What do you think about the Big Bang?

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by bystander » Mon Jun 21, 2010 5:30 am

beyond wrote:Chris, could you give me a brief explanation of your definition of "inflation" and of "expansion"?
Inflation
Expansion

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:37 am

Thanks for the effort bystander, but those two referrences were just as useless as my Webster's college dictionary. According to my Webster's, the definition of both inflation and expansion is simply -- getting bigger. It uses each one to describe the other.

According to the referrence that you gave for inflation -- they use expansion to explain it. Too many Big non-understandable words!

According to the referrence that you gave for expansion -- they said that they needed an expert to help with it. There wasn't really much of an explanation there at all, so i assume that is why they need an expert. There were a lot of words there talking about expansion, but no explanation.

There was mention of a white Hole theory earlier. The guy who put it out some how got it from his Bible. If he had read his Bible correctly to begin with, he never would have come up with white holes.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by ny » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:18 pm

this explanation is no good because I don't understand it.
make science easier please

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:23 pm

beyond wrote:Chris, could you give me a brief explanation of your definition of "inflation" and of "expansion"?
My definition of inflation would be a controlled expansion.
The point is, this isn't about your definition or my definition. That's the sort of thinking that led to confusion in this discussion in the first place.

Expansion doesn't have a formal cosmological definition, but is just used in its common sense of something getting larger. That's not the case for inflation, however. Inflation is used very specifically to refer to a period of rapid expansion that occurred over a short time after the start of the Big Bang.

There are certainly theories (using the term loosely) that posit some sort of expansion of something as the basis for the Big Bang itself, but you can't use the term inflation for that. By definition, inflation (or the inflationary period) occurred after the Universe began.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by The Code » Mon Jun 21, 2010 4:38 pm

beyond wrote:Thanks for the effort bystander, but those two referrences were just as useless as my Webster's college dictionary. According to my Webster's, the definition of both inflation and expansion is simply -- getting bigger. It uses each one to describe the other.

According to the referrence that you gave for inflation -- they use expansion to explain it. Too many Big non-understandable words!

According to the referrence that you gave for expansion -- they said that they needed an expert to help with it. There wasn't really much of an explanation there at all, so i assume that is why they need an expert. There were a lot of words there talking about expansion, but no explanation.

There was mention of a white Hole theory earlier. The guy who put it out some how got it from his Bible. If he had read his Bible correctly to begin with, he never would have come up with white holes.

If I have two golf balls, one in each hand and hold them out as far as I can. If you look at each golf ball one to your left and one to your right, you will notice there is about four feet of Space between them. To understand expansion all you have to do is realize that both your golf balls represent galaxies. And that space your holding them apart is increasing. your Golf balls are not moving away, but the space between them is increasing only, but because the space is increasing your galaxies are getting farther apart. but not because they are drifting away. But because the space is increasing.

Now, Understand, that space can increase fast enough to make your galaxies appear to move away from each other faster than the speed of light. And when you understand this, you pretty much have it.

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Mon Jun 21, 2010 5:06 pm

So, from what you guys are saying, you are starting with the point at which there was a rapid brief expansion and calling that part of the event inflation and what continued on after that particular part of the event, you are calling expansion. Is that right?

But you do not have a description for what led to the brief rapid expansion called inflation?
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Jun 21, 2010 5:18 pm

beyond wrote:So, from what you guys are saying, you are starting with the point at which there was a rapid brief expansion and calling that part of the event inflation and what continued on after that particular part of the event, you are calling expansion. Is that right?
Yes, although if you were talking about speculative ideas regarding the cause of the BB itself, it wouldn't be unreasonable to talk about expansion even before the moment the Universe began (expansion in something other than the Universe, of course). You just couldn't talk about inflation that way.
But you do not have a description for what led to the brief rapid expansion called inflation?
In fact there are several ideas about that, with the most popular and best supported being that it was caused by the behavior of vacuum energy (essentially, creating a negative pressure).
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by bystander » Mon Jun 21, 2010 5:32 pm

See the Timeline of the Big Bang. Very little is known about anything that happened before recombination because we cannot observe anything before that time. However, research in particle physics gives us a good understanding of what happened between the Plank epoch and recombination.

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Mon Jun 21, 2010 7:08 pm

So, back to the point of inflation we do not really have a dis-agreement except in use of terminology and before that the best current theory is that the event was started by vacuum energy.
The way i see the beginning is that you have to have a balance between what the Universe is now and what it came from. You would have to have started with the same amount of energy/matter or just the same amount of energy that it would take to produce all the matter in the Universe. As far as i know, you still can not get something from nothing.
So i see that there was something there "before" it got expanded apart and became the Universe. Because of the forces involved and all the destructive things that have taken place since the Big(Whoosh)Bang, i do not think it is physically or thoughtfully possible to reverse engineer the universe to find out what it was before.
I also see the same force that is called inflation and expansion, some how entering into what was originally there and expanding(growing)to the point of inflation and then continuing on as it is today. I also see that as this force was expanding in what was there, that what was there began to slowly change. because it was changeing, it could no longer function the way it used to and different reactions began to take place which hastened its becoming different and the point of inflation arriving.
I do not have any argument with the different things that scientists say were going on just before or after the Big(Whoosh)Bang. Everything was beginning to change in ways that i certainly do not understand.

