"Negative Infinity"

[warpus]

Guys, the Big Bang only predicts how our current observable Universe came into being from a singularity.

It does not say that time did not exist before the Big Bang. We just don't know..

 

[Sidhe]

I'd just like to say. With science everything is up for grabs. Nothing is sacred. It's to our best current knowledge, assuming blah blah is correct and blah blah is isotropic and blah blah is a harmonic oscillator. This is what we can say. But you know if you want to be a bit wild, you *could* say...This simplification is not necessarily bad though. If you tried to model every single thing you would make no progress whatsoever. What makes a great scientist is his/her ability to work out what exactly is important for the problem. And of course what the problem really is. It's his/her ability to *ignore* and filter out things which are not essential to the phenomena you are studying. Does it really matter for the purpose of classical mechanics for bulk matter if we ignore individual atoms? No. Doesn't work in quantum mechanics though of course. It all boils down to "What can I throw out of this problem to make it simpler while still keeping the essential things?" KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid).

Do you know that's exactly how I feel, KISS, you really do need to stick to the facts and not ponder the intangibles, you could end up lost in philosophical banter(no problem with that but it's not good science) To use an example already mentioned to show what I mean: we don't need no stinking 13 dimensions, oh 26 now how convenient I love the ideas behind String Theory but it's a little like reading a fantasy novel in that the story is convincing on a basic level, but the underlying facts defy rationality as they stand

 

[The Last Conformist]

Guys, the Big Bang only predicts how our current observable Universe came into being from a singularity.

It does not say that time did not exist before the Big Bang. We just don't know..

Repeating this doesn't make it true. Big bang theory says that there is no before the big bang. The theory might be wrong, but it does say this.

 

[warpus]

Repeating this doesn't make it true. Big bang theory says that there is no before the big bang. The theory might be wrong, but it does say this.

Can you back that up?

I read through the theory and it doesn't seem to make any claims about what happened before the Big Bang.

Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this (ed: big bang), although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity

I love the ideas behind String Theory but it's a little like reading a fantasy novel in that the story is convincing on a basic level, but the underlying facts defy rationality as they stand

Quantum physics defy rationality as well

 

[Sidhe]

Touche, but then they have a great deal of supporting evidence these days. Yes the two slit experiment proposed by Fenyman defies rationality but it does produce some rather strange and compelling evidence for consideration, QM is extremely strange but that does not mean it isn't provable.

Quantum chromodynamics for example, quark theory, was devoid of real proof(at least solid proof) untill very recently, in fact I believe the proponents only got a Nobel prize in the last ten years, it took 40 years for science to recognise it's tennants had fitted the observable facts and of course microprocessors capable of handling the experiments in question.

It seems backward to believe a theory as true without experimental evidence but the truth is many areas of QM that were statistically based, I.e. based in maths have turned out to have real experimental proof and to reveal practicality in many areas. The microchip is the best example I can think of where the microchip was a direct result of quantum principles, and also a prediction of it's limitations, which is why quantum computing is a hot topic, because there is just only so small you can get before quantum interactions upset the chip. Again a highly specualtive area, but not one without merit if they can get light to store information and atoms to work as RAM. I seem to remember they have a 4 atom quantum computer that works atm, although it's a hazy area the point is electrons store information in binary 2^2 then 2^2^2 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256 etc where as superposition alows storage in 4^4 increments, stack the atoms together and you have enormous scope. 4 then 4^4 256 then 4^4^4 424967296 and so on possible combinations. Good huh? Well if it can be made to work Computers the size of a nickle. Nanotech. Speculative but maybe just maybe workable.

 

[Souron]

Do you know that's exactly how I feel, KISS, you really do need to stick to the facts and not ponder the intangibles, you could end up lost in philosophical banter(no problem with that but it's not good science) To use an example already mentioned to show what I mean: we don't need no stinking 13 dimensions, oh 26 now how convenient I love the ideas behind String Theory but it's a little like reading a fantasy novel in that the story is convincing on a basic level, but the underlying facts defy rationality as they stand

Yeah, one of the things I don't like about string theory is it just ads a bunch of rules upon rules to make it work. It seems to defy KISS were it not for the fact that no other theory can claim to be such a compleate Grand Unified Theory. Of course it hasn't made any predictions that came true yet, so it cannot be accepted into scientific fact.

All modern physics can be quite baffaling though. I guess it's not a coinsidence that I like physics and fantasy just about equally.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Repeating this doesn't make it true. Big bang theory says that there is no before the big bang. The theory might be wrong, but it does say this.

I think this is very important. It's a hard concept to grasp. Even the special relativity time "paradoxes" are hard for the lay person to swallow. A physical limit to prehistory is even harder. I think failure to grasp this implication is why Elrohir responded to MrCynical as follows, on page 1 of this thread:

I'm afraid I don't understand. Are you saying that the matter that exploded in the Big Bang; along with all of space-time, just appeared right before the Big Bang? There was nothing before it happened? Not "We can't know what happened before", but "Absolutely nothing existed"? If not, then where did everything come from, to just pop into existence in time to explode and create the universe?

