the big bang

[bluetuesday]

no, not a thread about my sex life.

 

i've been thinking about the big bang. and i'm no scientist, but i was wondering about the whole concept of a singularity from which all matter sprang.

 

now i don't want a debate about whether or not god exists AGAIN. that's a circular argument that gets us nowhere. but i am wondering on what basis scientists think that complex structures governed by consistent laws arose from a random explosion. if everything was random in the beginning, is there any evidence to say it's still random?? and if it's not still random, when did it stop being random?

 

from what i gather of the big bang theory, 15billionish years ago, everything that is now in the universe - planets and suns and all the atoms - was condensed into a small space. tiny space. about the size of a manolo blahnik shoe box. okay, not a shoebox, but a small cupboard.

 

and then an explosion of some sort started forcing the matter outwards very very quickly and some of that matter formed into planets etc and the universe has been expanding ever since.

 

so my question is (and this does concern god a little bit because obviously i have my own theories about the creation of the universe, which incidentally also include it beginning with a singularity, but that's another story), how does science account for the fact that order sprang from chaos? what is the scientific explanation for something random like an explosion causing something which appears to be governed by laws such as planetary motion and gravity and thermodynamics? how did those things, which science has confirmed, arise? by chance? and if it's by chance - why don't they 'by chance' become chaotic again?

 

there are some decent brains lurking on the shack. if any of them can tell me what science says about it, i'd be grateful. perhaps there is an explanation for it or another example of the whole random to order thing in an area of science i know nothing about (which is most of them). or perhaps science actually teaches that the universe is anything but ordered, i dunno. throw me a bone, someone.

[Rooster_DAR]

"You have to thing about the timescales involved first"

 

Science still has a long way to go from understanding the universe, all we understand is the principles of physics and how it relates to us here and now. You have to keep in mind the timescales and distances involved here, it's easy to miss these details.

 

The idea of the big bang was found by Milton Hummison and Edwin Hubble by accident. They noticed that distant stars were shifted to the red (doppler effect) and deduced that these stars and galaxies were receding at incredible speeds. For one, the doppler effect is a property of physics that is undeniable, hence the universe is definitely expanding.

 

Our understanding of physics tells us the if something is expanding, then there had to be an origin with energy to perpetuate this motion. Now I don't think anyone can answer you question with absolution, but given the timescale the universe has had it's not hard to understand how order can rise from chaos. The properties of space and matter will eventually allow suns, galaxies, and solar systems to form, they have had billions of years to coalesce and uniform.

 

BTW..Although there is order from chaos, there is still nothing that's permanent, everything in the universe has a life cycle

 

Science is now looking at string theory and the probability that two dimensions may have collided together to create a mass explosion such as the big bang. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we do know for absolute certainty that the laws of physics are exactly the same throughout the universe. At the subatomic level however, these laws and principles seem to be null and things are more chaotic and disorderly, unlike our level in the universe.

 

The likelihood of other dimensions is highly probable, and more than likely in the near future we will be able to deduce it to fact. Humans have not been around on the planet long enough to know everything, but as time goes by we see science uncovering and unlocking these secrets.

[westernxer]

Yep, as Rooster said, science is evolving, which is why science is so cool. It's amenable to change as we learn more about our universe.

 

You can watch the Big Bang on television... just tune in to any channel with static. That static is cosmic noise from 15 billion years, so say the experts.

 

http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/65bang.html

[bluetuesday]

thanks guys. rooster - timescales... is that like saying given enough time anything's possible? is order a product of time, then? because as i understand it, there was no time until the big bang so time can't have had properties (such as the ability to produce order) that weren't defined chaotically. see what i'm saying?

 

a couple of things struck me as i was reading.

 

Our understanding of physics tells us the if something is expanding, then there had to be an origin with energy to perpetuate this motion. Now I don't think anyone can answer you question with absolution, but given the timescale the universe has had it's not hard to understand how order can rise from chaos. The properties of space and matter will eventually allow suns, galaxies, and solar systems to form, they have had billions of years to coalesce and uniform.

 

see, this is kinda the same thing. i always thought there was no space either until the big bang. like, matter created the space itself. because as i understand it (and i may be wrong), matter didn't explode into a space that was already there. it is stretching the space as it goes. so how could space have 'properties'? surely they are being defined by the movement of matter, which was random in the beginning. and if space does have properties which allow suns galaxies to form, how did it get these properties? what determined them? ah, questions, questions.

