Questioning the Big Bang

MSNBC.com ^ | 4/25/02 | By Alan Boyle

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

How did the universe begin, and how will it end? Among cosmologists, the mainstream belief is that the universe began with a bang billions of years ago, and will fizzle out billions of years from now. But two theorists have just fired their latest volley at that belief, saying there could be a timeless cycle of expansion and contraction. It’s an idea as old as Hinduism, updated for the 21st century.

THE “CYCLIC MODEL,” developed by Princeton University’s Paul Steinhardt and Cambridge University’s Neil Turok, made its highest-profile appearance yet Thursday on Science Express, the Web site for the journal Science. But past incarnations of the idea have been hotly debated within the cosmological community for the past year — and Steinhardt acknowledges that he has an uphill battle on his hands.
       “It will take people a while to get used to it,” he told MSNBC.com. “This introduces a number of concepts that are quite unfamiliar, even to a cosmologist.”
       
TINKERING WITH THE COSMOS
       Years ago, Steinhardt played a prominent role in formulating what is now the most widely accepted scientific picture of the universe’s beginnings, known as inflationary Big Bang theory: that a vanishingly small quantum fluctuation gave rise in an instant to an inflated region of space-time, kicking off an expansion that is now picking up speed.
       The model has weathered repeated experimental tests, including studies of patterns in the microwave “afterglow” of the Big Bang.
       “All the competing models were knocked off,” Steinhardt said. “So we had a situation where it looked as if we had converged on a single idea. But I was always disturbed by the idea that there were no competitors around.”

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[Scully]

I was speaking of the mysterious and unnamable Planet Eight.

Oh brother, here we go again! Tell me, Patrick, did you ever find it? ;)

[AndrewC]

Here is another article:

Boy, another country heard. This one, well here are some quotes...

"In this picture, space and time exist forever, Steinhardt says. "The big bang is not the beginning of time. Rather, it is a bridge to a pre-existing contracting era."

Curiously, the cyclic universe, as it is called, puts the origin of some present-day structures and events prior to the Big Bang.

Steinhardt thinks the seeds of galaxy formation were created by instabilities that arose during the last contraction, before the crunch that led to "our" bang.

The new model "turns the conventional picture topsy-turvy," he says.--- I'll say!

Also remaining is the "before" problem.(Which, despite what is written on these threads, is a problem)

Even the cyclic universe does not address when the cycles began, so "the problem of explaining the ‘beginning of time’ remains," the researchers say.

[longshadow]

***How did it come to be that the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy exists, or, for that matter, any law of physics?***

Some other people are interested in that and similar questions. They are called ANTHROPIC COINCIDENCES

I believe "Physicist" has addressed this issue in previous threads.

If recollection serves, for every symmetry (Charge, Parity, & Time) in QM, there is a corresponding Conservation Law.

I defer the details to him....

[Pagey]

bttt

[PatrickHenry]

Tell me, Patrick, did you ever find it [the mysterious and unnamable Planet Eight]?

Those who have found it, don't tell. Those who haven't have nothing to tell. So there you are.

[tet68]

Sort of like being born.

[AndrewC]

If recollection serves, for every symmetry (Charge, Parity, & Time) in QM, there is a corresponding Conservation Law.

Things are not so straightforward in this arena.

No completely satisfactory explanation of CP violation has yet been devised. The size of the effect, only about two parts per thousand, has prompted a theory that invokes a new force, called the "superweak" force, to explain the phenomenon. This force, much weaker than the nuclear weak force, is thought to be observable only in the K-meson system or in the neutron's electric dipole moment, which measures the average size and direction of the separation between charged constituents. Another theory, named the Kobayashi-Maskawa model after its inventors, posits certain quantum mechanical effects in the weak force between quarks as the cause of CP violation.

The attractive aspect of the superweak model is that it uses only one variable, the size of the force, to explain everything. Furthermore, the model is consistent with all measurements of CP violation and its properties. The Kobayashi-Maskawa model is more complicated, but it does explain CP violation in terms of known forces.

