Universe Origin/Time Zero/Big Bang.

[Faithful One]

There are a few different theories on the origin of the universe. This debate /discussion is open to speculation , as speculation leads to hypothesis for scientists. The main focus should be on what certain theory that you believe in , even if it is out of the realm of physics. This debate is not limited to "facts", as they are still elusive in the field of cosmology , although new evidence is appearing, challenging the classical theories of GR , general relativity. Quantum mechanics are coming into play as to form a spatial formula that goes back to our "time zero". Then we have the string theory (M theory, that is the current gauge that can institute Quantum theory into the process of creation of the universe. This involves the Higgs Boson , the search for the "God particle ".

Then we have astrophysics, that deals with the physical nature of the stars and planets , celestial bodies. Please keep in mind that all ideas are welcome , as we have some that are more savvy than others on this subject that post here, do not feel the need to understand quantum theory , or string theory , as generalizations of your beliefs of our origins are welcome, no ideas will be mocked or looked down on, as even the physicists of today have not locked down what was before the "Big Bang", with certainty.


Questions for Debate/discussion.

1. Do you believe the Big Bang occurred , or are you one that goes more to the idea that the universe has been infinite in its existence?
2. Do you think that the Big Bang , (if you believe in the Big Bang) erased what preceded it , thus erasing any chance to prove what was there before it?
3. What does the phrase "something can not come from nothing " mean to you ? i.e this goes against quantum mechanics , that seems to show something can come from nothing.
4. Concerning the "God particle ", and the Hadron colliders, are you concerned of the rumors that they could create a collapse as to end our existence, searching for the "beginning "?
5. Do you believe that divine intervention brought this perfect storm of creation into play?
6. Do you believe that space and time could be defined as "something", also do,you beloeve that space and time existed before the Big Bang ?

Answering all is surely not necessary, one or two is fine. Once again we are looking for ideas as well as well established theories , so do not feel the need to have a physics degree to answer, or give your thoughts.

We have just had a lengthy debate on our origin concerning the biological , one gleaming similarity to both, the other being celestial origin , is that the exact origin is not provable in either the universe or on the earth , but the processes set in motion(by unobservable origin) are evident.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 1 by Faithful One]

I am not sure what I believe about the origin. A few things appear important enough to consider.

1. The universe is expanding.
2. The expansion appears to have a central origin.
3. The universe is old 14+billion

Aside from that there are a ton of interesting theories but none that are solidly established to invalidate the others. I also am more partial to the multiverse and big bounce theories.

[ecco]

Questions for Debate/discussion.

1. Do you believe the Big Bang occurred

Yes

2. Do you think that the Big Bang erased what preceded it

Don't know

3. What does the phrase "something can not come from nothing " mean to you ?

It means that Fundies will use whatever cute phrases they can to try to denigrate science.

4. Concerning the "God particle ", and the Hadron colliders, are you concerned of the rumors that they could create a collapse as to end our existence

Why should anyone be concerned of any rumors?

5. Do you believe that divine intervention brought this perfect storm of creation into play?

What "perfect storm of creation"?

6. Do you believe that space and time could be defined as "something"

Yes

also do,you beloeve that space and time existed before the Big Bang ?

Not in our universe

[Hamsaka]

[Replying to post 1 by Faithful One]

Questions for Debate/discussion.

1. Do you believe the Big Bang occurred , or are you one that goes more to the idea that the universe has been infinite in its existence?

I don't know. Maybe this cosmos has other possible ways of . . . being than the Big Bang versus an infinite existence. For now, I lean to the Big Bang, knowing that it is undergoing yet another rigorous shake-down.

2. Do you think that the Big Bang , (if you believe in the Big Bang) erased what preceded it , thus erasing any chance to prove what was there before it?

There was nothing other than that which expanded from the Big Bang.

3. What does the phrase "something can not come from nothing " mean to you ? i.e this goes against quantum mechanics , that seems to show something can come from nothing.

The term 'nothing' means a quantum vacuum. Lawrence Krauss is the physicist who wrote the book this idea comes from. I hear the book wasn't very good (?) Anyway, Kraus meant 'quantum vacuum' when he said 'nothing'. If he said "The Universe from a Quantum Vacuum" who would have listened? Astrophysicists, and no one else.

4. Concerning the "God particle ", and the Hadron colliders, are you concerned of the rumors that they could create a collapse as to end our existence, searching for the "beginning "?

