Big Bang Theory

[Franko47]

Hey, Kathlene, I think that part of the problem for many of us is that we want some answers to the natural world that actually explain something and get us somewhere. The "big bang" model might not be exact and perfect, although the evidence overwhelmingly points to something along those lines.

 

Just saying that "God did it" is OK and everything, but it doesn't help us understand astronomy or astro-physics that well.

 

I'm certain that God could have arranged the original "singularity explosion" to result in what we now see all around us, and are a part of. Many Christians accept the revelations of science, even when they are just theories, because the issue of the "big bang" doesn't necessarily contradict a Creator Intelligence (God). For others, they feel threatened that somehow "science" and especially "high tech" science is somehow chasing their God back into the shadows or something. There need not really be that kind of conflict.

 

Strangely enough, many Christians even over the last couple of centuries had begun to accept the Genesis stories as metaphorical, symbolic, and so on. We live in a curious time of modern advancement where there is an unusual amount of obsession with wanting a desperate continuity with Old Testament mythology. (Bible literalism, YEC, etc)

 

Even Jesus used the term "physician" in the gospels; and must have been fully aware that there were ordinary people who used practical methods of healing that involved therapy, the setting of broken bones, herbs, and so on, to which he never criticized.

 

The conflict between science and faith is only in the warped minds of fundamentalists. They want it that way, because to truly balance reality in a rational way confuses them. Avoid this confusion; you can have faith and enjoy the study of science as well.

[Kathlene]

Hey, Kathlene, I think that part of the problem for many of us is that we want some answers to the natural world that actually explain something and get us somewhere. The "big bang" model might not be exact and perfect, although the evidence overwhelmingly points to something along those lines.

 

Just saying that "God did it" is OK and everything, but it doesn't help us understand astronomy or astro-physics that well.

 

I'm certain that God could have arranged the original "singularity explosion" to result in what we now see all around us, and are a part of. Many Christians accept the revelations of science, even when they are just theories, because the issue of the "big bang" doesn't necessarily contradict a Creator Intelligence (God). For others, they feel threatened that somehow "science" and especially "high tech" science is somehow chasing their God back into the shadows or something. There need not really be that kind of conflict.

 

Strangely enough, many Christians even over the last couple of centuries had begun to accept the Genesis stories as metaphorical, symbolic, and so on. We live in a curious time of modern advancement where there is an unusual amount of obsession with wanting a desperate continuity with Old Testament mythology. (Bible literalism, YEC, etc)

 

Even Jesus used the term "physician" in the gospels; and must have been fully aware that there were ordinary people who used practical methods of healing that involved therapy, the setting of broken bones, herbs, and so on, to which he never criticized.

 

The conflict between science and faith is only in the warped minds of fundamentalists. They want it that way, because to truly balance reality in a rational way confuses them. Avoid this confusion; you can have faith and enjoy the study of science as well.

 

A lovely post Franko, thankyou very much. I appreciate it.

[Brakeman]

Every single galaxy was leaving away from one single point, like a bomb exploding.

Actually everything is moving away from everything else, with no center or starting point in evidence. An analogy is blowing up a balloon. The balloon expands and dots painted on the surface of the balloon move away from each other, but there is no origin that the dots are moving away from.

 

That's not what I was taught in College Astronomy. It also doesn't make much sense as anything expanding has an original shape. I'll have to check that out, Got any links?

[Brakeman]

Hey Petrel,

 

I just double checked this with Nasa's Web site, and a couple of others and I was right.

Do you have any citations for your POV?

 

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_theory.html

 

Anyway, Did you read what I wrote Kathlene?

[Shyone]

Hey Petrel,

 

I just double checked this with Nasa's Web site, and a couple of others and I was right.

Do you have any citations for your POV?

 

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_theory.html

 

Anyway, Did you read what I wrote Kathlene?

This may be confusing, but...

 

1. Current references to a singularity are common, but there are some inconsistencies with what is observed.

a. There is no center to the expansion

b. Distribution of matter is uniform for the visible universe.

2. Even at the farthest distances we can see with current telescopes, there are still galaxies, and some are "old"galaxies. The shapes of the galaxies (eliptical versus spiral) are not related to the distance from our galaxy.

3. Other stuff - like the cosmic background radiation.

 

So the terminology is changing. And it doesn't make much sense, because the data does not jive with the theory exactly.

 

"The big bang occurred everywhere in the universe." Huh? Yep, that's right.

