By redoing your arithmetic?

Ditto Tornado. The universe has been expanding for fourteen billion years

I think you and Tornado are missing my point. The math is not complicated and does not lie. It just seems to me that there is something missing in the explanation of the Big Bang.

For instance, why would the biggest black hole in existence (the singularity) explode ? The ones we currently study don't seem to. A black hole that contained all the matter in the universe would have an event horizon of a light year or more. How could the initial expansion happen ?

It seems like it is comfortable to explain with fuzzy science, that which is hard to explain.

I think it is entirely probable possible that we have it wrong.

You sent us in the wrong direction with your incorrect arithmetic.

There is something missing but the Big Bang is the closest to covering what appears to have happened. If I showed you a video of billiard balls, all racing away from some central point; and if you took note of the sequence, and then reversed the directions, and if you found them moving towards that one point, would you not assume, as a working proposition that something like an explosion or impact caused them to spread?

Not if I had to divine that the billiard balls would have had to move at a speed which exceeds the laws of physics for a billion years.

I would assume we had made a mistake in our analysis.

By the way, I assume no responsibility for directing anyone; that sword will be fallen on by the reader.

The billiard balls don't have to move at a speed which exceeds the laws of physics for a billion years. Tornado and passingtongreen covered this in posts #1 and #2. They beat me to it!

One billion years after the big bang occurs, light transmitted from a source 13 billion light years away from us begins moving our way. Fourteen billion years after the big bang occurs (13 billion years after transmission began), that light reaches us, indicating that one billion years after the big bang occurs, that object was 13 billion light years from us.

Please explain what is wrong with this math.

"... indicating that one billion years after the big bang occurs, that object was 13 billion light years from us."

This would have been the case if our universe did not expand (all parts were not moving away from all other parts). In an expanding cosmos, your object had to be much closer to us 13 billion years ago.

According to our best model and data, it had to be around 3 billion light years from us when it emitted those photons. And just to make it even harder, the expansion has caused that object to be presently about 30 billion light years from us (all in nicely rounded figures).

-J

Wow. That indicates an expansion rate of approximately 2 billion light years per billion years.

If you read posts 18 & 27 you would understand.

You are trying to apply a linear solution (your math) to a non-linear problem.

Just learning here. I am slower than some.

Maybe not! It has taken me all of my life to get this far. :) I may be older than you, too. :)

"I think you and Tornado are missing my point. The math is not complicated and does not lie. It just seems to me that there is something missing in the explanation of the Big Bang."

I hope you mean only that the math in your OP is not complicated -- The mathematics of the BBT are extremely complex.

"For instance, why would the biggest black hole in existence (the singularity) explode ? The ones we currently study don't seem to. A black hole that contained all the matter in the universe would have an event horizon of a light year or more. How could the initial expansion happen?"

1. The term "Big Bang" is a misnomer. There was no explosion.

2. The universe did not start as a "black hole". A black hole is created by the gravitational collapse of a star.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity

It 's a theory. Period. Did the writer come-up with a better, that explains more observations (rationally), and has less inconsistencies? S.M.

I do not remember the correct buzz words but I'll try to explain what my my fuzzy memory tells me is the most accepted explanation of this apparent paradox.

When the Bang happened the physical laws of the universe were vastly different than now. Spacetime itself was being formed along with all of the stuff of matter and energy. Moments (not an hourglass moment ) after the Bang itself, spacetime continued to be created between the stuff. During this brief expansion (this expansion period has a special name ) far larger amounts of spacetime came into existence between some of the stuff than could be travelled by a photon during this period. Now what determined the non-uniform distribution of spacetime during this period is very much open to debate.

There's also a debate that to say "three seconds after the Bang the laws of Physics existed" is really a misleading description for prior to this transition moment, time as we know it did not exist.

This is like asking somebody if prior to conception they were a Hershey bar in their daddy's back pocket?

