The BEGINNING

People have thought about all sorts of stuff - was there a Big Bang? Are there parallel universes? How did our universe come in to existance? However, ALL of these theories need one thing, which is a major flaw - they all require something else to have been there first. This discussion is therefore not about the creation of our universe, but EVERYTHING. What was there before the excuse for our universe (depending on what your personal ideas are - big bang, 11th dimension/string theory, etc, etc.)?

Personally, when it gets to this point I say what I always say: Why is infinity such an inconceivable idea? To me, finite is completely rediculous. INfinite then gets rid of the nasty business of having things bigger than other things? (Something outside our universe - it took us a while to realise that we were in something bigger than the Earth nad even longer to discover that we weren't flat and the entire 'Universe' did not revolve around us...

Another...query...I have is that people use the term 'universe'. If it's the universe, how can it possibly have shape or size? If there's something outside it, surly that would then also become part of it, since the term 'universe' means everything. How can everything be defined by shape and size? How can everything have a boundary? Really, we're just part of a smaller something, I think.

Ideas?

Infinity has problems becuase if indeed things can be infinite, then eveything that could and will happen has already happened (same temperature all over the universe, etc)

As you can see from looking at our world- this is definately not so, meaning there is no infinity.

Infinity is not an option, at least not an option that we can cope with.

anyway, I believe the questions you ask cannot be trully answered. not today, and maybe never.

from every direction you look at it, there has to be some basic event which started evrything. what is the cause to that event? if there is a cause, what caused it? (though there are proposed sort of "round" models of the universe, which do not require a beggining)

it is possible that certain things do not require a cause (as it happens in quantum mechanics), but this is also difficult to understand and accept.

with the development of M-theory, Quantum Loop Gravity and such, it might be possible in the near future to answer some questions.

I think the most interesting issue in physics is the proposed solutions to dynamical collapse of systems. some of them actually state that there is nothing besides our mind, and the universe is mind-created.

: )

[Edited on 23-5-2004 by Transc3ndent]

In support, it is NECESSARY in determining and explaining the origin of matter and energy in our universe to label the cause and to admit through insufficient science that there is no adequate nomenclature for it. The big bang is all fine - it is an effect not a cause - there is no doubt that it happened.

There is absolutely sufficient evidence given here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

specifically at Post # 121169.

The fundamental flaw in the theories about how it all started is that people see time as something with a start and an end.

Human beings have this rediculous thought that like themself, everything has to start and end, and for this they also created the concept of time as, not a means of measurement, but something that starts and ends, like their mortal selves.

Imho, there is no start or end when it comes to time and space.
Time as having a beginning and an end is just something we accept and need because we need to have an excuse for the start and end of our own lives.

We think we are the greatest thing ever existed and therefor think that the way we become and vanish in a physical form is how everything must become and vanish, with a point of birth and a time of death.

I like your ideas. Open minded. "... INfinite then gets rid of the nasty business of having things bigger than other things?..."

Obviously we have what we have in terms of theory. And what we can't know exactly well we try to make sense out of. Yet, I like your way of thinking about it. It makes sense.

Because the universe has a size and a shape, it doesn't have to be embedded in a higher-dimensional space. Mathematically this is not required at all. With all possible measurements were can do, it is impossible to find out if our space (or manifold if you like mathematical terms like I do) is embedded in another space.

When science can't find out if something exists and this something can never influence us (because then we could measure it), Occam's razor removes it. That's good because all talk about spaces outside our universe would be based on speculation.

Transc3ndent, it's nice to finally see someone else that knows there are other quantum gravity theories than superstring theory. I think those working on quantom loop gravity should spend more time on their PR, because hardly anyone knows of their theory.

But matter and energy as we know them are actually quite trivial in the scheme of things, and what is visible to us in the universe can be awe-inspiring and religious to some creatures and mundane to others.

Why should there be a problem with "in the beginning" and why should atomic and molecular structures be the only composition of matter, just because they are so in the universe as we know it? I don't associate with many people who think that homo sapiens is the greatest thing that ever existed, and all evidence points to the contrary. But beginning and end are simple constructs that can apply to anything, and thinking of the 'known" universe as the be-all and end-all when it is just an accidental fart extends the recto-myopic vision and thinking.

Also why do two of you guys both spell ridiculous "rediculous"?

