Where Did The Particles That Started The Big Bang Come From?

Paranormal Inquirer

Critical Thinker
Paranormal Inquirer
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I haven't ever heard a logical explanation, though I have heard a minority of which are slightly credible;
*The universe has always been here, and
-How has the universe always been here, how can something always be and never be made?
*There was nothing before the universe, not even time. Time itself only exists within the universe. When the universe was created, time was also created.
-Hard to understand, but, then how did the universe get created. It doesn't really address the question.

But we need to come up with something, it can even be remotely plausible, as to how the universe was born.

God is not the answer, that just opens a whole other bag of questions just waiting to be answered with the same answer; God. Don't humour me with it. :)
 
JohnTheRevelator said:
I haven't ever heard a logical explanation, though I have heard a minority of which are slightly credible
Click to expand...

I've never heard any logical explanation either. Prior to "Planck time" things just "were". Complete stop of time seems antithetical to "time starts", yet some insist we aren't in a backwards infinite. (I guess, or they're just legitimately agnostic to origins).

*The universe has always been here, and
-How has the universe always been here, how can something always be and never be made?
*There was nothing before the universe, not even time. Time itself only exists within the universe. When the universe was created, time was also created.
-Hard to understand, but, then how did the universe get created. It doesn't really address the question.
Click to expand...

The difficulty of understanding origins seems the same as the difficulty of understanding "the end". Can you imagine an infinitely existing Universe? If so, reverse that to the Big Bang and before. The volume getting smaller forever. Astrophysicists may desire to have a "singularity" which started the Universe, but there's no evidence and it seem a cop-out to me.

But we need to come up with something, it can even be remotely plausible, as to how the universe was born.
Click to expand...

I don't see why. We don't need to know all X of all X in order to exist, form morals, live our lives. The vast majority of historical humanity hadn't conceived a big bang or infinity and got along just fine. I'm probably putting more into your statement than you wanted though!
 
Here's what we know: the universe is expanding in such a way that about 13.7 billion years ago all the matter we see in it today was crunched up in one point - or at least in a very small region. Those observations together with our current understanding of physics are not precise enough to tell us it was really a point with zero size or precisely what happened there. In particular general relativity (Einstein's theory of gravity) goes haywire there - it encounters a singularity, meaning it gives back infinity for physical quantities (which presumably shouldn't happen).

Resolving the singularity has proven to be extremely difficult - string theory doesn't seem to do it in general, and neither does any other credible theory. However there are some ideas. Here's a rough list of not necessarily mutually exclusive options:

1) the big bang was a true singularity, and time began there. There was no "before".

2) the big bang was actually a bounce - a previous universe collapsed towards a crunch, but just before it hit some very powerful repulsive force came into play and forced it to "bounce" and expand. We live in the expanding phase. The universe before could have been there forever (gradually contracting, going back to infinite size long ago) or the bouncing could be cyclic.

3) classical spacetime ceases to exist near the singularity. Quantum gravity effects put space and time into a quantum state with large fluctuations. Questions about "before" become meaningless.

4) the universe originated in a Hartle-Hawking instanton (i.e. time went from being a spatial coordinate to a time coordinate, and the universe appeared in a de Sitter phase).

5) our patch of the universe is expanding because it is inside a bubble of true vacuum in a larger space. In that case the big bang was non-singular, but you could still ask where the larger space came from.

6) the world is balanced on the back of a giant turtle. Before you ask, it's turtles all the way down.


The final answer to your question: we don't know.
 
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This is in no way a scientific answer, but, whenever someone asks what caused the Universe to exist, in the back of my head I always think: "What was there to stop it?"
 
Particles in motion is a paradigm we've had for thousands of years. Maybe it is soon to be replaced (soon= within 100 years?).

Perhaps a new paradigm might be that the birth of our universe is more like the boot-up of a simulation, than it is like "matter in motion on a stage we call space". Our concept of "space" is due for total renovation. Maybe the quantum substrate behind it all HAS been here forever. Who knows....
 
