The Beginning of the Universe

[Chris Sawatsky]

I recently started a topic called "The Speed of Light" and one of the responces said "You're going to have to unlearn this common misconception if you want to actually understand cosmology. The big bang happened literally everywhere and was never a 'point', and there is no rushing of material from a point into 'empty space' so to speak." So Imust be reading the following wrong...

The  Big Bang  was the moment 13.8 billion years ago when the universe began as a tiny, dense, fireball that exploded. Most astronomers use the Big Bang theory to explain how the universe began. But what caused this explosion in the first place is still a mystery. 

A sphere exploded but did not expand in every possible direction simultaneously? Is Light not the fastest thing in the Universe? Are you trying to say that Lightspeed is not the fastest speed that anything can travel? Everything I read suggests that the Universe is expanding outward in every possible direction at the same time and began to do this approximately 13.4 Billion years ago

[iNow]

It wasn’t an explosion, but the expansion and inflation of spacetime itself, and spacetime isn’t necessarily limited by the constraints of objects existing within it. 

[Markus Hanke]

2 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

The  Big Bang  was the moment 13.8 billion years ago when the universe began as a tiny, dense, fireball that exploded.

This statement is extremely misleading to the point of being just simply wrong - yes the initial state was “dense”, but “tiny” is a difficult to define term here, and it most certainly wasn’t a “fireball”, and there was no “explosion”. This statement comes from a really bad source.

2 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

A sphere exploded

It’s not a sphere.

2 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

Most astronomers use the Big Bang theory to explain how the universe began.

That’s a common misconception, the Lambda-CDM model only meaningfully describes how the universe evolved after a certain point in the very early universe. It has little to nothing to say about how the initial state came to be, since this requires physics that we do not yet have.

3 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

Everything I read suggests that the Universe is expanding outward in every possible direction at the same time

Yes, but it does so from every point - all distances increase over time, so there wasn’t one central point where everything started.

 

[Bufofrog]

12 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

The  Big Bang  was the moment 13.8 billion years ago when the universe began as a tiny, dense, fireball that exploded

That is a pop-sci article explanation.  In pop-sci articles the authors typically are trying to give the nonscience reader and idea of the overall concept in a very brief article which is usually at the expense of accuracy.  Authors of these articles usually use analogies (like the big bang was an explosion) that can be misleading.

[Airbrush]

All we know is the universe was denser and hotter near time zero.  We don't know it's shape, or if it was a point, or a sphere, or jagged and irregular as a lightning bolt.  If the universe is currently infinite in size, then it was also infinite in size at the start.  Something finite in size cannot grow to an infinite size.  That's why it seems more likely that the universe is not infinite in size.  Only the observable universe was a tiny point near time zero.  

Edited November 13, 2023 by Airbrush

[Phi for All]

On 11/11/2023 at 8:04 PM, Chris Sawatsky said:

Everything I read suggests that the Universe is expanding outward in every possible direction at the same time and began to do this approximately 13.4 Billion years ago

You're still hung up on what expansion means. You say "outward", but what does that really mean when the entire universe is expanding? To move outward, you need to do that relative to something, but the universe isn't a ball floating in nothingness. It's all there is, it's everything. I think you're tricking your mind into thinking of it like a balloon that has an outer edge, expanding into some other space. It's easy to do, since there's nothing else in our experience quite like it. 

[Anirudh Dabas]

 

^^ @Chris Sawatsky It's not expanding into anything; it's the entirety of existence. Describing the expansion as "outward" might indeed lead to a mental image of an expanding bubble, but the nature of the universe's expansion is more nuanced. It's the fabric of space itself that is stretching, affecting the distances between galaxies rather than pushing into some pre-existing void.

[Chris Sawatsky]

On 11/13/2023 at 9:15 AM, Anirudh Dabas said:

 

^^ @Chris Sawatsky It's not expanding into anything; it's the entirety of existence. Describing the expansion as "outward" might indeed lead to a mental image of an expanding bubble, but the nature of the universe's expansion is more nuanced. It's the fabric of space itself that is stretching, affecting the distances between galaxies rather than pushing into some pre-existing void.

Then all the info I have found over 20 years based on Einstein's Theory of Relativity and many others in the scientific community are wrong and should stop the use of The Big Bang Theory that literally states "Everything started as a ultra small and dense point that expanded outward in all directions in less than a millisecond". And why did the scientific community recently state that they have observed the Universe still expanding? Physics is physics and when something explodes in a vacuum the energy goes outward in all directions. Regardless I feel that we should be focused on the planet and our behaviour.

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

Then all the info I have found over 20 years based on Einstein's Theory of Relativity and many others in the scientific community are wrong and should stop the use of The Big Bang Theory that literally states "Everything started as a ultra small and dense point that expanded outward in all directions in less than a millisecond". And why did the scientific community recently state that they have observed the Universe still expanding? Physics is physics and when something explodes in a vacuum the energy goes outward in all directions. Regardless I feel that we should be focused on the planet and our behaviour.

