Big Bang - Where's the hole?

Originally posted by ImaFungi

isnt the definition of increasing distance between two objects,,, movement?

Nope. Not in this case, anyway. The space between the objects is expanding, the objects aren't propelling themselves away from each other.

reply to post by jiggerj

The term "Big Bang" often gives people the wrong impression of what the event is thought to have been. It's better to think of it as "The Big Stretch" or "The Big Expansion," only it got called a "bang" early on because of the rapid pace of the early expansion and, I believe, because it was catchy and alliterative.

Imagine the universe as like a rubber balloon. With a permanent marker draw a bunch of dots all over the surface uninflated balloon. Those dots represent the clumps of matter that would eventually become galaxies. Now inflate that balloon and all those little dots will start to move away from each other as the balloon expands. That's rather like what the Universe expanding is like, only in two dimensions instead of three. The space that makes up the Universe "stretches" the same way as the rubber of the balloon. Same number of dots, same amount of matter, but it gets farther apart as the balloon/Universe gets bigger.

Originally posted by CLPrime

Originally posted by ImaFungi

isnt the definition of increasing distance between two objects,,, movement?

Nope. Not in this case, anyway. The space between the objects is expanding, the objects aren't propelling themselves away from each other.

then i dont believe scientists are accurately understanding or viewing what they are viewing,,,,

how does that make any sense? is space physical constructed of anything?

Originally posted by LifeInDeath
reply to post by jiggerj

 

The term "Big Bang" often gives people the wrong impression of what the event is thought to have been. It's better to think of it as "The Big Stretch" or "The Big Expansion," only it got called a "bang" early on because of the rapid pace of the early expansion and, I believe, because it was catchy and alliterative.

Imagine the universe as like a rubber balloon. With a permanent marker draw a bunch of dots all over the surface uninflated balloon. Those dots represent the clumps of matter that would eventually become galaxies. Now inflate that balloon and all those little dots will start to move away from each other as the balloon expands. That's rather like what the Universe expanding is like, only in two dimensions instead of three. The space that makes up the Universe "stretches" the same way as the rubber of the balloon. Same number of dots, same amount of matter, but it gets farther apart as the balloon/Universe gets bigger.

I agree, only those dots have to be set in a circle around where the singularity burst. Now if you blow up the balloon you will see the dots moving away from where the singularity originated.

reply to post by CLPrime


if every astrophysicist were in a room,, and they couldnt leave untill they all agreed on the most probabilistic theory of the universe,,, the most likely,,,, the theory that is most congruent to truth and reality...... which one would that be?

reply to post by CLPrime

The "moving away" caused by universal expansion is not motion. The galaxies are not moving. The space between galaxies is growing. Locally (on intergalactic scales), the relative proper motion of two galaxies can be enough to causes the two to move closer together, even "impact." This is only because the outward spatial expansion only becomes significant over much larger distances.

In all honesty, that all sounds pretty fanciful.

It's all based around red-shift observation - a phenomena with far too many variables to be drawing the conclusion that space is expanding.

Of course... I've yet to see a very good definition for space that also allows it to be a physical thing that expands. This is particularly whacky when you get into subatomic particles and begin dealing with the concept of space as it applies to the subatomic universe (where space is less a physical metric and more like relative energy states)

So, I must admit I'm a bit confused. What, exactly, does the theory claim is expanding? Perhaps more importantly... how?

Originally posted by Daemonicon
In the way that I have always envisioned the Big Bang, there is no 'hole' at the center. There is a 'point' yes, at which everything that is now expanding, would have started from.

The "point" where the Big Bang started has since expanded to include every point that currently makes up the Universe. Everything that now exists, existed as a part of that one point including the space that is now in between the stars and galaxies, so when that point started to expand it took everything that was in that singularity with it. Before the Big Bang there was no space. The matter didn't explode out into space, space expanded and took the matter with it.

reply to post by ImaFungi


In cosmology, space is a manifold, which is a mathematical construct. In this sense, each point in this manifold "expands," or moves away from every other point. This is called metric expansion (the expansion of space itself).

