What happened before the Big Bang?

[philosophy]

This can only be accessed for seven days but it raises questions and
possible answers as Lawrey is trying to address in his "Time Out"
thread. I do hope those of our outside of Australia can access this,
it is a wonderful documentary.

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/2224449214/

[Neil Kelsey]

"This content is currently unavailable". Damn. 

 You might be interested in "A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss.

[philosophy]

Oh, what a shame. It really is a good one.

This was the promo:
Where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin?
For nearly a hundred years we thought we had the answer: a big bang
some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that our
universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.
This program takes the ultimate trip into the unknown to explore a
dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and to
find out what happened before the big bang.

To help, if it's possible I have accessed the credits. You may get
some idea how to get ahold of it through them.
Narrated by: Bernard Hill
Archive: NASA. The Huntington Library.
Film Editor: San Billinge
Written and Directed by: Peter Leonard
Editor: Aidan Laverty
HORIZON
BBC Productions. bbc.co.uk/science
BBC 2010.

[Neil Kelsey]

On Sunday, April 22, 2012 3:25:29 PM UTC-7, philosophy wrote:

Oh, what a shame.  It really is a good one.

This was the promo:
Where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin?
For nearly a hundred years we thought we had the answer: a big bang
some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that our
universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.
This program takes the ultimate trip into the unknown to explore a
dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and to
find out what happened before the big bang.

I'm beginning to wonder if "big bangs" might not overlap; is it possible that 20 billion light years away (farther than we can see, say) that a similarly rapid expansion is occurring that we won't know about for 6 billion years? 

[philosophy]

Here's a short link list I came across which deal with a few of the
Hypotheses talked about in the documentary.

http://plus.maths.org/content/what-happened-big-bang
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702084231.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html

I find it interesting that so many people want science to
come up with an answer and then get upset when science
finds it's time to refine their hypotheses. I get excited by
this aspect of science, not annoyed. Cosmology has
allowed for speculation which religion does not allow for.
Maybe this is why some individuals need religion i.e. it
gives you an answer and it doesn't change.

On Apr 23, 7:58 am, Neil Kelsey <neil.m.kel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[philosophy]

In answer to your question -
Ie "is it possible that a similarly rapid expansion is
occurring?" Yes.

"that we won't know about for 6 billion years?"

I don't believe so. I think science will have the
answers before then.

[Neil Kelsey]

On Sunday, April 22, 2012 3:39:02 PM UTC-7, philosophy wrote:

Here's a short link list I came across which deal with a few of the
Hypotheses talked about in the documentary.

http://plus.maths.org/content/what-happened-big-bang
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702084231.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html

I find it interesting that so many people want science to
come up with an answer and then get upset when science
finds it's time to refine their hypotheses.  I get excited by
this aspect of science, not annoyed.  Cosmology has
allowed for speculation which religion does not allow for.
Maybe this is why some individuals need religion i.e. it
gives you an answer and it doesn't change.

Religion gives you an answer that doesn't allow for further speculation unless it is forced upon it by scientific discoveries, which is amazingly about the same time when the religious tell you that their falsified cosmology along was a "metaphor" all along.  

Who do I thank for not being infected with that mental virus?

[philosophy]

Who do you thank? You(r) mind
What do you thank? Science

[Bill Bowden]

On Apr 22, 3:32 pm, Neil Kelsey <neil.m.kel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sunday, April 22, 2012 3:25:29 PM UTC-7, philosophy wrote:
>
> > Oh, what a shame.  It really is a good one.
>
> > This was the promo:
> > Where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin?
> > For nearly a hundred years we thought we had the answer: a big bang
> > some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that our
> > universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.
> > This program takes the ultimate trip into the unknown to explore a
> > dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and to
> > find out what happened before the big bang.
>
> I'm beginning to wonder if "big bangs" might not overlap; is it possible
> that 20 billion light years away (farther than we can see, say) that a
> similarly rapid expansion is occurring that we won't know about for 6
> billion years?
>

Yes, possible but unlikely since if such an event is occurring, it
would have to be a first occurrence. Otherwise, there would be
evidence of other such things in the past. And there isn't.

