Surprise: the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore

[Arlo]

We used to think the Big Bang meant the universe began from a singularity. Nearly 100 years later, we're not so sure.

https://i.imgur.com/O5SFHGZ.png


Where did all this come from? In every direction we care to observe, we find stars, galaxies, clouds of gas and dust, tenuous plasmas, and radiation spanning the gamut of wavelengths: from radio to infrared to visible light to gamma rays. No matter where or how we look at the universe, it’s full of matter and energy absolutely everywhere and at all times. And yet, it’s only natural to assume that it all came from somewhere. If you want to know the answer to the biggest question of all — the question of our cosmic origins — you have to pose the question to the universe itself, and listen to what it tells you.

Today, the universe as we see it is expanding, rarifying (getting less dense), and cooling. Although it’s tempting to simply extrapolate forward in time, when things will be even larger, less dense, and cooler, the laws of physics allow us to extrapolate backward just as easily. Long ago, the universe was smaller, denser, and hotter. How far back can we take this extrapolation? Mathematically, it’s tempting to go as far as possible: all the way back to infinitesimal sizes and infinite densities and temperatures, or what we know as a singularity. This idea, of a singular beginning to space, time, and the universe, was long known as the Big Bang.

But physically, when we looked closely enough, we found that the universe told a different story. Here’s how we know the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/big-bang-beginning-universe/?fbclid=IwAR3HD5mKxJOgDFzX7zgdqOFgiKDdTM-p4ILuK2p2qqY7zAZ0Gj7liAW5Qug

[Skybird]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Universe-Nothing-Lawrence-M-Krauss/dp/1471112683/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=lawrence+krauss&qid=1634323444&qsid=260-2179236-6343005&sr=8-2&sres=1800244789%2C1471112683%2CB06W9L1WCF%2C014303 8028%2C0393340651%2CB08QJSLWYW%2CB000FA5SO8%2CB00N BCUQJO%2CB00RQ1ZNT4%2C0006550428%2C1801100640%2C06 70033952%2C046500637X%2CB010WF11PU%2C0130333956%2C 8494495089&srpt=ABIS_BOOK

[mapuc]

I think our galaxy The Milky Way started with this Big Bang 16 to 17 billion years ago.
When it comes to the rest of the univers(es)it has always been there. No beginning and no end.

Galaxy dies and galaxy are born like our Milky Way.
Univers(es) expanding continues for ever

The perpetrator behind this is Dark matter

Markus

[Skybird]

Think twice, Markus - under guidance by the linked book. ;)

Things might not be what they look like. In the end, Big Bang is just a theory, made - like every theory - by best possible use of known facts at a given time. Possible that one day we put Big Bang into relation to a bigger context, as comologists today already do, or replace it completely with a then better fitting theory.


Scientific theories are never-ending construction sites. That is no criticism, nor pessimism - but the essence of the scientific process. No absolutes, no penultimate truths.

[mapuc]

Think twice, Markus - under guidance by the linked book. ;)

Things might not be what they look like. In the end, Big Bang is just a theory, made - like every theory - by best possible use of known facts at a given time. Possible that one day we put Big Bang into relation to a bigger context, as comologists today already do, or replace it completely with a then better fitting theory.


Scientific theories are never-ending construction sites. That is no criticism, nor pessimism - but the essence of the scientific process. No absolutes, no penultimate truths.

The Theory behind Big Bang is that the entire universe started from a little atom and throughout billions of years it expand to what it is today.

I say the theory could very well fit our own galaxy the Milky Way, but not the entire universe.

I have, based on all the documentary I've seen, heard and read, created my own theory.

Secondly
Nothingness can't exist. Universal law forbid this.

There are more universes than ours.

Markus

[Arlo]

I have, based on all the documentary I've seen, heard and read, created my own theory.


I didn't know you were an astrophysicist. :shucks:

[mapuc]

I didn't know you were an astrophysicist. :shucks:

I'm not an astrophysicist far from it.

I just like to create own theory about what's going on in our universe.

Markus

[Jeff-Groves]

Nothingness can't exist. Universal law forbid this.


And how exactly do you know what Universal Law is?
:har:

[Arlo]

I'm not an astrophysicist far from it.

I just like to create own theory about what's going on in our universe.


Many a non-realistic point of view started that way. Flat-Earthers, for instance. :shucks:

[mapuc]

Universal law is many things.

I made a search for nothingness cannot exist and found this

Nothingness doesn't be, that's the definition of nothingness (at least in this question) that what is not, does not exist. If there was no Universe, if there was nothing, nothingness would be, that is the only thing that there would be. Therefore, for nothingness not to be, something must be.

