“Before” the Big Bang is nonsense. It’s equivalent to saying “head north from the North Pole.”
It’s not so much that we know there was nothing before it, but that we can’t figure out what was before it.
No, in our current best-supported model of the universe (Lambda-CDM) the concept of “before” the Big Bang is meaningless. It is the apex of the spacetime “bell” from which everything emerged.
But something must have triggered the big bang. The model might not support this, but this only means the model is insufficient to describe what goes beyond our known universe.
That’s a philosophical question, not a scientific one, since it’s by definition beyond the ability of science to answer. It suffers from the infinite regress problem which many people invoke God to solve (the uncaused cause) but that’s not very satisfying, is it?
Obviously God did it. /s
That’s nonsense. You think some massive amount of matter just materialized from nothing into a singular point? How do you think all the stuff managed to get there in the first place?
It wasn’t matter that did the banging, it was space-time itself. Have you heard how we know that the universe is expanding? Well we can extrapolate backwards and find the point in time where space-time was just a point: “the big bang”. Not only was there no space-time for matter to exist in before the big bang, there was no concept of “before” because that word only makes sense in the context of spacetime. So yeah, the person you’re replying to is right, “before the big bang” is a nonsense phrase.
They keep finding inconsistencies to that. Groupings and radiation and gap distances that don’t line up with the expansion expectations.
Then the other more applicable point is that what makes you think “the big bang” was the first big bang? You think mass and entropy and radioactive decay and all this shit in the nothingness of space all started with “the big bang” but it only happens once and then in a ridiculously long time from now when everything reaches absolute 0 and there’s no energy left anywhere, that it’s just done? A one trick pony?
Well what if it all eventually manages to head back to its origin point after that and it makes another big bang that kicks off again?
Then the other more applicable point is that what makes you think “the big bang” was the first big bang?
Well, again you’re using terms of time to describe the birth of time, so no that’s not what I think because that statement doesn’t make sense. But I’m being pedantic, I’m sure you meant “what if our’s wasn’t the only big bang?” And to that I can confidently say “maybe?”. It’s an interesting question but it’s just not a scientific question. According to big bang theory, our universe, space-time and all the matter and energy in it, began with the big bang and we still exist inside it. Other big bangs, if they exist in some higher medium, are simply outside our scope. We just can’t design tests to answer those questions. Best we can tell scientifically is where our universe started.
You think mass and entropy and radioactive decay and all this shit in the nothingness of space all started with “the big bang” but it only happens once and then in a ridiculously long time from now when everything reaches absolute 0 and there’s no energy left anywhere, that it’s just done? A one trick pony?
Again maybe? You’re kinda putting words in my mouth. Idk if our universe is the only one, it’s impossible to know. My original point was that time as defined by general relativity could not exist before the big bang because it was itself a product of the big bang.
What I meant by “what if it wasn’t the first big bang?”, was that what if it wasn’t the first of our own universe? I mean what if space will at some point stop expanding and start contracting. Pull everything back close together again. Then theres another expansion just like what we’re currently in now. The best scientists, physicists, and mathematicians haven’t been able to work out a lot of major thing about our universe or how it works or even if it’s flat or folded in on itself yet. The data and tests/measurements don’t exist yet. So until that can get worked out into a theory, it’s silly to say time began at the expansion.
Last I heard scientists were leaning more toward the ever-accelerating expansion “heat death” theory then the expansion-to-contraction “big crunch” theory, but it’s not set in stone yet. But even if “big crunch” came out on top, assuming that the life of the universe is cyclical is pure conjecture. It could be right, but it’s unprovable, so we’ll never know.
As for the existence of space-time before the big bang, I don’t know what to tell you, I’m just quoting theory. By definition, the big bang is when space-time came to be. If the big bang was the result of an ancestor universe’s big crunch, we can’t assume that the same space-time carried over, let alone that the ancestor universe even had something analogous to space-time. Barring some insanely massive breakthrough, it’s simply unknowable.
It’s only something we can speculate about. It represents a limit to our ability to gather any evidence that might validate those speculations. We can’t say what happened before it, because time itself was one of the things that popped out of the big bang. What would “before” even mean if time didn’t exist?
Even if time and matter did exist in some sense, we can’t get any evidence for it. We can’t make any kind of useful theory about it. At best, we can make wild guesses.
We could also just say “we don’t know what it was like”. Russell’s Teapot suggests we should instead say there was nothing, because we can’t prove there was anything.
There’s no evidence to point to the big bang as being the very beginning, though. There may well have been a billion big bangs before this one. Each one taking so long to reset and start anew that to us, it might as well be seen as about infinity. Humanity outright doesn’t have the knowledge of what happens on extremely large or extremely small scales. We don’t really have a clue for what actually made space start to expand in the first place, so we don’t know if it’s ever happened before, or even if it happened anywhere else at any other time but outside of our observable universe.
