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Big Bang may have actually been a Big Bounce


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The beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding
A rhythm to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da

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If they throw enough theories out there one of them is bound to be right. :wacko:

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So, considering that it has been measured that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating rather than slowing down, how do they imagine that the universe would ever start contracting?

Edited by fred_mc
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I havn't read up on this, but how does the universe contract, what pulls it back in? Is it gravity?

Is the centre of the universe always trying to pull everything back in, but momentum from the bang still stranger than the pull? Could also explain why expansion is speeding up, maybe parts of the universe have moved away from the pull entirely.

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I just can't wrap my head around "why" the "creation of our universe" may have occurred 14 billion years ago.

What's so special about THAT time?

Edited by pallidin
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4 minutes ago, pallidin said:

I just can't wrap my head around "why" the "creation of our universe" may have occurred 14 billion years ago.

What's so special about THAT time?

Well, to be fair, before "that time", time didn't actually exist.

 

Edit. Your question is very valid though. Why did it occur?

Edited by Professor Buzzkill
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3 minutes ago, Professor Buzzkill said:

Well, to be fair, before "that time", time didn't actually exist

And I am "stumped" as to how "all that we know"... space, time, trillions of galaxies, etc. could come-out of a singularity much, much smaller than the size of a pin head.

Blows me away. Uh, for my sanity I must recuse myself and default to my fetal position.

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3 minutes ago, pallidin said:

And I am "stumped" as to how "all that we know"... space, time, trillions of galaxies, etc. could come-out of a singularity much, much smaller than the size of a pin head.

Blows me away. Uh, for my sanity I must recuse myself and default to my fetal position.

I dunno, doesn't stump me at all.  Now some sort of infinite being being out there doing things like that seems much less likely.  

I find that when there are scientifically (experimentally tested and mathematically valid) descriptions available that are hard to comprehend, it is usually a consequence of my not knowing the subject well enough, or maybe just a lack of imagination.  For example, I think you will find that the concept of the singularity at the beginning of space/time is just one of many extant theories.

I would also recommend looking into the emptiness of the universe -- how the illusion that it is filled with stuff is an illusion and the reality is its vast emptiness, even within the nucleus of an atom.  

 

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Asking "why" about existence is kinda a waste of time.  Causation is probably a human concept, as what we see as causation is generally just the outcome of the laws of probability.  Given enough time, pretty much anything is possible.  However, we rarely see it and generally only see the probable.

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9 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

I dunno, doesn't stump me at all.  Now some sort of infinite being being out there doing things like that seems much less likely.  

I find that when there are scientifically (experimentally tested and mathematically valid) descriptions available that are hard to comprehend, it is usually a consequence of my not knowing the subject well enough, or maybe just a lack of imagination.  For example, I think you will find that the concept of the singularity at the beginning of space/time is just one of many extant theories.

I would also recommend looking into the emptiness of the universe -- how the illusion that it is filled with stuff is an illusion and the reality is its vast emptiness, even within the nucleus of an atom.  

 

Frank, and not saying that you do know, or anyone knows, how it is even possible that Nature could provide a "special singularity" that somehow becomes expansive to create an entire universe out of a singularity less than the size of a proton?

THAT is serious stuff.

Edited by pallidin
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1 minute ago, pallidin said:

Frank, and not saying that you do know, or anyone knows, how it is even possible that Nature could provide a "special singularity" that somehow becomes expansive to create an entire universe out of a singularity less than the size or a proton?

THAT is serious stuff.

It's a pretty rigorously worked theory.  That doesn't make it "true" in any sense, but it does make it possible.

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5 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

It's a pretty rigorously worked theory.  That doesn't make it "true" in any sense, but it does make it possible.

The amount of "energy" in that "singularity", which can cause transformation into eventual galaxy formations must be so friggin high as to defy explanation of source, containment, and explosion.

