Posted on 09/05/2003 9:24:29 PM PDT by russianteen
I know that this is a commonly debated topic, and we all know what the truth is *wink wink*, but I feel like ranting about it anyway. We have all heard about the big bang, but i'd like to explain it all anyway. According to that theory, all matter was condensed into one point, and that was the universe. There was nothing outside it. The one point in the universe was everything, and one day it exploded. That, along with the rest of the theory, seems seriously flawed.
For an explosion to happen, one or more forces have to act upon another group of forces. According to the big bang theory, there were no outside forces, or anything else outside the universe. There was no outside. Yet there was a big boom that eventually led to the creation of planets, stars, and of course us. hmm...nothing wrong with the theory yet?
One thing that I have thought about is if there was a big bang from one central point, if all matter wasn't incinerated from the start, it would all fly in a different direction from a single starting point. All chunks created by the explosion, however big or small, would go outward in its own way a nothing would come into contact with anything else. This would make galaxies or any clusters of spacial objects impossible to prove.
I'm going into my freshman year in high school in a few days and i don't think my opinion will be popular with most of my peers and teachers. sigh...damn liberals...
CP violation. :-)
However you may be forgiven because all teenagers believe they know everything.
There are so many errors and misapprehensions in your brief 'rant' that it is difficult to know where to begin. As Wolfgang Pauli used to say, "it is not even wrong," i.e., it does not even merit being called 'wrong'.
For example:
"One thing that I have thought about is if there was a big bang from one central point, if all matter wasn't incinerated from the start, it would all fly in a different direction from a single starting point. All chunks created by the explosion, however big or small, would go outward in its own way a nothing would come into contact with anything else. This would make galaxies or any clusters of spacial objects impossible to prove."
There was NO matter at the start; only radiation. So 'incinerated' is pretty apt. So, by the way, is "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" Steven Weinberg's book, The First Three Minutes describes a universe made of nothing but radiation--but with densities much greater than granite. No matter could exist. It took thousands of years (millions?) for things to cool sufficiently that atoms could form.
Another error: there was no explosion from a point. The explosion is still going on! Space began expanding.
It is clear that the Universe rapidly reached thermal equilibrium (go take a thermodynamics class) and this has caused problems because there was not time for regions distant from one another to communicate at the light-speed limit. However, a concept called 'inflation' solved that problem; it is possible for spacetime to expand faster than light! This has the effect of nicely homogenizing the early universe, leading to the smooth (but not too smooth) early universe we observe in this epoch.
Do us a favor: get thru college and Astronomy 101 before you give us your take on the nature of It All.
If you want, Radio Astronomer and/or I can give you a reading list.
--Boris
Sorry to pop your 'big' ideas... LOL
There is evidence for this, and other related theories. Quantum physics says that, roughly speaking, matter can be created out of "nothing", with some small probability. Every once in a while, the nothingness of space-time will simultaneously generate a particle and its corresponding antiparticle. Usually, the two particles recombine to annihilate each other, but under certain circumstances they won't. For example, if the particles happen to appear at the event horizon of a black hole, one may get sucked into the black hole while the other is ejected.
Since individual particles are formed all the time due to quantum mechanics, occasionally multiple particles will be formed at the same location. The probability is very small, but space-time has been around forever, so it has happened a lot. With very, very small probability, quantum mechanics says that a whole universe can pop right up out of space-time. Again, since space-time has been around forever, the probability that it would happen eventually is basically 1.0. Well, it did happen, and here we are.
There are some interesting problems with the Big Bang theory, even among physicists. The most striking is similar to the one you mention. You wondered why everything didn't just fly off in all directions without ever forming larger particles, much less galaxies. I think the explanation for your problem is that early on in the universe's history -- way before one-trillionth of a second -- the material of the universe was dense enough that it formed large clumps that persisted after inflation, and turned into stars, galaxies, and galactic clusters.
The other problem that physicists wonder about is why the universe is actually so homogeneous. Why is it that whatever direction you look in the universe, it's actually pretty much the same? In principle, any minor variations during the early formation of the universe should have persisted, so there should be something like cracks or discontinuities in the patterns of galaxies. But there aren't.
Joao Magueijo -- in a book called "Faster Than the Speed of Light" -- has a new, post-Einsteinian, post-inflation theory of the cosmos that explains this strange homogeneity. Basically it posits that during the first sub-trillionth of a second of the universe, the speed of light was faster than it is now. This enabled energy to be shared and equalized across the entire universe simultaneously, producing the subsequent homogeneity. There's no experimental proof for this theory (comparable, say, to Einstein's prediction that the mass of the sun would bend starlight), but it hasn't been disproved yet, either.
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