 

BTW..Although there is order from chaos, there is still nothing that's permanent, everything in the universe has a life cycle

 

perhaps i should have used the word 'sustainable'. like you, i think the universe is changing and impermanent. but there's no doubt it's capable of sustaining life for a very long time in a relatively constant and stable enviroment.

 

Nothing is set in stone yet, but we do know for absolute certainty that the laws of physics are exactly the same throughout the universe.

 

certainly science has proved experimentally some of the laws of the universe. but even the word laws suggests the opposite of random, you know?

 

so i still can't get to the bottom of if there's any evidence that random things can produce order. although i can turn on my telly and watch the fallout. thanks westernxer. yet science must have some evidence, since both the big bang (random) and the laws of the universe (ordered) co-exist as theories. could they actually be incompatible?

[alphamale]

well BT...all this stuff is still theory based upon some evidence but we could be totally wrong. the way it works in science is that theories are based upon other theories which are in turn based upon base theories. So if one of the theories is wrong (which is highly likely) then the whole deck of cards falls apart.

 

in addition, the big bang is just one current theory about how the universe started.

 

it may take thousands more years to find out for sure if at all.

[axisdenied]

Okay, blue. You've posed a lot of questions, but the one I am interested in shedding some insight on is your question of order from chaos. Here goes.

 

The postulate is that there was an incredibly condensed mass filled to the brim with energy. The energy became so great that it broke the structural tension of what was holding the singularity together. An explosion occured, and everything that composes the known universe flew out. I know I didn't have to tell you that much. Here's where it gets interesting.

 

The evolution of the forces in the big bang has been well traced and it explains why you see phenomena you observe today. Think of all four fundamental forces as having originally been one big primal force. At some point in the lowering of the density and pressure of the universe in the aftermath of the big bang, things occurred that broke the symmetry of the forces. Gravity broke off first, which explains why it is so weak. It split off when the explosion happened because all the sudden you have several masses flying about and exerting attractions on one another.

 

A second or so after the big bang, the universe was composed of heavy subatomic particles. Some were even particles that you can't observe in nature today because the evolution of the universe has wiped them out (they've been produced at high energies in labs with high-powered particle accelerators, which is why we know they existed at some point). Some of these particles attracted to one another and broke the symmetry of the strong force, making light nuclei. So now we have a universe composed of very energetic ions and electrons (and some other ****, but that's beyond the scope of my discussion).

 

A minute or so after the big bang, the universe was a plasma. This means that everything carried a charge. When the density and pressure lowered enough to allow for the recombination of charged particles (meaning that they attracted to one another and became neutral atoms), the symmetry between the primal force and electromagnetism broke away.

 

There's another force, called the "weak" force, which governs particle decay, but it has been combined with the electromagnetic force. I orignally said there are four, but for all insensive purposes, there are three.

 

The reason you see heavier atoms is because of fusion processes in stars, which were collected together originally because of gravity, which was already split from the primal force, but this process took a few million years.

 

So, basically, in the timeline of the evolution of the universe, the mean energy of the universe at a given moment manages to unite each force with the next until they are united into one primal force. No chaos about it, just a lot of technicality.

 

Hope this helps. I laughed at your comment that the big bang had nothing to do with your sex life.

[Storyrider]

A humorous, surreal version of events, exerpt from the short story "All at One Point" by Italo Calvino:

 

 

"Naturally, we were all there,—

old

Qwfwq said,—

where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?

"I say 'packed like sardines,' using a literary image: in reality there wasn't even space to pack us into. Every point of each of us coincided with every point of each of the others in a single point, which was where we all were."

 

 

"...at the same time that Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0 was uttering those words: '... ah, what noodles, boys!" the point that contained her and all of us was expanding in a halo of distance in light-years and light-centuries and billions of light-millennia, and we were being hurled to the four corners of the universe (Mr. Pbert Pberd all the way to Pavia), and she, dissolved into I don't know what kind of energy-light-heat, she, Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0, she who in the midst of our closed, petty world had been capable of a generous impulse, 'Boys, the noodles I would make for you!," a true outburst of general love, initiating at the same moment the concept of space and, properly speaking, space itself, and time, and universal gravitation, and the gravitating universe, making possible billions and billions of suns, and of planets, and fields of wheat, and Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0s, scattered through the continents of the planets..."

