being created for it to expand into. Scientists aren't sure at this time whether the Universe in infinite or finite. People often find it hard to believe in science because science can't explain everything. We have to admit that our knowledge is limited but we continue to learn. We know that the Big Bang took place even though we don't understand everything about it. We knew that the Earth existed before we knew it was round. Religion tries to explain everything by saying, "God did it". Of course, that doesn't really explain anything about how God did it. Science explains what we can know today and admits that we don't know everything yet.

Answer 4

The big bang theory is just a colloquial term for the homogeneous solution to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity first solved by Friedman, Walker and Robertson, which describes the expansion of the Universe. It has nothing to do with questions of origin.

General Relativity makes assumptions about the continuity of space-time which break down as we near the big bang event. To fully explain the big bang event we will need a better theory than General Relativity.

Creationists engage in lying straw man arguments all the time. Since they have no honest arguments they have to use dishonest ones.

My own opinion is we tend to look at the universe wrongly, assuming space/time/mass/energy are fundamental rather than being based on something deeper. The way I see it, what exists are the mathematical laws describing reality rather than the reality we tend to believe in. The mathematical laws are eternal and necessary, the illusion they describe may or may not have a beginning, but this is a lot like a movie on a DVD having a beginning. The beginning of a movie is not the beginning of the DVD itself.

Answer 5

Very little is really known about the Big Bang. At this point it's a pretty solid theory, but, we cannot prove that it was actually the case. The problem with the theory is a limitation in what people are able to understand. In other words, if the Big Bang was the first instant, then asking what existed before it is a meaningless question to human beings as we cannot understand what it would mean for something to exist "outside" of time. Arguing about what happened before or created the Big Bang is actually quite silly, because the theory of the Big Bang does not permit any intelligible thing to be said about anything "before" the Big Bang.

Answer 6

The generally accepted big bang theories posit that we get zero out of nothing. In essence, in some way we do not yet understand enough to put into an equation, the universe adds up to zero.

The universe can create real particles out of nothing. However, it can only create real particles in pairs of opposites. The easiest example is the electron and it's anti-particle the positron.

Many theories hold that the sum total of the universe is zero. That when you add up the matter, the anti-matter, the dark matter, the anti-dark matter, the energy, the dark energy, and maybe even the anti-energy and anti-dark energy everything cancels out. This canceling out was what preceded the big bang and it could be what happens in the big crunch.

Answer 7

It's the same as the theory of evolution saying that mankind evolved from monkeys, so why are there still monkeys?

It's called a "straw-man" argument. Lie about what a theory says, then attack the lie rather than the actual theory.

It's the biggest tool in the fundamentalist extremists' anti-science crusade.

And of course, the big-bang theory does not say that "something" ever came from "nothing."

Answer 8

Astronomers aren't specialists in the area of study that would examine the Big Bang. For that, you would look to Cosmlogists.

And yes, in fact, the Big Bang pretty much does propose the idea that from a nothingness so profound that even time itself did not exist, existence as we know it did spring.

Technically, the Big Bang refers to the instant in which all mass known existed in a single infinitely dense, infinitely hot point. Prior to this (if the word prior can even be said to apply) is a nothingness so complete that it cannot even be described (for you cannot know anything about that which is truly nothing.)

Answer 9

It does not matter what your faith or ideology is, we just do not know what was here "before" here was here.

Before the Big Bang, before the Creator, before the Chaos, before the Sneeze, etc.

BEFORE

The best we can do is theorize and argue like the Lilliputians arguing over which side of the egg to crack.

Answer 10

Well physicists don't fully know where or what the big bang came from as of yet, but it is only logical to conjecture that it came from something. No physicist has ever said "the big bang came from nothing" that's just ridiculous.

Answer 11

I have yet to see a theory that adequately explains where the universe came from - what happened before the big bang.

of course, I have never heard a theory that adequately explains where god would have come from either