 

There are galaxies well beyond our ability to see them, and there always have been, but technology is improving, and technology is expected to reveal more about the nature of the universe in the distant past.

 

Don't be surprized if during your lifetime there are major changes in the description of the universe.

[Petrel]

Hey Petrel,

 

I just double checked this with Nasa's Web site, and a couple of others and I was right.

Do you have any citations for your POV?

 

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_theory.html

?? Are you referring to the idea that the universe has a central point that everything is moving away from? This is definitely not true, it's actually a violation of the cosmological principle appearing on the page you linked to. If you go to the Concepts page there it says:

 

The Big Bang did not occur at a single point in space as an "explosion." It is better thought of as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe. That region of space that is within our present horizon was indeed no bigger than a point in the past. Nevertheless, if all of space both inside and outside our horizon is infinite now, it was born infinite. If it is closed and finite, then it was born with zero volume and grew from that. In neither case is there a "center of expansion" - a point from which the universe is expanding away from. In the ball analogy, the radius of the ball grows as the universe expands, but all points on the surface of the ball (the universe) recede from each other in an identical fashion. The interior of the ball should not be regarded as part of the universe in this analogy.

[FourDogBrewing]

I like to hear your side of the story and what it is you believe.

 

I am by no means an expert, I only have a surface understanding of the universe expanding and the background radiation that proves it etc.... I can however give you my side and what i believe.

 

I believe in the Big Band Theory as it stands now, as I know of no better explanation of how the universe began. If the greatest minds on earth think this is the best theory we have, then I am on board until something else comes a long.

 

In a VERY simple way of thinking about it, if the universe is constantly expanding outward, and we know that it 14 billion years old, what happens if you hit rewind on this process. If you do that, you wind up with everything in the universe contracting to a single point, hence the singularity.

 

How the singularity got there and what else just goes into a ton more information and speculation.

 

Anyway hope that helps, that is what I believe, it is the best we have now.

[Robto]

The Big Bang theory is about how the universe has CHANGED over time, NOT about how the universe began. It says that 14 billion years ago the entire universe was extremely hot and extremely dense, and it has been cooling and expanding ever since. (Yes, the big bang happened EVERYWHERE in the universe. It was NOT an explosion from some central point.)

 

The primary evidence for this is:

 

1) Distant galaxies are moving away from us. The farther the galaxy, the faster it is moving.

 

2) We can see the afterglow of the hot, dense state. It's called the microwave background radiation. This is light/heat radiation that was emitted about 300,000 years after the big bang. It is a nearly perfect "black body spectrum" - meaning it's exactly the sort of radiation you would expect to see from something (anything) that was at a fixed temperature.

 

3) Small ripples in the microwave background - regions that are hotter and denser than average - could have been the "seeds" of galaxies. These ripples agree well with big bang predictions.

 

4) Mathematical models of the expansion predict that at very early times, some hydrogen would fuse into helium (also deuterium, tritium, lithium, and other light elements). We can observe the abundance of these elements in interstellar gas clouds and in stars themselves, and observations agree well with the predictions.

 

I believe in the Big Band Theory as it stands now,....

 

That would be the theory that the universe was blown out of Tommy Dorsey's trombone?

[Rev R]

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

 

Normally I wake up and think "ugh my back!"

 

I wonder though what is the source of this assumption that unless one believes in a divine cause of all, that one must believe that it's all a bunch of randomness. It's not just you K, I've had variations of the question posed to me many times.

 

To be truthful, the subject is interesting but how it all came to be is not really my concern. The consideration that there is no god to touch everything off doesn't detract from the "whoa!" factor at all.

[oddbird1963]

The consideration that there is no god to touch everything off doesn't detract from the "whoa!" factor at all.

 

That "whoa!" factor is what is so rewarding about living! Thinking about the Big Bang as the appearance of space at all "places" at once, or in terms of an expansion analogous to the expansion of the rubber portion of a balloon creates wonder.

 

When I pondered the changing of both space and time in relation to the speed of light (Brian Cox, "Why Does E=MC² "), working through the relationships myself, it blew my mind.

 

I think the stretching and uneasy reformatting of the mind around a new, hard to comprehend idea is the essence of personal growth. When you wrestle with a counterintuitive idea and hit upon a sense of new understanding of a profound idea, that feeling seems almost spiritual. I use the term in a metaphorical way. I don't believe in a literal 'spirit' inside the human body. But the sense of personal intellectual and relational expansion and significance can be powerful - - - something to savor.

[Guest Net Eng]

I would really like to hear your side of things and get a feel for it. Thanks.