"During this brief expansion (this expansion period has a special name)"

I couldn't remember the first time through, then it came back to me, "Inflation" is the word.

Yes! Inflation is the term.

Everything sprang out of nothing.....lol, I think we're basically just saying we haven't figured this part out yet....

Lawrence Krauss's A Universe from Nothing might be an explanation, or part of one.

That's the best explanation yet in this thread.

Yes, we haven't figured it all out. It is complete hubris to think that we can figure everything out. It is also foolish to not look and try figure out the next layer. But the Big Bang does not say the universe came from nothing. It may have, it may not have come from nothing. AFAIK the latest idea is that we cannot tell what existed prior. There is nothing that affects our universe prior to that moment. One physicist explaining why we cannot know about anything prior to the moment of the universe being created is to think of some one precisely at the South pole of the Earth and asking them to go further South. It not only cannot be done, it is a meaningless request.

The bottom line is that the universe is expanding. The galaxies are like raisins in a pot of rice pudding, as time goes on, the raisins all get further away from each other. If you run the movie backwards, the raisins get closer and closer until they touch. Something happened then that sent the universe hither and yon, very much like an explosion. Let's call it the "Big Bang" until we get a better idea.

I really don't like raisins, or rice pudding.

Can you use another example?

Beats me. I just found out this morning that the big bang wasn't a bang/explosion of energy. They shouldn't even be calling it a bang.

We already realize that in vacuum there was no "bang" from the "Big Bang." No doubt there will be other mistakes and incompletenesses to be corrected in the future. None of this makes the Big Bang a fraud, however. Even if it later turns out to be quite wrong, there is no bad faith in this hypothesis.

Who do you think is being defrauded and of what?
Del

Yea, maybe I could have said "incomplete" instead of "a fraud".

Very good description AH, to which I can add very little.

One mildly interesting point is that strictly speaking, the Big Bang theory does not include the inflationary period, neither as the BB was originally formulated (1949), nor at present (since the mid 1980s). It's simply stated as: "According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the Universe to cool and resulted in its present continuously expanding state."

I am certain you know all this and just rolled the two theories into one for ease of description. For other interested folks:

The standard BB model only requires an extremely rapid, but smoothly decelerating ('bang-type') spatial expansion at the 'beginning' - which is usually taken to mean after inflation, or whatever other theory could explain the later discoveries of the 'horizon problem' that you mentioned, as well as the 'flatness problem'.

One of the reasons for this separation is that there is no single rigorous underlying theory that can cover both inflation and the standard BB. To succeed in that, we require quantum gravity, or something like it, which is not fully worked out yet. It is however not uncommon for the popular scientific press to roll inflation and the BB into one and simply call it the Big Bang.

From a BB perspective, it looks a little bit like sweeping the difficult part under the carpet, but then, the standard BB (without inflation) is so well supported by observation that cosmologists can happily use it, without worrying about how it got started.

Inflation is also supported by observation, but not quite as strongly as the standard BB. There are other (e.g. 'brane-world' type) theories that could perhaps one day replace inflation as the precursor to the BB. However, there will probably always be the question: "what came before that?"

-J

Thank you Jorrie.

Very elegant thinking but not much less dogmatic than "let there be light" as I see it. S.M.

First, I am but a novice at this, but what I have learned so far tells me that unless you get a good foundation in cosmology and quantum physics, all of this will appear as magic or religion.

I think you can tell I respect your opinions, but on this last one rephrased: "I don't -as most of you- fully possess the required basis to give proof (or even clues) on this concept, but I'm totally convinced it's true", how far is that from good old faith? (Not that I would accept someone else as an absolute authority regarding so slippery grounds LOL) S.M.

I don't think that is a good rephrasing of what AH said.

Think AH did get what I meant nevertheless. S.M.

Thanks for helping me understand.

To use the billiard ball analogy i get this;

At the time the balls are struck there are no balls and no table,

The table forms first and the stuff that the balls are made from, next.