-Bill

[lawrey]

Philosophy,

Looking at this with bleary eyes before 0800 hrs, I think initially
I would very much be inclined to dump it in the don't know, but
would like to know basket. As B Bowden points out; if this is
plausible, the question remains....What about First Cause??

It's a pity it is unavailable to us.

One thing is for sure, if we can know, eventually we will.

On Apr 23, 4:00 am, Bill Bowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info>
wrote:

[Michael Perrigo]

Alright so did anyone answer the question or just talk nonsense?

[Trance Gemini]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 6:17 AM, Michael Perrigo <iceblu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Alright so did anyone answer the question or just talk nonsense?

Both? I think the question was answered early on in the thread. Check out the first page.

 

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[philosophy]

Yarrido is getting very confused with his Big Bang claims, so I
thought I would go back and write out the notes I took on this
programme. Am posting them here, and will refer Yarrido back to them:

Much of this discussion takes place at The Perimeter Institute in
Ontario. I shall introduce the scientists and their discussions in
order so you can follow this. It is along the lines of the programme
which you guys have been unable to access. If I have got anything
wrong, I apologize in advance.

Dr Param Singh. We get to thirty-four zeros plus one second before
the big bang, and then the theory fails. So, what comes before the big
bang, and how many times have we had a big bang? (My comment: Note how
we are getting further and further away from the god of the bible –
unless of course the Pope decides to claim the genesis story as being
only one of the many, or ongoing big bangs, which the church has made
specious claims before in the past).

Dr Michio Kaku (From The City College of New York): Co-founder of
String Theory and then Super String Theory which explains multi-
verses. The Big Bang suggests everything comes from nothing. (But so
does the Bible. One presumes nothing existed before God said “Let
there be light”. Or did space exist before God got to work, and if
so, what produced space?)
But what is “Nothing”? It could be one of two things according to
Michio Kaku;
1. Absolute nothing where space, time etc. does not exist, or what he
prefers to think,
2. A vacuum – an absence of matter, only energy.
Michio takes us to visit Plumbrook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. This
place is run by NASA and it is trying to reproduce space on earth. It
is a huge vacuum chamber which generates nothing. It has 8 foot thick
walls of solid aluminium. It takes 2 days to pump the air out of it
and a further seven days of freezing molecules which may remain, until
they are happy to call it the closest thing to a vacuum they can
make.
According to Quantum mechanics energy sometimes transforms itself
temporarily and briefly into matter. The hypothesis rests on the
possibility that one of these tiny explosions might have kept going
and going, rather than having a brief transformation. So the whole
thing might have ended up in a big bang. If the universe came from a
pre-existing state then there was a before and an after, a cause and
an effect.

Professor Andrei Linde of Stanford University says that the Big Bang
is a flawed concept. He asks “what caused this explosion”? He says
that on observation the universe is smooth looking the same in all
directions, so it is unlikely there was a messy explosion like the Big
Bang. He suggests that just after matter first appeared, rather than
a messy explosion, there was a massive unprecedented growth in the
size of the universe he calls inflation. Between the two of them, the
Big Bang and Inflation you have the expanding universe. He then
decided the Big Bang was not needed. Rather our universe was present
from the beginning – eternal inflation. He suggests our universe is
not alone, but is part of a larger number of universes or multi-
verses. He has calculated the number to be Ten to the power of ten,
to the power of ten, to the power of ten, to the power of seven, which
is absolutely huge.

Professor Turok, the head of the Perimeter Institute thinks the
concept of eternal inflation is rubbish. Dr Param Singh is trying to
get Maths and Quantum Mechanics to work together so a new mathematical
language can be developed. This is necessary, he says, because
gravitational force which is an attractive force, becomes a repulsive
force when the universe is very small, so there is a need to match
quantum mechanics and Einstein’s gravity so the problem of everything
coming out of nothing (infinity) is never reached. As the universe
gets smaller and smaller and approaches the Big Bang, quantum
mechanics kicks in and both sides of the equation cancel out to zero –
then the universe starts to expand again. Hence, he argues, our
universe owes its existence to a previous one, which collapsed in on
itself, then rebounded. The Big Bang was in effect, a Big Bounce.
This fits with the concept of natural cycles in the universe, the ebb
and flow of life etc. Contraction and Expansion. Now we have a
question “What started the infinite bouncing in the first place?”