So, from what i can de-duce from all this is that i see that this universe came from an equal amount of "some thing" and that the same force that is expanding it now, is the same force that started expanding in whatever was there to begin with. I just do not break it up into referrence points so much as scientists do.
Thats about the best i can put it right now.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by bystander » Mon Jun 21, 2010 7:22 pm

The forces that drove inflation are not necessarily (probably not) the same forces that drive the metric expansion of space. Conditions were very different during the inflationary epoch and universe as we know it. If you are going to discuss cosmology, you need to become familiar with the terms and definitions that are used in cosmology.

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Mon Jun 21, 2010 7:41 pm

AH, but they just maybe could possibly be the same. But I'm to old and mentally challenged to learn new languages, so i just insert my $0.03 worth and call it quits. The things we see after the inflation just maybe could possibly be the same as before the inflation, but probably not as there was a lot of pressure about to let go and the conditions were not the same as after the inflation.
Thanks for the conversation guys. Catch-yall later.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by swainy » Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:27 pm

Sometimes folk just get to wall, and no matter how hard they try, they just can't go beyond it. :roll:

edit: :roll: However, BEYOND

If you listen to they guys on this site. You will understand more, than you could have ever of dreamed of.
beyond wrote:The way i see the beginning is that you have to have a balance between what the Universe is now and what it came from. You would have to have started with the same amount of energy/matter or just the same amount of energy that it would take to produce all the matter in the Universe. As far as i know, you still can not get something from nothing.
From writing this, you are well on your way.

tc

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Henning Makholm » Mon Jun 21, 2010 10:50 pm

bystander wrote:The forces that drove inflation are not necessarily (probably not) the same forces that drive the metric expansion of space.
I'll stick out my neck and say that whatever drove inflation cannot have been "forces" at all, at least not in the Newtonian sense of "force". If I understand correctly, the inflationary theories still work within the framework of General Relativity, and Newtonian forces have rather counterintuitive effects in GR.

In everyday experience, pressure in, say, a balloon tends to make the balloon grow larger. It is very tempting to generalize this to universes (coincidentally, blowing up balloons is a classic lie-to-children about an expanding universe) and assume that a universe that begins to expand must be driven by some sort of pressure inside it. However, that analogy is false.

Our everyday experiences with pressure are about differences in pressure between different places in an already existing universe. Interesting things happen locally at the boundary between a high-pressure region and a low-pressure region, which makes the high-pressure region tend to expand into the (already existing!) space formerly occupied by low pressure. But this is entirely irrelevant for what happens well inside the high-pressure region -- and even more irrelevant if we consider an entire universe filled with uniform high pressure.

On the contrary, the GR equations that govern the evolution of cosmological models say that a universe full of high pressure will tend to contract (or expand slower) relative to an otherwise identical universe whose pressure is lower. There is no intuitive way of seeing that it must be so, but it drops out of the mathematics, unbidden, as a deductive consequence of other features we want the theory to have, such as gravity being an attractive force, SR holding locally, and so forth.

I do not claim to understand very much about inflation in particular, but what I've read seems to suggest that the special conditions of the inflationary epoch were not so much (from a GR viewpoint) to do with forces and pressure, but with a negative energy density permeating spacetime. If it was pressure, it must have been negative pressure in order to be able to accelerate the expansion.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Tue Jun 22, 2010 12:24 am

Thanks there, Henning Makholm; I didn't mean to imply that the force of expansion was like a Newtonian force. If it was, it would have ripped everthing to shreds. Like a lot of others, sometimes i just do not put things across right. However, whatever you want to call it, I think it acted like a catalyst and changed the unknown material that was there which caused all sorts of unnatural reactions to occur that caused the inflationary Big Bang and it took the result of the big bang and started to spread outward in all directions with it, until it has reached the point where things are now.
That is really some accomplishment!! It reminds me of what was once said about a mustard seed, that it is the smallest of seeds, yet grows up to be the tallest of trees. Of course i do not know if the one who said that had ever seen a Giant Sequoia tree.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by wonderboy » Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:20 am

As previously mentioned, I'm a fan of the white hole theory regarding a big bang.

Now I had a brainwave regarding it (and I know its meaningless Chris) but i like to put my ideas out there anyway. The whitehole theory asserts that for every blackhole there is an alternate universe on the other side recieving all the matter being sucked in from the preceding universe. this matter makes what we see in the universe, i.e. galaxies etc. Now, I don't think its as simple as that, as we can see emission jets from blackholes and they definetley do not lead to alternate universes. I do believe that there must be something at the centre of our universe which is continuously spewing matter into our universe and causing the universe to expand.

