Big Bang explains the Universe ?

Question

I don't understand the Big Bang theory for these reasons:

1. Where did all this material, enough to make an entire Universe , come from ? What was it doing up until it condensed and exploded to become us ? Was there another universe previously or what ?
2. Where is the universe anyway ? I mean are there others ? does it have boundaries and how do you know ?

3. Why the heck would this stuff WANT to condense( I know of course that it did not have consciousness) into a big ball anyway ? Why wouldn't it just sit there since there were no heavenly bodies such as planets and stars to create a gravitational force ?

4. How can you KNOW any of this since noone was there to bear witness? It is all just educated guesses right? I mean we are talking TRILLIONS of light years of distance and BILLIONS of years of time. So how can we KNOW that the same laws that apply locally apply over such vast times and distances? We cannot possibly test these theories in real space/time.

Did not say I disagree. I hate when people put words in my mouth. I asked for CLARIFICATION. I thought all the people who could not have calm conversation without casting aspersions were on the religious and political forums. Can't imagine why people who are involved in science would have a problem with a person asking questions. I thought that's what science IS. questioning everything and testing it until one is satisfied one has come up with a FACT. Silly me.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, you may expect some folks to try to put words in your mouth with this particular subject. Try your best to ignore answers which either do that or attempt to flame. It is, unfortunately, just part of the 'game' with the Internet.

As to your question, as light travels at a constant speed, one light-year (a common measurement of astronomical distances) means it takes light one year to travel that distance. Therefore, we are talking billions of years ago for billions of light years. Something like 14-15 billion years ago.

No, no one personally witnessed the event in which time and space and our universe were created. However, Bell labs had a problem many years ago. It seems noise was present in a microwave receiver. They cleaned the horn (antenna) and feedline and couldn't resolve the source of the noise. Someone got smart and figured the 'spread' of the noise corresponded to black-body radiation of something at a temperature around 3 degrees Kelvin (think of it as 3 degrees Celsius above absolute zero). Everything emits some radiation, depending upon its' temperature. Perhaps you've seen some of the infra-red views of houses in the wintertime which show where heat is leaking from the house. Same idea; much lower temperature.

This agreed quite well with a big bang after a period of time when the universe finally became transparent. Before that, everything was highly ionized and light couldn't travel any distance. They were looking at the heat of that ionized gas cloud some billions of years ago which was red-shifted down to 3 degrees Kelvin.

No, there are no 'boundaries' to the universe in 3 dimensions any more than there is a boundary to an ant crawling around a basketball. You never reach the end, although the ant may find itself back where it started.

Brane theory believes that the collisions of branes in the 11 dimension 'superverse' could have collided, resulting in the big bang and the creation of our 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time.

In any case, I'm including a URL to Nova which may help you in the *start* of your search for what is going on. I'm also adding another URL or two for you to check out.

As in the case of archeology, you put pieces together to try and figure what was going on and how long ago.


Best regards,
Jim

Answer 2

Nope. You're not silly. These are actually good questions.
I'm only sorry that I can't give concrete answers. But I'll get as close as I can with the ones that I can offer an answer at all.

It all comes down to the Doppler effect on the light that reaches us from the galaxies outside of our local group. This "red shift" indicates, pretty convincingly, that these galaxies are receding from us in a manner that suggests that they were once closer and that the Universe in general is expanding in a fairly disciplined and regular manner. Now there have been those who (for whatever reason) found this idea intolerable. And they have tried to explain the red shift in ways that did not involve an expansion of the Universe. The problem is that none have done so convincingly. Some of these explanations have been laughable, showing a terrible mis-understanding of the phenomenon they were attempting to explain. But that's beside the point. Astronomers and cosmologists have no choice but to accept the expansion of the Universe because it is the only explanation for the red shift that is not full of holes. It really didn't take all that long for most to come on board. Probably 50 % within 20 years and 75 % within 50 years (my off-the-cuff estimates).