It's a shame you chose to ignore everything that everyone had to say.

 

[Bufofrog]

2 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

Physics is physics and when something explodes in a vacuum the energy goes outward in all directions.

As been stated several times the big bang was not an explosion, and it most certainly wasn't an explosion in a vacuum.

[Chris Sawatsky]

On 11/12/2023 at 7:50 AM, Bufofrog said:

That is a pop-sci article explanation.  In pop-sci articles the authors typically are trying to give the nonscience reader and idea of the overall concept in a very brief article which is usually at the expense of accuracy.  Authors of these articles usually use analogies (like the big bang was an explosion) that can be misleading.

verb (used without object),ex·plod·ed, ex·plod·ing.

1. to expand with force and noise because of rapid chemical change or decomposition, as gunpowder or nitroglycerine (opposed to implode).

[Bufofrog]

1 minute ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

verb (used without object),ex·plod·ed, ex·plod·ing.

1. to expand with force and noise because of rapid chemical change or decomposition, as gunpowder or nitroglycerine (opposed to implode).

That's nice but I know what explode means.  The problem is that the big bang is not about an explosion.

[Chris Sawatsky]

On 11/24/2023 at 7:01 PM, zapatos said:

It's a shame you chose to ignore everything that everyone had to say.

 

I read every comment and all I get is "You're Wrong!" No one has the courage to share what they believe is the truth. I am not arguing or standing behind the standard explanation and theories. It's all just information as far as I am concerned and I won't consider any of it TRUTH until the day its proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If you disagree with the current explanation of the beginning of the universe then publish your theory and set the record straight. I am simply cutting and pasting what is printed on the websites that belong to several of the major Universities and institutions that you and others received your degrees from. Anyone can disagree with anything but can you prove it is wrong or are you a contrarian like many of the people on this site? 

[zapatos]

8 minutes ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

No one has the courage to share what they believe is the truth.

🤣

11 minutes ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

I am simply cutting and pasting what is printed on the websites that belong to several of the major Universities and institutions that you and others received your degrees from

No, you are not. The only thing you cut and pasted was a definition  of "explode". 

[iNow]

Science attempts to model how the universe works in a way that minimizes human bias and is consistent regardless of who tries.

Every model is provisional and will be quickly rejected when better models come along to replace them. 

The fact that you mention things like truth and proof in your posts implies that maybe you lack a valid understanding of how and why science works. 

This isn’t meant to insult you. It’s just a statement of the situation as I see it. 

[StringJunky]

14 minutes ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

I read every comment and all I get is "You're Wrong!" No one has the courage to share what they believe is the truth. I am not arguing or standing behind the standard explanation and theories. It's all just information as far as I am concerned and I won't consider any of it TRUTH until the day its proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If you disagree with the current explanation of the beginning of the universe then publish your theory and set the record straight. I am simply cutting and pasting what is printed on the websites that belong to several of the major Universities and institutions that you and others received your degrees from. Anyone can disagree with anything but can you prove it is wrong or are you a contrarian like many of the people on this site? 

Truth is for bibles, and proof is for mathematics.

[AIkonoklazt]

On 11/24/2023 at 8:18 PM, Chris Sawatsky said:

verb (used without object),ex·plod·ed, ex·plod·ing.

1. to expand with force and noise because of rapid chemical change or decomposition, as gunpowder or nitroglycerine (opposed to implode).

.......but there weren't any chemical substances to undergo any "rapid chemical change or decomposition," so that definition doesn't fit.

[exchemist]

7 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

I read every comment and all I get is "You're Wrong!" No one has the courage to share what they believe is the truth. I am not arguing or standing behind the standard explanation and theories. It's all just information as far as I am concerned and I won't consider any of it TRUTH until the day its proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If you disagree with the current explanation of the beginning of the universe then publish your theory and set the record straight. I am simply cutting and pasting what is printed on the websites that belong to several of the major Universities and institutions that you and others received your degrees from. Anyone can disagree with anything but can you prove it is wrong or are you a contrarian like many of the people on this site? 

Read more carefully. You have confused a rapid expansion of the universe, which is what the Big Bang hypothesis says, with an "explosion" (your words), taking place in the universe. The universe itself expanded. There was no "explosion", and no void into which the universe expanded.

That is what everyone has been telling you. Read the responses again with this in mind and it should become clearer to you. And stop moaning: the problem is you, not us. 

[swansont]

12 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

I read every comment and all I get is "You're Wrong!"

The first two responses gave some details of what cosmology says on the matter 

[Phi for All]

12 hours ago, Chris Sawatsky said:

I read every comment and all I get is "You're Wrong!"

Seriously?! Not a single comment did that. Every single reply has told you exactly what the problem is with your argument. Now you're either engaging in bad faith, or you just can't grasp the concept that when the entire universe expands, it's NOT expanding INTO anything. It can't, because there is NOTHING else except the universe. If you can focus on this and stop ignoring it, you may begin to see and break this 20 year cycle of ignorance. We all wish you the best!