Not in the slightest

5. Do you believe that divine intervention brought this perfect storm of creation into play?

No. If there were, I doubt we could know anything for sure about it.

6. Do you believe that space and time could be defined as "something", also do,you beloeve that space and time existed before the Big Bang ?

I don't know what you mean by 'something'? Why 'something'? Again, there is not anything or anywhere outside this universe. I get that our minds just glitch out at a concept like that. It is not common sense, and it sounds like a bunch of hogwash. But you won't find out HOW to understand it from an anti-evolution site.

[Divine Insight]

I have studied physics and cosmology my entire life with great interest. It not only became important to my career, but has never ceased being of interest to me on a personal level. I also consider mystical philosophies as well, but I do not include mythologies such as Hebrew mythology because that's not really a philosophy at all. In any case I would be very happy to share my answers to these questions with you.

1. Do you believe the Big Bang occurred , or are you one that goes more to the idea that the universe has been infinite in its existence?

To the best of my understanding this question is based upon ignorance of the Big Bang Theory. The reason I say this that the the Big Bang theory actually says nothing at all about how the universe may have "started" or whether it "started" from nothing. All it says is that at one point in time our universe was exceedingly hot and dense. To even call it "small" at that time is a misguided notion, even though many prominent physicists actually do this. The problem is that when we ask, "What was it small relative to?", we can only answer that by saying, "Relative to how large it is today". But if you contemplate that question deeply enough you'll see realize that comparing the size of the universe to itself is rather circular. So far all we know the universe could always be the same "size", even though it appears to be "expanding" today. I don't plan on going into the details of that in this post, but the idea that the universe was ever smaller than it is right now is actually a bad idea. Hotter and denser, yet. But smaller? Smaller than what?

2. Do you think that the Big Bang , (if you believe in the Big Bang) erased what preceded it , thus erasing any chance to prove what was there before it?

Yes. At least in the sense of having erased any signature of what might have preceded it. That's not really the same as having erased what preceded it.

In other words, I believe that the event that we call the "Big Bang" is indeed an impenetrable boundary past which we can never obtain data. In other words, the I believe that the Big Band is a sort of "Horizon" beyond which we cannot ever have knowledge of.

3. What does the phrase "something can not come from nothing " mean to you ? i.e this goes against quantum mechanics , that seems to show something can come from nothing.

The phrase, "Something cannot come from nothing" is actually based on ideas of classical physics. We were taught at an early age that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. However, it turns out that there are exceptions to this rule. Cosmologists now realize that it may indeed be possible to create energy and matter if gravitational fields are also created simultaneously.

And so we now believe that it may very well be possible to create something out of "nothing", although that "nothing" turns out to be something after all. It's just not the same kind of stuff that we normally associate with matter or energy.

4. Concerning the "God particle ", and the Hadron colliders, are you concerned of the rumors that they could create a collapse as to end our existence, searching for the "beginning "?

No. I understand the physics associated with gravitational black holes well enough to know that they could never achieve that kind of energy. So it's not a problem. We couldn't do it if we wanted to.

5. Do you believe that divine intervention brought this perfect storm of creation into play?

Divine "intervention"? Intervention in what?

I'm open-minded concerning a possibly mystical essence to reality, however my view on that are far more along the line of various Eastern Mystical pictures of the "divine". Those philosophies see all that exists as being a manifestation of the divine, not an "intervention" by the divine. And if that's the case, then we too would need to be a manifestation of the divine, not an entirely separate creation from the divine.

So for me, if there is anything mystical going on it's more likely going to be along those lines and certainly nothing at all like the mythologies of the Middle Eastern type of external Godheads.

But no I don't rule out the possible mystical essence of reality. On the contrary it's all very mystical to me.

6. Do you believe that space and time could be defined as "something", also do,you believe that space and time existed before the Big Bang ?

Yes, I accept Einstein's picture of a fabric of spacetime where both time and space are a property of what we call the physical universe.

However, I also recognize that the space and time that we intuitively experience is not the only concept of space or time available. The time that we experience in this physical universe is "Entropic Time". That is to say that the dynamic behavior of our physical universe has a property that we call "Entropy". But that is a property of our physical universe. It wouldn't be the same kind of "time" that exists even in the quantum domain for that matter.