The fact is, space exists just like everything else, so it has dimensions, and that means those dimensions can change. In the case of universal expansion, they grow uniformly due to internal pressure. The fact that we can measure distance within space is proof of this...distance exists within space, but nothing says that distance has to stay constant. In fact, General Relativity takes advantage of that fact, using the warping of spacetime to account for the gravitational force.

Originally posted by ImaFungi

Originally posted by CLPrime

Originally posted by ImaFungi

isnt the definition of increasing distance between two objects,,, movement?

Nope. Not in this case, anyway. The space between the objects is expanding, the objects aren't propelling themselves away from each other.

then i dont believe scientists are accurately understanding or viewing what they are viewing,,,,

how does that make any sense? is space physical constructed of anything?

Yes, in theory, it's made of dark matter that's filling in the spaces between galaxies, and filling it in at different rates. The further away the galaxies get from the singularity (point of origin), the faster the dark matter fills in. I'm guessing it's like an ocean wave that gets bigger and bigger as it moves along.

Originally posted by jiggerj
I agree, only those dots have to be set in a circle around where the singularity burst. Now if you blow up the balloon you will see the dots moving away from where the singularity originated.

No, the dots are more or less uniform in their arrangement (or at least they started off that way). In the real world those "dots" (matter) also have gravity, so they tend to clump up over time in spots, but on average they are all still expanding away from each other.

You could also think of it as squeezing a sponge as tightly as you possibly can to represent all the matter compressed into one single point. Then let go of the sponge and it will expand outwards in all directions. The structure of the sponge is the matter getting pushed outwards and taking up more space, but it's all still the same amount of matter and from inside the sponge every piece of that sponge/matter seems to be expanding away from every other piece.

Originally posted by Aim64C

It's all based around red-shift observation - a phenomena with far too many variables to be drawing the conclusion that space is expanding.

You're essentially arguing for the steady state universe, as favoured by Fred Hoyle and others.

If the universe is infinite, and not expanding, gravity would have caused all galaxies to merge an infinite time ago. However, observations clearly show that not to be the case.

Which means the universe must be expanding (or even contracting) - but not static.

Originally posted by ImaFungi
reply to post by CLPrime

 

if every astrophysicist were in a room,, and they couldnt leave untill they all agreed on the most probabilistic theory of the universe,,, the most likely,,,, the theory that is most congruent to truth and reality...... which one would that be?

Today, it would be Big Bang described very well by general relativity after the first few moments and standard nucleosynthesis after that, CP violation for the matter-antimatter asymmetry, the lightest supersymmetric particle as Dark Matter. For Dark Energy, they'd vote for the theory of whoever brought the best beer (as long as the theory was not too much worse than the beer).

Originally posted by jiggerj
Yes, in theory, it's made of dark matter that's filling in the spaces between galaxies, and filling it in at different rates. The further away the galaxies get from the singularity (point of origin), the faster the dark matter fills in. I'm guessing it's like an ocean wave that gets bigger and bigger as it moves along.

You are sort of, kind of confusing dark matter with dark energy. Dark matter doesn't fill the space in the void, dark matter is matter with gravity just like baryonic matter, the stuff that we are made of and that all the matter we can see is made of. Dark matter is something we know has to be there only because the matter we can see doesn't properly account for the structure of spiral galaxies and the rate of the expansion of the Universe or the amount of gravitational lensing we observe being caused by galaxies. If spiral galaxies were made up only of the matter we are able to see, they wouldn't and couldn't have the structure and couldn't rotate in the way that they do. There has to be a lot more matter there that we can't see to account for all of these things, but at present we have not been able to detect it directly. We have theories about it, but no lab has yet directly observed a piece of dark matter.

Dark energy is the "force" that is pushing the Universe apart. As mysterious as dark matter still is to us, dark energy is even more so. Science still has a lot to learn. This week we just finally got a handle on observing what's causing the matter we can see to have mass (the Higgs Boson). It's going to take a lot more time and work to figure out the rest.

reply to post by LifeInDeath

Now inflate that balloon and all those little dots will start to move away from each other as the balloon expands.