Sol, do you think advances in science will ever adequately explain this origin, or is the origin ultimately unknown?

I'm a (fairly) true agnostic to god, but I'm not sure if science can either completely explain origin and/or in the future replicate conditions. The "big prior crunch" seems to strongly gravitate towards a singularity.

If we can't replicate an early origin, will all theories on it remain ephemeral theories, with no evidence distinguishing themselves from other theories?


Hm, I guess the real question considering possibilities of our and computer's future evolution is--is (back)-infinity ultimately rationable to any intelligence?
 
Dragoonster said:
Sol, do you think advances in science will ever adequately explain this origin, or is the origin ultimately unknown?
Click to expand...

Over time science pushes back the boundaries of the unknown. I don't think it's ever going to push them all the way in all directions.

However I don't think the big bang is necessarily impossible to understand. On the contrary, I think it's reasonably likely that we will come up with a theory in the next decade or so which resolves the singularity and explains what came before it, and - crucially - which has some experimental/observational support.

Of course one can then ask what came before that previous phase, but that's the nature of science.
 
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Isn't the concept of "time" itself a human tool that has been quite useful, but due to relativity, "time" does not actually exist as a property of particles or the universe?
 
This kind of 'why are we here' thinking will never really be answered. Even if you get religious, that still begs the question of where whichever creator came from.

orange31 said:
Isn't the concept of "time" itself a human tool that has been quite useful, but due to relativity, "time" does not actually exist as a property of particles or the universe?
Click to expand...

Time is a dimension rather than a property. The flow of time does manifest itself as the increase of entropy in the universe as a whole, which is the only real indicator of the 'arrow' of time we have.
 
Bad news on the universe will last forever front, it won't (I saw it on the Discovery Channel so it must be true.) If it expands forever everything will move far apart and all the suns will eventually run out of juice and die. Empty, dead and cold universe. If it contracts again galaxies will collide and explode until we get smashed back into another singularity.

Nothing lasts forever, it's all pointless.
 
Senex said:
Bad news on the universe will last forever front, it won't (I saw it on the Discovery Channel so it must be true.) If it expands forever everything will move far apart and all the suns will eventually run out of juice and die. Empty, dead and cold universe.
Click to expand...

Also called energy death. It's the final state.

Funny thing is - before this happens (if this is what eventually happens), "we" might not even have stars to look at. The expansion of the universe is quite possibly accellerating. At some point it will be impossible for starlight from the nearest star to reach "us".

First comes darkness. Then comes the cold of energy death.

The future's not so bright..

Morale of this: Party while we can! :)
 
JohnTheRevelator said:
I haven't ever heard a logical explanation, though I have heard a minority of which are slightly credible;
*The universe has always been here, and
-How has the universe always been here, how can something always be and never be made?
*There was nothing before the universe, not even time. Time itself only exists within the universe. When the universe was created, time was also created.
-Hard to understand, but, then how did the universe get created. It doesn't really address the question.

But we need to come up with something, it can even be remotely plausible, as to how the universe was born.

God is not the answer, that just opens a whole other bag of questions just waiting to be answered with the same answer; God. Don't humour me with it. :)
Click to expand...
What particles are you referring to? I have never heard of any part of the BBT that posited the presence of particles initiating the BB. And to the best of my memory it was a while before anything we would call particles formed from it's initial output.:)
 
Spud1k said:
This kind of 'why are we here' thinking will never really be answered. Even if you get religious, that still begs the question of where whichever creator came from.
Click to expand...

Ahem...begthequestion.info

Sorry, it just bothers me.

Anyway, didn't I read somewhere that someone said click and it all happened? That seems to be the most logical...science just needs to find out where that dude is hiding and ask him.
 
As Fuelair said; at least initially there was nothing but pure energy. No particles whatever. As the energy expanded and started to cool marginally, the building blocks of atoms (quarks, bosons, etc,) began to condense, and then the first and simplest atoms.

Primarily hydrogen, a small portion of helium. Heavier elements didn't appear until the first-generation stars had "cooked" them.
 
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