The works of Roger Penrose have shown that it’s conceivable or potentially even provable that at the very largest scales of time and space, there is no meaningful difference between the accelerating “cold” end of our universe and the collossal expansion that began the universe as we know it, and in fact those two states are perpetually cycling, birthing new universes from the explosion of old ones. This is based on the idea that when there is no more physical mass in the universe, you can look at the universe from a reference frame that only looks at the geometry of the energy expanding through space and it’s identical to the beginning states.
I would recommend PBS Spacetime youtube channel for a lot better explanations of conformal cyclic cosmology than my feeble mind can try to relate.
Maybe there were other big bangs, but we need evidence of that, and that evidence doesn’t exist.
Jyst saying “but we don’t know” isn’t a replacement for evidence.
There’s no evidence that time started at the big bang, either. So it’s silly to say.
Not how it works.
“Time exists” is a positive statement. We need evidence for positive statements. There is no evidence of time until the big bang.
How do you think all the stuff managed to get there in the first place?
You’re still thinking like a meat-monkey. There are stranger states out there than one can imagine, and that’s not hyperbole. There was no causality before expansion, because there was no meaningful interactions or spacetime in which interactions can occur.
You’re always going to have a hard time imagining this, because again, you are a human. We all are, none of us can imagine states of the universe without time and space.
I still think that means I have to up towards Polaris.
Evidence of god?
ZEROOOOO
The hot big bang is basically just “let there be light” wrapped up in science words and don’t get me started on the period of rapid inflation. It’s incredible to me that the bedrock of modern physics is hand-waved away to get grad students focused back on either bigger nuclear plants and bombs or more qubits.
Please start on the period of rapid inflation. I’m curious to find out what you think
There are a ton of competing models for how the early universe formed. In order to explain why the universe is so smooth and flat though, they all invoke the idea of a short (10e-37 seconds) period of time immediately following “the singularity” that is presumed to have been literally the first point. During inflation the universe blows up 100000 times in size (and correspondingly drops in temperature by the same factor) then immediately slows down to roughly the rate of expansion we see today.
There are a lot of simulations and theories about this could have worked. And I’m sure they all have lots of grounding and math and believers. But none of thr explanations I’ve ever heard amount to more than “when I do this funny thing, the math works and none of of us know why” and that has been the state of quantum physics for 70 years: a series of “we don’t know but the math works.”
In software, we call that tech debt and I feel like our current model of profit-driven science isn’t capable of actually finding or reporting the answers that underly the debt-riddled results out of modern labs.
I’m glad there’s someone else out there with the same concerns.
I’d be more glad if unknowns and inconsistencies were frankly acknowledged. Even though in some senses Feynman contributed to the metaphorical tech debt, one of the things I love about his lectures is his frankness in regard to the (then) current state of knowledge, and about how much was simply unknown. Much of that is still unknown, and there are major glaring inconsistencies that are handwaved into oblivion.
To be clear, this is not an “anti-science” comment, but rather a desire to see the institution of science become more consistent, and to address unknowns honestly.
Really cool read. Thank you for your answer. Why did this sudden expanse stop so abruptly? It seems a mayor sharp slowdown for no reason?
Yes, I do too
Fortunately the big bang isn’t actually a bedrock of anything outside of cosmology and can be entirely ignored by the rest of physics.
I know it’s old, but I still cannot believe it’s the same woman in every panel. Girl looks like a different person in each pic.
That’s what I was thinking. And I just noticed that in 2 of the pics the shoulder strap to her shirt is different. If it’s not different women, it’s at least different shirts in some of the panels
It’s not the same woman. It’s an interview style advertisement with 2 women. Here’s the ad - https://youtu.be/1n9sLzlxPf0?si=GFUfdfBUpA5BFazE
I think the inability to destroy or create matter counts as Evidence but not necesarily Proof.
Well, the equations that predict black holes also predict white holes, and the big bang is functionally equivalent to a white hole. And we have found black holes. So…seems like the most plausible explanation for the big bang is…it was a white hole. Still can’t extrapolate backwards for the same reasons, but there are at least implicit causes of white holes suggesting there was spacetime before the big bang.
Evidence of happiness in life? Zero
One
Dang, nice
Took a long time and a lotta effort.
Teach me your ways, master
Your options are “grow” or “repeat”. Unfortunately, you’re the one most equipped to take responsibility for your own life, but you evolved into this situation, and evolution is messy. It’s not your fault, bit it’s your responsibility.
Accepting those things deeply enough, and what they mean personally, changes everything.
Well you’re forgetting about the big unbang, which occurred just before the big bang and condensed all matter and energy into a tiny speck.
