Inflating Balloons and Big Bangs?

Question

Say I was to record myself blowing up a balloon. Let’s say it took 20 seconds. I then reverse the recording a play you the first 15 seconds.

You may extrapolate and conclude that the balloon got smaller and smaller until it no longer existed. But we know that if this was the case then the balloon could not have inflated in the first case as the valve would not have been present. I guess those missing first 5 seconds are crucial!

Now let’s transfer this analogy to cosmology. Is it logical to extrapolate the universe back to a singularity? Especially based on the equipment, techniques, methods, resources and evidence we have available.

In doing so, are we removing the analogous valve and balloon factory from the equation?

Answer 1

I like the way you are thinking, but it isn't quite right. The big band theory, if placed in an analogy about a balloon, would be more like the creation of the balloon itself, not its expansion.

You see, before a balloon is a balloon, it is many different molecules, atoms, quirks, so and and so forth, all separate entities, just floating around in space. At some point though, all of these tiny particles that make up what is to become a balloon come together and create this balloon.

Balloons are made through a process of combining molecules to make the rubber, forming the rubber into a balloon shape (in a nutshell). The big bang is the process through which all of the universe as we know it was created. All the particles were there, they just needed a process to become what they are today.

Science cannot currently explain the big bang fully (that's why it is a theory), but it will continue to search for the truth of how this world came about.

Answer 2

Well, all you are doing is removing one as yet unexplained phenonemon - how did the universe start from a singularity- with another, namely, it there is an analog to a fill valve, where did that fill valve get the material fro the universe from?

If we push that a little further, tehn does tha mean the physical laws we experience were some how introduced through this filling mechanism? That would imply that the physical laws don't have to be from a single unifying law which is where we are with the Big Bang theory. Where do the physical laws come from and are they a subset of some greater set of laws found on the other side of the filling mechanism? You can begin to think of other questions you'd have to address if you were to go down this path. So, philsophically, you've replaced a series of questions with another series of questions which are at least as hard to answer.

Answer 3

Here's the thing, as I understand it: current cosmological models are used to describe those 15 seconds in your analogy. They say nothing about the first 5 - only what the state of the universe was at t=5, and what happened afterwards.

Answer 4

Most cosmologists are assuming that it did start that way and are looking for supporting evidence and finding it. But at least one guy doesn't buy it. See the source for his web page.