Posted on 11/20/2010 10:05:12 PM PST by LibWhacker
Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang? The current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But a legendary physicist says he's found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos.
The Big Bang model holds that everything that now comprises the universe was once concentrated in a single point of near-infinite density. Before this singularity exploded and the universe began, there was absolutely nothing - indeed, it's not clear whether one can even use the term "before" in reference to a pre-Big-Bang cosmos, as time itself may not have existed yet. In the current model, the universe began with the Big Bang, underwent cosmic inflation for a fraction of a second, then settled into the much more gradual expansion that is still going on, and likely will end with the universe as an infinitely expanded, featureless cosmos.
Sir Roger Penrose, one of the most renowned physicists of the last fifty years, takes issue with this view. He points out that the universe was apparently born in a very low state of entropy, meaning a very high degree of order initially existed, and this is what made the complex matter we see all around us (and are composed of) possible in the first place. His objection is that the Big Bang model can't explain why such a low entropy state existed, and he believes he has a solution - that the universe is just one of many in a cyclical chain, with each Big Bang starting up a new universe in place of the one before.
Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang?
How does this help? Well, Penrose posits the end of each universe will involve a return to low entropy. This is because black holes suck in all the matter, energy, and information they encounter, which works to remove entropy from our universe. (Where that entropy might go is another question entirely.) The universe's continued expansion into eventual nothingness causes the black holes themselves to evaporate, which ultimately leaves the universe in a highly ordered state once again, ready to contract into another singularity and set off the next Big Bang.
As alternative theories go, it's not without its merits, but there's no evidence to support it...until now. He says he's found evidence for his ideas in the cosmic microwave background, the microwave radiation that permeates the universe and was thought to have formed 300,000 years after the Big Bang, providing a record of the universe at that far distant time. Penrose and his colleague Vahe Gurzadyan have discovered clear concentric circles within the data, which suggests regions of the radiation have much smaller temperature ranges than elsewhere.
So what does that mean? Penrose believes these circles are windows into the previous universe, spherical ripples left behind by the gravitational effects of colliding black holes in the previous universe. He also says these circles don't work well at all in the current inflationary model, which holds all temperature variations in the CMB should be truly random.
Here's where the fun begins. If the circles are really there and are really doing what Penrose says they're doing, then he's managed to overthrow the standard inflationary model. But there's a long way to go between where we are now and that point, assuming it ever happens.
The inflationary model has become the consensus for a good reason - it's the best explanation we've got for the universe we have now - and so cosmologists will examine any results that appear to disprove it very critically. There are also a couple key assumptions in Penrose's theory, particularly that all particles will lose their mass towards the end of the universe. Right now, we don't know whether that will actually happen - in particular, there's no proof that electrons ever decay.
Anything....
ABG - anything but God...
A very confused peroration. Electrons are created every day and every second, according to Nature’s laws, as we understand them. But how do we even know of this? Please cite Chapter and Verse.
“Now I want them to see that just as nature has given to them, as well as to philosophers, eyes with which to see her works, so she has also given them brains capable of penetrating and understanding them.”
... that’s my Book.
That's because AOG (Acts of God) doesn't have a symbol that can be used in scientific equations.
Carson runs deep. “After you die, your fingernails keep growing, but your phone calls drop right off.” ( makes swooping gesture and deadpans at camera. )
All Penrose achieves here is in unnecessarily complicating the dilemma by forcing the question, how does nothingness contract. But I say unnecessarily because the ordered state that the universe expands into, according to his proposition, is indistinguishable from the ordered state that it contracts to. Something that Penrose doesn't understand, or simply refuses to address.
I'll tell you why. Because if the universe were eternally old (infinite past) it would already have to have burned out and gone through the cold dark death. We wouldn't be here.
Sauron
Sauron
How can you call others stupid and narrow-minded when you missed the obvious question: what did god come from if everything has a beginning from something?