Markus

[mapuc]

Many a non-realistic point of view started that way. Flat-Earthers, for instance. :shucks:

I do NOT believe in flat-earth theory.

If people want to believe it they are welcome to do so.

Markus

[Jeff-Groves]

Yeah I can Google too!

Nothingness is an abstract concept, meaning it may or may not possibly exist.
:har:

We do NOT know all the Laws of the Universe! If they even exist is questioned!
And Laws can be broken!

[Sean C]

Meh. The article linked in the OP begins by stating the big bang isn't the beginning, and concludes by saying that:

Inflation could have gone on for an eternity, it could have been preceded by some other nonsingular phase, or it could have been preceded by a phase that did emerge from a singularity.IOW, the big bang theory is no less plausible than before. More precisely: we're now even less sure whether or not it is the right theory - and we may never know.

Don't get me wrong, it's still fascinating. Just a bit of click-bait at the beginning ... as usual.

What really interests me is the idea of "time" itself in [or "before"] these extremely early states.

[Arlo]

I do NOT believe in flat-earth theory.

If people want to believe it they are welcome to do so.


Nor do I. But, yes, people are indeed welcome to believe their own made up theories. But I'm not gonna let a surgeon that made up their own medical degree operate on me. Nor am I going to argue with a community of astrophysicists using my own theory of the universe based on a documentary I once saw. Just sayin'. :shucks:

[mapuc]

I do not claim that I'm absolutely correct in my home made theories when it comes to our universe.

Heck from what I know there could be nothing but emptiness and from nowhere the universe startet to expand.

Edit
Just having difficulty to believe nothingness can exist.
End edit

Markus

[Arlo]

I do not claim that I'm absolutely correct in my home made theories when it comes to our universe.

Heck from what I know there could be nothing but emptiness and from nowhere the universe startet to expand.


Well, I guess questioning your own home made theories is a good start. :shucks:

[mapuc]

What does Quantum Mechanics have to say about nothingness ?

According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum isn't empty at all. It's actually filled with quantum energy and particles that blink in and out of existence for a fleeting moment - strange signals that are known as quantum fluctuations. ... There are no particles there, and nothing to interfere with pure physics.

Markus

[Skybird]

Just having difficulty to believe nothingness can exist.

Good, that is a sign for your sanity.

But you may misunderstand it alltogether. Linearity may be the enemy of imagination. :D

Pick any of these for start.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=krauss+lawrence+

[mapuc]

Well, I guess questioning your own home made theories is a good start. :shucks:

You right so I have questioning my own theory about this nothingness.

Can it exist according to quantum mechanics-See above Skybirds comment

Can it exist according to law of physics
Well according to it, it can

Therefore absolute nothingness is impossible. One moer point "nothingness" means "there not being anything (not something)", and "be (being)" means "existence", which according to your definition is an attribute - and an attribute can only be an attribute of something (anything).

So what's correct. Law of Quantum mechanics or Law of Physics ?

Is there some mathematical formula who can support this state of nothingness
I haven't found any. Only some google book.

Markus

[Reece]

God created the universe! :yep:

[Jimbuna]

God created the universe! :yep:

So who created God?

[Skybird]

So who created God?


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/58/3f/63/583f6315a4a8b3ff38ec980f27a04410.jpg

[mapuc]

It's nothing but fata morgana all this is being feedet into our brain via pipes, while we lay in this liquid in our coffin.

Yep we are in the Matrix

(this can't be proved-yet)

Markus

[Rockstar]

According to religion God created the universe. According to science it was what they call Quantum Fluctuations.

Neither can be fully explained. Yet both can be defined much the same way. Both predate time and the universe, both are non physical yet act upon the physical both created something from nothing.

Who created God?
Who created quantum fluctuations?

[mapuc]

Let's take about God and its creation

Is God an entity or is the word God a substitut for some very advanced aliens who planted a seed (some type of atoms) and thereafter supervised while it grew.

Then the question is where did these advanced aliens come from.

Quantum fluctuations
Was this planted by God or these advanced aliens.

I think that from the very first start of our universe, there was nothing but this Quantum fluctuations-atoms appear and disappear...until some of them survived.

Another thought
Could there have been a kind of Big Bang from the very first start-A Big Bang who started this Quantum fluctuation ?

Markus

[3catcircus]

An interesting hypothesis is that the big bang is a white hole - that is - everything sucked into a black hole ends up a singularity. That singularity then turns into a new universe via a big bang. Every black hole in this universe turns into a new universe that bubbles off from this one. Our universe bubbled off from a different one via our big bang. Quantum foam in the multiverse.