CP violation has important theoretical consequences. The violation of CP symmetry, taken as a kind of proof of the CPT theorem, enables physicists to make an absolute distinction between matter and antimatter. The distinction between matter and antimatter may have profound implications for cosmology. One of the unsolved theoretical questions in physics is why the universe is made chiefly of matter. With a series of debatable but plausible assumptions, it can be demonstrated that the observed matter-antimatter ratio may have been produced by the occurrence of CP violation in the first seconds after the " big bang," the violent explosion that is thought to have resulted in the formation of the universe (see big-bang model).

The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 420 March 29, 1999 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein

Direct CP violation has been observed at Fermilab by the KTeV collaboration. An important way of apprehending the basic nature of time and space (in the finest tradition of Greek philosophy) is to ask "what if" questions. For example, will a collision between particles be altered if we view the whole thing in a mirror? Or what if we turn all the particles into antiparticles? These propositions, called respectively parity (P) and charge conjugation (C) conservation, are upheld by all the forces of nature except the weak nuclear force. And even the weak force usually conserves the compound proposition of CP. In only one small corner of physics---the decay of K mesons---has CP violation been observed, although physicists suspect that CP violation must somehow operate on a large scale since it undoubtedly helped bring about the present-day preponderance of matter over antimatter.

K mesons (kaons) are unstable and do not exist outside the interiors of neutron stars and particle accelerators, where they are artificially spawned in K-antiK pairs amidst high energy collisions. K's might be born courtesy of the strong nuclear force, but the rest of their short lives are under control of the weak force, which compels a sort of split personality: neither the K nor anti-K leads a life of its own. Instead each transforms repeatedly into the other. A more practical way of viewing the matter is to suppose that the K and anti-K are each a combination of two other particles, a short lived entity called K1 which usually decays to two pions (giving K1 a CP value of +1) and a longer-lived entity, K2, which decays into three pions (giving K2 a CP value of -1). This bit of bookkeeping enshrined the idea then current that CP is conserved.

From CP violation

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

That's always been my belief. See reply #7

[longshadow]

Things are not so straightforward in this arena.

Yes, the CP violation is a very interesting topic, one which "Physicist" has discussed in previous threads.

I'm not sure how it is supposed to relate to the issue we were discussing, to wit: Conservation Laws in Physics and their relationship to symmetry in QM, which was offered in response to "BikerNYC's" question about the underlying causes of those Conservation Laws.

[MHGinTN]

My doctor (Dr. Who) said last week that he would be by here tomorrow, but he miss-set his Tardis and he showed up yesterday, so I missed him. I would have asked him to explain all this, but ...

[edsheppa]

Also remaining is the "before" problem.(Which, despite what is written on these threads, is a problem)

In what sense can one talk about the ‘beginning of time’ when cycle precedes cycle supposedly ad infinitum? I see no problem here except the expectation that our intuitions are valid in regions beyond our experience.

[AndrewC]

which was offered in response to "BikerNYC's" question about the underlying causes of those Conservation Laws.

The original problem was the answer to this question by BikerNYC --- How did it come to be that the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy exists, or, for that matter, any law of physics?. I answered that with a post to the Anthropic Coincidences(AC) and you brought up symmetry breaking and conservation laws. This induced me to present the CP violation which is another AC(--although physicists suspect that CP violation must somehow operate on a large scale since it undoubtedly helped bring about the present-day preponderance of matter over antimatter.--).

[AndrewC]

I see no problem here except the expectation that our intuitions are valid in regions beyond our experience.

You may not find it a problem but my observation is a consequence of the statement made in the reference namely---Even the cyclic universe does not address when the cycles began, so "the problem of explaining the ‘beginning of time’ remains," the researchers say.

[Physicist]

This induced me to present the CP violation which is another AC

I don't think there's any coincidence involved with CP violation. If the amount of CP violation were any more or less than what it was, it isn't clear that it would have affected us greatly, as long as it wasn't too close to zero. The universe would have been different, but not necessarily so different that complexity could not have arisen. There's nothing magical about the observed degree of CP violation.

For the record, I don't believe in "fine tuning", at least not at the level of symmetry breaking. If you find that there are two "independent" quantities that cancel each other to an exact precision, that indicates to me that there is some as-yet undiscovered physical principle that forces them to be the same (i.e., they are not really independent). To many decimal places, your legs are exactly as long as they need to be to reach the ground; there's no magic behind that coincidence.