Once they were satisfied with a universal expansion, the thought immediately arose of all the matter in the Universe having at one time been together in one place. I'm really not competent to tell you in any detail what that might have been like. But from my reading and such I've developed the notion that under really extreme conditions (such as those at about the time of the big bang) matter, energy, time and space have different properties than those that we perceive under the conditions that we live in. And, for that matter, that the distinctions between them become blurry. I have the notion that before the big bang matter, space, time and energy were, sort of, mixed. And that the Universe before the big bang was made of this mixture. What the properties of this mixture might have been, I just couldn't say. I've just about reached the limit of my brain power as it is.

And most of what I just said about this mixture is my own interpretation of what I've read on the subject. So if I've got it all wrong, the blame is mine.

Answer 3

You make some very sound objections. They are all worth responding to.
1) As frustrating and counter-intuitive as it may seem, we can't think in terms of where it all came from or what was before. We can think that way about anything but the Universe. The idea of coming from "another Universe" doesn't answer the question of where it all began. There isn't another Universe. If there was something before the Big Bang, then that is just a previously unknown part of THE Universe.

2) The Universe can't be contained within, compared to, or come from anything. There was no "before." No "outside" or "edge" or "center". You might think of its extremes as being approachable but never reachable, just like an asymptotic function.

Condensing is easy to explain. Gravity. We know about that. The perplexing question is what caused it to expand? We don't know. We probably never will. The Universe has successfully humbled us.

They take their best guess by first looking at the evidence for a Big Bang. And there is evidence. Then using the laws of physics, build models going backwards in time. Yes, this could lead to some very wrong conclusions, but at least they have models which conform to the physics. But as for time=0, they will never know. I believe it can't be known...by anyone...ever.

Answer 4

Personally, I don't think there was a big bang.

The whole Big Bang concept was the conclusion based on observations and calculations of Edwin Hubble working along other scientists that postulated the idea.

Read some of it:
Hubble was generally incorrectly credited with discovering the redshift of galaxies. These measurements and their significance were understood before 1918 by James Edward Keeler (Lick & Allegheny), Vesto Melvin Slipher (Lowell), and Professor William Wallace Campbell (Lick) at other observatories. Combining his own measurements of galaxy distances with Vesto Slipher's measurements of the redshifts associated with the galaxies, Hubble and Milton L. Humason discovered a rough proportionality of the objects' distances with their redshifts. Hubble and Humason were able to plot a trend line from the 46 galaxies they studied and obtained a value for the Hubble-Humason constant. In 1929 Hubble and Humason formulated the empirical Redshift Distance Law of galaxies, nowadays termed simply Hubble's law, which, if the redshift is interpreted as a measure of recession speed, is consistent with the solutions of Einstein’s equations of general relativity for a homogeneous, isotropic expanding space. Although concepts underlying an expanding universe were well understood earlier, this statement by Hubble and Humason led to wider scale acceptance for this view. The law states that the greater the distance between any two galaxies, the greater their relative speed of separation.

This discovery was the first observational support for the Big Bang theory which had been proposed by Alexander Friedmann in 1922. The observed velocities of distant galaxies, taken together with the cosmological principle appeared to show that the Universe was expanding in a manner consistent with the Friedmann-Lemaître model of general relativity.

Now, keep in mind that at the time (1919), the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consists entirely of the Milky Way galaxy.

It is interesting to see how much the scientific community has changed the accepted view since then. Even more, in 1917, Albert Einstein had found that his newly developed theory of general relativity indicated that the universe must be either expanding or contracting. Unable to believe what his own equations were telling him, Einstein introduced a cosmological constant (a "fudge factor") to the equations to avoid this "problem". When Einstein heard of Hubble's discovery, he said that changing his equations was "the biggest blunder of [his] life".

I like to present this example to illustrate how quickly the big scientific mind can change of "mind".

So my point is this. Based on what it is understood today the general consensus will agree with whatever the big scientific minds say. 100 years from now it might be something completely different.

All these new views on multi demential (yes I did it on purpose) universe is based on theories trying to explain something that might not have nor require explanation.

