Are there any theories as to what was around before the big bang?

Are there any theories as to what was around before the Big Bang happened?

I am currently all for it but the more I think about it, it begins to make me think it is a very well thought out and brilliant theory but just kind of dumb too. I don't have much experience in the field, so don't bash me for asking or if I am wrong about anything. I just recently became interested in physics about a year ago and am currently planning on majoring in it.

From what I've been told two atoms just collided and BAM! the universe is born.

What was here before those two atoms?
Were they just floating around in nothing?
Were they the only 2?

If there were more atoms just floating around does that mean that something else was here before this universe, as in atoms making up matter, making up planets, stars and whatever else.


I almost feel like people should just leave the subject alone and just consider it as unanswerable as what really happens when we die.

Start by examining precisely what a universe is. It is essentially a game. The physical universe is not a thing, but it is composed of energy, matter, space, and time. The postulate that energy and matter cannot be created is clearly false; the very existence of the physical universe proves it.

Unfortunately, the authorities of today have assumed that the physical universe is the only universe. Thus, they attempt to explain the beginning of this universe without cause. You are right to question such an assertion!

If you want the truth, think for yourself. Never let anyone under the directive of authority or "proof" make you accept something that doesn't make sense to you. Most of today's facts will inevitably be tomorrow's historic misobservations.

I hope this helps you.

Truthfully,
Shane

reply to post by seangkt


I've always heard that the thought is that everything was condensed to a point no larger than a pin prick. So, that is what existed before the Big Bang. The universe then would have always just been and at one point popped like a corn kernel and kept on moving.

I'm not aware of any other theory other than that.

reply to post by seangkt



I was searching about this few days ago which led me to this article somewhere:

. Many have avoided it as an impenetrable mystery. Others have tried to define it away. Most have got themselves into an awful tangle just thinking about it. The problem, at rock bottom, is this: If nothing happens without a cause, then something must have caused the universe to appear. But then we are faced with the inevitable question of what caused that something. And so on in an infinite regress. Some people simply proclaim that God created the universe, but people always want to know who created God, and that line of questioning gets uncomfortably difficult.

One evasive tactic is to claim that the universe didn't have a beginning, that it has existed for all eternity. Unfortunately, there are many scientific reasons why this obvious idea is unsound. For starters, given an infinite amount of time, anything that can happen will already have happened, for if a physical process is likely to occur with a certain nonzero probability-however small-then given an infinite amount of time the process must occur, with probability one. By now, the universe should have reached some sort of final state in which all possible physical processes have run their course. Furthermore, you don't explain the existence of the universe by asserting that it has always existed. That is rather like saying that nobody wrote the Bible: it was. just copied from earlier versions. Quite apart from all this, there is very good evidence that the universe did come into existence in a big bang, about fifteen billion years ago. The effects of that primeval explosion are clearly detectable today-in the fact that the universe is still expanding, and is filled with an afterglow of radiant heat.

Make your own conclusion.

[edit on 2-12-2009 by December_Rain]

there are no unanswerable questions.


I dont think anything existed before that. But maybe everything expands out then gets contracted back to one point than explodes in a big bang again. That could mean before the most recent big bang there existed another universe, it had a life span of who knows, maybe some insane number like hundreds of trillions of years. Who knows, I'm no expert....

It's fascinating what they're learning about black holes and their potential creativity at the moment. If we can figure exactly what they're doing we might get closer? Perhaps the LHC will get us closer?

I also came upon this reply by an anonymous user on a diff. site which I found quiet interesting and would like to share with you

It is at this point unknown what was around before the big bang. Indeed due to the nature of the big bang we may never know.

It is important to note however, that the question itself may be inherently flawed. General relativity tells us that time and space are the same and that they are merely two separate aspects of a single entity, the fabric of space-time. Since the big bang was the origin of space, then it would also be the origin of time. As difficult as this is to grasp, there may not have been a "before" the big bang.

So asking what happened before the big bang is like asking what is north of the north pole.

Originally posted by octotom
reply to post by seangkt

 

I've always heard that the thought is that everything was condensed to a point no larger than a pin prick. So, that is what existed before the Big Bang. The universe then would have always just been and at one point popped like a corn kernel and kept on moving.

I'm not aware of any other theory other than that.

Yes, but the other question always arises to that answer, where did the pin prick come from ? How was it created, how did it get there ? The real truth is that whatever you or I believe, is just a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the truth. We are part of something so large, that as the majority of most humans use only 10% of their brain power, that maybe we'll never know.

Weather you believe in Science, Religion or the little green men, what's to say that they are not all true ? In point of fact they all relate to the same thing. A higher power, Bing Bang, God... Etc. So i say believe whatever you want to believe. It's probably the Truth anyway.......

Here's my best guess.

Cheers!
-X

PS. You might want to read up Roger Penrose's Weyl curvature hypothesis.