 

 

Rather than a "big bang" I prefer this term:

 

[Antlerman]

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

Someone here a little while back said I always seem to reach into the ashes and pull out a gem. (I think it was Mondo who said that) I'm curious from this, are you wondering how we approach the day not seeing an ordered plan? Does your faith give you this sense of order to the world around you, that your worldview sees it as having purpose and destiny, and that when you consider those who don't have that same framework that offers that for you, that this itself is a greater puzzlement than the theory of science itself?

 

It seems to me, that is the crux of your question, not the how of the Big Bang. That's what I hear behind it. And that becomes a very interesting discussion of in fact, worldviews. Which I'd be more than happy to engage with you at some point if you are willing. But you should start a topic specifically on that, and invite me to it.

[oddbird1963]

[A]re you wondering how we approach the day not seeing an ordered plan?

That's a great way to reframe what may be the underlying issue here, A-man. The 'unasked question.'

 

I am not a surfer, water-skier or any of those exciting things.

 

But I think on a good day I see this unordered, unplanned existence of ours as a series of waves washing in to shore. We can stay on the beach and have minimal participation, or we can ride out to meet the waves on our surf boards and ride the wave into shore. It can be an exciting experience, a terrifying experience, we could wash out we might even hit our head, go under and drown.

 

Life is unplanned, but that doesn't mean we can't make some plans of our own. Life is random, but that doesn't mean we can't shape things, to some degree, to be exciting and fulfilling for us. Life is unguided, but that doesn't mean we can't engage the life we have, maneuver, harmonize ourselves with it all.

 

As life unfolds, how are you going to choose to engage it? That's the question behind it all. A Big Bang or the apparent purposelessness of existence still cannot keep you from riding the waves of life. It's all a choice, a decision to engage this life courageously.

[Kathlene]

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

Someone here a little while back said I always seem to reach into the ashes and pull out a gem. (I think it was Mondo who said that) I'm curious from this, are you wondering how we approach the day not seeing an ordered plan? Does your faith give you this sense of order to the world around you, that your worldview sees it as having purpose and destiny, and that when you consider those who don't have that same framework that offers that for you, that this itself is a greater puzzlement than the theory of science itself?

 

It seems to me, that is the crux of your question, not the how of the Big Bang. That's what I hear behind it. And that becomes a very interesting discussion of in fact, worldviews. Which I'd be more than happy to engage with you at some point if you are willing. But you should start a topic specifically on that, and invite me to it.

 

 

Thankyou Antler, very perceptive I did want to know what the theory was behind the Big Bang, but realised that most of the science of it really went over my head. Thankyou everyone for explaining it to me in laymen's terms. Thankyou Brakeman for your post too. I learnt about the Doppler effect in physics during school, and read about it in the link OddBird gave me.

 

I guess what I was trying to put together in some sort of package without it becoming some sort of religious debate, was yes, what is your worldview if you believed in the Big Bang theory. (Yes I recognise it is not a theory that explains the beginning of the universe, but the growth and change of it).

 

I am actually interested in your worldviews and belief systems, but not interested in arguing or debating over mine, or yours in fact. I think with understanding comes tolerance and wisdom and growth. You all know what my worldview is and how I walk my journey with it, but I wanted to know seriously what was everyone's in here.

[Kathlene]

[A]re you wondering how we approach the day not seeing an ordered plan?

That's a great way to reframe what may be the underlying issue here, A-man. The 'unasked question.'

 

I am not a surfer, water-skier or any of those exciting things.

 

But I think on a good day I see this unordered, unplanned existence of ours as a series of waves washing in to shore. We can stay on the beach and have minimal participation, or we can ride out to meet the waves on our surf boards and ride the wave into shore. It can be an exciting experience, a terrifying experience, we could wash out we might even hit our head, go under and drown.

 

Life is unplanned, but that doesn't mean we can't make some plans of our own. Life is random, but that doesn't mean we can't shape things, to some degree, to be exciting and fulfilling for us. Life is unguided, but that doesn't mean we can't engage the life we have, maneuver, harmonize ourselves with it all.

 

As life unfolds, how are you going to choose to engage it? That's the question behind it all. A Big Bang or the apparent purposelessness of existence still cannot keep you from riding the waves of life. It's all a choice, a decision to engage this life courageously.

 

Thankyou Oddbird I appreciate you sharing that with me and everyone here. I might start another thread to hear from others too.

