Before the Big Bang: A Twin Universe?

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they describe more of a bounce than crush....so i would assume that this is most likely a different theory or a revised version of the big crunch theory?


i posted this topic to generate such discussion because i think you get better information from good discussions than simply just researching on your own (which allows a lot of different sides to be missed in the end).

See -Endless Universe- by Steinhardt and Turok.

ruveyn

I thought this was going to be more interesting at 5 am.

Theres way too many assuptions in this field IMO. That all supernovae are the same brightness(a yardstick to measure distance), That light travels at a fixed rate in a straight line from those super nova, that red shift is somehow set in stone and has no margin for error over these distances. The big one is the assumption that everything moved in a neat path from the source of the big bang at the "beginning" of time.

If any of the above are to be true and variable it would greatly increase the age of the present Universe. I have missed some things that could induce more error.

Of course the original question of to know whats before the Big Bang is impossible as it is quite literally before our time, therefore becomes a question of religion not science.

Well, that wouldn't be one of the assumptions, because it isn't.
Nothing moved in any path from any "source".
The universe just got larger.
If you like, everything is still exactly where it started. It's just that the gaps between things are now bigger.

Its one of the things i could never get my head around because wouldnt this cause one side of the heavens(the outer edge) to be moving away at faster rate than the inner edge that we are traveling away from. Although maybe i could answer myself here in thinking that the Universe is on such a scale that this would be unmesurable?

I can go along with you here.

The classic thing to explain the universe, and how space behaves, is to say:

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Think about the two-dimensional surface of a balloon being inflated. All the points on the surface end up further apart, but there's no "special" point on the surface, that stays still. They all move equally, out from the centre of the balloon. That "direction" of travel is at right angles to any motion that would be meaningful to a two-dimension creature living in the balloon's surface.

The mind twist needed after that, is to try to visualise our own situation, as three-dimensional creatures, living in the three-dimensional surface of a four-dimensional hyper-balloon.

The "centre" of that hyper-balloon may exist, but it is in a direction that is not one we can apprehend. We cannot measure motion in that direction.

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All the above rubbish aside, the point is that (our) three-dimensional space isn't embedded in another, somehow "bigger", more "fixed" three-dimensional space.