That stuff moves rapidly and forms balls that diverge.

Now a question. If we are on one of those balls part way down the table and we "look back" to see another ball, do we actually look in the direction of the singularity, or, do we look sideways or even forwards ( i.e. away from the singularity )?

This is the part that is hard to get a handle on.

The universe, as far as we can tell, is expanding equally in all places. Therefore, there is no center of the universe.

While we can peer outward and see everything receding from us and this gives the appearance that we are in the center of that expansion, the fact is there is nothing special about our location in the universe (or any other). Pick any location in the universe at it will appear the same way - that everything is receding away from that vantage point.

So, with the billiard table example the concept of looking back or forward really has no context because the billiard table and everything within it is expanding and this billiard table has no boundaries, either. That's a lot to swallow, I know, because we are used to living in a world with boundaries where you get up at the edge of your bed, leave the bounds of your property, drive to the end of town, and stand at the water's edge.

So it gets very strange to wrap your arms around the concept that the universe is about 50 billion light years across, yet has no boundaries.

You might enjoy looking up comoving distance and proper distance with respect to the universe. It might help explain all of this a bit better.

Thanks again for your explanation. It is very difficult to grasp The universe, as far as we can tell, is expanding equally in all places as this would tend to indicate that there was no singularity, certainly not as a point as we understand it, unless the universe is still within the singularity. Or perhaps the singularity was/is infinite?

Jim

A ga from me, and a thanks for taking the time to explain the, apparently, unexplainable. It is clear that by talking about an expanding universe coming from a singularity is way too much of a simplification. It places it (the BB ) in the realm of a firecracker and within everyones experience. Whereas, the whole thing is way outside normal experiences and way more difficult to understand. I'm tempted to say that by trying so hard to understand the concepts raised one may lose sight of basic principles but then i bite my tongue as i realise that it's the basic principals that are so far away from the BB theory they cause the misunderstanding.

I think it is great that people such as yourself and others on this forum have the ability to understand/imagine the big concepts of today. BB theory, quantum physics, quantum mechanics etc. and are then prepared to try to relate to me in simple terms so that i may understand.

Thanks Jorrie,

Jim

The substantial evidence is based on theories with missing pieces that support a theory very well.

Perhaps Einstein's greatest blunder was not his acceptance of a static universe but in his later belief that it was, as a result of Hubble's observations. There are some who postulate that the observed redshift, on which the Hubble Constant is based, results from attenuation caused by the passage of electromagnetic radiation through space-time that is warped by the presence matter and thus indicates distance but not recession. Maybe bosons and fermions are affected similarly in different fields. Then again, we may all still be too close to the primordial ooze to be able to figure it out.

Dear WJMFIRE,

I see where you're headed with that and I have to agree, there are many unfounded and highly implausible theories out there masquerading practically as solid fact, and although the others here have mentioned, and are correct that it is the Big Bang 'theory' it does have the obvious arithmetic holes you've mentioned.

Also, when will the newly discovered dark matter be added into overall hypothesis of the Big Bang theory?

That's what I see. Theories are like Play-Doh and can be molded into any shape we can imagine. I guess no one's really sat there and imagined it out into a plausibility yet.

I think you make a good point, if all matter started at one dot, how could it simultaneously have chucked everything into place. Sort of like, KABOOM, and then everything is as far apart as it is now.

My question is closer to home. Read NatGeo's 'Gospel of Judas' on the scrolls there's a section where Jesus says to Judas, "...and remember, we come from the self-replicating beings..." WTH?!!! Sounds like the beginnings of a discussion on either gene manipulation, DNA or cloning? Good reason for the very early people to have burnt all but the most hidden. I can't wait for the whole set to be translated!

Why I mention that is because if we get slammingly new perspective on an ancient like Jesus, what weird and wonderful things are out there in the universe? What ways may have it really started?

