Answering the cosmic riddle of existence

Razorback kitten

I don't believe there was a Big Bang. I believe the universe is creating and unmaking matter all the time. Like religion helps people believe they have an afterlife, I think this theory exist out of our desire, or need, to have our questions answered (in a way that we like normally). As the concept of an eternal cosmos seems unacceptable these days. The Big Bang theory in my opinion has been shaped to fit our unanswered questions.

I don't want to debate about whether there was or wasnt a Big Bang. Instead I'd like to ask you all to talk about, before the Big Bang.

Mostly I hear or read that 'before' is not valid, as time began then, not existing previously. However this singularity must have been caused, or led up to in some way.

I can't see how our universe could lead to a Big Bang scenario. Meaning it looks to be only once, like a firework, as there's no way our universe is heading towards another BB. Or does it really yo-yo back and forth???

tim wood

"Only universe." What does that mean? Cosmology has moved to thinking speculatively that ours is a kind of bubble in something larger, and there are likely lots of other bubbles, coming and going, each with their own conditions, and maybe even their own laws. At this level of speculation, it seems to be a matter of what makes the more sense, although no law says anything at that level must make sense.

It's good, then, never to lose sight that science probably will never answer ultimate, final questions. And it's a sign, imo, of maturity to give up spending too much energy on them.

So you have your belief that there is no big bang, notwithstanding that science has that pretty well nailed down. But in your epistemology, what does it mean to say you don't believe in the big bang?

JosephS

I like to entertain the idea that if dark energy consigns this universe to an ever increasing, ever diluted space that at some point, after trillions upon trillions of years, after planets and molecules have been ripped apart, that the universe will pass some critical density threshold where actuality will pass into potentiality. It will drift out of time and pass, as it were, into legend. The universe will no longer exist.

Just a figment of my imagination, but it makes me content to consider it.

PoeticUniverse

It will drift out of time and pass, as it were, into legend. The universe will no longer exist. — JosephS

Kind of like this?

(In my own voice.)

How the universe ends might tell us something about what the beginning ultimately meant—that is, not much, I suppose.

JosephS

↪PoeticUniverse

What software do you use to create your videos? That must take quite some time. The voice-over is relaxing :-)

Razorback kitten

↪tim wood

It seems like a leap of faith to me. There are other explanations for expansion or the microwave background which I find more plausible. Not to mention most professionals now agreeing that General Relativity is incorrect or incomplete, yet it's used to work out the details of the Big Bang.

And yes I wanted to know how many people really think about bubble/multiverse theories in a serious manner.

deletedusercb

It's good, then, never to lose sight that science probably will never answer ultimate, final questions. And it's a sign, imo, of maturity to give up spending too much energy on them. — tim wood

That would be a bit of an insult to cosmologists, then.

Terrapin Station

I voted:

There was a big bang - this is the most revisable of the three. But current evidence points to a big bang, whatever might have preceded it.

There is no God - In my view this isn't even slightly questionable. The notion of there gods is ridiculous and many aspects of it are incoherent. It's just absurd, childish shit that people made up to explain their experiences when there weren't better ways to explain them.

There is only one universe - this is primarily a matter of definition, although part of it is also that physicists can veer into absurd/idiotic (at least if not meant as fantasy/SciFi) explanations when they start positing things like the multiverse interpretation of qm.

Razorback kitten

↪Terrapin Station

I like your views on religion. We should have moved past it years ago. Still, with regards to the evidence of the BB, I think it's not quite substantial enough. Then I consider the size of the universe and try to envisage how it could possibly of come from one single point? How it got there? How could it happen again? So I'm left with many new questions just because this answer solves a few other previous ones. Now I see it used like the implementation of dark matter and energy to fill in blanks.

tim wood

There is only one universe — Terrapin Station

This is akin to the problem of the Loch Ness Monster. Reported over nine-hundred years, if there is such an animal, it's got to be a family. Now, given that there is a universe, is it more likely that there is just one and only one, or that there's more than one? To hold it to one implies the existence of not only whatever brought it into existence, but additional somethings to keep it at only one. That seems the less likely. But clearly this has nothing to do with physics so much as a judgment on likelihood.

Razorback kitten

Why would there need to be a something preventing other universes from appearing? There only need be a lack of something which could cause another.

schopenhauer1

↪Razorback kitten

I think it's important to recognize that when we conceptualize and imagine universes, we always keep a human point of view on it. What we cannot do is get the view from "somewhere else" or "everywhere" or "nowhere". None of these views are amenable to us, thus views of all existence are not amenable to us, other than our own conceptualizations.

deletedusercb

Now, given that there is a universe, is it more likely that there is just one and only one, or that there's more than one? — tim wood

It depends on whether you would call the sum of all that exists anywhere the universe or, if there are different pockets, you decide to call these more than one universe. If it is a multiverse, then is that one universe with many separate 'part?. IOW one could defininition away the idea of universes, that is, in the plural.

James Pullman

Good day to all,

The only fact about where it all started (if it has started) is that we do not know. And probably we will never will. And that is, undoubtedly, the greater issue: how can our existences, extremely equipped to be praised as superiors and illuminated, can deal with this? We can´t, we will never will, and it is this duality that impels us to search further. My faith (and please remember that faith is, by definition, not subject to logical and formal counterarguments) is that human time will not be enough to get a final answer.

(Important note : I have read all about black holes, dark matter and energy, gravitational ripples, string theory, inflation, quasars, Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and also Harry Potter)

Razorback kitten

↪schopenhauer1

Is beg to differ. After all, there is no other way for a universe to be perceived. It can't be seen or experienced but it's within the reaches of thought surely. I don't claim to have an exceptional mind, far from it. Still I can imagine these ideas and conceptualise them. Even though I could never witness such a thing.