However, I thought that this could maybe be creating an "onion" effect on our universe. It was described above that the universe was stretched till it could take no more (in its early days) then exploded releasing a whole lot of matter into the unknown to congeal and create galaxies, stars, planets and solar systems etc! What if this has happened many times since the dawn of our universe? think of an onion and its many layers. Where a new layer starts, this is the equivalent of our universe expanding due to stress caused by the matter being emptied into our universe.

I also likened it to a water balloon. If you fill it and keep filling it, the balloon will burst and the water doesnt just fall straight down, it spreads out as it falls down and moves really quickly. So if this has happened many times over our universes life, i.e. the balloon has burst, then this could account for expansion speeding up. Either that or the ammount of matter being entered into our universe is being sped up by a force unknown.



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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Jun 22, 2010 2:20 pm

wonderboy wrote:Now, I don't think its as simple as that, as we can see emission jets from blackholes and they definetley do not lead to alternate universes. I do believe that there must be something at the centre of our universe which is continuously spewing matter into our universe and causing the universe to expand.
Polar jets associated with black holes are just material falling in from accretion discs that is redirected, so I'm not sure what that has to do with your suggestion. As to new matter causing the Universe to expand... that is very similar to some ideas put forth by Steady State theorists when they could no longer deny that expansion was real. The reason there are so few cosmologists who still seek Steady State solutions is because nobody has found one that comes close to fitting in with actual observation. The Universe is expanding, but it is the metric of spacetime that is changing, not the amount of matter (or energy) in the Universe. The density of the Universe is not constant, but the mass (energy density) apparently is.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:54 pm

What if what is called the Big Bang did not produce any matter at all? That all the matter and energy were already here in a different state of existence then what is now and the Big Bang event simply created actions and reactions that altered what was here already into what we see today and causes a great heat doing it as it goes? The cooling that is seen in the universe might simply be because the event has gone by and the heat that was generated is dissapateing. This makes more sense to me than trying to get a Universe's worth of something from almost nothing.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:04 pm

beyond wrote:What if what is called the Big Bang did not produce any matter at all?
I think that is the general viewpoint. The singularity or near singularity that the Universe formed from had a finite amount of energy. All the matter and energy we see today is derived from that. No energy created, no energy destroyed.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:27 pm

So then, what scientists are really trying to figure out is what is it that changed everything and maybe where did it come from??
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by The Code » Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:37 pm

beyond wrote:So then, what scientists are really trying to figure out is what is it that changed everything and maybe where did it come from??
When should we tell him, that the whole universe was at some stage smaller than a Atom? and that space-time and everything seems to come from nothing?

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:49 pm

I suppose right after i say that at one time the Universe was just part of a thought.
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by bystander » Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:58 pm

The Code wrote:When should we tell him, that the whole universe was at some stage smaller than a Atom? and that space-time and everything seems to come from nothing?
Mark

You are the only one I know of who believes that, and it is pure speculation on your part. At the current time, no one cares to even speculate what the conditions were or what happened prior to the end of the Planck epoch. The mathematical models and our understanding simply don't allow us to go that far back in time.

So, my answer is, we don't. It would be dishonest and misleading.

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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Tue Jun 22, 2010 10:16 pm

I would have to half agree with The Code. It wasn't the Universe that started off smaller than an Atom, it was that which was put in it to change it that started out smaller than an Atom and perhaps even smaller than a string or the smallest part of what Energy is made up of. And now we can't even see the beginning or the end of its effect. It has really out done a mustard seed!!
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Beyond » Tue Jun 22, 2010 10:40 pm

I just looked up the definition of Planck epoch and it would seem to need a little bit of re-write. It speaks of the universe comeing into being at the Big Bang event instead of That which caused the existing Universe to change. So wouldn't that necessitate a change in orientation from Universe to That which caused the Universe to change??
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Re: What do you think about the Big Bang?

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Jun 22, 2010 11:13 pm

beyond wrote:I just looked up the definition of Planck epoch and it would seem to need a little bit of re-write. It speaks of the universe comeing into being at the Big Bang event instead of That which caused the existing Universe to change. So wouldn't that necessitate a change in orientation from Universe to That which caused the Universe to change??
The Big Bang event is defined as the moment that the Universe came into being. The Universe and the contents of the Universe are the same thing. This theory does not suggest that there was something before the Big Bang; the very concept of "before" is undefined, since "before" is a reference to time, and time itself was created with the Big Bang. It is not correct to characterize any Big Bang theories as describing an event that caused the Universe to change.

The question of whether something "caused" the Big Bang is not addressed by the Big Bang theories themselves, and is only barely addressed by any scientific theories. It is mainly a philosophical question that most cosmologists would probably describe as meaningless.
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