[Guest Valkyrie0010]

I don't form a worldview around the big bang, or evolution. It is kind of a it is what it kind of thing, and you make what you will out of it

[skepticalme]

Every single galaxy was leaving away from one single point, like a bomb exploding.

Actually everything is moving away from everything else, with no center or starting point in evidence. An analogy is blowing up a balloon. The balloon expands and dots painted on the surface of the balloon move away from each other, but there is no origin that the dots are moving away from.

 

Technically you are both correct. Everything in the universe IS expanding out from a single point, but not a point in three dimensional space which you pointed out. The balloon analogy compresses the first four dimensions into the one below. In the analogy the 2-D surface of the sphere represents the 3-D space that we are all familiar with. That 3-D space expands radially through the fourth dimension, time. In the alalogy the radius of the sphere is time, time is distance from the center. The center of that sphere, the origin of both space and time, is what we call the Big Bang. The BB is not an event that happened at that point, it IS that point and its subsequint expansion. As that sphere expands we ride along on the surface , which is 3-D space, carried forward through time, which is why time moves only in one direction and why we occupy only one point in time. The rate of that expansion is what defines the speed of light, because space is expanding through time at that speed. Physical objects can not exceed the speed of light because, if the did, they would be outruning time. This is also why, at the speed of light, time stops because at c there is zero motion relative to time. Points on the surface of that sphere with very little radial distance between them are expanding almost in parrellel. That is why we don't see the expansion locally. Points with a larger radial distance, a greater 3-D distance, appear to move away from each other at a rate proportional to there radial distance.

 

Back to the ballon analogy, take a point of the surface of the sphere(we'll call that the point you occupy) and draw a circle around yourself with a radius equal to one radian. (If the sphere has a radius of 4" draw a circle around that point with a radius of 4"). That is your visible universe. If the surface of the sphere is expanding at c, points at opposite sides of that circle appear to move away from you at c in opposite directions even if they have no velocity through 3-D space. This is how objects can appear 13 billion light years away(the edge of the visible universe) even though the universe is 13 billion years old. Keep in mind that if you a looking at something 13 billion light years away, that is where it was 13 billion years ago. Its actual distance from you now is (13 billion light years x 'pi)' or nearly 41 billion light years.

[Shyone]

 

Back to the ballon analogy, take a point of the surface of the sphere(we'll call that the point you occupy) and draw a circle around yourself with a radius equal to one radian. (If the sphere has a radius of 4" draw a circle around that point with a radius of 4"). That is your visible universe. If the surface of the sphere is expanding at c, points at opposite sides of that circle appear to move away from you at c in opposite directions even if they have no velocity through 3-D space. This is how objects can appear 13 billion light years away(the edge of the visible universe) even though the universe is 13 billion years old. Keep in mind that if you a looking at something 13 billion light years away, that is where it was 13 billion years ago. Its actual distance from you now is (13 billion light years x 'pi)' or nearly 41 billion light years.

The balloon analogy would be possible if there were more than 3 dimensions. The analogy comes from the idea that the earth has no "edge" or boundary, which comes from the mental conceptualization of 2D to 3D.

 

For just a moment, however, we should consider that there is no physical evidence of more than 3 dimensions (4 if you include time).

 

Hence, it could very well be exactly as it appears: distant galaxies appear 13 billion light years away 13 billion years ago (that have been discovered so far - actually closer to 14 billion). And so their current position would be about 41 billion light years away.

 

I know that current thinking is that inflation produced the expansion of the universe so that distant galaxies appear to have been receding at speeds faster than the speed of light in the early universe. But what if they really didn't recede at speeds faster than the speed of light but at their current "speeds" determined by red shift? Is there really sufficient justification to suppose that the universe is "slowing down?"

 

Thinking of the universe expanding faster than the speed of light at earlier times smacks of a rationalization similar to the idea of "tired light" proposed by creationists to explain that the speed of light was once faster than it is now. What if the laws of physics still applied in the "old days."

 

Proposing extra dimensions that are unverifiable and untestable, or changes in the physics of the universe, may eventually be fruitful, but I think that we should also consider that things are the way they appear. No center of the expansion, vastly larger universe than our previous cosmology suggests, and a time frame larger than 13 billion years - or even 41 billion years.

 

Perhaps there is no "center of expansion" from a big explosion because there was no explosion.

 

From http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/bigbang.html

 

There is no centre of the expansion, the universe is simply expanding at all points. Observers in any galaxy see most of the other galaxies in the universe moving away from them.

 

The only answer to the question "Where did the Big Bang happen?" is that it occurred everywhere in the Universe.

