Big Bang Question?

I don't get it can someone explain wtf "nothing" is how can there be nothing?, is it like a blank piece of paper then BOOM that's it?

reply to post by pixiekaram


Most cosmologists these days accept that there probably wasn't "nothing" before the Big Bang.
My favourite is that there are two (or more) "Branes" and that our Universe is a result of a collision between them.

Think of Branes like two infinitely big Egyptian Cotton sheets, held flat against each other.
If you flap the sheets around a bit, they will touch together at various points, and release some heat energy.

It's in an interaction similar to this that the Universe became energised and started expanding/radiating.

reply to post by myster0

At the cost of sounding ignorant... What exactly are these "branes"?

reply to post by visius


think of it like the memBRANES of two cells touching each other and creating friction, which is heat, causing expansion.

reply to post by visius


In the context of what the poster above stated, I think "membranes" would better suit the analogy.

Personally I think the Big Bang was more of a little fart, and that events like it have been happening for much longer than we could imagine. Not just one, but many.

For all that "stuff" to get compressed to a point where it can no longer squeeze into a smaller space so it goes Bang, it has to have been squeezed there by something(s) else going Bang somewhere else.

Why do most people think so small and fit everything into a frame that relates to our concievable timespace?

I see it as an endless stream of Bangs and the surrounding compressions that result from those bangs.

Boioioioing!

reply to post by visius


I think those other guys have got it pretty much sorted for you

The surfaces of interaction are wound up in so many dimensions, and are so "Infantesimally" small, that it's very hard to see it. Except by looking at "stuff" I guess.. cheese is nice.

reply to post by pixiekaram


S& F, pixie,

You are so right.

Nothing comes from nothing. Full stop. Zero.

There had to have been a start - and some sort of creation.

But what started that?

This is where we run out of lines and have to go with the big bang (impossible) or the Creator - the only possible way I think.

And as to where the Creator came from - I can only think that a lot of things are hidden from us.

But if you go back to the very start and trying to work it out...forget it.

Tthat's what I don't get it cannot be from nothing it's illogical and moronic but some things are just to big for us to know

I'm not aware of any theory that suggests there was "nothing" and recent research shows that when we say "nothing", in Universal terms we actually mean "something" as Dark Matter (Matter that doesnt have a positive or negative charge) makes up around 80% of our perceivable universe.

The complex processes that lie behind the interactions of Dark Matter and Matter currently are beyond our comprehension using known scientific modelling derived from our local Galaxy so given the scale of the size and scale of the Universe the Big Bang could be some exotic process that we'll never fully understand without understanding the full mechanics of the Universe.

My wild guess would be that Energy indeed cannot be created or destroyed and there are a number of "Volcanoes" in the universe that spew out matter via some sort of process based around the compression of dark matter,possibly using the "charged" energy sucked up by holes in some sort of exotic energy recycling process which maintains a relatively steady state for us to exist in.....temporarily.

reply to post by pixiekaram


Not necessarily moronic. If the big bang created this universe, then for this universe there was no before. This universe didn't exist nor its laws of physics. The reason we can't get energy out of nothing is because our laws of physics don't allow it, but our current laws and their limitations might not have existed at the time.

When they say nothing came before the big bang, they might just mean nothing that makes sense in this current framework.

It's hypothesized that there are multiple universes and its also hypothesized that each universe has its own set of physics. While it is impossible to get energy out of nothing with our current laws of physics, that may not always be the case. In this universe it may be very hard or impossible to create something out of nothing. But in another universe it may have been very easy to create energy.

We don't know what came before the big bang, or if there was a before. This dimension may be the only one with time with our perception being changed by the warping of space. Space/time. In other dimensions though there might not be time and everything may happen in an instant with another set of physics that allow for energy to be easily created.

All the energy to create this universe could have been created in an instant and then exploded into mass creating gravity that started warping the space around it creating a new set of physics where energy couldn't be created for free anymore and now time existed and we just got stuck with whatever physics we got stuck with. This may also explain why we've only seen one big bang. It happened, and it caused our physics to change or come into existence and the new physics didn't allow for such easy creation or use of energy therefore preventing another big bang from happening inside our universe.

One example is the speed of light and other constraints of the universe. They say after the big bang the universe expanded at a cosmic rate much faster than the speed of light for a short time and then slowed down. Perhaps this is how we get a universe that is 92 billion light years across but only 14 billion years old.

For a while certain things could travel much faster than the speed of light because our physics hadn't been set yet and as long as it has no mass it still can. But as soon as the universe expanded enough for the current laws of physics to set in, all of a sudden nothing can travel faster than light. But that doesn't mean it was always that way.

Also, it's hypothesized that 74% of the universe is dark energy and only 0.4% of the universe is made up of stars. That's a lot of energy. It's just dark energy has no effect on us because it passes right through ordinary matter. You can't build anything to harness that energy because the energy don't touch it. It'd be like building a windmill generator but the wind won't move the windmill. It passes right through it instead. Since the blades don't turn, you can't get the energy.

If the physical properties of matter were just different enough that they could "touch" the dark energy it would be pretty easy to get something out of nothing. You could do it all day long. But maybe we just got stuck with a set of physics that causes us not to be able to touch that energy. The universe/multi-verse is filled with mostly energy. We just can't touch it. Since we can't we have the idea that producing energy is very hard. It may actually be very easy to create certain kinds of energy, but we just can't harness it.

If there were membranes before the big bang it leads us right back the Watchmaker's analogy and you have to ask, well then where'd the membranes come from? But that could be a whole different set of physics and there might not be any way to figure that out.

Energy wise the only difference between the two theories is this. If it was just a big bang, then the energy came from nowhere. If the membranes collided to create the big bang, then the energy came from the collision. But where'd that energy come from? Nobody knows.

reply to post by pixiekaram

The answer to your question is that the universe is nothing. It has a total energy of zero.

This thread is in the wrong forum. I'm going to ask the mods to move it to Science & Technology or some other appropriate forum.

reply to post by pixiekaram


These supposed cosmologists must have recently done this change of opinion as the most recent text book I collected from 2000 says nothing expanded, made hydrogen expanded more exploded made heavier elements, exploded more made stars planets and organized systems.

From this rain fell upon a planet in an oxygen less environment (mind you water is made of oxygen) and washed mud as it does today into the water, and heat from volcanic activity (like today say in Yellow Stone) warmed the waters, then lightening (you know like we have today) struck the muddy water (just like we have today) and bam life appeared (just like it does not happen today).

From nothing comes everything with organization, nothing is more intelligent than everybody on ATS.

reply to post by pixiekaram


What about God then? God is just a piece a paper and then poof?! Why is the Big Bang so taboo yet the idea of God is not taboo.

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


I'm not saying I know or anybody knows if you actually read my above post "some things to big for us to know" translation some things are to big for man to understand maybe they will figure it out one day, but then again once they do there will be people coming on ATS saying it's all BS it's a conspiracy yadda yadda yadda thus the cycle begins.