No, what MrCynical is saying, if I understand, is just what TLC says the big bang theory says: There is no "before the big bang". There is no question of "popping into existence" as we understand "popping". Popping would involve an earlier time, in which nothing is there, and a later time, in which something is there. But, compared to the big bang, there is no earlier time. Only the later time.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Can you back that up?

How much GR do you know?

 

[warpus]

How much GR do you know?

I'm not an expert by any means but I know the basics. Unless you mean Gene Roddenberry, in which case I know that he liked green alien chicks, but that's about it

Seriously though, I always thought that the Big Bang Theory only deals with the.. big bang.. and not what happened before.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

GR? What does Grandfunk Railroad have to do with the thread topic?

Anyway, in my opinion (which Im fully aware doesnt amount to a hill of beans in this type of discussion), there was Now before the Big Bang. An Eternal Moment. What we call 'Time' was born when Space was thrown into the Nowness. Needless to say, I have no links or equations to back that up

 

[C~G]

I say that a physicist wouldn't say what he said, and you interpret this as me saying he isn't entitled to speculate? Have your English reading comprehension checked, dude.

I apologize The Last Conformist, I overreacted, let's rule it was bad day at office for me.

 

[col]

A lot of the problems about what happened before the Big Bang stem from the concept of time itself. Newton - and I guess most non-physicists these days - see time as something that rolls onwards at a steady rate separate from evrything else.

Post Einstein, we know ths is wrong. Experimental evidence has proved that this time does not in fact exist. That time moves at different rates. It changes depending on speed and whether an object is in a grav field. Again both of these results have been tested experimentally. Indeed we cannot even say that one event occurred before another event. It may be before for one person and after for another.

Time is not in fact independent of everything else but actually part of everything else. When the universe began with the Big bang, time itself began.

There is no 'before' the Big bang, because 'before' depends on a flawed view of the nature of time.

 

[Eukaryote]

Time going on forever backwards is possible, but thers no way of knowing if it was so, so I don't care.

 

[Sidhe]

A lot of the problems about what happened before the Big Bang stem from the concept of time itself. Newton - and I guess most non-physicists these days - see time as something that rolls onwards at a steady rate separate from evrything else.

Post Einstein, we know ths is wrong. Experimental evidence has proved that this time does not in fact exist. That time moves at different rates. It changes depending on speed and whether an object is in a grav field. Again both of these results have been tested experimentally. Indeed we cannot even say that one event occurred before another event. It may be before for one person and after for another.

Time is not in fact independent of everything else but actually part of everything else. When the universe began with the Big bang, time itself began.

There is no 'before' the Big bang, because 'before' depends on a flawed view of the nature of time.

Oh I agree but there's no reason to say that the universe isn't just a continuous sequence of big bangs and big crunches if you actually bother to look further than the rote your told, the truth is that current Big bang theory likes to devoid itself of answering the question and actually makes the assumption that it has, sadly it's not true, there are just to many intangibles to make ultimate conclusions, to me to do so is to devoid yourself from science and accept only one version of the universe, this is inherently risky and inherently unwise particularly given the state of our understanding, by all means advocate one theory and dismiss everything else, that is your belief and your right.

 

[pboily]

Not that this has any bearing on the discussion at hand, but I think col (or Feynman, as I like to think of him) actually came up with some of the "rote" that we are told and played a part in the current "state of our understanding"... (although I don't remember what his specialty was).

 

[deo]

IIRC time is a physical Law and didnt exist before the Big Bang.

 

[col]

Oh I agree but there's no reason to say that the universe isn't just a continuous sequence of big bangs and big crunches if you actually bother to look further than the rote your told, the truth is that current Big bang theory likes to devoid itself of answering the question and actually makes the assumption that it has, sadly it's not true, there are just to many intangibles to make ultimate conclusions, to me to do so is to devoid yourself from science and accept only one version of the universe, this is inherently risky and inherently unwise particularly given the state of our understanding, by all means advocate one theory and dismiss everything else, that is your belief and your right.

Rote I was told? Actually my master's thesis was on looking at cosmological EVIDENCE.

Cosmologists dont just make things up you know. There is a lot of evidence out there that has to be explained. All theories must stand or fall on how well they fit the evidence.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'm not an expert by any means but I know the basics. Unless you mean Gene Roddenberry, in which case I know that he liked green alien chicks, but that's about it

Seriously though, I always thought that the Big Bang Theory only deals with the.. big bang.. and not what happened before.

Again, there is no before.

Consider yourself, here and now, as a point in the spactime continuum (an "event"). All points with the same time coordinate (in a given appropriate coordinate system) constitutes the "hypersurface of the present" (HotP). Big bang theory essentially says that any past-pointing timelike curve starting at the HotP will end in an initial singularity. Since the past is the set of points you can reach by going backwards from the present, it follows your past does not include any points beyond the initial singularity.

 

[Souron]

As far as I understand, the "no time before the big bang" model is simply the simmplest explanation, and as such accepted by standard science. It's along the lines of the afforementioned KISS principle.

That does not necessarily rule out the posibility of something before, but immagining such alternatives is a fruitless and unscientific endevor.

I should also add that my afformentioned string theory Big Bang/Crunch hypothisis does not violate these principles because it is a natural conclusion of string theory, which seeks to be the simplest explanation for quantum gravity. It does go against current Big Bang theory (Big Bang theory claims that there was only one Big Bang).