Which Came First , Time or the Big Bang? What about Space

[BAYLOR]

According to the big bang theory , the universe started out as a primordial atom. Then it exploded in spectacular fashion and suddenly you have instant universe ,Time Space galaxies ,stars , light, gravity, dark matter , ect.

The big bang was an event, the first in time. But how could it have happened all? For an event (any event ) wouldn't there would have to be time flow ?

And how could there be no space in existence before the big bang? We don't know the exact size of the primordial atom , it could have been any size , from tiny all the ways up to galaxy size. But whether it was tiny or gigantic, wouldn't it have occupied space which didn't yet exist?

How can anything happen or exist without Time and Space?

 

[chrispenycate]

There can be no before to the big bang. Any more than there can be anything into which the universe is expanding. Our conceptual imagination is not capable of handling this situation, so it's much easier to see it as a problem in mathematics than metaphysics.

 

[BAYLOR]

There can be no before to the big bang. Any more than there can be anything into which the universe is expanding. Our conceptual imagination is not capable of handling this situation, so it's much easier to see it as a problem in mathematics than metaphysics.

No Before ? Why? For all we know there could have been a previous universes prior to the big bang . There Could have been a whole cycle of universes that come and gone . Maybe this one where we exist now will come around again and Ill be typing this same comment again.

The thing of it without the mechanism of time thee no kind of activity or event can occur, not even activity at the subatomic level.

The primordial atom existed for who knows how long. if it existed, it occupied space , so therefore space existed . For it to have exploded , implies that time already existed . Wouldn't that make sense ?

I do have to admit that the possibility of all of this repeating again is depressing possibilityto contemplate .

 

[Venusian Broon]

If it existed, it occupied space , so therefore space existed . For it to have exploded , implies that time already existed . Wouldn't that make sense ?

From what you've written there it seems to view the big bang under a common misconception - that it was an incredibly vast explosion of matter, light and energy that occurred in an already present three dimensional space (well at least three dimensions.)

No, that's not what the big bang was all about. Space-time itself came into existence (mathematically) at the moment of the big bang and it is that that is really expanding.

The easiest analogy is that of a rubber balloon. Take a balloon and draw spots on it with ink. In this analogy the rubber of the balloon is 'Space-time' and the ink is matter. Blow it up and the surface area of rubber gets bigger and the spots of ink get further and further apart. In a similar way the universe is expanding and drags the matter away from each other at a particular rate. Now you could view Time as some sort of 'property' of the expansion and internal interactions of a three spatial dimension Space-time universe...*

...so under some explanations of the start of the universe, the big bang singularity just popped into existence from a piece of 'false vacuum' (whatever that is!) and then started to expand**. Therefore if you believe Time is some sort of state wrapped up with Space-time, matter and energy, then it becomes totally meaningless to apply any concept of time to the state of the false vacuum (which apparently does not have matter or space-time)

However, that does not mean that like you say there have been other things 'before' the big bang. The issue here though is (and I apologise for banging on about this!) evidence, hypotheses and testing - back to science. It may be that we are stuck in infinite loops of: big bang, expansion, contraction, compression into some incredibly dense singularity, then big bang, expansion and it goes all again etc.... But if there can be no evidence of anything before the big bang, i.e. information from one expansion is wiped out in the eventual contraction of itself then we have no way of knowing if that actually happened. The fact of the matter is then really anything could have existed or happened 'before'. Thus is becomes physically meaningless yet again.

That is not to say that we might find echoes or clues of what happened before - never say never - but at the moment it's difficult to see where or what they might be.



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* Of course this just raises all sorts of question like, will there be the same sense of time if the universe contracts instead of expanding, or will be 'go backwards'. Would the entropic arrow of time go backwards? It rapidly gets quite complex

**This must have the ancient Greek philosophers spinning in their graves - who basically believed that you can't create something out of nothing. They did have starting points, big bangs if you will, but forms were made out of formless matter. In their minds there was always something there.

