Before the Big Bang?

Spoony Youngblood

I was having a debate/discussion with colleagues....and aside from the fact that I discovered that they were spastics and god-botherers, they found the concept of the big bang hard to comprehend let alone every other theory known to science. I told'em what came before the big bang was pretty much incomprehensible, just as gravity probably was a few centuries ago and the thought of a spherical shaped earth a millennium before that. Time, as I'm aware, is another dimension isn't it? by this I mean, it's like gravity, ie it exists. But it's really difficult for people to grasp this notion. However, the spiritualist amongst us, note he does not believe in religion, but thinks a creator exists because everything looks like it's been designed and nothing comes out of nothing.....yet when I asked him who created God he looked perplexed. Which was the point I was making, we can't apply the physics of our universe to things that may have or may not have existed prior to the big bang. I mean, did time even exist? So basically, what's the best way to answer this question....what came before the big bang?

Adzzz

Asking who created our God is virtually the same as asking what was before the Big Bang. We understand the universe as fundamental laws which are inhabited by particles and atoms etc, etc. But before the Big Bang how can there have been fundamental laws?

Most likely, I think it was Dr.Dwayne who said this awhile ago, it's like a cycle. So essentially before the Big Bang there was a universe like ours, which reached breaking point, collapses in on itself, shit blew up again. Rinse and repeat.

This doesn't make sense.

Spoony Youngblood

Possible. But you couldn't say that with any conviction.

x42bn6

It's possible that "time" was created in the Big Bang, so it makes no sense to consider what happened "before" it, too...

Adzzz

No, that's true. But it seems quite plausible to me. Nothing lasts forever, but nothing really ever disappears. The Dr. spoke about tao and zen buddhism and stuff. If you think about it, if the Universe is on a cycle, reincarnation is true. But true in the most amazing sense that we might come back as a planet, or a star, in twelve billion years time.

Perhaps everything you see in Space was once a person, or a dinosaur.

How can time be created in the big bang? I remember someone talking about creation being spontaneous but you need the raw materials first. Hence the cyclical process.

Sultan

If logic dictates there comes a point when it becomes necessary for something to be created from nothing. In Islam we believe that "nothing" has always existed in the form of God.

I'm not sure if that has come out right.

hungrywing

What is this 'before' you speak of.

MikeUpNorth

I doubt any of us are good enough at maths to have this debate in any worthwhile sense.

Physicists don't fully understand the big bang as yet, let alone what, if anything, came 'before'. There are competing theories and discussions which have yet to play out. It's still very much a work in progress.

Spoony Youngblood

I think we all use the same atoms/particles or something. Basically we are the universe - one entity.

But the idea that there were more big bangs seems to me that it's a concept grounded firmly on planet earth.

hungrywing

Nothing. Everything.

Adzzz

If there was suddenly something out of nothing, I believe intelligent design might be plausible too. I don't think it can be ruled out at any length really.

JezChan

I struggle to comprehend any number of dimensions greater than 4, let alone something like M-Theory which needs spacetime to have 11 dimensions. What if before the big bang there were just a whole bunch of elementary particles floating around everywhere and by chance, say, three strings happened to fit together nice and perfectly and start off a chain reaction?

Personally, this isn't a very pressing issue of physics for me; I'd rather figure out what all this dark energy stuff is and find out if there's any way to manipulate it.

MikeUpNorth

My own view is that this 'something vs nothing' question is a false distinction, and one that everyone makes. 'Nothing' is just a special kind of 'something'. In essence, I think 'nothing' is a pretty meaningless term when talking of theories of the universe. It's based on an unjustified assumption that the default t0 scenario is for there to be 'nothing', but why make this assumption? (Why make the assumption that there even needs to be a t0? But that's another question.)

If there was genuinely 'nothing' - no space, no time, no anything - then it would be equally valid to ask 'why is there nothing rather than something'?

x42bn6

It's been speculated, not that I read into any of this (too complicated!).

That said, Hawking once said that asking what happened before the Big Bang is meaningless, in the same way that asking what is north of the North Pole as being meaningless, too.

Spoony Youngblood

Yes, but if this something had been created it means it must've been created by something that was created.

I think.

hungrywing

The physics community really hasn't done a good job of explaining to the public the current belief re the non-linearity of time.

It helps to think of time as a spatial dimension, as a position. Here and there. Not before and after. You as an infant and you sitting at your computer co-exist within that 'space'. One's body, the cells, the amino acids, the atoms, all 'pulse' within spacetime.

It is our development cycle/mortality that makes us ascribe time a 'direction' - i.e. towards death.

Spoony Youngblood

Aren't scientists creating a telescope that will enable us to travel back to the creation of the universe ie the Big Bang?

Sultan

I understand you need a creator to create. However, like I said previously there must come a time when we need to look beyond human logic and accept it is beyond our limited capabilities and therefore something has always existed.

Why are you so deep today?

Go hassle the fanboys.

hungrywing

No. And if you're actually interested in this kind of subject, then you really ought to stop thinking in this way.