[AlGone2001]

That's always been my belief. See reply #7

Actually, your use of the biblical verse, "Let there be light" requires several bangs.

The Lord places demarcation points between the events of creation, called days.

This would mean that there would have had to be a bang each day for your version to be held in esteem.

The Lord was very smart in that He created the foilage/plant life on the third day, but created the sun on the 4th day.

This means that he could not have taken a very long time between the days.

The plant life lives partly on the sun's light, and He commanded all things to procreate after their own kind.

This means that there was not a long period between the days, as the plants had to obey His command.

The term, "big bang" implies that an event happened without reason. As the bible proves, God's creation was very methodical and organized. Nothing happened by accidental circumstance.

[AndrewC]

I don't think there's any coincidence involved with CP violation.

I think that is the point, at least for some. Here is a link to those who are curious about such things.

Life, the cosmos and everything

Life, the cosmos and everything
Physics in Action: October 2001

Cosmologists who study the link between life in the universe and the values of the physical constants were once viewed with suspicion by other scientists. But a recent high-profile conference at Cambridge showed that the subject is fast becoming academically respectable.

Stars in the making

The notion that certain features of the universe, such as the values of the physical constants, may be constrained by the requirement that intelligent observers can arise was first mooted nearly 40 years ago. This "anthropic principle" has been a focus of controversy (even intense antipathy in some quarters) ever since. However, judging by a conference that took place in Cambridge at the end of August, the notion seems to be attracting the interest of an increasing number of eminent physicists. The meeting - the first in a series supported in part by the Templeton Foundation - took place at the Cambridge home of Martin Rees, one of the foremost advocates of the anthropic principle. Future meetings will address the biological and philosophical aspects of the subject.

What is the anthropic principle?

There are various versions of the anthropic principle. The "weak" version accepts the laws of nature and the values of the physical constants as given and claims that the existence of life then imposes a selection effect on where and when we observe the universe. For example, the current age of the universe cannot be less than the nuclear-burning time of a massive star - otherwise there would not have been enough time for the chemical elements that are essential for life to have been generated by stellar nucleosynthesis. On the other hand, the universe cannot be much older than this because the stars would have all burned out. This means that life can only exist when the universe has roughly its observed age. This is a logical consequence of our existence and is relatively uncontroversial.

The "strong" version of the anthropic principle suggests that the presence of observers imposes constraints on the physical constants themselves. In other words, life could only arise if the constants were close to their observed values. Some people might infer from this the existence of a creator who tailor-made the universe for our benefit. However, cosmologists have recently realized that processes in the early universe may naturally have generated an ensemble of universes, each having different values of the constants. We live in one of the universes that is conducive to life. Even though invoking multiple universes is highly speculative, this makes the strong anthropic principle much more palatable from a physical point of view since it just becomes an aspect of the weak version.

In order to argue that the universe is fine-tuned for the emergence of observers, one must specify who qualifies for this description, and not everybody agrees on this. Brandon Carter, who first coined the term "anthropic principle" in 1974, introduced the meeting by emphasizing that the concept can be refined in various ways according to whether one includes every conceivable observer (including ants and extraterrestrials) or just Homo sapiens. He proposed a "refined" anthropic principle, in which the observer is "weighted" according to the amount of information processed. It is not clear, however, that consciousness is the key feature of the anthropic constraints. Other speakers stressed that many of the fine-tunings are just associated with the development of complexity.

Evidence for the anthropic principle

As Virginia Trimble emphasized, the prerequisites for getting out of bed in the morning are many and varied! In particular, the existence of life (or at least our particular form of it) requires the formation of a hierarchy of structures - planets, stars and galaxies - and, as successive speakers pointed out, each of these seems to require rather special conditions.

Carl Murray focused on planet formation. The discovery of several dozen extra-solar planetary systems in recent years suggests that our solar system is far from unique, although he did emphasize that merely having planets is not enough for life to occur since the Earth seems to have been fortunate in various other ways. For example, it is known that the Moon has played an important role as a climate regulator. If the Moon were much smaller, the spin axis of the Earth would change chaotically - leading to catastrophic weather variations that could exclude the emergence of life. Another fortunate aspect of our solar system is that the outer planets seem to have played an important role in the formation of the inner ones.