In fact, Paul Davies explains this quite well in his book entitled "About Time". And other physicists also recognize that there is a need for more than just the entropic time that we measure within our universe.

Once again, I don't want to get into all of this in this post. Most people have enough difficulty trying to understand Einstein's Relativity time and how time dilation works within the universe. They aren't in any position to be trying to grasp ideas of time that are far stranger than this.

But yes, the entropic time that we experience in this universe is indeed "something'. It's a fabric of the physical instantiation of dynamic space. And therefore time is as "physical" for us as any physical location is.

But as I say, non-entropic concepts of time may exist as well. But those concepts are not intuitive because they require total abandonment of "cause and effect" which the human mind can't deal with. Especially not in any logical way because are very notion of logic is based on reasoning that things "follow" from other things. And that itself is a form of cause and effect. We simply can't imagine non-entropic time, because for us it seems "illogical". At least to our intuitive notions of what "logic" ought to be.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 1 by Faithful One]

4. Concerning the "God particle ", and the Hadron colliders, are you concerned of the rumors that they could create a collapse as to end our existence, searching for the "beginning "?

Just got to nip this one in the bud. No No and No. Using the Hadron collider to detect a Higgs field and associated particles will not cause a black hole that will end our existence it can't and it won't. This is just a spurious rumor that got spread early on during its development, because of the possibility of micro black holes.

Black holes in particle accelerators?
According to general relativity, a black hole should form whenever some mass is squeezed into a very small region of space. The precise meaning of "very small" is defined by a length scale called the Schwarzschild radius. This radius depends on the mass, but also on the properties of whatever hidden extra dimensions there might be. For certain kinds of extra dimensions, the Schwarzschild radius of a given mass will be significantly larger than otherwise. Consequently, in order to form a black hole, you wouldn't need to compress matter nearly as much as in a space without extra dimensions. Under those favourable conditions, collisions of protons with other protons at the LHC should result in the formation of miniature black holes.

More concretely: Protons consist of subcomponents called quarks. When two quarks in collision do not just fly past each other, but collide nearly head-on, then, at the energies achievable with the LHC, a sufficiently high concentration of mass would result, and a mini-black hole would form. In the following animation, the relevant portion of our three-dimensional world is represented by a plane, embedded in a higher-dimensional (in the image: three-dimensional) space. Ordinary elementary particles are confined to the world-plane - they cannot ever move out into the extra dimensions. When the two particles moving in that plane have almost reached each other, a black hole forms, its horizon represented by the black sphere:



Particles in the plane in near collision, resulting in the formation of a black hole
[Animation size 222 kB, please allow time for loading]

Black holes with a mass that is extremely small are extremely unstable. The intensity of Hawking radiation, a hypothetical quantum process by which black holes emit elementary particles, depends on the black hole's mass - the smaller the mass of a black hole, the greater the amount of energy emitted in this way. By this process, the mini-black holes formed in particle accelerators would evaporate nearly as soon as they are created - typically, such black holes would only exist for a few tenth of a trillionth of a trillionth (10-25, in exponential notation) seconds. Their decay would result in a sudden blast of a few energetic particles. Possibly, some exotic remnant object might survive as well (however, what such an object could be, and whether or not there really are exotic remnants, is not at all clear to present physics):



Minuscule black hole decaying into particles and into gravitational energy leaving the brane
[Animation size 194 kB, please allow time for loading]

With respect to the numbers, types and energies of the resulting particles a decaying black hole would look different from other particle collisions. Some of its characteristics are directly related to the existence of the extra dimensions: For instance, in the animation above, you can see that some energy associated with gravity (shown as brown, wiggly arrows) is carried off into the extra dimensions - from the point of view of a physicist in our three-dimensional universe, this energy would simply vanish!

When physicists study collisions in particle accelerators, they use sensitive detectors to keep track of the different types of resulting particles and their energies, which enables painstaking reconstructions of each collision. The following image, based on a simulation, shows what physicists might see in their detector when a mini-black hole decays:



Simulated particle traces for black hole decay
[Image: R. Godang using IguanaCMS]

The image shows a sideways cut-away view of the particle detector CMS currently under construction at the LHC accelerator. The colliding particles move at right angles to the image, either directly towards the observer or directly away. The lines represent traces of particles produced by the black hole decay. The green line is the trace of an electron, while the red lines are traces of particles called muons, which are similar to electrons but more massive. The blue and cyan lines denote particles consisting of quarks, and are thus distant kin to protons and neutrons - so-called Kaons in blue, pions in cyan.