 

[magichands]

I say 'packed like sardines,' using a literary image: in reality there wasn't even space to pack us into. Every point of each of us coincided with every point of each of the others in a single point, which was where we all were.

I was wondering what the point was. And now I know. No more need for sedatives.

[Storyrider]

I was wondering what the point was. And now I know. No more need for sedatives.

 

Are you calling my post boring? I guess maybe you had to be there.

[magichands]

Are you calling my post boring? I guess maybe you had to be there.

Never. Now I know what the point is, I won't lose any more sleep. We should celebrate.

[Storyrider]

Never. Now I know what the point is, I won't lose any more sleep. We should celebrate.

 

Got it. No more pacing the floor till dawn pondering the point of the universe. Time to move on to more meaningful pursuits.

[magichands]

Time to move on to more meaningful pursuits.

I thought you'd never ask.

[bluetuesday]

Okay, blue. You've posed a lot of questions, but the one I am interested in shedding some insight on is your question of order from chaos...

 

...Hope this helps. I laughed at your comment that the big bang had nothing to do with your sex life.

 

i feel like mr thick, the winner of last year's 'thickest thicky in thicksville' competition. but are you saying there never was proper chaos? in layman's terms, the explosion wasn't really random, it was a controlled outward forcing of matter?

 

if i understand you, you're saying that there was a 'primal force' which didn't get defined by the big bang, but defined it. am i in the right ballpark? if so what defined the properties of the force? or is energy assumed to be pre-existing - albeit formless?

 

see, i just can't get my head around this. there's something i'm not seeing, or maybe there just aren't answers to what i'm asking. my understanding of this is looser than a floozy's flaps, i'll admit, but i do sort of understand what happened after the big bang with the cooling and the formation of structures. sort of. ish.

 

i just don't understand the nature of the bang, i suppose. i also don't understand whether the primal force you speak of was a property of the condensed matter, or a force that acted upon it. or whether the matter wasn't in fact condensed, it just somehow 'appeared' from a huge (or tiny) ball of formless energy. but then that leads me onto how energy becomes matter... and that's a question for a different thread.

 

mostly i don't understand properly if my questions are even the right ones.

 

sigh. isn't the universe super.

[alphamale]

i just don't understand the nature of the bang, i suppose. i also don't understand whether the primal force you speak of was a property of the condensed matter, or a force that acted upon it. or whether the matter wasn't in fact condensed, it just somehow 'appeared' from a huge (or tiny) ball of formless energy. but then that leads me onto how energy becomes matter... and that's a question for a different thread.

you have lot of company BT....no one understands or knows for sure. these guys like steve hawking can drive around in their electric wheelchairs all day long.....but when their battery runs out they know little about this stuff that is 100%

[serial muse]

Hi BT,

 

Your question reminded me of a funny quote that highlights confusion about this theory:

 

"In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."

 

One thing that's important to note initially is that Big Bang theory isn't actually intended to describe the "origin" of the universe. As Rooster mentioned, the theory was developed only to describe the universe's current phase of expansion, not its actual initiation. (Someone brought up string theory – not to confuse you, but one idea which is connected with the string theorists is that the universe is actually continually expanding and contracting – we just happen to be in an expansion phase.)

 

But back to the bang. Another confusing point is that, contrary to popular perception, Hubble's law didn't actually say that the universe began at a single point, or singularity, which then exploded into empty space in the manner of an explosion on Earth. The law actually only says that matter was denser everywhere in the early days of the universe, and is now thinning, becoming less dense.

 

The idea that the universe “exploded” one day was actually coined by a scientist who vigorously opposed the idea that the universe was expanding – it was he who derisively gave it the name “big bang.”

 

But the idea that people are postulating that random matter suddenly exploded into existing space is misleading: actually, the theoretical concept is not so much that matter flies apart, it’s that space itself is expanding. One common description of it is like the surface of an inflating balloon, with galaxies attached like dots to the surface. (Another one that makes me hungry likens it to baking bread, with galaxies suspended like raisins in the rising dough.)

