I have often wondered where the gases came from that started the Big Bang at the beginning of the Universe.:surprised
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I have often wondered where the gases came from that started the Big Bang at the beginning of the Universe.:surprised
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So have alot of other people. Currently, that is religion, not science.
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Well, the question can lead to religion, but there is a flaw in the question to begin with.Originally Posted by korjik
The gases formed after the Big Bang.
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Yup, and in and of itself the issues pertaining to before-the-Big-Bang or cause-of-Big-Bang state of the cosmos are hardly religious. Hypothetical of course, but there's quite a gap between metaphysics of religion and hypotheses of cosmology. Unless you're a logical positivist of course
Still, the current answer is that there is no clear and overwhelmingly convincing theory as to what instantiated the Big Bang and what was the full effect and extend of that event.
Indeed. Taken as an assertion, it's of the nature that's not even wrong, unless you want to play with semantics seriouslike.there is a flaw in the question to begin with
The dog, the dog, he's at it again!
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"Gases" can typically be expected to mean atoms, unless they are a super heated plasma which they most certainly where. But regardless, all of these are made up of subatomic particles, which in turn seem to be made up of even smaller things like quarks and such. Some people believe we can keep going ever smaller and smaller finding new elementary building blocks, but it's safe to say that at the end what we will find is energy. All matter (or at least all baryonic matter, I'm not sure about stuff like dark matter) is made up of energy.
So when the universe started there was probably a tremendous flash of energy, which then started coalesing into different particles, which came together to make up the wonderful world of matter we see around us. At least that's how I understand it, but yea, what we really want answered is where did that energy come from...
Artificial gravity and week-long interplanetary travel through linear acceleration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artific...r_acceleration
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The gases came soon after the energy release from the Big Bang. Conditions were far too hot in the early seconds of the bang for the formation of protons and such.
Science is extremely limited in its ability to observer directly or indirectly any evidence that could answer the question of where this energy came from.
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Limited in no small part due to our lack of funding. In order to understand the conditions of the early universe we need to replicate them, by focusing a small amount of space to pressures and energy levels that are similar to what you would find in the big bang (stop me if I'm wrong). The LHC is a good start, but we need to get bigger! I say we build a circular particle accelerator around the equator of the moon!
Then one day, if we survive that far, we build a ring around the Sun... and put an accelerator in that one too! lol, Imagine the kind of science we could pull off with that one!
Artificial gravity and week-long interplanetary travel through linear acceleration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artific...r_acceleration
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The problem, though I could be wrong, is that physics itself does not have a handle on what might take place during that first Planck second. It is likely worse to apply any known pyhysics to what took place prior to the first Planck second, but there is nothing wrong with speculating, which might eventually open a door.
More funding hopefully would introduce some serendipity that opens an unexpected door, but I suspect that physics has no doorway to reproducing energies that were likely during the first Plack second, though I am a novice in this area.
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Well yes, we can only look so far back. By the first plank second, the universe can't have expanded much more than one cubic plank-unit of volume. The entire universe's worth of energy confined to the smallest comprehensible volume of space (or close enough to it). There is definitively no way we can repeat those conditions. One thing we should try to aim for though is that time when... I forget what the technical term is... when all 4 fundamental forces were still all smooshed into one. Try and repeat those conditions at least. Help us finally get a Theory of Everything set up.
Artificial gravity and week-long interplanetary travel through linear acceleration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artific...r_acceleration
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Even this seems speculative or is it a requirement for Inflation theory?
That's a nice way to say it as opposed to those that simply say it was a singularity.The entire universe's worth of energy confined to the smallest comprehensible volume of space (or close enough to it).
The Theory of Everything is unification of all 4 (GUT is for all but gravity).There is definitively no way we can repeat those conditions. One thing we should try to aim for though is that time when... I forget what the technical term is... when all 4 fundamental forces were still all smooshed into one. Try and repeat those conditions at least. Help us finally get a Theory of Everything set up.
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That would be the grand unification epoch. Also, we don't know for sure how much the universe could have inflated (not expanded) during that high energy state. As for myself, I'm putting my money on Inflation, so therefore I believe that the universe exponentially inflated (possibly by a google) in less than 10^-35 or 36 seconds
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Others have answered well and, gone on to trying to unravel the greatest mystery... Why., or is that how ?
So as long as the understanding that 'In the beginning' It was not gasses that co lest into mater... forming the Big Bang. It was ENERGY.
Ask me what energy is and I will look back at you knowing I have not the slightest chance of answering that question.
That some of the greatest minds on earth have applied themselves to this very question and are still at it...
It could be a while... Personally I do not expect a answer... ever. For me it is sufficant to say the universe began.
Because it did. Because it could. That's both answers how and why.
Now you ask me if I feel smug having just answered the greatest question before us... No.
Because I still have more questions than answers...
... and just for Philippe Lemay ... We might not need to build the accelerators you speak of... Just study the Sun. Thoughtfully.