Adzzz

I certainly think this is a concept people often fail to really understand, there are only a certain number of elemental building blocks (even those we haven't discovered yet) so essentially we all came from this 'big bang' and in my belief it's where we will all go back to, only to be spat again at some later date.

If you imagine an equilibrium in the universe, a certain level of matter or a certain distance reached from central point (i.e. the big bang location) gravity can't hold it and so it all collapses and in ensuing chaos the universe is reborn.

Why do you come to that conclusion Spoony? Do you mean in the sense that it's our basic human instinct to assume the creation is out of violence? Or do you feel it's just too cliche? Which admittedly it might be.

I'm not sure it's pointless. If anything I reckon it's the key to understanding our universe. But, I'm a lay-person, so my opinion on this matter is effectively null.

Fascinating thread though.

Spoony Youngblood

Well, which was my point, it's incomprehensible because we simply don't know. But it won't stop people from asking questions however futile they are.

And I have no idea why I'm so deep today.

Adzzz

I've thought of something...if we can see galaxies that are ancient, possibly even gone, because it takes so long for the light to travel. Doesn't this mean, we should still be able to see the big bang, or does it mean at the end of our expanding universe the light created initially by the big bang is now at the far reaches and therefore the end of the universe will be amazingly bright.

Spoony Youngblood

I thought it'd mean we'd be able to see the big bang. Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that even 'nothing' is 'something' thanks to Mikewaydownsarf.

Plechazunga

You're right, and we can see it - or at least detect it.

As for the original question, anything that came before the Big Bang should be regarded as either pure speculation or premature ejaculation.

Adzzz

Yeah logic dictates that the further look into space there should be one collosal cluster of light and fire. In theory.

I see, but if we assume a state of 'nothing' is still 'something' it fundamentally changes how we think about the 'state' before the big bang.

Wow.

x42bn6

I'm not convinced of this argument. Take Hawking's North Pole analogy, for example. Time may well be cyclic, just like the circumference of the Earth.

The main problem with the "First cause" argument is that it begs the question why there has to be a first, or why the first cause should be uncausable. Very similar to a loaded argument. It's easy to think everything must have a beginning and an end, but then again, refer to Hawking's North Pole idea. It's also similar to asking what the last digit is in the decimal expansion of 1/3 (0.333...) - but there is no such thing as a "last digit".

So "We don't know what happened before the Big Bang" doesn't equate to "Something did it".

Sultan

Plech is alive...

Spoony Youngblood

Yes, I think it's hard to conceptualise anything without a beginning(or an end for that matter).

Adzzz

I see, thanks for that. I'm beginning to think I should have been an astro-physicist.

If a gigantic nuclear explosion is behind this, surely scientist could detect similarities between conditions in the universe and conditions around atoms after a nuclear blast. CERN should have just nuked something.

Sultan

It's a circular argument

Spoony Youngblood

So basically, you can see the beginning or am I missing something?

x42bn6

Not really, a circular argument would be:

"We don't know what happened before the Big Bang, therefore X."
"X, therefore we don't know what happened before the Big Bang."

"We don't know what happened before the Big Bang" is the only fact in the mix.

Plechazunga

I think you probably should have been if you just 'predicted' the existence of background radiation on the basis of a vague conception of the Big Bang as a big explosion a long time ago.

That's pretty much what they're doing, in a more controlled way.

No end or beginning:



Beginning but no end:



Hey Sults. I'm not technically alive, but I've transcended the dimension of time. It took enormous effort and expense, and then annoyingly I found out I could have got exactly the same effect simply by moving to Hastings.

Spoony Youngblood

To be fair, I did mention a circle to the bloke who said something had to have a beginning(and an end).

Adzzz

Radiation is particles moving around in space, the atmosphere etc etc. A way to create lots of this is a nuclear chain reaction (I think) with the amount of radiation in the universe there must have been (according to them) a massive explosion right.

So essentially, the big bang had alot more atoms to collide but even in the basic sense of a nuclear explosion I assume it must show signs of similarity, I mean, it's on a lesser scale right but it's still the same principle.

This is probably what they're doing at CERN but in an more observable way.

Does anyone know if CERN are essentially performing a 'safe' nuclear explosion in the accelerator?

EDIT: Thanks Plech, just read your post.

Spoony Youngblood

I've decided to become an astro-physicist and all.

Adzzz

I honestly had no idea, however, I have a conception of meta-physics and received a first in an essay done on the subject. I'm bad at the physics but good at the philosophy.

So, in the space of this thread I realised that nuclear explosion would yield results we would expect to see from the big bang.

I got a D in GCSE physics.

a D.

Tibs

Scientists search for answers, and they will only find more questions

Adzzz

Also, the idea of no end and no beginning helps chaos theory, in the state of nothingness apparent at the end and the beginning the big bang is an anomaly and therefore fits in the theory of the laws of nature. I think. But this does raise some obvious questions:

1.) We once assumed the earth was flat. Assuming the universe has no end or beginning suggests that existence is normal, it also suggests that with anomalous bangs does anything change. I fear we approach a theoretical boundary here.
2.) We're only accounting for the dimensions we understand.
3.) Time is a dimension we're actually creating to suit our purpose somewhat.

Tibs

Some nice space photos