Now, based on the latest model the universe should look something like this,

http://www.grg.org/charter/Universe.jpg

This is my personal idea of the universe,

Think of a really large aquarium, the shape is not important, and fill it with bubbles, medium to large size bubbles.

The soap lines where the bubbles touch each other is where all matter exist and galaxies and everything else. Like a giant cobweb.

In between are large bubbles of empty space. (Energy?, Dark Matter?)

Now, the bubbles are growing, and the soap lines are stretching and the galaxies are speeding away from each other and the universe is expanding.

No big bang.

Answer 5

1 I like black holes. they suck in a HUGE amount of matter/energy and don't really grow in size. they can, but there is a limit. they are called super massive black holes. they seem to compact matter into such a small space that it seems to disappear. this infinitively small point in space is called a singularity.
I think that at this singularity, time space and other tiny dimensions where quantum particles can travel through, are all slammed together ripping dimensions open into another place into ------ another universe.
spewing out all the matter it sucked in before, all most instantly out of a "white hole" aka another big bang, more than likely in a universe separated by your 2nd question.
2.
NO ONE truly knows yet...........
in its own instant in time?/space/dimensions
I don't believe there is border. its a state of being and beyond that state is something that cannot exist to us.
right now, we don't know whats on the "outside" of our universe..... we can't even see it. we can only see 45 billion light years away, and beyond that we have NO idea.

3 all this matter that come out of this dimensional blender has to be almost pure energy.... that would be the only way all this matter could break apart and fit in such a tight compacted area.
I mean black holes DO rip apart stars to strands.
anyway while the energy is excited they radiat light light and other waves. once the energy cools down it start to clump as it moves toward each others that are slower.

DAmn.... it all seems like a stretch to me, but I do believe in particles that "create" gravity and mass.
also heating and cooling can cause matter to change into other forms of matter.

4. like I said before..no one really knows. not really a guess. its a hypothesis. Its an idea that we are trying to prove and even disprove. people always forget that. hearing our theory is WRONG is a good thing. it means we get to know we need to move on.

basically,........... math..... if the math works, then we "might" be right.
then observation.... we need to predict the math, then test the whole equation, or even parts of it and "see" what happens with the math we have. if parts can work then the rest might too.

THEN recreation. we have to do that experiment again.

I think finding the way TINY particles work, will help prove that the math that forms the basis for many of these HUGE ideas of creation actually work. all thanks to quantum mechanics!!

Answer 6

My dear young person - your question is of enormous importance, but for me to answer it for you would require giving you the equivalent of several years of very advanced physics and chemistry - up to the point that you understood the rudiments of String theory mathematics - i can explain the principles of jet propulsion by inflating a balloon, and letting it go - (newtonian physics), HOWEVER, having observed that demonstration does not qualify you to work for NASA.
If you really have an interest in this however, get to work in the relevant classes - I mean that seriously - I have often told students, if a conversation is "over your head", get a ladder - that is, do your part to be able to understand it - acquire the more complex vocabulary - get past undergraduate levels in higher math and science, then start reading the books by Stephen Hocking and colleagues - Be assured though, that the "big bang" is not the last word on this amazing story - where is the Universe? you're in it!, and some philosophers would say "you are it!".
You used the word "just" with the phrase "educated guesses", as if to trivialize those opinions -- let me assure, an "educated guess" by someone who is a recognized master genius in his field, carries serious weight, and the highest degree of probablity that it is correct. There are some of us who have become so advanced in our fields of study that our opinions have become treated as an original resource - my field happens to be ancient languages - but the great scientists are in that same position - you do not have to have been there - or, as the saying goes, "if a man speaks in a forest, and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Answer 7

Picture a big ball of manure hanging from a rafter in a barn with a firecracker in the middle of it and.....BANG! This would be a good way to recreate the moment. If you stand close, it becomes a 3-D experience.

Answer 8

No one knows where all the material came from. That's why the God hypothesis is so popular, but then no one can explain where God came from, so we're back to square 1.

