What existed before the Big Bang?

Question

Was the Big Bang just a single explosion of a repeatative process? Does the universe expand and contract in rythem, much like that seen within energy waves or atomic organization. Pulling itself into a singularity and exploding over and over again, perhaps forever?

Is it just like one giant perpetual energy machine? If that's possible, wouldn't light given off at the edge of the universe be lost as total energy, causing an eventual breakdown of the system, or is the universe supposed to just expand forever?

If it's possible that it will expand forever, what were the factors that had to already be in existance that caused this reaction? Is it possible that the universe is only one of many within a multiverse?

Perhaps our galaxies and our universe composes the "fundemental" building blocks (the quarks and atoms so to speak) of another level of existance.

Is it possible that if we keep breaking down energy into smaller forms we'll eventuall stumble upon our own existance?

I'd prefer that creation theology be left out, simply because I'm really looking for possible truths. Answers are always more interesting from people who are blessed with enough curiosity to ask questions, rather than try to have all of the answers. That's the big problem with religion as I see it. It attempts to fill in the gap where knowledge meets ignorance, but it only treats the symptoms of curiosity, by providing convinient explainations while undermining it's evolutionary function, to provide truth capable of ensuring or improving conditions of survival.

I could go on for days.

If it didn't happen we wouldn't be here. I don't want your Christian answers. I want intellectual speculation. Something that requires logic and flexible thinking rather than remembering a book full of verses.

I mean seriously, when has the Bible actually ever reflected reality? It wasn't in calculating the age of the earth, much less the shape of it, the fact that it's not the center of the universe, much less the middle of the solar system. And I suppose dinosaurs died in Noah's flood which occured somehow even though people and dinosaurs never co-existed. Or maybe dinosaurs just never existed. I hate to bash the Bible but how many of you have been paying attention to history? Besides burning witches and various other "heretics", I can't think of many instances in history where the church has actually be right, much less righteous.

Now that I've beat that horse to death, I'd just like to restate that I want speculative answers, which really shouldn't be answers at all.

I could go on for as long as it takes to read the Bible on how full of holes it is. If you want to talk about how incredible any given theory is, I suggest you creationists first look through your own swiss cheese invention. If any theory is full of holes, it's creationism.

The Big Bang theory is one based on the most probable cause of a given state of observable data.

Creationism deals with how people explained things before they could even see them.

I hate to burst your bubble, but technically and physically, Genesis is full of crap. Metaphorically, I suppose it's possible, but there's not a poem in the world that can't apply some metaphorical meaning to human life. I mean seriously, just think people.

Answer 1

This is always a fun debate.
BTW string theory doesn't support brane theory.. they are two very different theories entirely. neither depending on the other.
OK first lets look at the argument logically.
1) we state from a perspective that the big bang is valid.
by so doing so we also must state current physics didn't apply till the actually 'planck time' So time and space as 'We' know it didn't exist. since the big bang space/time was created along with the primordial particle soup.
OK now we set the stage for the logical argument.
2) was there time before time?
One could argue that there must be so. Since how could events transpire before time?
3) OK so there must have been time. But is it the same as out time/space?
Actually this is the sticking point. Current physics cannot apply.
here is a linky for the 'ONE' of the current debates
http://www.physorg.com/news96027669.html
another theory time has a cousin dimension. a second dimension of time and space. We cannot directly interact with dimension but it has/had/will be influencing us. (sorta like a folded dimension of time/space (ours) nested into the vast vast landscape of this time space.

ok that seems a bit confusing at first but in a weird way it would make sense. if you are an avid fan of brane theory this makes great sense. As the branes (superstructures of different states/realities) would exist within this realm of space/time. but the 'bubbles' of each separate reality/states would be floating in this space/time yet having internally their own space time.

so in retrospect if you chose this course of theory. yes there can be time before big bang/creation. Just it wouldn't be 'our' space/time.

as for the religious argument. I'm sure if god plopped down the true meaning of the universe on the earthly inhabitants it would make absolutely no sense. So parables and close approximations would be alot easier to swallow. but then again neither can prove their case. My view is the Universe is alot more bizarre than we could ever ever possible imagine as mere mortals. That's what makes it so darn fun to study

Answer 2

I doubt it was a 'big bang' in the first place which implies an explosion. It's more likely in my view that it was dust, ice, debris and such that collected around a gravitational point or possibly an already dead sun and heated up over time to 'build' what we have now. This could have taken billions of years if not more. Calling it the 'big bang' just makes it sound more interesting.