We are talking here about our entire universe, with its trillions of massive galaxies and such, created out of a less-than-proton sized singularity.

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>>> pallidin returns to fetal position <<<

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Maybe so, maybe not.  This is a philosophical rather than physical question, at least for now.  We really have no idea what the essence of "energy" is (the books merely say, "the ability to do work," which ends up being circular (what is "work?" -- what you get when you apply energy).  The energy may have been brought into existence out of space-time during the inflationary period (that is the most common view today) and not at the very beginning.  Besides, what counts with energy is more than just its amount, but its entropy.

There is a lot of course that is beyond my pay scale, but I find myself comfortable with what I understand, and it fits together pretty well and is confirmed by an awful lot of observational evidence that most people know nothing about.  The idea of a cyclic universe seems to have an appeal to a lot of people, but has serious entropy problems.  Better to my mind to picture a fresh new space-time than the recycling of an old one.

What was there before the beginning (assuming the Big Bang or something like it was the beginning)?  Well, of course, nothing -- really nothing -- no eons and eons of nothing because there was no time for there to be eons and eons.

Actually, though, I lean toward the "eternal inflation" idea.  

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We're still inside that singularity. The space simply expands but nothing exploded.

Moreover, if there is one, there could be more singularity, why not?

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5 hours ago, Frank Merton said:

Maybe so, maybe not.  This is a philosophical rather than physical question, at least for now.  We really have no idea what the essence of "energy" is (the books merely say, "the ability to do work," which ends up being circular (what is "work?" -- what you get when you apply energy).  The energy may have been brought into existence out of space-time during the inflationary period (that is the most common view today) and not at the very beginning.  Besides, what counts with energy is more than just its amount, but its entropy.

There is a lot of course that is beyond my pay scale, but I find myself comfortable with what I understand, and it fits together pretty well and is confirmed by an awful lot of observational evidence that most people know nothing about.  The idea of a cyclic universe seems to have an appeal to a lot of people, but has serious entropy problems.  Better to my mind to picture a fresh new space-time than the recycling of an old one.

What was there before the beginning (assuming the Big Bang or something like it was the beginning)?  Well, of course, nothing -- really nothing -- no eons and eons of nothing because there was no time for there to be eons and eons.

Actually, though, I lean toward the "eternal inflation" idea.  

There must be something to cause the "Bang" : inner activity, energy, one single big atom, physic laws. Things don't just suddenly appear like that without a trigger.

The Bang means it's an expansion of something, it doesn't suggest that something just come out from nothing.

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Just an idea,

Cosmological observations suggest that during its very early life, the universe may have looked the same at all scales – meaning that the physical laws that that worked for the whole structure of the universe also worked at the scale of the very small, smaller than individual atoms. This phenomenon is known as conformal symmetry.

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_30-6-2016-14-4-5

In other words, the early universe was exclusively quantum mechanical at a high energy level of vacuum energy. Energy, whatever it is, always "wants" to go from a higher energy state to a lower energy state. That's why things happen. If there is a possibility for energy to be released, it will be released, but this high vacuum energy cold exist forever.

What would be the trigger for this release of energy? If this early universe is quantum mechanical, then by its very nature there will be the probability of various levels of energy within that vacuum energy state. At large scales the energy will average out to be uniform, but at very small scales, the energy of the vacuum can be any value.

This is why virtual particles are created in empty space. Concentrate enough energy at one particular location, and since E=Mc^2, matter will be created. Perhaps at some location in the vacuum energy state the difference between that high state of energy and its surroundings was so great, that the volume surrounding that high energy state looked like a lower vacuum state of energy, so that the energy of that location was released.

It's like the energy created its own quantum probability of release. If we pump too much air pressure into a balloon it will burst into the lower pressure of the air around it. In the cosmological sense, this release of energy will create its own space to expand into. It cannot expand back into the general lower energy vacuum state around it in the same way virtual particles are created. This release of energy has now created a different quantum environment than the general vacuum state. 