 

[Brian G Turner]

When Black Holes were postulated, I seem to recall an idea that matter that entered a Black Hole could exit through a White Hole - effectively, creating a new universe. This also invoked Inflation, a theory by Alan Guth, critical for describing the Big Bang, which suggested that the universe was simply one of many - like bubbles in water.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

However it now seems unlikely that Black holes go anywhere.

 

[BAYLOR]

However it now seems unlikely that Black holes go anywhere.

Whatever goes in gets irradiated first , stretched out and crushed down to a very small size and sucked into the mass of the black hole. It's likely a one way trip for as long as the black hole endures.

 

[Venusian Broon]

When Black Holes were postulated, I seem to recall an idea that matter that entered a Black Hole could exit through a White Hole - effectively, creating a new universe. This also invoked Inflation, a theory by Alan Guth, critical for describing the Big Bang, which suggested that the universe was simply one of many - like bubbles in water.

The problem I have with inflation (as well as making my nights out more expensive over the years) is that it's origins are just as mysterious as any questions about why there was a big bang or what happened before it. Namely, that inflation is seen to have happened in the early universe but no one knows why it occurred. There just isn't any explanation for it. It just did. And I'm not sure anyone is going to be able to answer that question any time soon (if at all!)

So building huge numbers of universes from it seems again to me tantamount to building castles in air. Fun for a SF writer of course, I for one love all these extra universes (possibly there's one where I manage to actually get published), but IMHO probably not correct

 

[Dinosaur]

A quite good and obviously dumbed down version I heard was that our universe version of time did not exist until the big bang. As such what went before could not be observed as observation requires the passage of time which we simply cannot comprehend.

 

[paranoid marvin]

We are trying to comprehend something which to our limited comprehension is... incomprehensible.

Personally I think it is cyclical ; bang, boom, bust - then back to bang. But that is pure speculation/guess-work; something that my mind is capable of dealing with/comprehending.

We'll probably never know, certainly not in our lifetimes anyway; but wouldn't it all be so dreadfully dull if we knew all the answers?

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Big Bang?

Why only one?

If more than one could there be an infinite number of them?

If there are/were how far away (collectively) would they need to be to explain the apparent expanding area we seem to have landed in? I.E. picture multiple bangs a long way away.

What prevents multiple bangs within bangs?

If there have been super-nova popping off here and there, presumably some of them must have been further away from the original centre. When they went bang how come the subsequent gas clouds and resulting suns never travel toward us - IE why is everything red shift out there.

Why is the speed of light (supposedly) only now fixed?

While we're on the topic, what magical force de/accelerates light when it passes from one medium to another?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

what magical force de/accelerates light when it passes from one medium to another

I think the denser mediums it goes slower because not a straight line but zig-zag path, so the speed isn't actually changing, but only seems so from the outside? This means something has to change at the boundary between two mediums as velocity = frequency x Wavelength, but the frequency inherently is not going to change. I think sound can speed up in a denser medium. It also has refraction at medium boundaries. Let's see what Wikipedia says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction

I think there are "meta materials" that at gross level appear to "break" the rules due to nano sized structures that do keep the rules. As Radio is the same kind of thing as light, you can do experiments with cheap microwave sources and suitable meshes, grills and hoops of metal or sheets and rods and balls of insulators transparent to Radio. Also for light you need a laser for a coherent source (cheap enough now). Most radio sources are coherent and polarised, though creating circular polarisation is slightly more complex than plane. One usual trick is to have a horizontal and vertical pair of aerials a quarter wave apart driven in phase or together but driven 90 degrees out of phase (a phase delay can be created by longer cable in one path).
A Fresnel lens can easily be made for 10GHz out of concentric metal hoops.

 

[HareBrain]

In terms of what the universe is expanding into, isn't it the same stuff (or lack of stuff) that currently exists (or doesn't) between particles of matter?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Big Bang?

Why only one?

Where's the evidence for another one?

EDIT - to be fair there are a few astrophysicists who claim to see the influence of another universe in the data of the very large structure of the universe. However I believe that the jury is still out on this, and likely to be out for many years. The effect they have observed could have a far more mundane reason.