The real mystery is what is the multiverse...

[mapuc]

An interesting hypothesis is that the big bang is a white hole - that is - everything sucked into a black hole ends up a singularity. That singularity then turns into a new universe via a big bang. Every black hole in this universe turns into a new universe that bubbles off from this one. Our universe bubbled off from a different one via our big bang. Quantum foam in the multiverse.

The real mystery is what is the multiverse...

Can't remember his name-Know he's from Asia-Theoretical physicist Use to see him in How the universe work, The universe and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.

He came up with this hypothesis black on one side-White on the opposite side.

Here's the mathematical formula for multiverses

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=67752

Analysis of WMAP and Planck spacecraft data has proved that we live in an invisible Multiverse, referred to as hidden, that has a quaternion structure

Markus

[Skybird]

It's nothing but fata morgana all this is being feedet into our brain via pipes, while we lay in this liquid in our coffin.

Yep we are in the Matrix

(this can't be proved-yet)

Markus
Truer is that we cannot objectively perceive the penultimate, final "reality". With what we perceive of the universe with our senses, we only demonstrate that our senses work according top their inbuilt modus operandi. And thats why for different species with different biological senses, one and the same universe appears to be very different things. We deal with echos of these perceptions that get fed into our brain via physical and chemical electric impulses. While the nature of matter also is somethign very different than what our senses seem to tell us about them.

We can get along. We can orientate ourselves sufficiently to exist for a while. And all the time we probably know NOTHING about how things "really" are. I mean: really "really". :)


Transcendence can only be had at the price of overlooking, forgetting oneself and one's own inbuilt sensual and intellectual limitations. Thats what meditation originally really is about. Its about the death of the - never having existed - ego, and the big danger therein lies in the easiness by which this can be understood terribly wrong, guiding you deeper and deeper into what you originally wanted to escape from.

The mere circumstance of "wanting" already is the root of all evil in this. And if you want to not want, you nevertheless already have stepped into the trap again.

Suche den Schimmer,
suche den Glanz,
Du findest es nimmer,
findest du es nicht ganz.
(Hans Bemmann: Stein und Flöte)

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."
(Mark 8, 34)

"The spirit is of shining clarity, so throw away the darkness of all your terms. Free yourself from everything!"
(Huang Po)


"There exists only one spirit and not a single particle of something different to which one could cling to. Because this spirit is Buddha-nature. If you students that are on the search, cannot awake to this substance of of spirit, then you will overlay the spirit with conceptual, abstract thinkling. Search for Buddha outside, and you will stay bound to external form, religious exercises and more things that are only harmful and are not the way of highets insight [...] Even the smallest thought to cling to this or that, already creates imaginary symbols that lead you back into diverse rebirths."
(Huang Po).

"What we see, never is nature itself, but is nature that is exposed to our way of asking questions about it."
(Werner Heisenberg)

"Therefore, I am the cause of myself according to my essential being which is eternal, but not according to my developing /unfolding apperance/form, which is temporal. And therefore, I am unborn, and according to that, I never can die. By the way of not being born I have existed sinc eall times, and I do exiost now, and will exist forever. What I am by the way of my developiung/unfolding appearance/form, will die and will be ruined, because it is mortal, therefore it will be shattere dby time."
(Meister Eckehart)

The Jews and the Taoists put it best:

"The name of God cannot be pronounced." (Judaism)

"The One Essence that could be known,
is not the essence of the Unknowable,
the idea that could be imagined,
is not the image of the Eternal.
Nameless is the All-One, is inner Essence.
Known by names is the all-many, is outer form.
Resting without desires means to learn the invisible inside.
Acting with desires means to stay with the limited outside.
All-the-One and all-the-many are of the same origin,
different only in appearance and name.
What they have in common, is th wwonder of Being.
The secret of this wonder
is the gate to all understanding."
(Lao Tse).

The summary of it all? By the experience of "Enlightenment", there is nothing that you would additionally gain. If only we would now it! We already are there and never have been somewhere else. The best spiritual practicing is to stopp making a fuss about thes eoh so important questions. Eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired, drink when you are thirsty, piss when your bladder is full. How much more obvious can reality be for you?

