Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

BBC ^ | 6-6-08 | Chris Lintott

[Michael Barnes]

A team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang.

The discovery comes from studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB), light emitted when the Universe was just 400,000 years old.

Their model may help explain why we experience time moving in a straight line from yesterday into tomorrow.

[Michael Barnes]

A team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang.

The discovery comes from studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB), light emitted when the Universe was just 400,000 years old.

Their model may help explain why we experience time moving in a straight line from yesterday into tomorrow.

[Michael Barnes]

Interesting read...

[Soliton]

Ping

[Michael Barnes]

Fairly certain I see you from time to time on science related threads..

[scooter2]

Here’s fifty cents. Go call someone who cares.

[Michael Barnes]

Didn’t get any last night huh?

[theDentist]

I always had this theory that the universe would expand (big bang) and then somehow collapse to the infinite, then explode again to it’s limits, contract again etc. To me, that is God’s Heartbeat. Maybe I was right... now the scientists have to work out the fuzzy details...

[Angry Write Mail]

"...our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang..."

Perhaps I can assist our physicist friends:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

[Michael Barnes]

How would it collapse though? From the brevity of my readings, the universe is accelerating.
Personally speaking, I like the idea of a collapse only to start all over again. The idea of "everything" speeding away from "everything" else and simply burning out and fading away into darkness is a bit, well, lonely.
But, the universe is what it is I suppose.

[theDentist]

How would it collapse though?

Ah, if I had THAT answer, I'd earn a Nobel Prize. Not an Al Gore Nobel Prize, but a REAL ONE worthy of respect.

[vimto]

I am reminded of the Monty Python sketch where a scientist has a fragment of bone but has no problem constructing a massive Dinosaur from it.

[DManA]

It’s almost easier to grasp a place before time and space then it is to imagine what’s it must be like inside the heads of guys that think this stuff up.

[Squawk 8888]

My understanding is that the point is still being debated. Depending on how much “dark matter” is out there, it is possible that the universe will collapse again due to gravity.

Asimov had an interesting theory about this- if the universe contains enough mass to collapse due to gravity, then that gravity is also sufficient to prevent light from escaping. Ergo, the universe is a black hole.

[Michael Barnes]

Ergo, the universe is a black hole.

Now that is one to ponder...

[theDentist]

2 ideas for people to shoot down easily just for fun

1) The universe may have an elasticity to it like water. I forget the name of it, but you know when you pour a puddle of water onto a desktop, and look at it from the side, you see the water has a depth and curves down to the desktop. It has a thickness, but it also retains shape. Same as we dee a drop of water in a spaeship, being round or oblong etc and spinning, but these droplets retain their shape until they interact with something, yes? Well, if the universe were like that, it would expand endlessly until it reached the limit of that elasticity, though it doesn't explain a reason to contract.

Which leads me to 2> Dark Matter. They're discovering many things about Dark Matter, and I wonder: perhaps dark matter has gravitation forces to it. This would allow for elasticity, and could also somehow cause a it to retract, to collapse....

Anyhow, it seems the basic theory of physics would apply to the universe as they would to a puddle of water on a desktop, or a droplet in a spaceship.

[DManA]

"Every time you break an egg or spill a glass of water, you're learning about the Big Bang," Professor Carroll explained.

Seems to me life is exempt from the Second Law. In order to have an egg to break some animal had to organize random elements into an organized structure of the egg.

[pabianice]

Not everyone.

[DManA]

What you call elasticity most people call surface tension. I don’t see any analogy between surface tension and the universe.

[tumblindice]

1.) `surface tension’

[DManA]

I wonder of Wells would have been please or disgusted over how fancy they made his time machine look.

[KarlInOhio]

Seems to me life is exempt from the Second Law. In order to have an egg to break some animal had to organize random elements into an organized structure of the egg.

The chicken and egg aren't a closed system unto themselves. Life is able to make things more organized locally only because of the energy supplied by the sun, which is increasing in entropy.

[Gondring]

It’s almost easier to grasp a place before time and space then it is to imagine what’s it must be like inside the heads of guys that think this stuff up.

And even worse is trying to get inside the heads of the ladies! ;-)

Adrienne L. Erickcek, principal author (a few years back)

[Gondring]

I was thinking “Ya gotta break some eggs to make a universe!” ;-)

[DManA]

Guys is non-gender specific.

[DManA]

Well, at least life flaunts the SPIRIT of the law. ggg

[DManA]

How about this? Gravity acts on random matter and organizes it into bodies with very complicated structure. Isn’t a planetary system that evolves out of a nebula an example of reversing entropy?