If there have been super-nova popping off here and there, presumably some of them must have been further away from the original centre. When they went bang how come the subsequent gas clouds and resulting suns never travel toward us - IE why is everything red shift out there.

Not true, some objects are blue-shifted, i.e. travelling towards us (i.e. the Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course). But the majority of the stuff of the universe is red-shifted relative to us.

Why is the speed of light (supposedly) only now fixed?

Well the daft answer is that: we only observed it to be a constant.

But it is such a fundamental constant, that if it were to actually be a variable it would have huge knock on effects on a whole range of very noticeable things - we should therefore see a whole range of extremely interesting and weird effects through our telescopes. We don't. (Or to be fair, if they are there they are so slight as currently not be noticeable.)

 

[Venusian Broon]

In terms of what the universe is expanding into, isn't it the same stuff (or lack of stuff) that currently exists (or doesn't) between particles of matter?

I'm slightly not quite sure what your asking. But if I'm getting you right, I think the simple answer is: No.

Currently we believe space-time itself (the very dimensions of our perception) is expanding. We physically see it as most of the matter of the universe travelling away from us (see my Balloon analogy up above in comment #4). Depressingly if the rate of expansion were to remain positive and we could live long enough to witness it (and it would take a very long time), then eventually the night sky would darken and become black as even our closest stars would be too far away for us to visibly notice them.

We have mathematically modelled this expansion and therefore one could argue there is an abstract mathematical space that the our modelled universe 'expands' into. But this is not a physical observable space, it is only a construction of our own conception that we find useful to explain the experimental results. I'll try and think of a nicer analogy!

 

[HareBrain]

But where does the gap between, say, an atomic nucleus and the electron(s) come from? Did this also arise from the Big Bang?

 

[Venusian Broon]

But where does the gap between, say, an atomic nucleus and the electron(s) come from? Did this also arise from the Big Bang?

Yes

EDIT - I should qualify that. Yes, according to our current standard model/understanding of what we think happened at the event we call the Big Bang

 

[Ray McCarthy]

atomic nucleus and the electron(s) come from

Electrons and Protons attract each other.
Protons repel each other.
Electrons repel each other.
Neutrons ought to weakly stick together.

Something is keeping the Neutrons and Protons close together. Some mix of Atomic glue and gravity?

Something is keeping the Electrons (a probability cloud rather than really orbiting particles like a solar system) away from the Protons.

I haven't ever read any explanations that make a lot of sense and I can't see how it's related to the Big Bang (if that happened)?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Something is keeping the Neutrons and Protons close together. Some mix of Atomic glue and gravity?

I agree that this is poorly understood - there is a empirical nucleus model I believe, that essentially worked so well they apparently couldn't be bothered to find a better understanding.

However the reality is I think that trying to model an atomic nucleus from first principles results in a hugely horrendous many-body equation that we are light years away from even solving numerically. Remember currently we have yet to solve the three-body problem in any really meaningful theoretical situation.

Something is keeping the Electrons (a probability cloud rather than really orbiting particles like a solar system) away from the Protons.

Ok, this is a bit handwavy, but you could use Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to explain this.

In steady state a system will be in the lowest energy state that it can be. In general terms Total energy = Kinetic Energy + Potential Energy.

Now an electron and proton have opposite electric charges so the lowest potential energy state is for the electron to be right next to the proton (and in this case be a negative number). However if this were to happen this would tie the electron down with a very high probability to a very small space.

Hence by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle the momentum of the electron must therefore be undetermined and high. Thus the kinetic energy of the electron will be high. (And Kinetic energy term is positive). If we let the electron go 'further out' this Kinetic energy term drops.

Therefore there will be a happy distance at which the electron 'sits' where the total energy as calculated between these two competing factors is a minimum. Because of the constants that our universe seems to use, mass and charge or electron/proton etc..., that means that electrons operate quite happily in fuzzy clouds outside nuclei.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Your hands are flapping so hard you are nearly flying. Yes, we have a lot of fun stuff to figure out!