"Pain is no penalty. Death is no failure. Life is no reward."
(Treya Wilber)


According to religion
"Religion"? Which one? They can be very different. Some are theist and focus on deities and demons, others do not know such conceptions. Some are monotheist, some are multitheist, some are atheist. Some claim a beginning and an end, others dont even know what useful meaning these term could have. And ironically the most poetic genesis story of how the world was created, is even more fictional than all the others, its the song of the Ainur by Tolkien. The metaphor is beautiful, and the idea of matter/existence from music (wave), is not even that far-fetched, scientifically seen. All matter swings in waves, all the world swings in waves.

[Skybird]

Space exploration to me always means two things: the outer and the inner space. And something tells me that if one thinks it to the end, both are just one and the same.

Our world, we living people of today have forgotten this. And thats why our technology and science are off balance and threaten to destroy us. Only materialism. No spirituality. No wonder we are in troubles.

What is spirituality?

To me it is just this, only this and nothig else: the asking of the questions that every mind of sufficient complexity to form any concept of self-awareness and an understanding for its own mortality in one way or the other must ask and cannot avoid to ask and cannot run away from:

Who am I?
Where do i come from?
Ho much time do I have?

We are thanatophobic, and think all materialism and science as ways to trick death and run away from it. We may run. But we can't hide.

What is death? The dropping of the veil of Maya: What gets revealed behind it is only what always has been, since always. We never were away from it, and we thus never can return to it.



It is.

[Rockstar]

"Religion"? Which one? They can be very different. Some are theiostic and focus on deities and demons, others do not know such conceptions. Some claim a beginning and an end, others dont even know what useful meaning these term could have. And ironically the most poetic genweis story of how the world was created, is even more ficitknal than all the bothers, its the song of the Ainur by Tolkien. The metaphor is beautiful, and the idea of matter/existence from music (wave), is not even that far-fetched, scientifically seen. All matter swings in waves, all the world swings in waves.


Take your pick. I don’t think any one religion has the market cornered on truth. Though it seems to me most ancient religions have a source for the creation of the universe. What makes them different and diverge from one another is in the retelling of that story.

[Skybird]

You said "According to religion God created the universe." And that statement is a generalization that is wrong because it implies that every religion is theistic and has a creator/deity in its focus. You also wrote God with a capital G, that turns the word from a term like "god" (a category) into a name like the Christian "God".

One can be atheistic - and nevertheless feel religious, or spiritual. Religion is not an exclusive all-theism affair.

What they all seem to have in common is some kind of rituality and a trend for becoming policy- and material power-driven institutions wiht priests and cults and so forth. Thats why I am usually turned away by all of them, including theistic and atheistic alike. I am no friend of this ceremonial stuff, it tends to lure peopel awaya form what realy counts, making the symbol ursurping the relevance of what it only was meant to point at. And the abuse of rituals by hierarchies of priests to serve their own political, material, institutional interests, is obvious. Even in most forms of Buddhism (which knows no god/s and deities originally), this deformation can be seen. Thats why I tend to insist on keeping religions, all of them, on very, ry, very short lines. Lend them just a hand in good faith, and they eat you up alive, all of you.

[Texas Red]

God was never created. He has always been here, past, present, and future. I know, it's hard to comprehend that a being can have no beginning- even I cannot comprehend it. But that is OK as we are not supposed to comprehend it, we just believe by faith.
Hence why in Revelation 4:8, angels are quoted as singing in praise, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was (past), and is (present), and is to come (future)" and why God says he is the First and Last, the Alpha and the Omega which are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.

Now, moving away from religion here...


There are many, many theories as to how the universe began. Personally, I believe the age-old Big Bang theory is correct. There are other theories, such as when the last universe ended and was crushed into a singularity, it was rebirthed and expanded.

[Rockstar]

God was never created. He has always been here, past, present, and future. I know, it's hard to comprehend that a being can have no beginning- even I cannot comprehend it. But that is OK as we are not supposed to comprehend it, we just believe by faith.
Hence why in Revelation 4:8, angels are quoted as singing in praise, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was (past), and is (present), and is to come (future)" and why God says he is the First and Last, the Alpha and the Omega which are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.

Now, moving away from religion here...


There are many, many theories as to how the universe began. Personally, I believe the age-old Big Bang theory is correct. There are other theories, such as when the last universe ended and was crushed into a singularity, it was rebirthed and expanded.

Age old in that many of the ancient texts described the universe as having a beginning. What caused the writers to think that is unknown. It wasn’t exactly an age old accepted scientific theory until 1931 and data which seems support it now.

[mapuc]

What if there never have been a beginning of our Universe and there's no end.

To put it the way El Whacko said it

it's hard to comprehend

On the other hand
Even an eternity has a start, which mean even if there never been a beginning it must have start from scratch.