It's a Bizarro world out there.

Originally posted by thematrix
The fundamental flaw in the theories about how it all started is that people see time as something with a start and an end.

Human beings have this rediculous thought that like themself, everything has to start and end, and for this they also created the concept of time as, not a means of measurement, but something that starts and ends, like their mortal selves.

Imho, there is no start or end when it comes to time and space.
Time as having a beginning and an end is just something we accept and need because we need to have an excuse for the start and end of our own lives.

We think we are the greatest thing ever existed and therefor think that the way we become and vanish in a physical form is how everything must become and vanish, with a point of birth and a time of death.

This is not true, because the newtonian approach was that time has no begining and no end. only later, after the development of special and general relativity (which isuch less logical than newtonian physics), it became clear that time, and our universe - has a beggining, and has an end.

also, you may not realize this, but physical theories do not develop according to what we like to believe in. this is not religion, and physics develop according to observations and experiments. Therefore, if someone says time has a beginning, it's not because it's more convinient to think this way, but because this is the only explanation for certain things in the universe.

I also think that THIS approach is much harder to accept, because questions like "what was before time" arise. I don't think we can ask what was "before" space-time, because the term "before" exists only where there is time.

Why couln'd it be like an eternal thing? I mean, our present universe is believed to be expanding, but our theories might just be wrong in a distant future, and it could be that after a while, everything crushes into a single point, just to start again with another big bang.

No one remembers anything before they're born. We could just be in that kind of universe, that dies and is reborn again... We wouldn't know about it.

... Interpretation is a cage ...


Scientific theories about space, time and related topics are scientists interpretation of what they see and interpretations of what they find in experiments.

And you tell me, what according to you can only be explained in the universe by the concept of time having a beginning and an end?

If you mean what would be there before the big bang, then think about this. Before the big bang, there was a universe like this one, that started in a big bang, and before that big bang there was a universe that started in a big bang.

The only thing science says is that there is a period of time that shows a beginning and a most propable end of the universe we are in.
It doesn't say there is a beginning or an end, it only says that they can't see or imagine what was there before the big bang.

There is an interesting point to be made here:

We as humans have trouble comprehending the concept of infinitude - everything we know (see, feel, measure, etc) is finite, so we have no reference for the infinite (if we did, it wouldn't be infinite).

Yet at the same time we have trouble with the idea of finitude - if I say the universe has boundaries, you wonder what is outside those boundaries. It is difficult for us to accept the idea of a finite universe.

I guess the only solution is that the universe doesn't exist. Descartes was wrong! I think, therefore I am not!

Note that those interpretations you speak of are not something we make up, just because we want it to be that way. If it was that way, we would still think that earth is flat, and that the sun and the stars rotate around it.

I don't see anything wrong with those interpretations, as they are the only way we can understand the universe. your idea about infinite time is also an interpretation as a possible solution to current problems in physics, only unlike other - more physical interpretation- yours is based on nothing besides some personal philosophical idea and not on long observations and mathematical work. therefore it is probably much less correct.

It is hard to speak about time from a physical point of view without understanding what time IS. according to relativity (which was confirmed in numerous ways), time is not a straight line (as newton thought), but it is bond with space, and has a form. so instead of time and space there is a new term - spacetime.

Roger Penrose and Sthephen Hawking have shawn that if general relativity is correct, then time MUST have a beginning, and this moment of beginning is called the big bang.
Time ends in singularities, which can be found in black holes.

This all is proven mathematically, based on the mathematical model of general relativity.

[Edited on 23-5-2004 by Transc3ndent]

The only thing science says is that there is a period of time that shows a beginning and a most propable end of the universe we are in.
It doesn't say there is a beginning or an end, it only says that they can't see or imagine what was there before the big bang.

That actualy comes from a Stephen Hawkins lecture.
Nice to see you bring him up.

Science says and dictates that for all their math and theories to be right, there has to be a beginning and start to this universe. Starting and ending in a singularity.
BUT, big BUT, all their laws and theories become absolutely nullified and absolete when they look at the singularities. All their laws, idea's and theories break down to an absolute frigin zero at the point of those singularities.

The people like Hawkins that go further then that say that its more then propable and most likely to make sence of their breakdown problem, but is totaly unprovable for science, that a universe is a infinity cycle of singularity to singularity.