If “the big bang” created the universe, then where did the matter for the big bang come from? (Note: I believe in the big bang theory, so don’t try to convert me, I’m just curious)
The big bang wasn’t just an explosion of matter and energy. It was an explosion of space and time, too. There was no existance before the big bang, so there couldn’t be any “creation” as we traditionally understand it. The matter and energy just came with the universe along with space and time.
So everything just appeared? Something doesn’t compute for me.
yeah, it seems to go against the conservation of energy theory. There are two theories I’ve heard.
One is that the universe is cyclical and was once a universe just like this until all the matter turned into black holes and collapsed into it’s self, aka the Big Crunch, but there is not enough evidence to show that the universe is dense enough so that all the matter in the universe turned to black holes will be far reaching enough to slow the universe and then reverse it. Scientists are first trying to prove the existence of “dark matter” and then when they prove it exists (personally, I think “dark matter” is just something they use to make the equations fit), they have to show that there’s enough of it out there to make the universe crunch. But that still raises questions, how could it just be cycling around forever and ever and not have started somewhere?
The second theory is divine creation of the universe, how far you want to stretch it (that “God” was just the catalyst for the big bang or that’s it all the way to “God” reaches in and makes differences every day) is your personal preference. This again raises questions like if God created the universe, then what is God’s universe like? What created God? Hard to say, maybe God lives in a universe where there is no conservation of energy, maybe we are one universe’s simplified simulation of their universe. I think you’re asking a question that is far beyond comprehension of the puny human mind.
Sort of. Events like the big bang have a tendency to defy common sense logic because they fall so far outside the every day experience.
To say it appeared, in the everyday sense, isn’t exactly accurate. When you think of something appearing it requires some sort of timeline. A point before the object was there, the moment when the object appears, and then a point when the object exists.
The universe is different, though. There was no point in time before the universe (and all of the matter and energy) existed. The instant of the big bang had no past. The universe has existed for all time, it is just that ‘all time’ is a finite number.
The “Big Bang” ( A theory named by people who disagreed with it passionately, by the way ) is a very difficult concept to describe in terms of our usual perceptions. It wasn’t big, and it didn’t go bang. Everything didn’t suddenly appear at the beginning of time, in the center of space. None of those concepts mean what we assume they do now in the moments prior to Planck time.
The conditions during the earliest instants of creation do not have duration, or location, or relative interactions in the same way that matter and energy interact within space during time as we perceive it. The “singularity” apparent when peering back in time is an artifact of our own perception. Space itself is created, and time. Within it the propagation of energy, and matter gain their characteristic limit of C. Space itself may not have that limit, or may have acquired it along with time.
The particulate nature of post Planck matter (it’s granularity) may be a characteristic which evolved with space, or the extrapolated result of some early event which broke the primal phenomenon into multitudinous sub phenomena, which each created space, and consequent distance and volume. It is also possible to suppose that the universe we perceive is limited to that portion of the entire universe that did not travel beyond the limits of the forces we now know, prior to the establishment of the limit of C. If that is the case, it is as likely as not that we (and all the galaxies, and quasars, and superclusters) exist in a tiny remnant fragment of that total.
I know a lot more about the words than I do about what all the words mean. I love reading about cosmology, but the concepts are very difficult to hold in the mind. Of course I could just be wrong.
Tris
There are hypothetical particles, called “virtual particles” which pop into existance from nowhere. They would seem to violate conservation of energy, but do not, because of quantum uncertainty. This version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that one cannot make an exact determination of energy and time simultaneously. This means that the energy “account” may be unbalanced–but only for a finite time.
This is not a totally useless theory–in fact, it can be used to explain electric fields (using virtual photons), and why such fields grow weaker with distance.
What does this have to do with the Big Bang? Some have hypothesized that our entire Universe, which appears to have arisen from a point singularity, started as a virtual particle. The implication is that if there is an ultimate “Big Crunch” (resulting from a closed universe), then the energy debt will be repaid.
I’m not sure how attractive the theory is currently.
It’s simple. Big Bang Theory explains how the universe formed from the nigh-very beginning. Time and space were created with lotsa energy. Things expanded. Energy cooled into matter. Viola, our universe.
What the universe/Big Bang came from is unknown. Period.
There are speculations and educated guesses and claims to faith, but it is not known because there is no way for us to access that information. Perhaps someday physicists will understand new levels of physics and we’ll have a decent mathematical/physical explanation.
As Phobos said any guess as to where the Universe came from is a nearly impossible question to answer. Any answers are almost entirely speculation.
That said I have heard the the Universe came from the unravelling of higher dimensional space. For some reason (inherent instability?..who knows) dimensions 1,2,3 split off from dimensions 4-10 (I think…not sure on that. Also, the 4[sup]th[/sup] dimension may be part of our Universe…be sure to distinguish between the timelike 4[sup]th[/sup] dimension and the spacelike 4[sup]th[/sup] dimension though). All of the other dimensions snapped down into a Planck length point that also happens to touch all points in our Universe (talk about counter-intuitive!). The energy released from this split was stupendous and what we see around us today.
There is some ‘evidence’ pointing in this direction. As you get to higher and higher energies (REALLY high energies) the different forces of nature begin to unify into a single force. Also, when you do the math of our current forces in higher dimensional space many of the inconsistencies between them also start disappearing. Everything just seems to fit together better in higher dimensional space.
This might actually be provable (theoretically…practically it’s near impossible). Just as energy was released on the spilt of dimensions if you put enough energy back into the system you can unify things again and probe the higher dimensions. Unfortunately, IIRC, it would take something like the complete conversion of the mass of Jupiter into energy and a particle accelerator from here to the cenetr of the Milky Way Galaxy to achieve so it won’t happen anytime soon.
This is by no means proof of anything so take it for what it’s worth. Just thought I’d throw it out there.
The conservation of anything, and the creation of the universe are not mutually reconcilable. The same set of parameters cannot allow both to be possible. It’s like that big rock everyone bugs God about. Can a physicist describe a paradox so complete he cannot resolve it?
Tris