Our presence on Earth might be regarded as an example of the weak anthropic principle. Rather more controversial are the anthropic conditions that seem to be associated with stars. I discussed in my talk how these involve constraints between the dimensionless "coupling constants" that describe the strengths of the fundamental interactions - in particular the electric fine-structure constant a = e²/h-bar c ~ 1/137, the gravitational fine-structure constant a_G = Gm_p²/h-bar c = 5 x 10^-39, and also the weak fine-structure constant a_W = gm_ec²/h-bar³ x 10^-10, where G is the gravitational constant, g is the Fermi constant, m_p is the mass of a proton, h-bar is the Planck constant divided by 2 pi, c is the speed of light and m_e is the mass of an electron.

It seems that a_G must be roughly a²⁰ for both "convective" and "radiative" stars to exist (prerequisites for planets and supernovae, respectively) and roughly a_W⁴ for neutrinos to eject the envelope of a star in a supernova explosion (necessary for the dissemination of heavy elements). These "coincidences" might be regarded as examples of the strong anthropic principle.

Several contributors highlighted an even more striking example associated with stars. This involves the strong interaction and concerns the generation of carbon (another prerequisite for our form of life) in the helium-burning phase of red giant stars. This occurs via a reaction in which two alpha particles unite to form a beryllium nucleus that then combines with another alpha particle to form carbon. However, as the late Fred Hoyle (see Sir Fred Hoyle 1915 - 2001 and page 11 of this issue, print version) first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely tuned resonance in this interaction. This fact is sometimes presented as an anthropic prediction but, as Trimble intriguingly pointed out, there may have been evidence for this resonance in the data even before Hoyle suggested that it be sought in the laboratory.

Heinz Oberhummer, who has studied this resonance in more detail, reported some beautiful work showing how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that the nuclear interaction must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life.

Cosmological anthropic constraints

The anthropic constraints associated with the formation of galaxies involve various cosmological parameters, such as the density of the matter in the universe, the amplitude of the initial density fluctuations, the photon-to-baryon ratio and the cosmological constant (an extra term Einstein introduced into his field equations for cosmological reasons and which may cause the universe to accelerate). Some of these parameters might be determined by processes in the early universe rather than being prescribed freely as part of the initial conditions. However, as Martin Rees discussed, even small deviations from the observed values of such parameters would exclude the formation of structures like galaxies and their subsequent fragmentation into stars.

More follows at the above link. It seems as if "ID" is a proper topic among physicists.

[AndrewC]

To many decimal places, your legs are exactly as long as they need to be to reach the ground; there's no magic behind that coincidence.

Otherwise, they wouldn't be legs. And the same unusual coincidence applies to the dice in craps. They have exactly six faces, the amount needed for that game otherwise you might be playing D&D.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Actually, your use of the biblical verse, "Let there be light" requires several bangs.

I don't think so. Genesis Chapter 1 verse 3, "And God said Let there be light: and there was light."

Badda bing, badda boom. The Big Bang. The rest of the days that follow don't concern me as far as this discussion is concerned.

[AlGone2001]

I don't think so. Genesis Chapter 1 verse 3, "And God said Let there be light: and there was light."

Actually, He called for the light, and then he called for animales, and then He called for man. He did all of of these things in an orderly fashion.

Your theory implies that the presence of light led to the creaion of man, while the very One who created the light also made man. He did this in his own time, and man was not a direct result of the light.

Light was not the cause of man. God formed man from the dust of the earth, blew His breath ito Him, and man became a living sould.

Therefore, the light was not the big bang that led to the creation of man. It was only a thing which God did to promote man's creation.

Now, the burden is on you to show me from a biblical passage where the light led to man's creation through it's own action.

Before every thing God created, we see that He said, "Let there be ____".

The light never said that, did it?

[AlGone2001]

Badda bing, badda boom. The Big Bang. The rest of the days that follow don't concern me as far as this discussion is concerned.

Of course. You feel comfortable taking one verse out of its context and setting to use it as you wish, but far be it from me to use the subsequent verses to show how your interpretation of the Word of God is wrong.

Have you thought about how ridiculous your comment sounds?