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The Sun? I always knew the sun ejected high energy particles, but if we want to specifically study very high energy particle collisions, how would the sun help us? Besides, Wikipedia tells me the LHC has managed to bring protons up to speeds of 0.999999991 c (it stands to reason much larger accelerators will achieve much greater speeds). Does the sun spit out particles travelling anywhere near this speed, aside for photons of course.
And while I may seem to be going a bit off topic, it is relevant to the discussion. Particle accelerators and colliders are one of the safests bets for simulating the early conditions of the universe. At least until we find a way to control black holes or something...
Artificial gravity and week-long interplanetary travel through linear acceleration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artific...r_acceleration
Order of Kilopi
Although there is no rigorous theory for this idea, some physicists, like Hawking, take the position that there should be some kind of balance between the kinetic energy in the gas (including photon "gas" and gluons and so on) and the gravitational potential energy, such that the total energy always adds up to zero. Then there is no need to ask where the energy "comes from", as there never is any total energy, rather the question is what controls the "commerce" between kinetic and gravitational energy. It would be as though in the "beginning", gravitation gave a huge amount of "money" to the gas, in the form of kinetic energy, in exchange for a giant "IOU", and the gas has been gradually paying off that IOU ever since. If one asks why the flow of "money" is in that sense, it probably has something to do with how we mark cosmological time, such that the "progression" of cosmological time is simply defined as the current state in that exchange. If it's true that cosmological time does in fact mean nothing beyond that, then the questions of why the universe is expanding and why it has a finite age go away-- they are both just how we tell the story of exchange between gravity and kinetic energy on the universal scale, and both the speed of light and cosmological redshifts have a place in that story. Somehow that all connects to our local concepts of speed and time, but just how globally generalizable those notions really are is an issue that is often taken for granted without much further thought.
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I recall hearing an (online) lecture some time ago that Paul Steinhardt gave about 5th dimensional colliding branes and whatnot (ekpyrotic universe, cyclic model). Seemed to make a whole lot of sense, although technically it's a bit beyond my understanding.
Here is an illustration:
I also vaguely remember hearing about an upcoming mission was supposed to prove whether Steinhardt's theory had credibility or not, and perhaps at the same time debunk Guth's inflationary theory? I think it had to do with measuring gravity waves (ripples in spacetime). Can anyone shed some light on this?
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I do believe the reference may be to LISA that may be able to detect "speculative astrophysical objects like cosmic strings and domain boundaries":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_(astronomy)
The dog, the dog, he's at it again!
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Yes, the cyclic model does seem to make a lot of sense. It would be wonderfully simple if such was the case in our universe, but alas the data of WMAP contradicts the cyclic model or "big bounce" theory as it were and actually gives credence to Inflation.I recall hearing an (online) lecture some time ago that Paul Steinhardt gave about 5th dimensional colliding branes and whatnot (ekpyrotic universe, cyclic model). Seemed to make a whole lot of sense, although technically it's a bit beyond my understanding.
Here is an illustration:
I also vaguely remember hearing about an upcoming mission was supposed to prove whether Steinhardt's theory had credibility or not, and perhaps at the same time debunk Guth's inflationary theory? I think it had to do with measuring gravity waves (ripples in spacetime). Can anyone shed some light on this?
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How does WMAP data contradict cyclic models in general?
The dog, the dog, he's at it again!
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In georgeeze, I see it as KE = PE, thus KE - PE = 0. Is this simplicity applicable?
This is where I get lost quickly. The equation above makes great sense for what we see today, but "in the beginning" it makes no sense when KE and PE are both at an absolute value of zero. Though I find your commerce analogy helpful, how can one have commerce starting with no money? The old joke arises here about the sage that gave advice on how to make a million bucks by first starting with a million dollars and then .....Then there is no need to ask where the energy "comes from", as there never is any total energy, rather the question is what controls the "commerce" between kinetic and gravitational energy.
Last edited by George; 2010-Dec-30 at 09:51 PM. Reason: grammar
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Completely, though the standard is that PE is negative, so it would then be KE + PE = 0.
The other way around-- their absolute values were both maximal at the beginning.The equation above makes great sense for what we see today, but "in the beginning" it makes no sense when KE and PE are both at an absolute value of zero.
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Ah yes, that helps. Has there been a demonstration, even indirectly, that when a something and a certain negative something are combined that they produce a nothing?
Via ex nihlo?The other way around-- their absolute values were both maximal at the beginning.
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The closest thing might be, if you throw a rock up onto a ledge, it starts off with lots of kinetic energy and some negative potential energy, and ends up with zero of both when it rests on the ledge. But the zero of the potential energy scale is completely arbitrary, and the presence of kinetic energy is frame dependent, so on balance it is not clear that anything physical can be interpreted from these kinds of balances. It is bookkeeping.
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If atoms and whatnot (I'm clueless, as you can tell) are mostly "space", if you condensed everything (removed that "space"), how big, or small, would that be?