If, as science currently says, there was a singularity, then dimensions and time had a beginning. At least that’s what I thought I read. As I happen to believe in God, the Big Bang fits in nicely with that.
G-d is above all time.
“key assumptions in Penrose’s theory, particularly that all particles will lose their mass towards the end of the universe.”
Oh goody! So I can quit dieting, quit exercising and quit counting calories - just wait until the universe ends and poof, my weight is down to a healthy level!
Another thing, if the past is infinite then how did we ever reach the present?
I recommend Ben Stein’s movie,”Expelled: No Intellience Required.” One of the scientists in the film spoke at our church last Sunday. No one knew her belief system or her politics. Her “crime” was asking the students to think about all sides of the issues of creation and evolution (her own beliefs were unknown...all she did was ask the students to research and consider all facts before blindly accepting any theory). She was fired right away and blacklisted in the scientific community despite multiple awards, sterling credentials and high respect in the scientific community...and she is not the only scientist to suffer this disgrace.
I recommend Ben Stein’s movie,”Expelled: No Intellience Required.” One of the scientists in the film spoke at our church last Sunday. No one knew her belief system or her politics. Her “crime” was asking the students to think about all sides of the issues of creation and evolution (her own beliefs were unknown...all she did was ask the students to research and consider all facts before blindly accepting any theory). She was fired right away and blacklisted in the scientific community despite multiple awards, sterling credentials and high respect in the scientific community...and she is not the only scientist to suffer this disgrace.
There are two kinds of basic problems with the "big bang" idea. One is that it is based on a totally wrong interpretation of redshift data. Halton Arp (www.haltonarp.com), http://www.dragonscience.com etc. and others have shown multiple instances of high and low redshift objects which are clearly part and parcel of the same things, clearly refuting the entire basis of big-bang.
But the really big problems with the idea are philosophical. Show me a scientist who can expound the big bang idea and keep his face straight, and I'll show you a man who couldn't pass the most basic sort of a philosophy or logic course. In fact I'll show you a man who needs to be horsewhipped, the idea is so flagrantly ludicrous.
Having all the mass of the universe collapsed to a point would be the mother of all black holes; how's anything supposed to bang its way out of that?
Aside from that, time appears to stretch out to infinity both before us and behind us and to my knowledge, there is no evidence for believing anything else. Suppose a big bang DID occur 17 billion years ago.: is time supposed to have STARTED 17 billion years ago? If so, how and why? If not, then an infinite amount of time existed prior to the big bang; the mass of the universe would have sat there at its starting point literally forever prior to that event; why would a situation with an infinite past change?
Are we supposed to believe that the universe goes through cycles of big bangs and then big contractions to the original everything-at-a-point condition? The big contraction would be an absolute violation of the second law of thermodynamics. In fact they don't even have enough real mass in a single galaxy to explain why it doesn't fly apart and are reduced to talking about "dark matter" supposedly making up 95% of the universe (you'd be vacuming the stuff up off your carpet every day if that were the case).
Big bang is a philosophical and scientific morass which competent scientists have given up on; like evolution it is only being defended by dead wood and second-raters at the present time.
It seems to be an endless cycle. Good news is that we will not have to worry about it!!!! Give or take a few billion years. BTW the recent discoveries of large places of strange energy and what is thought to be dark matter. confirm that current thinking in this article
Amazing, isn't it. I'll believe the Big Bang theory when the edge of the expanding universe is actually observed. Until such time as that occurs I will continue to watch (with great amusement) as Physicists twist themselves into knots trying to make their equations fit what has been observed. Dark matter is a prime example. It has to be there, otherwise there isn't enough matter in the observable universe for the theories to work. Another big problem for Physicists who tout the BB theory is the expansion of the universe is apparently still accelerating (in all directions), at least from our single vantage point.
Funny thought - how would you describe the beginning of “time”,
especially that “moment” BEFORE it started?
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