The Big Bang Theory

[blobrana]

Hum,
Well there a person, Rodger Penrose, who proposes that everything is topology (spinars etc).
He thinks that there is only multi dimensions; and how they wrap up together, dictates/creates the particles, forces, particle families and forces.

I suppose applied to string theory, the string or membrane is everything, you don’t need anything else.
The original 5 dimensional membrane, (that may have always `existed`),  is sill here but it has been transformed into `energies` and `matter` and `space` and `time` (etc).

And may revert in the future to being pure dimensions again.
 
Perhaps we should be asking what a dimension is?

[Dandy]

X-ray wrote:
...
I still have a problem (look, my maths and physics isn't like yours, so I look at things in terms of what I can explain in plain English): the quantum foam is SOMETHING, and to me it is just another handgrenade. As I said before, I don't want to speculate on the shape or configuration of the "thing" from which all this was created, I want to know where it came from. .
...

Doesn't "came from" desribe a place in space/time?
In a singularity there is neigther space nor time - they evolve immediately *AFTER* the BB - as well as the matter, energy and all the dimensions, that make our universe.

I assume our minds/brains are far to limited for us to predict what the *OUTSIDE* of the Universe "looks like".

Are there other universes? How many? How are they constructed? and so on...

A few postings up I read that before the BB there was no time.

I'm not sure on that - I could as well imagine, that there was *UNLIMITED* time - or eternity.

That with the BB a kind of limitation/cyclisation was introduced into time, a process, that allows things to "evolve" and to "die".

But that's just my thinking...

[X-ray]

@ Dandy

"...Doesn't "came from" desribe a place in space/time?..."


That's exactly my point. I cannot see how something 'comes from' complete nothingness. To me the only logical explanation is a loop. That satisfies the no beginning and no end concept, and preserves the constituents of the universe, either in the way of matter, or in the way of energy. But when I am presented with complex theories and conjecture about how things suddenly developed from a singularity or a liquorice stick (whose existence itself is not scrutinized) then it seems like a way of spliting up a question so that the focus is how the liquorice stick evolved/developed/changed into what we see today, rather than questioning how you can get something out of nothing.

More about the plus and minus and resultant of zero:

@ Blobzie

If we imagine for a moment that you are satisfied with a mathematical zero equating to 'nothing' I would like to know if there is any evidence that the entire universe and matter and energy from which it is composed is NOT curently in fact a resultant of zero. In other words, how do we know that all the negatives added to all the postives, do not equal a big fat zero right now?

Because if we consider that they do, then you and I do not really exist, because we are 'nothing' when all the sums are totalled.
If we consider that the resultant is not zero, then where did the excess material/energy come from that gives us the universe as we see it? It may as well be considered on its own, without a fancy attempt to rationalise a certain number of pluses and minuses beforehand.

Of course, another thing that bothers me is the convenience of saying that there is an equal amount of pluses and minuses, and that the sum of these is nothing. It is convenient because it can't be proved. After all, it would be really inconvenient if it was proved, because that would kill the theory itself, as the proof would rely on identification of either the minus or the plus components that contribute to the resultant of zero. And these components would prove the 'lack of' nothing.

It's kind of like a jar, 'filled' with a vaccuum. I can assert that there are 12 blue goblins and 12 yellow pixies in the jar, but we can't see them (in fact they aren't there, because they cancel each other out). Only by some other (as yet unexplained force) can you suddenly have 13 goblins, which renders the contents of the jar 'something'.

Of course there is the nagging problem of why such a force, necessarily being external to the jar, was not counted as part of the universe in the first place. The link to Rubak's site that I provided earlier gives a very sound and logical argument why the universe can't be thought of as a compartmentalised entity such as an expanding balloon (or jar of goblins or what-have-you).

[blobrana]

Hum,
Well at least you grasped the idea proposed by the classic big bang theory…

Indeed, cosmologist George Gamow once in a conversation with Albert Einstein casually mentioned that one of his colleagues had pointed out to him that according to Einstein's equations a star could be created out of nothing at all, because its negative gravitational energy precisely cancels out its positive mass energy.
 "Einstein stopped in his tracks, and, since we were crossing a street, several cars had to stop to avoid running us down".


There are a few experiments (i.e. COBE satellite) we can do to check that the universe also hasn’t a rotation, or that the universe is electrically neutral, and we can show that certain particle collisions [ as K-mesons, or kaons decay violated the so-called charge-parity CP symmetry ] have `chirality` (preferred direction) that show that the universe isn’t symmetrical at the quantum level, with respect to matter and antimatter.
 
There was a discrepancy in the decay between kaons and anti-kaons.

It’s worth tracking down a copy of the 1967 landmark paper by Andrei Sakharov; "Violation of CP Invariance, C Asymmetry, and Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe"

When the universe was creating matter and antimatter there was a slight imbalance (not a 100% annihilation process) that was due to the way that the original 10 dimensional symmetry broke down. The matter (the imbalance) that was left, was balanced by the creation of space-time.

One could postulate that a universe could produce matter and antimatter that cancelled out completely (i.e. no particles in it) but by doing so there is no creation of space/time/gravity…
Alternatively, that there was too much Baryonic matter created, and the universe quickly imploded, through gravity, before it could `inflate` (through inflation).
Or, slightly too little matter created, and the inflation energy is too powerful, and disperses everything so that stars and galaxies can’t form...

And indeed that is what quantum fluctuations may have done; there may have been an infinite amount of `failed` universes, that have occurred `before` our universe came about.

Quantum uncertainty allows the temporary creation of bubbles of energy, or pairs of particles (such as electron-positron pairs mentiond before) out of nothing, provided that they disappear in a short time.

(No need for a "force, necessarily being external to the jar")

The more mass created, the shorter the virtual particle can exist.
The energy in a (space-time) gravitational field is negative, while the energy locked up in matter is positive.

If the Universe is exactly flat, then the two numbers cancel out, and the overall energy of the Universe is precisely zero.

[X-ray]

...but that still leaves us with at least one blue goblin today, knocking silently on the inside of the glass jar, hoping someone will recognise his existence...

[bjjones37]

blobrana wrote:
Hum,
Well at least you grasped the idea proposed by the classic big bang theory…

...

If the Universe is exactly flat, then the two numbers cancel out, and the overall energy of the Universe is precisely zero.

Uhh, did she just prove the universe does not exist? :-D

[mdwh2]

X-ray wrote:
If we imagine for a moment that you are satisfied with a mathematical zero equating to 'nothing' I would like to know if there is any evidence that the entire universe and matter and energy from which it is composed is NOT curently in fact a resultant of zero. In other words, how do we know that all the negatives added to all the postives, do not equal a big fat zero right now?

Because if we consider that they do, then you and I do not really exist, because we are 'nothing' when all the sums are totalled.

I don't think it makes sense to say that. All it means is that the total energy is zero, that doesn't mean that we don't exist. I don't stop existing if I have zero momentum, for example.

Or to put it another way, if a rocket moves by firing out gas in the other direction, the total sum of momentum is still zero (conservation of linear momentum), but it would be incorrect to take the rocket and say that it had zero momentum. Similarly, we still have positive energy, even if that is counteracted by negative energy elsewhere.

If we consider that the resultant is not zero, then where did the excess material/energy come from that gives us the universe as we see it?

Who knows. But if it always existed, I don't think that would be a contradiction of conservation of energy.