What do you all think came before the big bang?
 

Though a sound theory, it doesnt explain everything. For this theory to work there has to be something from nothing. Matter, however small, had to form from this infinite nothing for the chain reaction that is the big bang to begin. So my question for you all is, what was this matter, and above all, how did it come to be? I am an athiest of sorts, but I believe that "God" is this matter. It is the miracle that happened to start everything, no more no less. What do you think?

There's quite a few options that I can think of:

1) the universe is constantly expanding and imploding again. Before the big bang, we had the big crush, which was preceded by another big bang, etc.

2) There's even some theories that suggest there wasn't a big bang at all - the universe is always expanding and imploding (like in option 1), but typically misses the center. This means there's never a true big bang, just a very dense center.

3) quantum mechanics dictate that there can never truly be *nothing*. There's always energy and matter around, some of it appearing out of nowhere, and disappearing again. It is possible that this mechanism caused the big bang (but rather hard to explain).

4) In a multi-dimensional universe, we have "sheets" of energy moving around. These sheets of energy have bumps in them, and when these collide with other sheets, an enormous amount of energy is released. This may be the cause of a big bang. In this scenario, there would be big bangs all over the place - we just can't see them, because they take place in another dimension.

My question was more based at this single theory. Of course there are other theories on how everything got started. But if we wanted to include them all we would have to include the theory that god created the universe. Based on the big bang theory, whether there were 10 big bangs or what not. It still leaves out the part that there had to be matter or energy to start everything.

I pretty much explained my views on this matter in the thread "Rationalistic Theism"

Personally I don't believe we can ever know the answer. We certainly don't right now. I think that the multidimensional universe as Dragonlich stated in #4 is quite probable. However it still fails to address the ultimate question: where did THAT come from?
Cause and effect would dictate that it had to be CAUSED by something, but you must remember that such concepts as "time" and something happening "before somethign else" are completely confined within our own universe.

Ballzor, I did not just come up with some random theories... these are scientific theories suggested by very notable physicists. Option 3, for example, was explained by Stephen Hawking in his book "a brief history of time" (or something). number 4 was one I recently saw on a documentary on the telly.

And CSFilm: cause and effect do not dictate that such a multidimensional thing should be caused by anything. Quantum mechanics can take care of that by itself, because of the fact that there has to be *something*. Besides, we can't ever know where the whole universe came from, even if we know what caused the big bang - how could we ever find out? All information about the state of the universe before the big bang was erased by that event.

Often people are fixated with the idea of a beginning to the universe and time, but what if there is no such thing. Suppose time goes in one big loop until it reinterates itself completely. Every possible situation that could ever occur plays out and then it starts over again. It has always been doing this and still will. It also skips over the concept of nothing because I often feel nothing is such a hard concept to grasp possibly because it cannot exist.

It's possible. But the point is that believing in this is following the same flawed logic as believing in God. There is no evidence to believe in such a thing.

Plus I'm sure certain people would point you to the question...But where did THAT come from? How did this loop come into existence? etc etc..
Apparently God is invincible to such an argument.

There was a time/space place that was less (perfect) by one occurance. (there have been a (near) infinite amount of previous time/space places and there were will be a (near) infinite more untill the world is perfect.) Just a thought.

there is a story i have heard a few times, it goes like this.

God was thinking one day (he was bored) that he would create the universe. but since he was everywhere, he had to make some room to create it. so he moved everything around, but there were some pots in the way, so he moved them out of the way and used what was inside to create the universe. the pots exploded and the universe was created with the stuff that was inside of them.

it's our job to find the broken pieces of the pots and put them back together and give them to God.
---
that last part is about being good, doing good deeds, and praying. there is much more to the story but thats the basic idea, its really a kids story with a moral and stuff but helps to explain things to them.

You don't know how it came into being = God????

There is no evidence supporting the presence of a God. It is irrational to believe that he is the cause without any sort of basis. "We don't know" is insufficient support.

It may have always existed.

Anyways, Quantum theory demonstrates that even *nothing* is unstable.

So our galaxy isn't just one big cosmic snow globe that someone on the outside decided to shake up one day?

God can't be used to answer the question of where the universe came from for one simple reason. God had to have come from someplace as well. To say that he always was and always is is the same as saying that the universe always was and always is.

To me, time is just like any of the other dimensions. 3 dimensional space is infinate, forward and back, up and down. I don't see why time is any differant.

For a unique answer read Asimov's short story entitled "The Last Question". That has an explaination that I find enjoyable.