If the Big Bang produced everything out of "nothing" could there have been several? So there was very little, then there was some Minute Bang that produced a tiny bit more, then that collapsed on itself, then there was another Bang that produced a little bit more. Repeat until you have what there is today.
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The whatnots are within space, so space (i.e. spacetime) is in addition to the whatnots though each influence one another. Energy, when cooled as in expansion, will produce the whatnots. BBT did not start with any matter; energy was in the beginning and the expansion of space caused the temperature to drop and precipitate-out into other forms of energy including matter and photons. So, if you wind the clock backwards to the instant when it was all in one tiny spot, perhaps a singularity or maybe not, then it would be compressed energy and would not be too constrained on size. However, for fun, if you were to take the size of a proton and pretend it could hold its size even at infinite temperatures and pressures, then you could calculate a size. I think the exponent would be in the 80s, and 84 comes to mind, but that may include electrons. Dark matter complicates things since there seems to be more of it by mass and we don't know what it is.
Perhaps, but how do we test the idea? One concern for this scenario is what time would be like prior to t=0 because how do sequential events take place if time is unborn?If the Big Bang produced everything out of "nothing" could there have been several? So there was very little, then there was some Minute Bang that produced a tiny bit more, then that collapsed on itself, then there was another Bang that produced a little bit more. Repeat until you have what there is today.
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I'm not entirely sure if such an "oscillating bang" model has ever been proposed but there are various models and hypotheses where a number of separate or consecutive inflation events are proposed. Obviously in the light of that, it's not yet at all clear if the BB event in fact produced "everything" or if it occured "out of nothing" (most likely vacuum fluctuations of vacuum, if such is being proposed).
The dog, the dog, he's at it again!
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The "space between" was more of a side question.
Anyway, although the something-out-of-nothing question will never be answered, I think the gradually increasing Bangs is more plausible.
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Maybe we just got the sense of time wrong. Perhaps the universe started with zero potential energy and zero kinetic energy, and has been falling in ever since. Then it is making its gravitational field (and potential energy) as it goes along, and generating all that kinetic energy to balance it. Of course, that means effects lead to causes and entropy decreases, we just think backwards about it, because in some sense intelligence is "swimming upstream."
Rather than being taken too seriously, what this idea is primarily intended to convey is that our job is to make sense of what we see, not to use what makes sense to us as a way of deciding what must be.
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Falling implies a potential, unless someone pushed it.
I buy the balance but I'm stuck on the initial conditions that activates the "fall", especially when they extrapolate to the realm of nada, zippo, flat broke.Then it is making its gravitational field (and potential energy) as it goes along, and generating all that kinetic energy to balance it.
This reminds of a comment that hit me between the eyes the other night: Alan MacRobert's article, "Why is the Sun so complicated?" (current S&T) stated, "We live in a universe with an interesting property: energy flowing through a system tends to organize that sytem into greater complexity, producing emergent phenomena (at the expense of greater disorder, or entropy, elsewhere)". I was surprised at how surprised I was, but I just don't recall seeing this decades ago in thermo class.Of course, that means effects lead to causes and entropy decreases, we just think backwards about it, because in some sense intelligence is "swimming upstream."
I guess I shouldn't complain if nothing is all they are pointing to.Rather than being taken too seriously, what this idea is primarily intended to convey is that our job is to make sense of what we see, not to use what makes sense to us as a way of deciding what must be.
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Only if you accept our possibly backwards concept of cause and effect. If time is actually backward, we got that wrong too-- then falling isn't caused by a potential, it is the cause of potential.
I agree that normal causal thinking appears to fail. That's why I pointed out that we really don't know that normal causal thinking has anything to do with how the universe actually works. It may very well have a lot more to do with how intelligence works.I buy the balance but I'm stuck on the initial conditions that activates the "fall", especially when they extrapolate to the realm of nada, zippo, flat broke.
Yes, it's an important point-- disorder increases expressly because of our concept of what disorder is (to wit, states with larger numbers of ways of happening). It's all on us-- what we call "disorder." The second law says that disorder must increase, but it does not say that the most disordered state must occur-- there has to be a path to that state that obeys the laws. The laws tend to select paths that lead to complexity on small scales and disorder on large scales, but not states of complete disorder, at least not right away. This is fortunate-- the second law of thermodynamics by itself would not lead to an interesting universe, it is only when it is augmented by all the other laws that these more interesting paths to disorder get selected.This reminds of a comment that hit me between the eyes the other night: Alan MacRobert's article, "Why is the Sun so complicated?" (current S&T) stated, "We live in a universe with an interesting property: energy flowing through a system tends to organize that sytem into greater complexity, producing emergent phenomena (at the expense of greater disorder, or entropy, elsewhere)". I was surprised at how surprised I was, but I just don't recall seeing this decades ago in thermo class.
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Sooo, I can be a smart alec and complain about your post and in so doing, cause it! Hey, me and my keyboard, we's gots us some licks!
Calm down, have some dip. - George Carlin
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