History Channel - The Universe - Before the Big Bang

February 25, 2008 | Chuck Plante - aka backtothestreets

[backtothestreets]

Heads up! Tomorrow night (February 26, 2008 at 9:00 PM), the History Channel will air a new segment of their Universe series that could be very interesting. It will try to address what was before the Big Bang. This is a subject I don't see anyway of discussing without raising religious beliefs.

[chessplayer]

“The Big Bang Theory has not yet been superseded by another theory.”

I think thats where String Theory comes in. I think it postulates that our universe is just the result of another universe. Kind of like our universe is a “baby” of another one.

[FreedomCalls]

But there was a mom and a dad, even though they were not me.

But you didn't have any thoughts before you were created. YOU were created, not your mom and dad -- they were created previously. Since TIME itself was created in the big bang, there was no "before" to even conceive of. If time did not yet exist, how can one go backwards in time to a point before it's creation?

Here's another thought experiment. You can go into a wood shop and create a table -- with a top say 3 x 5 feet of birch with a pine inlay. How would you answer the question "what kind of wood did you use on the top six feet from the edge?" There is no wood six feet from the edge. You can't answer the question. Just as there was no time before the big bang. You can't answer the question about what existed before the big bang as there was no "before."

[tj21807]

It is not possible to know what was there before the big bang.

Any dogma (religion, atheism etc.)that preaches otherwise is bunk.

[NicknamedBob]

"Was there God? If not, how did God come about? And why?"

Maybe God showed up to find out what the noise was about.

[oust the louse]

"some scientists theorize that the universe has been expanding and contracting for eons"

Expanding and contracting to where and by how much?....hmmmmm...tough to figure that one out huh?...

[AFPhys]

For me, it is also similar to asking what the square root of -1 is, too. The answer may be a useful construct, and even necessary to explain certain things, but that does not mean it is a part of true reality.

[AFPhys]

“... The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas About the Origins of the Universe”
-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—

Sounds like a really good book to get for my 11yo daughter now...

[AFPhys]

Actually, it was not until the “Recombination” phase about 400,000 years after the Big Bang that Hydrogen and Helium atoms were formed. Perhaps you were recalling that protons & neutrons were formed from quarks within the first millisecond or so, and that these later fused into (mostly) deuterium, tritium, and helium nuclei within the first 5 minutes or so, but atoms with electrons bound to nuclei were not possible at the extremely high temperatures a mere 100,000 years after the Big Bang.

[Doneit]

Thanks. I thought the description included things I’d already seen. Will watch!

[Age of Reason]

Was there God? If not, how did God come about? And why?

Before one can even attempt an answer, one should first define god.

I suspect any definition renders the concept of god as a tangle of logical contradictions--that is, whatever definition one attempts, is logically false.

Doing such an exercise I have found enlightening--after which, one discovers how murky one's concept of god was.

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP

[wolfcreek]

Actually I was trying to be humorous but, with the real existence of black holes and exploding stars, etc, I still believe there was a *similar* universe before the *Big Bang*.

IMO, there have been continual periods of creation and destruction. IOWs, an infinite universe.

[theDentist]

Thanks for the HU. I’m looking forward to it.

[Mr. K]

let’s see... a whole TV show on something they don’t know anything about? should be fun

[Mr. K]

In the beginning, there was this Giant Turtle...

[stockpirate]

The big bang is a hoax. It could never have happened.

[backtothestreets]

Just a friendly reminder of the History Channel Universe program tonight. I’m on the west coast so all you FReepers to the east have the first opportunities to make comments on the program content.

[backtothestreets]

Well DANG! The segment of the program devoted to before the Big Bang was a mere 8 minutes long, and never once pondered the existence of God, although the point of creationism was mentioned a couple times.

[Continental Soldier]

Thank you for your post. Our thoughts about God, when pushed to the limits, are very murky, indeed. There remain a very large number who continue to conceptualize God as portrayed in the Old or New Testaments, but modern science has taken us to new frontiers. What was there before the alleged ‘Big Bang?’ Was there God? And, if so, why? And what of the recent findings of quantum physics? Is there no real boundary between order and chaos? Are the rules of our world strictly a local matter? And is there a definable difference between what is and what is not? Scary stuff, indeed.

[Continental Soldier]

:)