Markus

[Skybird]

The question is whether one takes your quoted religous text literally, or metaphorically. :03:

If I take Jesus metaphorically, I have him in one row with Hui Neng, Huang Po, Lin Chi and who else, Ch'An, Vedix texts, old Hinduism, old Taoism. Christian mystics like Origines, Meister Eckehart, Angelus Silesius, Thomas a Kempis, and others express the similioarities clearly although not referring and having known these Asian conceots. If I pick the old testament or the new one beside the glad tidings, or take Jesus literalyl and word for word, I have him on the shelve between the Harry Potter books, and the DVD with Hannibal Lecter.

There cannot be several truths parallel to each other, there can be just one. Where one thinks there are several ones, all but one must be wrong. thats what "truth" is about.

Believing is not knowing. Claiming that believing a virtue is the trick of those who claim something and know they cannot stand the testing of it.


The Golden Rule.


Or this:


“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” - Siddharta Gautama

[Platapus]

I think that the idea that humans have any understanding of how the universe was formed or even operates is hubris to a ridiculous extent.



We can form hypotheses from our single point of observation and we can test them across a tiny span of the Universe. That's what we do.... That's all we can do at this time



But that should never be confused with actual understanding of something this big and this old. Even our basic concept of size and time start to fail when applied to the Universe.



Maybe if we can study the universe for a million years or so from different observation points, we might start to garner an understanding.

[Skybird]

I think that the idea that humans have any understanding of how the universe was formed or even operates is hubris to a ridiculous extent.

We can form hypotheses from our single point of observation and we can test them across a tiny span of the Universe. That's what we do.... That's all we can do at this time

But that should never be confused with actual understanding of something this big and this old. Even our basic concept of size and time start to fail when applied to the Universe.

Maybe if we can study the universe for a million years or so from different observation points, we might start to garner an understanding.

We would need to be able to step back from it, although we are an integral part of it. Being a part of it we can perceive it as much as an eye can stare at itself. We do not deal with the reality. We deal with our abstract ideas about it, our imgage of it, our fantasy.

I think mind can gain understanding, but for that it is necessary to - well, to step back from the universe, and in the end: to step back from ourselves, from being what we are. We would need to stop being what we are, become unhindered by being anything at all that by its definition of being this and not that already is subject to limits and limitations and therefore cannot embrace "all". Infinity minus even just "1" is not infinity. There may not be many individual minds/spirits. Maybe there can be just one mind/spirit? One all-mind beside which nothing else does "exist".

We cannot do much, we cannot gain anything. What it is about is: let it be, let it go. Doing without intention or desire. Not craving, not resisting. You eat when you are hungry, you drink when you are thirsty, you sleep when you are tired and you piss when your bladder is full. What further comment is needed? What philosophical explanation is needed for doing these things under the given circumstances? What would be additionally gained by that? Our ego is just an illusory construction. Much more we are embedded in contexts and situations of which we are an integral part.

Maybe we are more the events around "us", than we are "ourselves", separate and isolated?!

Billions and billions of germs, bacterias ands virusses in our bodies. "Our" bodies...? Without them said body would not even exist.

What is this observer that thinks and sees and thinks of itself as "me", "my ego", "this is me"?


True understanding, self-realization can only be had at the price of transcendence.

[3catcircus]

I think that the idea that humans have any understanding of how the universe was formed or even operates is hubris to a ridiculous extent.



We can form hypotheses from our single point of observation and we can test them across a tiny span of the Universe. That's what we do.... That's all we can do at this time



But that should never be confused with actual understanding of something this big and this old. Even our basic concept of size and time start to fail when applied to the Universe.



Maybe if we can study the universe for a million years or so from different observation points, we might start to garner an understanding.

The fact that we had to invent the concept of "the observable universe" as a subset of the universe is all the proof we need that we can never really understand the full scope of the universe. Anything that can happen, will.

[Rockstar]

The fact that we had to invent the concept of "the observable universe" as a subset of the universe is all the proof we need that we can never really understand the full scope of the universe. Anything that can happen, will.

Then there’s that theory which says objective reality does not exist until it is observed.

[3catcircus]

Then there’s that theory which says objective reality does not exist until it is observed.

Even objective reality is subjective...

When I observe something and draw a conclusion, you can observe the exact same thing and draw a different conclusion - and both of us could be completely correct or both be stupendously wrong.

[Aktungbby]

Then there’s that theory which says objective reality does not exist until it is observed.Indeed, at 70, all my heretofore big bang theory is severely suspect; as I observe very little these days!:wah:

[Platapus]

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/7/79/quantum_mechanics.png