[Airbrush]

On 1/12/2024 at 6:15 AM, Phi for All said:

Seriously?! Not a single comment did that. Every single reply has told you exactly what the problem is with your argument. Now you're either engaging in bad faith, or you just can't grasp the concept that when the entire universe expands, it's NOT expanding INTO anything. It can't, because there is NOTHING else except the universe. If you can focus on this and stop ignoring it, you may begin to see and break this 20 year cycle of ignorance. We all wish you the best!

In a multiverse model there may be multiple, or an infinite number of, big bangs.  In that case each "universe" is finite in size, has a center, and edges expanding outward. The outer edge may have ANY shape and be moving at ANY speed since the edge is not constrained by space as it expands into the "bulk."

"In the bulk model, at least some of the extra dimensions are extensive... and other branes may be moving through this bulk."

Brane cosmology - Wikipedia

Edited January 25 by Airbrush

[Genady]

11 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

In a multiverse model there may be multiple, or an infinite number of, big bangs.  In that case each "universe" is finite in size, has a center, and edges expanding outward. The outer edge may have ANY shape and be moving at ANY speed since the edge is not constrained by space.

Not necessarily. There are ways to have even infinite number of infinite universes in a multiverse. And if some of them are finite, they do not necessarily have a center, edges, etc.

[Airbrush]

On 11/24/2023 at 7:54 PM, Bufofrog said:

As been stated several times the big bang was not an explosion, and it most certainly wasn't an explosion in a vacuum.

You sound so confident.  I don't think anyone knows if the big bang was an "explosion" or not, and we don't know anything about a pre-big bang vacuum.  With eternal inflation those don't work.  With a multiverse of universes what do you find between universes or big bangs?  They call it the "bulk."  Is that a vacuum?  What we call THE universe may be only ONE region of expansion and we like to project that to infinity because very large numbers are beyond us.  What does our big bang look like Graham's Number of light years away?  We don't have a clue.

 

On 11/11/2023 at 7:04 PM, Chris Sawatsky said:

I recently started a topic called "The Speed of Light" and one of the responces said "You're going to have to unlearn this common misconception if you want to actually understand cosmology. The big bang happened literally everywhere and was never a 'point', and there is no rushing of material from a point into 'empty space' so to speak." So Imust be reading the following wrong...

The  Big Bang  was the moment 13.8 billion years ago when the universe began as a tiny, dense, fireball that exploded. Most astronomers use the Big Bang theory to explain how the universe began. But what caused this explosion in the first place is still a mystery. 

A sphere exploded but did not expand in every possible direction simultaneously? Is Light not the fastest thing in the Universe? Are you trying to say that Lightspeed is not the fastest speed that anything can travel? Everything I read suggests that the Universe is expanding outward in every possible direction at the same time and began to do this approximately 13.4 Billion years ago

We don't know if the "big bang" happened LITERALLY everywhere.  We think the OBSERVABLE universe (big bang) began as a tiny dense region. 

Light has a fixed speed THROUGH space, but we don't know how fast light moves far beyond our observable horizon.  Cosmic inflation is much faster than light speed.  Everything you are talking about refers to our observable region of our big bang.  There certainly MAY be a central region of our observable portion of our big bang.

Edited March 10 by Airbrush

[swansont]

19 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

You sound so confident.  I don't think anyone knows if the big bang was an "explosion" or not, and we don't know anything about a pre-big bang vacuum. 

As with all science, what we know is based on data and theory. The data are what we observe in nature and as the result of experiment, and the theory is the models we have that’s based on the data and has allowed us to make predictions. It’s provisional, since new data could require a modification of theory. But that’s what it means to know things in science.

We know the big bang was not an explosion in space because the evidence does not support that hypothesis.

If you want to consider other hypotheses, you’d need evidence for them before we can consider them as something we “know”

 

19 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

With eternal inflation those don't work.  With a multiverse of universes what do you find between universes or big bangs?  They call it the "bulk."  Is that a vacuum?  What we call THE universe may be only ONE region of expansion and we like to project that to infinity because very large numbers are beyond us.

Large numbers are beyond the average person, but not to scientists who deal with them in the course of their work 

[Airbrush]

8 minutes ago, swansont said:

As with all science, what we know is based on data and theory. The data are what we observe in nature and as the result of experiment, and the theory is the models we have that’s based on the data and has allowed us to make predictions. It’s privisional, since new data could require a modification of theory. But that’s what it means to know things in science.

We know the big bang was not an explosion in space because the evidence does not support that hypothesis.

 

Large numbers are beyond the average person, but not to scientists who deal with them in the course of their work 

 

What is the evidence that the big bang was not an explosion?

What is the likelihood that the expansion we are able to see continues to infinity (assuming a flat universe)?  I propose that even scientists are not comfortable with very large numbers.  The number of Planck volumes in our observable universe is less than 10 to the power of 200.

Edited March 10 by Airbrush