[theDentist]

Ah, Surface Tension. That's what I was trying to think of.

My analogy is: The universe can be like that droplet of water in space. It expands in all directions, but if we could somehow go to the very border of the universe, a wall of universe, so to speak.... that wall may have a surface tension. And like the droplet, it reaches a certain diameter depending on it's volume, but retains the shape until that tension is broken. Anyhow within that droplet are millions of atomes, interacting with one another, repelling from one another, just like stars and galaxies, but all subject to that surface tension.

But that could be the vicadin talking....

[DManA]

Maybe you’ve got a Nitrous-oxyde leak?

That stuff never worked on me.

[tumblindice]

Interesting. I’m no scientist, but I know if you carefully over-fill a tumbler with water the surface of the water will actually be slightly higher then the rim of the container, and `crowned’ due to surface tension.
Add more water and eventually the tension is overcome (`explodes’, if you will) and water flows down the side of the glass.
In your analogy, if the `container’ is a certain volume of space with no need to contain the contents due to near absence of gravity—you can grab a handful of water—then I suppose you look to determine what is being added to the contents of the `bubble’ to cause the tension to fail and the bubble to burst.

[Quix]

Thanks.

I’ve always believed in time before the Big Bang.

[RightWhale]

Yeah, but I don’t post science threads anymore.

[RightWhale]

Yeah, but I don’t post science threads anymore.

[LeGrande]

Thanks for the ping, this is interesting stuff : )

[antiRepublicrat]

May I suggest a story? The Last Question (whole short story at link) by Isaac Asimov. Interesting twist on the whole universe end and creation thing.

[LeGrande]

Yeah, but I don’t post science threads anymore.

You should :) and put me on your ping list.

[RightWhale]

I might suggest http://arxiv.org/archive/ and go for the real deal.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

OK, so you told us who you believe did it; now how did He do it?

Different question being asked here...

[Michael Barnes]

Thanks, I’ll give it a read..

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Quix!

alas, already posted:

Hints of ‘time before Big Bang’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7440217.stm
Posted on 06/06/2008 12:52:23 PM PDT by chessplayer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2027262/posts

-related, in reverse chrono-

History Channel - The Universe - Before the Big Bang
February 25, 2008 | Chuck Plante - aka backtothestreets
Posted on 02/25/2008 1:30:39 PM PST by backtothestreets
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1976091/posts

Echoes from Before the Big Bang May Be Inaudible
Scientific American | July 1, 2007 | JR Minkel
Posted on 07/01/2007 9:37:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1859444/posts

Time Before Time [speculative cosmology]
Seed Magazine | August 28, 2006 | Sean Carroll
Posted on 08/30/2006 1:01:48 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1692401/posts

Probing Question: What happened before the Big Bang?
Pennsylvania State University | 03 August 2006 | Barbara Kennedy
Posted on 08/04/2006 4:26:21 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1677590/posts

The universe before it began
Seed Magazine | 5/22/06 | Maggie Wittlin
Posted on 05/24/2006 3:59:24 PM PDT by LibWhacker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1637759/posts

What Was Here Before the Beginning? [Big Bang, Cosmology]
RedNova.com | 06 January 2005 | Martin Rees & Helen Matsos
Posted on 01/06/2005 5:29:32 PM PST by PatrickHenry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315656/posts

Questioning the Big Bang
MSNBC.com | 4/25/02 | By Alan Boyle
Posted on 04/25/2002 2:34:20 PM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672878/posts

Before the Big Bang
Source: New Scientist
Published: May 20, 2000 Author: New Scientist
Posted on 06/05/2000 15:04:22 PDT by Sol Taibi
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a393c23e60d10.htm

-and-

From the present to the past [Stephen Hawking]
PhysicsWeb | 30 June 2006 | Staff
Posted on 07/04/2006 4:29:06 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1660121/posts

No Big Bang? Endless Universe Made Possible by New Model
Physorg.com | January 30, 2007 | University of North Carolina
Posted on 02/03/2007 7:49:37 AM PST by aculeus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1778588/posts

Forget the Big Bang Theory
OnPoint Radio | Thursday, May 31, 2007 | host Tom Ashbrook
Posted on 06/08/2007 12:11:39 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1847168/posts

[SunkenCiv]

[Quix]

Ahhh. Thx.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Well, duh......God was SOMEWHERE when He pushed the plunger......