Given, all the mass of the universe has always existed and it has always been in roughly the same quantity.

Given, mass cannot be created nor destroyed only converted or changed.

Given, larger bodies attract smaller bodies, that's why planes fall from the sky.

Postulated there is no such thing as an absolutely flat surface or straight path or line, everything is curved and ultimately travels parabolically and returns to the point of origin.

This comes from the given that larger bodies attract smaller bodies and cause their courses to be deflected.

Taking the given about gravity (what goes up must come down) and the fact it has been PROVEN that ligh rays bend in strong gravity fields and taking the curved space postuolate into account it is INEVINTABLE that most of the mass of the universe will turn, fall back to the center and gather togther into a single large mass and as this mass increases other elements still moving away will be forced to bend and go back towards the central mass.

Rule of thumb, the center of a mass tends to be made up of the denses of materials and the denser the mass the more the gravity, hence the lighter outer permieters fall or collapse towards the central mass.

This is why Earth has air and Mars doesn't. Mars doesn't have enough gravity to hold a dense air mass like the Earth has.

This is why you can't terraform Mars, the air will just burn off into outer space UNLESS you put a very heavy gas the outer rim that can hug the surface of mars (methane) and trap other lighter gasses below due to the inability of one gas to pass through another.

So as your mass collapses the entire mass gains gravity. Eventually this gravity sucks up all mass in the area and attracks distant mass from billions of light years away.

Eventually the gravity becomes so strong light can't escape (we've already established that gravity bends light and this is proven).

As the mass continues to compact due to gravity space between sub-atomic particles vanishes and eventually there is no place for sub-atomic particles to go but into each other in a process called fusion.

In fusion heat is created and heat causes mass to expand. Fuse enough atoms to start a chain reaction and in a microsecond all that compacted mass heats up from next to nothing to +10,000 degrees and starts to expand and explode exponetially.

The first thing out is gamma radiation and WE KNOW THIS FOR A FACT because we see it happen in man made fusion reactions.

So two gamma particles are emitted from each pair of fused sub-atmic particles and we have trillions of these occuring at the same time so we have tens of trillions of gamma rays going out from the center at the speed of light and as the fusion reaction contiues the gravity of the mass weakens as it expanands and heats up and in a burst there is comsmic radiation and light.

If this postulate is true then there must be a Cosmic (gamma) radiation everywhere in the background measurable at a distance of beyond the further known visible object of 13.5 billion light years and THIS radation signature was discovered everywhere in 1960 by Bell Labs

This radiation is suspected at being the furtherst out "mass" object and it is in all directions everywhere.

It is 3.6 on the kelvin scale

It was PREDICTED 30 years before it was found by the Catholic Priest who postulated the Big Bang theory.

The priest also postulated that we would find ALL obervable objects moving away from us. 100% away from us at all times.

This was also proven 10 years later by Hubble.

In measureing stars and galaxies all had a red shift indicating they were moving away.

We know this to be true because the Doppler shift is a law.

It is why a train horn changes pitch as it goes by you.

And light does this also.

Also two other scientists beside the Priest came up with the same math for the explaination of the propegation of mass separately.

Three people with the SAME math, the postualte of objects ALWAYS moving away. THe postualte of back ground cosmic radation in the 2-4 kelvin range.

PROOFS for these postulate.s

It still doesn't mean it's right.

He was only a Catholic Priest not the Pope, so he's not infallable, but his point of view certainly found lots of supporters once his postualtes started to be proven.

Answer 9

My thing with the Big Bang Theory is this:

It supposedly happened 6 billion years ago. There was a large explosion where ton and ton of matter went into ciaos. This ciaos just happened to form into habitable planets and stars.

Can't happen with out help. Can't happen without a creator. That, my friend, would be God.

Answer 10

well, well, well.....you have now understd why its called the big bang THEORY.....no one was there....it is all an educated geuss.....no one can possibly tell you the answer if you understand the theory....

you're just saying you disgree with the theory

this is more of an opinion, not a question