ummmmmmm. Okay, this isn’t easilt put-into-words-able. But bear with me, please.
A point is a point. One dimensional and all.
But more than a point (especially in terms of the universe) is not easily seperable from another more than a point.
Do we know (or are we pretty sure) that the big bang came from a point, and not from more than a point? If the big bang is all about two virtual paticles annihilating eachother, could they not have arisen in a more than point environment?
jb
I believe this is the logic that leads physicists to conclude that the Big Bang came from a point:
If something is more than a point, then it includes some space.
Space and time are considered to have been created during the Big Bang.
Therefore, no space could have existed before the Big Bang.
Therefore, the Big Bang could not have come from more than a point.
then I guess my question is this:
Is a big bang from an already established space different than one established from a point?
jb
If no space existed before the Big Bang, the it could have also come from less than a point, maybe even nothing …
It’s meaningless to speak of what ‘came before’ the Big Bang. The BB is a singularity, meaning that the conditions after do not follow from the conditions after. You cannot use the laws of physics to look back before that time.
Someday, there may be a refinement of the theory that would tell us something about a time before spacetime came to be. But such things don’t appear in the Big Bang theory.
So, the Bang could have come from an event in some earlier universe, or from the destruction of a universe, or it could have been sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkelseizure. We cannot say, within physics as we now know it. I can see why you say, ‘grrrr’.
Since when is a point one dimensional?
Last time I checked, lines were one dimensional. Points weren’t dimensional at all. No length, no width, no depth.
10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43 X 10^-43M = an 11 dimensional plank point. This is not a mathematical continuum, it’s a whole lot of space to be bubbling about in the inter-universal froth.
But how does anyone know that there wasn’t any space before the big bang?
I mean, space could have already been there, and it is infinitely big. Maybe all the big bang did was dump some matter/energy into this pre-existing infinite space.
Saltire just answered that question howardsims. We don’t know about anything before the big bang. We cannot even speculate about anything that occurs before the big bang right now…
If space had existed, devoid of mass and energy, before the Big Bang introduced those things to our universe, we would be able to detect it. One of the best experimental proofs of the Big Bang theory is the cosmic background radiation, the discovery of which gained a Nobel prize for Penzias and Wilson. This radiation is uniform in all directions (excepting certain tiny variations discovered by the COBE satellite, but they are really, really small).
If spacetime had not started to exist at the same time as the Big Bang, the background radiation would be lopsided, allowing us to point to the place where the Bang occurred. Since it is uniform, we know the Bang happened at all places at once (when ‘all places’ was a single point), then space expanded to make ‘all places’ as spread out as it appears today.
Overall, as has been said, it may be meaningless to consider the universe as a point. Other thoughts…
Current physics cannot describe the Time=0 condition of space. The Planck Length is one apparent barrier.
The Big Bang is not proven to be from virtual particles in a quantum foam, but it’s a decent speculation/hypothesis/educated guess.
I think it was Stephen Hawking who recently had the idea of the Big Bang seed being a “Pea Instanton”…something that is not quite point-like. Maybe I can find a link on this somewhere…
No need to get upset about the Unknown. It is perfectly acceptable (and expected) in science to admit that some things are not known yet. Better that (to drive research) than to make stuff up.
You cant really say what the big bang ‘came’ from. Before the big bang there wasnt anything for it to come from. Its like the bit before you turn the TV on. there isnt just a small picture, youve not turned it on at all, so theres nothing.