James Pullman

↪Razorback kitten

What do you differ from?

Terrapin Station

This is akin to the problem of the Loch Ness Monster. Reported over nine-hundred years, if there is such an animal, it's got to be a family. Now, given that there is a universe, is it more likely that there is just one and only one, or that there's more than one? To hold it to one implies the existence of not only whatever brought it into existence, but additional somethings to keep it at only one. That seems the less likely. But clearly this has nothing to do with physics so much as a judgment on likelihood. — tim wood

I commented above, "There is only one universe - this is primarily a matter of definition,"

For example, if we define "universe" as "everything that exists," then you can't have more than one.

PoeticUniverse

The universe is as a spring wound up that is now slowly unwinding, this giving it 'oomph'; so, something had to have piled up, due to the meeting with some limit, and then the universe came forth, and long it will last, until all the stars have gone and all the photons are far apart.

RegularGuy

↪PoeticUniverse

I tend to think that universes are constantly being belched from other universes. One or many had to have always existed.

PoeticUniverse

I tend to think that universes are constantly being belched from other universes. One or many had to have always existed. — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, for if it happened once, then it can happen again and did happen before, too.

tim wood

For example, if we define "universe" as "everything that exists," then you can't have more than one. — Terrapin Station

In this area, perhaps less dogmatism. How often in our own lives do we think we have a handle on "everything" only to find that, to be short, we don't. Or if you just want to play word games, then I am not much interested.

Janus

↪Coben

↪Noah Te Stroete

↪PoeticUniverse

Under the contemporary conception a universe is a space/time continuum. If there are other universes then there are other space/time continuums. The problem is how can we coherently say that infinitely many other universes have existed before ours and in different "spaces" or "places" without any ultimate beginning unless there is an overarching infinite space/ time without beginning?

Perhaps it would be better to accept that the nature of the real cannot be captured, but only glimpsed, in thought; which should not be all that surprising when you think about it.

James Pullman

↪Janus

Correct. And the answer is we do not know yet. Gravitational waves that have been detected point to the existence of an universe consisting in 3+1 dimensions (although not definitively). Big bang, inflation and forever-expanding nature of space/time is were we stand. Big rip? And then nothing: this entangles even more how it all started. But there is hope, 70% of the universe is made of dark energy - it is so called as it is, because scientists do not have a clue what it might be.
And acknowledging that we don´t comprehend most of it, it´s the best way to get there.

Janus

And the answer is we do not know yet. — James Pullman

And acknowledging that we don´t comprehend most of it, it´s the best way to get there. — James Pullman

Do you think it is plausible that we could come to know the answers to these seemingly intractably antinomial questions?

James Pullman

↪Janus

Janus, sorry for not using big words (i understand what you say and the meaning of the words you used), but i can only see only one question here: what is all of this? What I stated is that we don not have a definitive answer. There is nothing contradictory in wanting to know something and recognize that we do not know it yet. In fact they are mostly the same thing. If we´ll have a closing answer? Not one of my strong beliefs:

we may not have the time (as species) and it may not be finite (all of this, i mean).

Nevertheless, i´m the first to get on the ship that goes out for looking. Because, like i stated, i do not know. And if there is an answer i want it.

Janus

There is nothing contradictory in wanting to know something and recognize that we do not know it yet. In fact they are mostly the same thing. If we´ll have a closing answer? Not one of my strong beliefs:

we may not have the time (as species) and it may not be finite (all of this, i mean). — James Pullman

Yes, I agree with you that it's good to try to understand as much as possible, while always being mindful of the paradoxes and limitations of reason and empirical investigation.

James Pullman

↪Janus

Sorry to disagree again :)
there are no paradoxes here, neither limits to reason/logic (they are limitless by definition). Only possibilities of time and/or size constrictions (for now...)

Janus

↪James Pullman

Ingenuous disagreements are fine! :smile:

So, it seems that in regard to other universes and how we can conceive of their temporal relationships to ours (i.e. before or after) there is an inherent paradox, given that we think of space and time as being only within universes (universes being thought of as space/time continuums).

So then we might say that the wider multiverse just is the universe, but if we go that way then we must relinquish the idea that the universe began with the Big Bang, and perhaps the idea that our "universe" is causally or energetically closed as well.

The other problem is as to whether, given that other universes are separate space/time continuums, we could ever have any empirical evidence that other universes exist.

James Pullman

↪Janus

Yes, your conclusions are right, starting from the assumption that we completely understand the universe (or, as preferred, the universes), as space and time, filled with matter and dark matter.

But at this point we already know that the fabric of space-time is 70% filled with something with do know what it is, and if/when we find out, it might turn out to be just that we only understood 30% of the fabric of all there is.

The implication of dark energy is huge, it´s scientifically accepted/true that we don´t know what the f... is going on! ;)

BC

“I don't want to debate about whether there was or wasnt a Big Bang. Instead I'd like to ask you all to talk about, before the Big Bang“ RK

There can’t be much of a conversation if you rule out of bounds the POV most will have.

It sounds like you would prefer Hoyle’s Steady State universe which some followed until the more compelling BB theory was proposed. You might even prefer an earlier view —

In the 13th century, Siger of Brabant authored the thesis The Eternity of the World, which argued that there was no first man, and no first specimen of any particular: the physical universe is thus without any first beginning, and therefore eternal. Siger's views were condemned by the Pope in 1277.

Janus

↪James Pullman

Yes, I agree that if we change our conception of the universe what are apparent paradoxes at present may dissolve.

Answering the cosmic riddle of existence

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