Compacting universe before big bang?

[iplaw]

It must be something with highly intelligent people that they feel compelled to appear non-conforming so they throw up dog sites or maybe it's that they are lacking in the "creative" department.  Anyways it always funny to see websites published by double PHDs that have clipart images, and that's the high tech part.

[McQ]

Wow... I've only been gone for a day and this topic has hopped to 7 pages.

Another source for you, kiddo. :-) Hope all is well.

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/bh_reallyexist.htm

[silviakjell]

Too...much...information......not....enough....time.

[Promethium147]

BUT - Science HAS the answer. There is no First Cause, because - there is no "First." It’s just that so few people get it, it’s hard to wrap the head around â€" because of what a head evolved to do, survive in a LOCAL 3D Euclidian space - it hobbles our concept of it. We didn’t evolve to think in
4D.

And yes, it was a struggle - for consistency. And yes - we get some, lots of it. Religion does not - it is lazy. It is all about giving up, and accepting I will never know - when, in fact, I may.

FIRST does not exist. It's an illusion - an artifact of the way our heads work, of our LOCAL 3D space.

Both Time and Space have Curvature, not “ends” or edges. I’ll describe the weird qualities of SpaceTime, and bear in mind TIME. Let's look at Space first â€"

First, we come up with a theory â€" Relativity â€" that leads us to conclude a “Big Bang”, an further conclude that this would be a Opaque Fireball until around 380,000 yrs. after the explosion, and that it would give off radiation of a certain wavelength â€" IF it is so.


Then, some time later, we discover the radiation is there â€" coming from all directions â€" but the resolution is poor. We design and build a satellite telescope specifically for the purpose of mapping it precisely in all directions, launch it, conduct a survey at high resolution, and it yields an image â€" a backdrop, all around us.

And in high resolution, we see â€" the roiling surface of the Primordial Fireball, projected on the surrounding sphere of 3D space. It appears to explode AT us, simultaneously, from all directions â€" IT DOES â€" but it is “dragged away” even faster than it explodes â€" space itself expands faster than the explosion.

We appear to be in the center â€" in fact, we would appear to be in the center no matter where we went in the entire Universe. WE ARE.

Simple Model â€" reduce everything by one dimension â€" imagine we are 2D beings in a 2D Universe, Flatlanders living in a planar LOCAL space, but â€" we actually live on the surface of a large 3D sphere, it just APPEARS “flat” locally â€" there is curvature, but it’s so slight, we don’t notice.

If we travel in a straight line, we would eventually return to our point of origin â€" our 2D space is finite (the surface area of the 3D sphere), but completely unbounded â€" there is no limit to our motion within it, but if we keep moving, we will cover the same space over and over.

If the 3D sphere expands, 2D space expands â€" and every point on the sphere’s surface will get further away from every other, and other things will appear to be “dragged away” from the vantage point of any given thing. Each thing, including us, gets stretched â€" but we can’t notice; the space we occupy ITSELF is expanding.

Now, each point of Stuff on the surface has Mass. Think of the 2D surface being drawn inward toward the 3D sphere’s center at each massive point, as if it the 3D sphere center were the center of gravity. The masses create bigger, deeper “dimples” in the LOCAL 2D space as they increase in mass.  
Now, here’s what you didn’t expect â€" time flows at a lower rate in these pits, depending upon how deep they are. If they reach the center â€" Black Holes â€" time doesn’t flow at all. It stretches all the way in to the center â€" the Beginning â€" and there is no Time there.

So now, roll a frictionless bowling ball on the surface. In the simpler model (without dimples), the ball would return to us by a great circle route around the sphere; but with the dimples, it rolls around the rims of the dimples, where the rate of roll also accelerates, and â€" it gets pretty well randomized. The likelyhood of the ball returning â€" coming up behind us â€" is now just about nil. The bowling ball will most likely fall into a dimple and stay there at some point in its journey anyway.

Now it may appear from the “average” surface that Time flows more QUICKLY in the pits, the ball appears to accelerate as it spins around a pit rim; but when the bowling ball goes into one, it’s slower from the vantage point of the bowling ball â€" it does not age as rapidly in the pit, although it’s moving faster.

I f I see you fall into a black hole, you accelerate inward from my vantage point, and are destroyed on the way in, torn apart by tides â€" but from yours, things slow down, and you take forever to fall in.

Time IS NOT ABSOLUTE and uniform everywhere, it flows at different rates in different places, dependent on gravitational field density. Simply synchronize two atomic clocks, put one through a high-altitude flight â€" and they are no longer in synch. The one at high altitude ages differently than the one on the ground â€" their gravitational field density was different â€" one was further from the center of the earth, and gravitational field density drops as the inverse square of the distance from the earth’s center â€" and in a manner precisely in accord with Theory, Time slips.

If we run in a straight line, we will not reach an “end” of the Universe. If we run Time backwards or forwards, we will not reach an “end.”

The “outward” motion of the Big Bang is from a 4D vantage point, don’t get confused. This would be seem in the Simple Model as the expansion of the sphere (and it was not a uniform expansion, either.)

We “appear” to be in the center, but from a 4D vantage point, no “place” on the 3D surface is different from any other. This fit the Simple Model analogy very well.

We do not see “things” around us, only Time â€" the things are long gone by the Time we see them. Although distant things appear to have older, more primitive structures, you may presume they have evolved everywhere to a state similar to the Stuff immediately around us â€" there “are” no Quasars, they are all long gone.

