Trying to understand the Big Bang

cartrite · Post #1by **cartrite** » 07.11.2005, 13:32

The other day I started a topic in the physics forum about the Big Bang and seemed to offend at least one person from the UK. Maybe it should have been posted here instead. Anyhow, I'm just trying to understand all of this Big Bang Theory stuff.

I think, according to the Big Bang theory, that everything started from a single atom. A singularity. This atom blew up and started everything we see and live in.

But to think of our galaxy as part of a hydrogen atom in a gas cloud in intergalactic space, well I must be on drugs? Right?

The reason I can't buy the Big Bang Theory is that it seems to put a limit on size and time. What were things like at time = -1? What is outside of the present expansion? Not space. This is being created with the expansion?

If it were possible to step outside of the universe and watch this Big Bang event, what would be behind you? Beside you?

So I think of the atomic realm as small particles that make up everything we see. And I think of the universe, and everything in it, as bigger particles, making up an atomic realm for something bigger. Never stops getting bigger. Never stops getting smaller.

Now, this is not a theory. It is just my attempt to make some sense of all this. If this means that I must be on drugs, or nuts, or in some dream world, then So Be It.....

cartrite

Post #2by **selden** » 07.11.2005, 14:54

An atom is not a singularity. A singularity is not an atom.

A lot is known about atoms. By definition, nothing can be known about a singularity. By definition, there was no time before the singularity that is often called the Big Bang. t=-1 sec is undefined. At the instant of the Big Bang, everything was at 0. No information about what happened "before" it can be available. Current theories about the history of the universe do not require any knowlege about what happened "before" the Big Bang.

Unfortunately, the idea that our universe is part of a larger atom is fantasy.
It is not consistant with what is known about atoms and what are often called sub-atomic forces.

Sadly, the concepts that people come up with when they work from simplified ideas about what we know about physics and cosmology wind up being very misleading. You need to take the time to read some of the books that have been written about those topics. Books by Hawkings are one place to start. You might want to consider taking college physics courses, too. Or you can work your way through the textbooks for those courses, starting with the courses that are their prerequisites.

[edit]
"The Fenynman Lectures on Physics" are one good place to start.
[/edit]

cartrite · Post #3by **cartrite** » 07.11.2005, 16:53

About 10 or 15 years ago I read a lot about atoms and the universe. Unfortunately, I probably forgot most of what I read then. Time for a refresher I guess.

As far as this universe being part of a larger atomic realm, well I know that quantum mechanics and astronomy disagrees with that fantasy. I sometimes try to come up with some explanations to make everything work together, but always fail. This idea that the universe is making up something larger and the atomic world is making up something smaller is just that, an idea I entertain from time to time. It started one night when I was a kid, before I new anything about anything. I was laying on my back in a field one summer night, far from city lights, and got this feeling that this was how things worked. The milky way was as bright as I ever seen it. And I wondered what I was really looking at. Since then I tried to make that idea fit into what was known, new discoveries, etc. But it doesn't fit. I know that. I guess I just wanted to see if anyone else ever entertained the same idea (sci-fi fantasy).

cartrite

Post #4by **selden** » 07.11.2005, 17:00

The idea of universes being particles in larger universes has been around for a long time.

Ray Cummings wrote SF about this back in 1922. A reprint of "The Girl in the Golden Atom" is available through Amazon, for example.
More recently, the movie "The Men in Black" used this idea in its final scene.

Malenfant · Post #5by **Malenfant** » 07.11.2005, 17:22

selden wrote:More recently, the movie "The Men in Black" used this idea in its final scene.

That was such a random throwaway scene that I wonder why the heck it was in the film in the first place...

Post #6by **selden** » 07.11.2005, 17:29

Remember, the "mcguffin" of that movie was a galaxy on Orion's belt.

My reading of it was that they were saying that our galaxy is like that, too.
And it was an excuse to do a very long pull-out through pretty pictures

Malenfant · Post #7by **Malenfant** » 07.11.2005, 17:57

selden wrote:And it was an excuse to do a very long pull-out through pretty pictures

I think that was the real reason they did it

cartrite · Post #8by **cartrite** » 07.11.2005, 18:28

I never seen those recent films or read that book from the 20's. I'll have to look into them. I remember the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, (the old ones) being on the tv from time to time. My Grandfather liked watching them. I suppose there may have been an episode from one of those shows that influenced my tiny mind at the time.

WildMoon · Post #9by **WildMoon** » 12.11.2005, 04:23

There's an idea out there that the singularities of black holes are like fetuses, baby universes waiting to be "born". Would be an interesting idea, universes reproducing...though with that arises the question: What was the first universe and how was it created?

Hmmm...reproduction....isn't that something that is required for an organism to do to be considered living?

Malenfant · Post #10by **Malenfant** » 12.11.2005, 04:55

WildMoon wrote:There's an idea out there that the singularities of black holes are like fetuses, baby universes waiting to be "born". Would be an interesting idea, universes reproducing...though with that arises the question: What was the first universe and how was it created?

Hmmm...reproduction....isn't that something that is required for an organism to do to be considered living?

Stephen Baxter (hard scifi author, astrophysicist) had some interesting ideas about that. Check out his "Deep Future" book - basically he's wondering if one of the main purposes of life evolving in a universe is so that it can advance to the point that it can make more universes like the one it's in. In other words, life is a universe's way of reproducing itself.

WildMoon · Post #11by **WildMoon** » 17.11.2005, 03:54

Hydrogen is it's food, and we help it reproduce...there's a lot of talk about a race evolving so such a level they become "ascended", could this be the level required for a universe to reproduce?

Hmmm...Black hole meets white hole of another universe...the two singularities merge, the holes then separate and singularity grows allittle then suddenly inflates and rapidly grows in size.

Very interesting...