It's fun to theorize. I know some people who believe there's a black hole at the center of every galaxy and that if one traveled into the black hole they'd return on the other side to a different point in either another galaxy or universe from a white hole.

I'm still trying to grasp quantum mechanics that tell us if we move forward in time we could put our hand through a wall because over time, the wall would not exist. In that light, then an event seen that happened thirteen billion years ago would be impossible to conceptualize or predict? It's fun to read here and learn, think and discuss ;-)

Not sure if any responses were to me or just to the general discussion, but I get the distinct feeling that many here forget Einstein's advice "Imagination is greater than science." and "Never stop questioning the universe and everything in it."

It also feels that many here have mixed up physics and quantum mechanics, God and cosmology, my thoughts and reality, and the purpose of discussions and out and out attacking someone for their hypothesis.

Isn't that what started this? The discussion regarding the hypothesis around the Big Bang?

My analogy of National Geographic's literal translation of a 1,900+ year old document that has connotations regarding something akin to cloning is to demonstrate that whenever we think we know everything, we may find out we knew nothing and have to scrap a theory, add in the newly discovered facts or factors, rethink and create a wholly new hypothesis that allows for those new facts.

But this might be the wrong crowd for that ? I respect and will read all your thoughts but I don't expect any of them to be more the be all, end all answer anymore than mine is, which may be the unnerving factor of theory and conjecture --i.e. there is no right, wrong or final answer.

GA. A good discussion.

The Question leads to another. If what I learned in physics is true, matter is always matter it never goes away it just changes form. I also learned that you cannot produce matter from non matter. So the questions are this: Who made the first matter and if in fact there was something like the Big Bang, who lit the match?

As someone else pointed out, you may have missed an important part of physics class. Remember Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2?

It sets the equivalence between energy and matter very succinctly and we know very well that process takes place every day. You need only go outside and let the Sun warm your face to understand that.

Someone seems to be missing the point. In E=mc^2 m stands for mass. Mass is matter and if you start with matter/mass it had to come from somewhere because it is a fact that from nothing you can only derive nothing. In order to accumulate mass you have to have matter to begin with. Einstien was not an atheist. "Albert Einstein's religious views have been studied due to his sometimes apparently ambiguous statements and writings on the subject. He believed in the god of Baruch Spinoza, but not in a personal god, a belief he criticized. He also called himself an agnostic, and criticized atheism, preferring he said "an attitude of humility."

"In E=mc^2 m stands for mass. Mass is matter and if you start with matter/mass it had to come from somewhere because it is a fact that from nothing you can only derive nothing."

Not quite accurate. Wiki explains it better than I can:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence

"The equation E = mc2 indicates that energy always exhibits relativistic mass in whatever form the energy takes.[2] Mass-energy equivalence does not imply that mass may be "converted" to energy, but it allows for matter to be converted to energy. Through all such conversions, mass remains conserved, since it is a property of matter and any type of energy. In physics, mass must be differentiated from matter. Matter, when seen as certain types of particles, can be created and destroyed (as in particle annihilation or creation), but the system of precursors and products of such reactions, as a whole, retain both the original mass and energy, with each of these system properties remaining unchanged (conserved) throughout the process. Simplified, this means that the total amount of energy (E) before the experiment is equal to the amount of energy after the experiment. Letting the m in E = mc2 stand for a quantity of "matter" (rather than mass) may lead to incorrect results, depending on which of several varying definitions of "matter" are chosen."

Nice. But, Where did the energy come from? Out of thin air? Out of a vacuum? Out of what? From nothing you get nothing. It has to have some kind of a starting point. Either Matter or Energy.

Energy implies molecular movement. Where did the molecules come from or where did the atoms come from? There are more questions than answers.

Some atheists say that the universe was a quantum 'pop into existence' event. Theists might say that God created the universe out of nothing. Wiki says this. The law of conservation of energy is a low of the universe, not a law of creating it. Either way, there is more to explain, such as where was the vacuum before the quantum pop?