And from the Simplified 3D Model perspective, the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, but the 3D sphere is 58 billion light years in diameter. The limiting rate is the speed of light â€" in the 2D realm â€" but the Universe is much bigger than its limited age would have allowed it to achieve at that speed â€" because the space itself expands. The 3D speed of light â€" in 4D â€" is not a limitation.

There is no “first.” It is â€" human bias regarding the image of Time.

[Girl Dancing In Orbit]

Anyway, although it is pretty much impossible at this point to definitely say how the universe came to be and what it will become, what is everyone else's pet theory?

My take on it is that I don't really care about what scientists have to say right now as to what happened before the Big Bang. I still look into their theories, models and hypothesis and I find them interesting, don't get me wrong.

But since our actual physics cannot tell us what happened at the very first moment of the big bang (at Plank's Epoch), it certainly cannot tell us what happen before the BB. So I don't have any pet theory. Let's wait and enjoy the mystery  

[SteveS]

Hey Promethium, I liked your post a lot.

There is no “first.” It is â€" human bias regarding the image of Time.

I dig it!

I like the cyclical universe ideas put forth by (at least) Neil Turok and Paul Steinhardt.  I think the idea of an infinitely existing universe, with no "firsts" in it, appeals to me very strongly.  Ultimately, to me, "elephants all the way down" makes a lot more sense than "Atlas".  I know infinite regressions are not popular and that people don't like this answer, but I can't think of any good philosophical reason that they can't be true.

[lucifer_astrum]

Well really, my point is here that Time is not at all what we think it is (what we "sense" it to be), and it can be easily demonstrated that no one has a very good concept of linear Time - let alone NonLinear Time.

The assumption of a "before" is just that - an assumption, we are human and like the idea of Continuity. There is no "before".

The "Big Crunch" idea, that the Universe expands, slows, reverses and collapses again, is a fine example of this - it turns out it just isn't so, the expansion of the Universe happens to be accelerating - and it was just an assumption, without any basis in reality.

Infinite regressions seem to work - Newton's Integral Calculus solves Zeno's Achilles paradox (apparently!)

Achilles wants to walk to the wall, but - to get there, he must pass the half-way point.

When Achilles arrives at the half-way point, he must then proceed to the NEXT half-way point before reaching the wall, etc.

And it would seem Achilles will never reach the wall, because he must first pass an infinite number of half-way points.

But by integration, we sum the infinite series 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16...
...and arrive at a finite sum of 1. Achilles reaches the wall on schedule.

However, Infinity is not required, and is in fact a very, very small error - just very large number of steps is required, but a finite number. The final, minimal possible step of Achilles covers one Planck length, and occurs in a single quantum instant - not long, but quite finite in size.

So, infinite regression seems to work, for all intents and purposes - but it is off a little, and the philosophical implications are startlingly different.

DUDE! It's Finite in every sense! At least, this Universe is.

And the definition of Universe is basically one of Information Transfer - we can't receive any information from another Universe, or send any - by definition. Every "thing", spacetime, matterenergy, has properties, and this constitutes information.

If there is no Information inherent in a thing, that thing does not exist.

There just is no Infinite, and no Zero, accessible from any Universe, or any other Universe accessible from here, though the M theory - a single fusion of five previous, separate flavors of string theory - seems to tie everything together in a Unified Field (HA! We even find the Graviton!), and it seems to have no limit on the number of POSSIBLE - but indemonstrable - simultaneous Universes.

But hey, as far as Religious questions go, I've seen a few people drop by here to announce that there is no more evidence for the Big Bang than New-Earth Creationism - now, I haven't seen their photos of God creating the Universe, but we do have high-resolution images of the primordial fireball at an age of about 380,000 years, and of course, photos of everything that has happened thereafter, on a cosmic scale - and I find this very convincing.

[SteveS]

lucifer_astrum - are you Promethius147 by a new name?

Well really, my point is here that Time is not at all what we think it is (what we "sense" it to be), and it can be easily demonstrated that no one has a very good concept of linear Time - let alone NonLinear Time.

I concur.

The "Big Crunch" idea, that the Universe expands, slows, reverses and collapses again, is a fine example of this - it turns out it just isn't so, the expansion of the Universe happens to be accelerating - and it was just an assumption, without any basis in reality.

I agree - but  I think the cyclical model has the contraction happening differently.  The two "brane worlds" collide rather than all the matter and space within one collapsing back on itself.  Right?

I love Zeno's paradoxes and I agree, the calculus seems to resolve them.  The philosophers have pointed out that applying calculus to the problem maybe doesn't address the problem Zeno was pointing out (which is probably why you qualified with the word "apparently").

This, however, seems like it would:

The final, minimal possible step of Achilles covers one Planck length, and occurs in a single quantum instant - not long, but quite finite in size.

I like this idea too - that there really is nothing "infinitely" small.  I'll have to do some readin' on Planck lengths - I'm unfamiliar with the concept.

DUDE! It's Finite in every sense! At least, this Universe is.

I'm certainly willing to accept that this could be true.

we do have high-resolution images of the primordial fireball at an age of about 380,000 years, and of course, photos of everything that has happened thereafter, on a cosmic scale - and I find this very convincing.

- yeah, so do I!

Thanks man - you've given me some things to think about.