Big Bang Theory

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Close your eyes and open your mind if only for a moment. Turn off the TV and the radio. Close the books and the magazines. Forget the online articles and the studies and tell me... Does it sound possible to you that the universe started with a big bang? That all galaxies would fit in a space no bigger than a needle's tip? Does that sound like reality to you?

Both science and religion seem to agree that the universe began that way
and is still getting bigger.

Close your eyes and open your mind if only for a moment. Turn off the TV and the radio. Close the books and the magazines. Forget the online articles and the studies and tell me... Does it sound possible to you that the universe exists? Does reality sound like reality to you?

As opposed to what? What theory is less mind boggling?

The beginning of the physical universe is so far outside our experience that "what sounds possible" to us has no relevance to the way things really are.

Mathematics and physics are the tools you need to answer this question, not whether something "sounds possible". There are no shortcuts - quick and effortless routes - to that kind of knowledge.

Many things we take for granted today (TVs, computers) would have sounded impossible - unthinkable - a thousand years ago. So what? They exist, so "sounding impossible" is irrelevant.

I tried what you said and I experienced my skin. I felt myself and the world around me. I became calm. So, thank you for suggesting I do this. However, I felt no sense of "big bang," although I like the theory and am a fan of cosmology and such.

Let's think of the universe that is the next logical step after reviewing the special theory of relativity. Imagine the Quantum foam in a 2 dimentional way. Like a net. Now make it 3 dimensional... bend it and form it after your thoughts. Imagine the small energy flactuations that quantum theory predicts. Is not this a very nice way of explaining the uncertainty within our decisions?

If you try to cut the net, you will only experience a increase in distance between the strings within the net, more random flactuations would start occour and the net would change its nature to counteract the cutting effect. The energy that is nothing would become something but at the same time more of the energy existing in the universe would get drawn in into the quantom foam and be absorbed by the strings. This if you think of it explains why distance and time only is a product of number of foam holes that extend over every string.

I left one thing out. This is only in theory and there are not any facts within my experiment. My picture of the universe is a bit different this is just a nice way to respond to this kind of philosophical reasoning that is asked for in this thread. Give me someone to talk Quantum theory with!

"Sire, there is no royal road to learning."

- Euclid, to Egyptian king Ptolemy, who wanted to bypass all that tedious learning of math and science (such as it was then) and gain an understanding of the universe now.

Simple observation should demonstrate that "common sense" has nothing whatsoever to do with the way the universe operates. Is it "common sense" that light should work as both a particle and a wave? Yet you can verify this fact with some fairly inexpensive equipment, which you can operate at home. Is it "common sense" that the passage of time should depend on your acceleration/the local gravity field, as predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, and experimentally confirmed by astronauts?

This is what I know about the big bang,

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall, we built the pyramids,
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang! BANG

(sorry, couldnt resist)

It is mathematically possible. Since the concept of the cosmos starting small and expanding does not lead to a logical contradiction, one cannot dismiss the idea just because it conflicts with "common sense". Common sense is a very bad guide to scientific progress.

ruveyn

Well, the distance between the galaxies is widening at increasing speed (as indicated by their redshift). So there must have been a time when the galaxies were closer... Sounds pretty simple to me.

The existence of the universe sounds impossible to me for many reasons, mainly because of Gödel's incompleteness and also for the problem of where did the BigBang come from. I'm more of the idea that consciousness "creates" the universe in a way we still don't understand.



If you reject the conservation of energy, other possibilities appear. But nevermind, to be honest i only started this thread because i had not started one in years and this is what i was thinking of that day.

If you reject physics, you can assume A Wizard Did It. Who's to gainsay you?

If you assume no external reality, all bets are off. Perhaps we're just a temporary nightmare in the mind of a butterfly dreaming that he's a man...

In either case, there's no sense debating the origin of the universe, because there are no defined terms to use for experimentation or investigation - just, well, faith. And if I'm going to "have faith" in some metaphysical supernatural "explanation" with absolutely no trace of falsifiability, there's already one such "explanation" embraced by several different religious traditions, saving me the effort of thinking up my own little God-play.

For myself, I choose not to believe that everything that can be known is a lie; I hold that there is external reality, that it is knowable, and that I can learn more and more about how it all works, starting with premises that seem true and refining them as experiments and investigation reveal weak points. This method will bring me closer and closer to The Truth, even though Godel says I can never get all the way there. (Just because I can't learn everything doesn't mean I shouldn't learn anything; I can't climb a tree all the way to the Moon, but does that mean no one should ever climb trees?)

I don't reject physics, I embrace and research physics, I am an organic physicist. Just because i'm attacking an old accepted principle doesn't mean i reject the entire science.

This reminds me of a quote by someone (Arthur C. Clarke, I think), who said, "Either we are not alone in the universe, or we are. Either way, it boggles the mind."