 

Technically, the universe is not expanding at all points. The earth is not expanding and neither is the solar system, milky way galaxy or local group. Clusters of galaxies are not expanding within the cluster. The expansion takes place in between the large gravitational masses defined by galaxies and clusters.

[skepticalme]

Shyone,

The balloon analogy, at least the way I was using it, doesn't extend beyond the 4 confirmed dimensions. Dimensions beyond that are purely theoretical.

 

I to, am skeptical of the universe expanding at a rate faster than light at any point in its history. In fact, I believe that it is the rate of expansion that defines the value of c. I certainly believe that the laws of physics held true in the old days as they do now. I think that what a lot of people misunderstand is that for every unit of distance the universe expands outward(along the fourth dimensional radius, time), the circumference expands by 2*pi units. Now if the universe's 4-D radius is expanding at c then the circumference of the entire universe is expanding at 2*pi c. This is why objects more than one radian apart APPEAR to move away at greater than c. They aren't physically moving away from each other, the space between them is growing causing the red shift. And this is precisely what we observe, the greater the radial distance(the farther away it is), the more red shifted it is until you reach a sort of 'event horizon' at the boundary of the VISIBLE universe exactly one radian distant. Just inside that 'event horizon' all EM radiation is red shifted into what we observe as the cosmic background radiation.

 

Locally(and by locally I mean the scale of galaxies and super clusters and everything below that), gravity overpowers expansion.

 

 

[Shyone]

Shyone,

The balloon analogy, at least the way I was using it, doesn't extend beyond the 4 confirmed dimensions. Dimensions beyond that are purely theoretical.

 

I to, am skeptical of the universe expanding at a rate faster than light at any point in its history. In fact, I believe that it is the rate of expansion that defines the value of c. I certainly believe that the laws of physics held true in the old days as they do now. I think that what a lot of people misunderstand is that for every unit of distance the universe expands outward(along the fourth dimensional radius, time), the circumference expands by 2*pi units. Now if the universe's 4-D radius is expanding at c then the circumference of the entire universe is expanding at 2*pi c. This is why objects more than one radian apart APPEAR to move away at greater than c. They aren't physically moving away from each other, the space between them is growing causing the red shift. And this is precisely what we observe, the greater the radial distance(the farther away it is), the more red shifted it is until you reach a sort of 'event horizon' at the boundary of the VISIBLE universe exactly one radian distant. Just inside that 'event horizon' all EM radiation is red shifted into what we observe as the cosmic background radiation.

 

Locally(and by locally I mean the scale of galaxies and super clusters and everything below that), gravity overpowers expansion.

Very well put.

 

There may be something about the Hubble Sphere or some related radius that defines the speed of light. dunno.

 

I think the idea of "expanding at greater than the speed of light" comes from the fact that the most distant visible galaxies have already travelled at least 14 billion light years (as of 14 billion years ago) and they would now be much further than that - and the total distance "travelled" would therefore exceed the distance that they could have travelled if travelling at c for 14 billion years.

 

Um, that's about as clear as mud. Let me try again.

 

If the distant galaxies we see travelled 41 billion light years (linearly) in 13.7 billion years, then they travelled an average of 41/31.7 = 3xc or three times the speed of light.

 

One way or another, when they finally get this shit sorted out, some law of physics is going under in some way. There isn't any way to reconcile the current universe and the totallity of the laws of physics. That doesn't mean that I am saying that any particular law is going under with any degree of certainty, but something stinks in the state of Denmark.

 

I also suspect that, if it were possible to be in a distant galaxy and look around, then given the same limitations (and/or equipment) the appearance of the universe would be the same: No center, expanding in all directions, relatively uniform distribution of mass in all directions, etc.

 

IOW, I seriously doubt that distant galaxies would look in another direction besides ours and see - nothing.

 

We need a lot more information about the galaxies beyond our current limits of detection. Maybe I'm way off and there is nothing beyond our "visible universe", but it would be a hell of a coincidence that we just happen to be right smack dab in the middle. Every single time Mankind has thought they were right in the middle of something, they were wrong.

 

The earth is not the middle of the universe, the sun isn't, and I don't think the galaxy is either.

 

We are a speck on an average star around an ordinary galaxy that is one of innumerable galaxies in a universe so vast that we haven't even touched the "shore of the cosmic ocean."

 

And the entire universe isn't just a sphere around us that we happen to be able to see. That very idea strikes me as limited in vision as the Hebrews "celestial spheres."