The detector contains a powerful magnet which produces a strong magnetic field. This field deflects all moving particles which carry electric charge - in the illustration, their traces are curved. The degree of curvature, combined with other data, is used to infer each particle's momentum and mass.

By studying collision products, physicists at LHC would be able to identify and study the decay of mini-black holes. In this way, they might be able to prove the existence of extra dimensions, and even gain some insight into their properties.

How often would black holes be produced? The answer depends on what model of the extra dimensions one uses for the calculation. According to some models, black holes should be produced at the LHC at a rate of one per second!

If particle collisions at high-energy may indeed create black holes, we should also expect creation of other gravitational objects which are predicted by string theory, such as higher-dimensional spatially extended solutions of the gravitational equations called branes - cousins of the three-dimensional extended subdomain that is our world.

Artificial mini-black holes - should we worry?
Do we need to worry? Might these mini black holes start growing and, eventually, devour the whole earth? We should not worry about this. Even if you do not trust the calculations predicting a quick demise for such minuscule black holes, there is solid data to go by.

If black holes really form in high-energy particle collisions, they are also continuously created in the earth's atmosphere by the collision of Ultra High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) with nuclei of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and other elements present in the atmosphere.

UHECRs are particles of unknown origin and identity (protons? light atomic nuclei?) reaching the earth from outer space. In such collisions with atmospheric nuclei, a shower of new particles is produced (consisting mostly of electrons, their slightly more massive cousins called muons, and photons). These particles can be detected by specialized observatories on earth or in space, as sketched in the following illustration:



Incoming cosmic ray colliding with atmospheric nucleus, producing a shower of particles, some of which are detected by a detector array on Earth
[Animation size 194 kB, please allow time for loading]

The collision energies for UHECRs can be enormous - some observations show energies of hundreds of TeV (hundreds of trillions of electron volts), which is much larger than the collision energies in particle collider experiments. And while the events with very high energy are exceedingly rare, this type of collision has been going on for literally billions of years, so an inordinate number of mini black holes would have formed. Since the earth has not (yet!) disappeared into one of these black holes, the much less massive man-made mini black holes should be quite safe.

The rarity of ultra-high energy collisions is also one of the reasons that physicists have not been able to confirm or disprove the formation of mini-black holes in this way. Still, this could change over the next few years, as the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory in Argentina, which has just started taking data, becomes fully operational.

So will we actually find these tiny black holes? Hard to tell - at the moment, we have no direct evidence that the models predicting the existence of extra dimensions are on the right track, and if they are, that among all the many possible shapes and sizes for the extra dimensions, those realized in our universe allow the production of miniature black holes at a detectable rate. Our search is akin to playing the lottery - we will need to get very, very lucky to find what we seek, but if we did, the payoff would be enormous: We would have the first direct evidence that space has extra dimensions!

http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlig ... erators_bh

[enviousintheeverafter]

1. Do you believe the Big Bang occurred , or are you one that goes more to the idea that the universe has been infinite in its existence?

This isn't an either/or.

[Divine Insight]

1. Do you believe the Big Bang occurred , or are you one that goes more to the idea that the universe has been infinite in its existence?

This isn't an either/or.

Exactly. Theists often phrase their questions in a way that reflects their own limited thinking. They imagine dichotomies that simply aren't valid dichotomies.

[H.sapiens]

1. Probably, that's what the forensics leads one to think most probable.
2. I have no idea, what there was before time existed (now there's a weird thought) is hard to imagine.
3. Yuch, YEC!
4. Rumors? No not a worry, energy levels are no where high enough.
5. I don't believe in a perfect storm of creation.
6. Since "something" could be "anything," sure. How many dimensions and which ones are a bit hard to sort out in a non dimensional singularity. Go watch "Flatland."

[enviousintheeverafter]

1. Do you believe the Big Bang occurred , or are you one that goes more to the idea that the universe has been infinite in its existence?

This isn't an either/or.

Exactly. Theists often phrase their questions in a way that reflects their own limited thinking. They imagine dichotomies that simply aren't valid dichotomies.

I think it has more to do with the way established cosmology has been so widely misrepresented by popular science journalism (most any popular article talks about the Big Bang as the "beginning of the universe" or something similar).