Who or What Lit the Fuse

Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' describes how time and energy
came into ... So in order to try and explain where the universe came from I will
start with an ... 3) All events must follow a logical order within the given definition.
.... The open universe that will expand forever, the flat model that will come to a
halt, ...

Where did the universe come from?

Does this illuminate?

Some husband went to light the stove, wife yelled at him for tracking in mud. He went and cleaned up the mud, went back to light the pilot and forgot the gas was on all that time.

Actually, everything was calm & peaceful until the first CR4 GW thread...!

Not the Sacred Quantum Fluctuation (in Nothing, no less) we've all been taught since....whenever, O ye of little faith? :D

Logical order infers a beginning, flat model that will come to a halt so we have an end no beginning?

1. The Universe was not created from the Big Bang theory. The theory came about 13.75 billion years later. 2. Everywhere is the centre of the Universe. 3. The edge of the Observable Universe is 45 to 47 billion light years distant. The rest of the Universe which we can't see (thanks to Hubble's Law) is far larger and may in fact be infinite - or not. It depends on the topology.

"Our ever expanding universe was created from the big bang theory, so who or what lit the fuse?"

If it was created wouldn't that no longer make it a theory! Wouldn't knowing who or what also remove it from the list of theories.

The universe/omniverse has existed forever. About a trillion years ago (give or take a few tens of billions) the previous cosmos began to collapse inward long after after it's own 'big bang' had caused its expansion. That inward collapse eventually reached a microscopically small size at a temperature of trillions of degrees, at which point 'our' big bang occurred, which is now about 14 billion years in our past. Eventually, in another trillion years, our universe will begin to collapse and initiate a new big bang for the next version of the universe.

This may not agree with current thinking about the cosmos, since there is some evidence suggesting that the cosmological constant, or quintessence, or dark energy, or whatever, is causing the universe's expansion to accelerate, so that it will expand 'forever', never collapsing back in. Maybe so, but that's still just a bit of speculation since there is so much we don't know. So my 'choice' is this idea of bang/crunch/bang/crunch/ ... ad infinitum.

You can chose the notion that a 'god' exists who got things started, but science excludes miracles; just like mathematics excludes dividing by zero.

"The universe/omniverse has existed forever. About a trillion years ago (give or take a few tens of billions) the previous cosmos began to collapse inward long after after it's own 'big bang' had caused its expansion. That inward collapse..."

Now that there is what I call a real Statement of Faith, Mr. Graham...

Billy wrote: "... just like mathematics excludes dividing by zero."

Bollocks. Any number system that forms a commutative ring - the integers, the real numbers, and the complex numbers, obviously - can be extended to a wheel - a kind of algebra where division is always defined. In particular, division by zero is meaningful. The real numbers can be extended to a wheel, as can any commutative ring, so you'd better fess up, Mr. True Believer. Wheels discard the usual notion of division being a binary operator, replacing it with multiplication by a unary operator, /x, similar (but not identical to the reciprocal x-1 , such that a / b becomes short-hand for a * /b = /b * a, and modifies the rules of algebra such that 0x != 0 in the general case. x - x != 0 in the general case and x / x != 1 in the general case as /x is not the same as the multiplicative inverse of x, therefore there is a God and He's very pissed at your getting The Book of Genesis all wrong, Bubba. For one thing, He made Man at the end of the First Week, when He was tired, and it shows.

The so called "Big Bang" was the collision of two dimensions, the eleventh, which contains the majority of energy by default, and the third, which you occupy at this time...

Hmm...two dimensions and one them very hot. Sounds like a dimensionally-reduced version of Flatland's Hell... :-)

This sounds like homework for a divinity engineering class. You need to bray for such information; but, alas, CR4 does not normally answer brayers.

Divinity Engineering...hmm... Materials Science? Chemical Engineering, of the Edible Kind? Oh fudge, now I'm really confused ...

Anonymous Poster #1,

What divine revelation brought you to the conclusion that, "Our ever expanding universe was created from the big bang theory"?

Also, spelling's OK, but punctuation is poor.

Seeing as it's all theory...
One only has to postulate that instability is the natural order of things.
Nothingness can spontaeously become equal and oposite entities which if they meet cancel out and become nothing again. I believe this phenomonon has been observed.
There are lazier alternatives like blaming God, the bankers or cats (choose you own deity or group of people/critters)
Del

When was the last time you saw a pair of virtual particles, Mr. Cat? (psst, if you did, they weren't virtual)

I never said 'virtual' . You came up with it.
A quick google turned this up on spontaneous creation and anhilation of particle/antiparticle pairs... can't be bothered to read it myself...

Del

Yes, the word appeared out of nowhere, and since you did see it, it's real. :)

Can't we blame all three? Wait, one of the three is virtual, let's just delete that one.

Nothingness does not spawn particle-antiparticle pairs, Mr. Cat, energy does.

Onwards towards the Big Phut, then?

There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

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