Are suns reborn? Nobody really knows for sure as that kind of science is actually guesswork a lot of the time. It might be feasible, a dead sun (dwarfs and the like) can and do attract space debris over time to start again.

Expand and contract? Why not. Our sun does which gives us increased temperatures here as is happening now (think global warming) and cold winters of times gone by. The 'black holes' they have found seem to do this also, so maybe the rest of it does but on a much slower and larger scale. For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

We just don't know what is exactly out there or how much of it. So as far as we are concerned, space is infinite.

Answer 3

In regards to the first paragraph or two, no one knows, but there's been much speculation on it. We know the universe is expanding so we speculate on the Big Bang. If there is enough dark matter in the universe (we're still looking) the gravitational drag will be enough to eventually reverse the situation and cause a Big Crunch. If not, the universe will expand forever, gain entropy, die a thermal death. The cyclic model "big bangs and big crunches" you describe has been written about... see some books by Paul Davies to get a colorful summary.

Answer 4

Once upon a time, 14 billion years ago, a cosmic explosion released an immense amount of heat and pressure. All the particles and energy in our universe, once confined to a space about the size of a dime, raced away from one another at tremendous speeds. As the hot particles cooled and continued to expand into space, matter formed and the stars and galaxies of our universe were born. And so, the story of our universe began… or did it?

Maybe something came before the Big Bang. Physicists have tried for decades to write the mathematical prelude to our universe’s fiery birth, but Einstein’s theory of general relativity stopped them short. An immense amount of matter and energy were built up in an infinitesimally small point at the moment of our universe’s birth, and the laws of general relativity that govern large bodies and systems in the universe are no longer appropriate on such a small scale. Instead, quantum theory, which deals with the quirky properties of the very small subatomic particles in the universe, takes over. Traveling to the beginning of it all, at least our all, requires some way of reconciling general relativity with quantum theory.

“The unification of these two is the only thing that allows us to look before the Big Bang,” says Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at City University of New York. So far, the leading theory of unification, according to Kaku, is string theory—the idea that tiny strings vibrating in unseen dimensions of space make up all matter, light, energy, everything. If our universe is described in eleven dimensions filled with these subatomic strings, physicists believe the fundamental physical forces can be unified and they can get closer to describing the instant of our universe’s birth and maybe even what came before it.

Armed with string theory, Kaku and others speculate that before our Big Bang, there were simply more universes. “Our universe could have either popped into existence or collided with another universe,” he says. Imagine a bubble bath where each bubble represents a universe. In this multiversal tub that existed before our Big Bang—and still exists today—universe bubbles are colliding, popping, budding new bubbles, expanding and contracting. If this scenario really exists, “Big Bangs happen all the time,” says Kaku.

Some physicists believe our universe was created by colliding with another, but Kaku says it also may have sprung from nothing: a completely empty eleven dimensional universe with no spin, no charge and no energy. This seemingly tranquil nothingness universe was actually unstable and some physicists believe that a fluctuation in the vacuum caused our universe to pinch off from its empty existence without time and space to a universe that was large enough to expand. Like a bubble in a bath, our universe had to grow instantaneously in order to survive and escape the collapsing fate of small bubbles.

SOURCE:http://scienceline.org/2006/08/21/ask-snyder-bang/

Answer 5

There was nothing before the big bang. There is nothing outside the universe and nowhere to lose anything to. It is a closed system. The rest of your questions we do not yet have answers for.

Answer 6

According to the Superstring Theory, two "branes" collided and created the Big Bang

Answer 7

The theory goes that the big bang occurred from a huge ball of matter, so in turn if there is a big ball of matter somewhere else in the universe, history could repeat itself. Though probably there isn't a ball of matter large enough for humongously great distances and in the law of conservation of matter, no matter or energy can ever be created or destroyed.

Answer 8

It was a dense point, and it couldn't take itself, it collapsed and the Big Bang came.

Answer 9

Before the "Big Bang" theory, there were a bunch of scientists straining what was left of their brains to come up with an idea that could do away with creation. So after common sense went out the window, they probably were on their way to their cars and one of the cars probably backfired. That gave way to their evolution theory, which has holes' poked through it ever since.

Answer 10

It was the big Bang.