Hey just found an article which may interest you on this subject

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

reply to post by liquidsmoke206


I should have said a question that can never be answered correctly.

reply to post by 1.618


Me and a friend got on that debate the other night I was listening to The Universe in a Nutshell audiobook and he said what if all this is wrong there is no way to tell it is right and I said it is right according to our technology and our understanding of life. He replied to me that science should be a religion. One that is not so dependent on blind faith but still not fully fact just mostly theory. That whole argument is what got me here asking this haha.

Twas I-the eater of Worlds.

reply to post by December_Rain


ha, both of your posts seem exactly like what i was saying, maybe I am an expert?

I also think that it's all representative of some sort of consciousness. Physical manifestations of whole ideas, concepts....thats probably all the physical universe is.

There is (or was) no such thing as "before the Big Bang." At the point of the Big Bang, time began expanding in multiple dimensions -- forward and backward among them. So if you can imagine the past moving even farther back in the past, the same time the present continues to move into the future, then you'll get kind of an idea of what happened.

Originally posted by seangkt
Are there any theories as to what was around before the Big Bang happened?

I am currently all for it but the more I think about it, it begins to make me think it is a very well thought out and brilliant theory but just kind of dumb too. I don't have much experience in the field, so don't bash me for asking or if I am wrong about anything. I just recently became interested in physics about a year ago and am currently planning on majoring in it.

From what I've been told two atoms just collided and BAM! the universe is born.

What was here before those two atoms?
Were they just floating around in nothing?
Were they the only 2?

If there were more atoms just floating around does that mean that something else was here before this universe, as in atoms making up matter, making up planets, stars and whatever else.


I almost feel like people should just leave the subject alone and just consider it as unanswerable as what really happens when we die.

I heard it was two memBRANES colliding that caused the Big Bang. Research STRING THEORY. As for atoms, they weren't even around back then. The first generation of stars were made of hydrogen atoms, and only through them exploding [super-nova], were heavier elements formed. Then and only then , after a few star generations, were there enough heavy elements in the universe t create terrestrial planets and people. Each blood cell in your body has one iron atom. Iron has to be formed at the core of a dying star. Research Star Death. Not exactly answering your question, but maybe opening more questions?

There are plenty of theories about the Pre-Big-Bang. Accordingly, those theories hold about as much water as the Big Bang theory itself.

That's the problem with astrophysics — it's an immense edifice of theory backed up by nothing but human mathematics and speculation, which have been proven on every occasion to be completely inadequate for describing the bizarre formations and dynamics of the universe.

I mean, Science is much more certain about objects and dynamics 13 billion light years away than it is about objects and dynamics right here on earth or in our solar system... That's because there is no way to challenge their theories about deep space.

On the other hand, Science is proven grossly inaccurate on almost a daily basis when it comes to physical dynamics on Earth, and Mars, and Jupiter, et cetera.

Scientists admit that, with the discoveries made by our various planetary probes, our local space is so unpredictable, it's like waking up in a new world every day. In other words, their fiendishly complex scientific speculations are disproven every day, and they have to rewrite the books with regularity.

Yet they have no problem confidently expounding on the existence of black holes, and quasi-stellar radio objects, and gamma-bursters, et cetera.

But it's all pure theory. Nobody knows if any of this junk exists at all. And we never will, because these bizarre formations and objects are so incredibly distant from us in space and time, Humans will either be extinct or we will have evolved into another species before we ever reach those far-flung locations.

Now, what existed before the Big Bang? One theory is that our Universe is the result of a collision between at least a couple of other spatial dimensions — that is, when these two dimensions intersected, the unimaginable energy released punched its own hole into physical existence, and this rupture began to expand instantly, creating a new universe full of escaped energy that eventually settled into the more familiar Universe we recognize.

In that theory, there actually are other spatial dimensions in existence before our Universe existed. Which means there probably are other universes out there, some much older and some much younger than our own.

In another theory, the Universe already existed when the so-called Big Bang took place. In this theory, an object akin to a white hole erupted into this Universe, spewing an incomprehensible amount of energy into existence. We have actually even seen something like this happening relatively recently — we've seen an object that is spewing out far more energy than is possible, and the theory is that the object is a white hole...the antithesis of a black hole.

Again, this is all pure theory, there isn't enough evidence to say with certainty.

But, I mean, for the amount of imagination and unprovable speculation behind the Big Bang Theory, you might as well believe in the Creation Story.

It's about the same level of fantasy, with the same lack of evidence to support it.

— Doc Velocity

Maybe the big bang was your birthday. Time expanded both ways and created what happened before you arrived and after. It might as well have...for all it means to you.

If the big bang theory came from male ejacualtion, what do you think is possible before, lol.

I like how everyone is stuck trying to figure out the past when we can't even figure out the present. Why do you even try to figure it out? I mean really...

Sure, if it directly affected any part of my daily life then maybe....MAYBE...but it doesn't. We're here now, let's start acting like it.

A2D