 

The idea that space might be expanding is a hard concept to wrap our brains around, because it defies what we know about Newtonian, classical physics and geometry. But it follows from Einstein’s general theory of relativity (which is the theory that unites gravity with special relativity, stating that gravity is not really due to a force per se but is due to the curvature of space and time) that the energy and matter content of space determine its curvature and geometry.

 

In other words, I'm not sure it's accurate to describe the expansion as creating "order out of chaos" so much as following its own inherent laws - which, of course, we're still trying to figure out.

 

I'm not sure if that helped at all but I can try again.

[Erik]

Big effing sh*t....

 

Here's muy two cents: (disclosure, mostly, I'm an atheist)

 

So they describe the BB: BB created time, matter, the laws of nature, and such. Human faculties are nowhere near the quality to understand BB. So I say: it sounds to me like you are describing "God." A matter of words, in other words....

[Erik]

In other words, it doesn't matter if what was before the BB was God or some kind of random state. It comes down to the same thing.

[Rooster_DAR]

A second or so after the big bang, the universe was composed of heavy subatomic particles. Some were even particles that you can't observe in nature today because the evolution of the universe has wiped them out (they've been produced at high energies in labs with high-powered particle accelerators, which is why we know they existed at some point). Some of these particles attracted to one another and broke the symmetry of the strong force, making light nuclei. So now we have a universe composed of very energetic ions and electrons (and some other ****, but that's beyond the scope of my discussion).

quote]

 

Ahhh the battle between matter and antimatter, I think that's what your referrring to here. It's accepted that matter and antimatter were in a struggle for survival in the new universe, and the matter won the war. From what I understand, had antimatter anihilated the matter we would not exist.

 

Cheers!

[Rooster_DAR]

But the idea that people are postulating that random matter suddenly exploded into existing space is misleading: actually, the theoretical concept is not so much that matter flies apart, it’s that space itself is expanding. One common description of it is like the surface of an inflating balloon, with galaxies attached like dots to the surface. (Another one that makes me hungry likens it to baking bread, with galaxies suspended like raisins in the rising dough.)

 

Yes I agree and understand this too, my initial respone made it seem like the explosion was creating the perpetuation of the universe. Much of what science knows at this point is speculation, however it's also probable given what evidence we do have. I believe for the most part science is closer to discovery than anything else, but absolution remains to be seen. Have you seen the episode of Carl Sagan's (Cosmos) where he talks about 2, 3, and 4 dimenstions. Very cool stuff, and very plausable.

[axisdenied]

A second or so after the big bang, the universe was composed of heavy subatomic particles. Some were even particles that you can't observe in nature today because the evolution of the universe has wiped them out (they've been produced at high energies in labs with high-powered particle accelerators, which is why we know they existed at some point). Some of these particles attracted to one another and broke the symmetry of the strong force, making light nuclei. So now we have a universe composed of very energetic ions and electrons (and some other ****, but that's beyond the scope of my discussion).

quote]

 

Ahhh the battle between matter and antimatter, I think that's what your referrring to here. It's accepted that matter and antimatter were in a struggle for survival in the new universe, and the matter won the war. From what I understand, had antimatter anihilated the matter we would not exist.

 

Cheers!

 

Actually, I was referring to heavy quarks: charm, strange, top, bottom, not up and down which are those that compose nucleons. Plenty of anti-matter is still swimming around out there. We're only aware of what maybe 4% of the universe is made of, so that in itself makes this thread a good discussion.

 

The matter-anti-matter annihilation is a good example of the breaking of the symmetry of a force. Had there not been quantum fluctuations in the primordial universe (the breaking of the symmetry of the strong nuclear force), we may not be here to be discussing it.

[axisdenied]

 

Actually, I was referring to heavy quarks: charm, strange, top, bottom, not up and down which are those that compose nucleons. Plenty of anti-matter is still swimming around out there. We're only aware of what maybe 4% of the universe is made of, so that in itself makes this thread a good discussion.

 

The matter-anti-matter annihilation is a good example of the breaking of the symmetry of a force. Had there not been quantum fluctuations in the primordial universe (the breaking of the symmetry of the strong nuclear force), we may not be here to be discussing it.

 

Oh wait. It's top and bottom that make the nucleons. Forgive me, my work isn't actually in this area of physics.