Taking that as the analogy...

What is "breathing" into the universe?

What is the "rubber" between the dots on the balloon? What is stretching, aside from arbitrary numbers and concepts?

Same number of dots, same amount of matter, but it gets farther apart as the balloon/Universe gets bigger.

I find this suspect.

Quantum mechanics doesn't play too well with this idea that space can be arbitrarily inflated. It can be argued that quantized states -create- space (and even further argued through the concept of energy-information equivalence and the holographic principle).

And if it can't happen in the quantum world - then it doesn't make sense for it to happen in the larger macroscopic world build upon quantum mechanics.

Originally posted by LifeInDeath

You are sort of, kind of confusing dark matter with dark energy.

It was a fifty-fifty shot. Hence, I shouldn't gamble.

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by LifeInDeath

 

And if it can't happen in the quantum world - then it doesn't make sense for it to happen in the larger macroscopic world build upon quantum mechanics.

I thought the quantum world DIDN'T work the same way as the macro world?

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by LifeInDeath

 

Now inflate that balloon and all those little dots will start to move away from each other as the balloon expands.

Taking that as the analogy...

What is "breathing" into the universe?

What is the "rubber" between the dots on the balloon? What is stretching, aside from arbitrary numbers and concepts?

Equations of motion given by General Relativity, which has passed a large number of experimental tests now even though it is conceptually pretty radical.

These aren't arbitrary numbers and concepts---the whole kibosh has concrete experimental & observational consequences.

Space itself can be squeezed and pushed and we have laws of physics which appear to govern how it works.

Originally posted by LifeInDeath

Originally posted by jiggerj
Yes, in theory, it's made of dark matter that's filling in the spaces between galaxies, and filling it in at different rates. The further away the galaxies get from the singularity (point of origin), the faster the dark matter fills in. I'm guessing it's like an ocean wave that gets bigger and bigger as it moves along.

You are sort of, kind of confusing dark matter with dark energy. Dark matter doesn't fill the space in the void, dark matter is matter with gravity just like baryonic matter, the stuff that we are made of and that all the matter we can see is made of. Dark matter is something we know has to be there only because the matter we can see doesn't properly account for the structure of spiral galaxies and the rate of the expansion of the Universe or the amount of gravitational lensing we observe being caused by galaxies. If spiral galaxies were made up only of the matter we are able to see, they wouldn't and couldn't have the structure and couldn't rotate in the way that they do. There has to be a lot more matter there that we can't see to account for all of these things, but at present we have not been able to detect it directly. We have theories about it, but no lab has yet directly observed a piece of dark matter.

Dark energy is the "force" that is pushing the Universe apart. As mysterious as dark matter still is to us, dark energy is even more so. Science still has a lot to learn. This week we just finally got a handle on observing what's causing the matter we can see to have mass (the Higgs Boson). It's going to take a lot more time and work to figure out the rest.

could it be because the images we view of galaxies are like long exposure photos,,,, where as the galaxy is actually spinning very vast?

are the smallest particles and quantum mechanics the primal stuff,,,and once this stuff was structured and ordered and obeying stable laws,,, it was able to transform into larger structures? and this happened untill the largest structures were created? or was it more like a mix of massive amounts of quanta energy that immediately made macro structures? once the quantum made stable larger forms of quanta,, would the laws of physics of the quantum rule the macro,, or the macro has its own laws which effects the quantum? when galaxies collide,,, do the laws of the macro structures react first or is everything rendered quantomly and macro follows?

Originally posted by ImaFungi

Originally posted by LifeInDeath
Dark energy is the "force" that is pushing the Universe apart. As mysterious as dark matter still is to us, dark energy is even more so. Science still has a lot to learn. This week we just finally got a handle on observing what's causing the matter we can see to have mass (the Higgs Boson). It's going to take a lot more time and work to figure out the rest.

could it be because the images we view of galaxies are like long exposure photos,,,, where as the galaxy is actually spinning very vast?

No.

How long do you think it takes for a galaxy to "spin" (it's more like there are curved pressure waves)?

How long is a photographic exposure?