The release of energy has now created something new and different from that from which it originated. The evolution of this unique quantum state of affairs is now our cosmological history.

 

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1 hour ago, StarMountainKid said:

This is why virtual particles are created in empty space. Concentrate enough energy at one particular location, and since E=Mc^2, matter will be created. Perhaps at some location in the vacuum energy state the difference between that high state of energy and its surroundings was so great, that the volume surrounding that high energy state looked like a lower vacuum state of energy, so that the energy of that location was released.

And that just might be right answer.  Probability when analyzing quantum states can create events that seem improbable when contrasting the outcomes to our limited scale of time and space, but given that time and space are a construct of the universe itself, there is no seeming end to the chances that an event in quantum foam will line up perfectly for such a shift to happen (as in a moment of structure in a chaotic system).  A simple example might be freak waves in the ocean or lake; although few and far between, sometimes the random conditions are right to create a tsunami when random waves combine.

Also, just to add to the earlier conversation,  the 14 billion year age theory of the universe comes from measuring background radiation in the universe.  By looking at the decay of a high energy wave at the time of the big bang and compare it to the microwaves that create the "echo" of the big bang (discovered somewhat recently) and comparing it to scientific data regarding wave decay, we can estimate a (rough?) timeline of the universe. Also, It was predicted that if there was a big bang, we would find an echo such as described, so they kind of knew what they were looking for.

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To change from one state to another, it requires times. But for most people, time didn't exist before Big Bang, so there couldn't be any change of state.

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3 hours ago, FlyingAngel said:

To change from one state to another, it requires times. But for most people, time didn't exist before Big Bang, so there couldn't be any change of state.

Yes. If it's a big bounce though there's no singularity, so time would still exist because there's no "before the big bang". The universe always exists, so a change of state is not necessary. Just my thinking.

Another interesting idea is information panspermia. Life genome could be digitized, compressed and transmitted as an information package and broadcast throughout the universe. It could even be preserved through a cycling universe vial the cosmic background radiation. The decoding mechanism would also be included in the algorithm.

So, some advance intelligent form of life could survive the big bounce by this method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_panspermia

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13 hours ago, FlyingAngel said:

There must be something to cause the "Bang" : inner activity, energy, one single big atom, physic laws. Things don't just suddenly appear like that without a trigger.

The Bang means it's an expansion of something, it doesn't suggest that something just come out from nothing.

In a situation like that where the stuff has nowhere to go but outward, the probability is overwhelming that that is what it will do.  The cartoon we see so often of the Big Bang as an explosion is not true.  It was just an expansion and the only cause needed is probability.

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Ever since I took in the full meaning of infinite space and time I've been interested in this and think most scientists -at least up until now have been thinking on too small of a scale. Forget colliding galaxies, think colliding universes. Fusion of massive intergalactic black holes. Time that always was and always will be. Always. Distances never ending in any direction. Ever. F-in facinating!!

Edited by Varelse
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As may be apparent, I tend to think causality is an illusion (a very un-Buddhist idea since cause and effect is identified in its system as the foundation of karma).  When you open the stopper to a jar of perfume, the odor soon permeates the room.  What causes this?  It is the random motion of the particles of the perfume, mixing with the random motions of the particles of air in the room.  There is no force causing the perfume to spread -- it is just that it is more likely to go outward than to go inward since there are more places outward for it to go.  In short, I see causality as something we assign to events that are really just the workings of probability.

When it comes to the birth of this singularity, while I think other theories have more appeal, I can see  it happening.  One thing about probability is that it is not guaranteed to happen as predicted -- just vastly more likely to.  In this picture of things, we have to avoid thinking of the nothing that precedes the singularity as being something.  It is truly nothing, and has no time so it has no eons of existence.  The appearance of a singularity every now and then may have a certain probability, and if it does, no matter how small, it will happen -- in fact it will happen over and over and over.

 

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