"Obviously there is a shortage of thinking here."

Oh my,

The futility of it all. All the universe to ponder and we are short of thinking?

Does this mean that we may never know the TRUE answer. Does that really matter??

Would it change your life to know. How will you know when you do "know"?

We thought that the speed of light was going to be redefined a while back. That was just a loose wire. Go figure.

I will sleep just fine tonight, in my ignorance of the origin of life, the solar system, and where all my hard earned tax dollars are squandered. Frankly, my opulant contribution to the givernmet bothers me a hell of a lot more than figuring out the validity of the BB.

And that, is why I won't do two shows a night anymore babe. (Michael Keaton: Beetlejuice.)

It really is inaccurate to say that all of the stuff (matter and energy) present from the Big Bang and inflation came from nothing. Where and what all the stuff came from is unknown. There are many proposals to answer your question, where does what made the BB and the universe come from. A few of these proposals do say that stuff came from nothing.A few more say that it might as well be from nothing. Most proposals (that I'm aware of) say that we cannot tell anything about what happened prior because measurement uncertainties and other random factors overwhelm any remnant information of prior conditions. Some proposals do suggest testable experiments to validate or refute the proposal. AFAIK no proposal of why the BB happened have been recognized as the answer.

But we will keep trying.

Byron Jay-

Some recent experiments suggest that one may, in fact, be able to create something from nothing. I am referring to experiments utilizing mirrors in a vacuum and the Casimir effect- seems you can create photons out of "nothing". But, then again, it seems that one of the mirrors have to be vibrating, which means there must be some energy input into the system somewhere...

My head is starting to hurt

I thought matter can be converted to energy, so that it is perpetual but not always as matter?

time and space. Einstien

some of the people on this site are more policically "self serving" motivated than all the crap i've seen since the last election.

I have never been sure but my best guess is that someone someday will figure it out. You, I like because you are not married to an idea that has not been proven. There are a lot of theories and a lot of speculation but you my dear are not one of the victims of either. Like me, more questions than answers.

You may not be able to separate science from religion. Please do speak for me and the many others who can separate these two.

"Science relies on data to back up its claims."

The data is the same for everyone but there is interpretation of the data that will bring a different result.

When Posts are made trying to explain the BB where all this matter which somehow came about at some time suddenly explodes, with high heat being generated, propulsion of the matter farther apart from other matter and somehow these divergent elements come together and you get the foundation of life. Sure, that makes logical sense!

The enormity and intricacy of what we now can observe and partly understand did not come about because of a chaotic event. The stretching of data and conjecture with unsustainable data is common with those who try and foster the BB/evolution theory. There are tooooo many holes even when the data is stretched to try and explain the results of what we see.

There are natural laws that govern the operation of what we see and we may not fully understand many of those so people try to make the data support their preconceived theory. That's why the starting point, which is the religion of evolution or the religion of God, is a integral part of science. One can't really separate science and philosophy/thinking completely when looking at data. There will always be a bias in the interpretation of the data, one way or the other.

Science is the search for facts, identification of data, interpretation of data, theories drawn. None of the steps can be left out so there will always be some subjective element to science.

"That's why the starting point, which is the religion of evolution or the religion of God, is a integral part of science."

But evolution is a scientific theory based on evidence; there is no evidence of God there, or anywhere else that I am aware of. Can you point to evidence of God?

I'll tell you what.. If you descibe him to me, I'll point him out to you.

You are preaching, but not to the choir.

You exist. Imagine NOT existing.

<...Imagine NOT existing...>

There's a logic knot there somewhere. If one did not exist, one could not imagine either existing or not existing. Or something.

Is it tea time yet?

Please, let's leave a science-or-religion debate off the forum. In this thread we're looking at something pretty specific:

"If the universe is 14 billion years old, how could two galaxies (ours and the observed) have traveled 13 billion light years apart in only 1 billion years ?"