Professor Lee Smolin of The Perimeter Institute says that producing
everything from nothing, the so-called singularity, points to a lack
of understanding. He says the theory of general relativity is not a
complete theory – that there is more to understand. His understanding
of what happened before the Big Bang owes more to Charles Darwin than
to Albert Einstein. Biology states, he says, that the universe has an
ancestor. He postulates that the universe was born inside of a black
hole – that there is ultimately a bounce inside the black hole – a
natural selection idea. The density inside the black hole would
eventually explode again, and that would be the Big Bang. His theory
is called “Cosmological Natural Selection”. These ideas of Pre Big
Bang are almost mainstream in science now.

Professor Turok has a different take on things. He says that time did
not exist before the beginning so a big bang must have been a violent
event in a pre-existing universe. He suggests that there must have
been at least ten special events in the universe and time. He suggests
a minimum of two membranes (Branes). He says that all the space we
live in is part of a Brane. These Branes are three dimensional.
However when the Branes (space) come together, this little four
dimentional gap in space, allows the two space branes to come together
or collide, producing an explosion. These branes can collide but at
the same time they can remain extended, and hence the explosion
produced is finite.

The Inflationary Theory so far checks out. Those working on it think
that the Brane idea is a distraction from the true work. However, the
problem remains in that they can’t explain what happens before
inflation. It is interesting to observe that some people originally
involved in The Big Bang Theory are now starting to dismantle it.
Professor, Sir Roger Penrose of Oxford University suggests that when
all inflation is complete all you will end up with is photons. These
photons will then become the big bang of the next universe. He says
all the mass will be converted to energy and all differentiation will
disappear.

Five hundred years ago, anyone suggesting the earth orbited the sun
would have been ridiculed and arrested. Cosmology is evolving.

Scientific ideas are jut ideas until they are confirmed by
observation.
In Louisiana, they are trying to observe the big bang itself. They
are hunting for Gravity Waves at LIGO – The Laser Interpherometer
Gravitational Wave Observatory. Professor Joe Giami says they have
built a 4 kilometre laser tunnel for the laser beam, and it has
mirrors at its end. Gravity waves are thought to warp the fabric of
space and time. They postulate that a laser beam is generated, then
split in two, which when it reaches the end of the tunnel is deflected
by the mirrors to arrive back at the start of the tunnel.
Theoretically these beams should be in sync with one another, so if
they are not it might be that a gravitational wave has temporarily
changed the relative length of the LIGO arms. This work is sensitive
to 10 to minus 18 metres which is one, one thousandth of a photon or
hydrogen atom. So LIGO is a prototype Big Bang detector.

Once they do detect these things it has been determined that they will
build one of these things in space with arms which reach 3 million
miles in length. These will intercept the remains of the gravity
waves theoretically produced a the beginning of time. Of course they
are wondering if hidden in the signature of the first wave, will be
evidence of previous big bangs.

Cosmology has come a long way in even ten years. Now the scientists
concede there must have been something prior to the Big Bang, but
what? They are at a turning point and must give up some of their
previously held prized ideas. To some, the beginning or genesis is
happening constantly. Like most scientists Turok just wants a theory
tested by data and confirmed which shows how the world works.

On Apr 23, 7:58 am, Neil Kelsey <neil.m.kel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[LL]

LL. How absolutely anti-religious of him. He should be ashamed of
himself.

.....

[Salvatore Rappoccio]

I think this is a bbc copy that we can see outside of Australia:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vdkmj

Cheers,
Sal

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[philosophy]

Thanks Sal
I couldn't find a way to play the entire programme.
It has snippets only.
I did find the related links about each of the scientists
very interesting though, and thanks for the link.

> ...
>
> read more »

[Ian Betts]

Thanks Sal.

It an hour long program I see,

--
Ian