Almost a year ago I swore I read something that supposedly proved that the universe will never contract then expand then contract then expand. I think they determined that the amount of mass in the universe is not enough to create the gravity needed to pull everything back together, so for so called forever everything just expands away from each other.

Might be difficult to understand/believe but I certainly manage to believe it (if not both :) ):
I don't think there <b>was</b> anything before the big bang. Much as, if you start anywhere on Earth and walk north, you'll head towards the North Pole. But once there, you can't go any further north - it just doesn't exist!

There is not enought "normal" matter, thats for sure. However, a huge amount of the mass of the universe is made up of dark matter, which is extremely difficult to detect. It is possible that the mass of the dark matter would be enough to bring the universe past the threshold value.
But current estimates show that it is unlikely that enough dark matter exists, so instead of a "Big Crunch", we are more likely to end up as a total heat death, i.e. a state of maximum entropy, with all of the matter/energy in the universe evenly spead over an incredibly large distance.

gotta agree with cliche, there was nothing, whatever nothingness is, that's what was there. sure its difficult to understand but its as good a theory as the rest of em.

Maybe there was no beginning and the universe is always expanding. Think about it. Go back to big bang and there is a little dot in space containing the entire matter of the universe. Go back five minutes or whatever and maybe that dot in half the size. go back another five and its a quater the size. Or maybe its exponential and the speed of increase is always increasing. say the size of the universe now is 128 (2s exponents are easy ok?). One billion years from now it will be 256 and one billion years ago it was 64. A billion before that it was 32. 16, 8, 4, 2, sqrt2, and aproaching 1 but never reaching it. If one is the singularity, than it simply never was. The entire universe is one big neverending math equation.

Did that make sense?

Yeah it makes sense it may be possible too.

IMO this is really a quesiton that may never be answered - people will always have theories unless one day somehow we did get an overwhelmingly correct / whatever answer but i wouldn't hold my breath.

Well, the big bang theory says that all matter in the universe collapsed together and the resultant energy caused it to explode outward. The two options for what happens after that are (1) that it will keep expanding forever or (2) that it will gradually slow down and fall back into itself causing another big bang.

With that in mind, there are two options for what happened before the big bang: (1) that it was another bang/collapse, preceded by another, and so on for infinity or (2) that this bang or a prior one was started by something. That's an obvious place for those who are so inclined to insert a diety, of course (creator of all things and so on). But I think it's safe to say that from this vantage point, after whole universe was balled up and exploded outward, that it's pretty hard for us to know anything that preceeded creation of our universe.

Personally, if the big bang is the correct theory, then I think it's been a infinite series of bangs. People who reject that notion are usually just uncomfortable with the concept of infinity (hmm, reminds me of another thread). But time is a notion that might not apply in the same way when we're talking about the complete destruction of the universe.

I was reading a science magazine the other day and came across a certain article. It said that scientists recently found that the speed at which everything is moving away from each other is actually increasing rather than decreasing, which means that its most likely not going to stop, which puts serious doubt into my mind that the Universe keeps expanding and contracting.

I read something similar, but they went on to say that, for reasons they don't understand, the speed of expansion may not have been constantly through all time to date and may in fact slow down again in the future.

That depends on the exact state of the big bang material - whether it was smooth or lumpy... (and I'm not kidding either)

I coulda swore I read that the Big Bang is supposed to be caused by energy that came from a sort of subspace.

Time is infinite. There is no beginning or end but it isn't a loop either. The universie is the same. You can't say "the big bang can't just happen, what was before that?" but then say "God made everything, but nothing was before him"

Re: What do you all think came before the big bang?
 

The gooey kablooie.

It has recently been concluded that the amount of matter in the universe would dictate that it will continue expanding forever.

But into what? If the universe is expanding, then it has to be expanding *into* something.

This suggests to me that, just a stars are organised into dense and loose clusters...and just as galaxies are organised into dense and loose clusters...isn't it possible that our Universe is only one of x number of universes (sic?) in the (for lack of a better word) Mega-verse?

If so, what is the ether that our universe is in? Are we in a dense or loose uni-cluster? (another mike-ism ;))

Since there is a definite limit to the amount of the universe that can be seen (due to the speed of light,) I dont know if we will ever know...It is almost like someone or something has placed a curtain at the edge of our visible universe and said...sorry...this isnt for you to know....

weird.

Re: What do you all think came before the big bang?
 

A lot of alcohol and a busload of nurses!

the big lightning.

The sizzle of a burning fuse?

I read somewhere (I think Kip Thorne's book, Black Holes and Time Warps) that an oscillating universe is impossible. Even if the universe collapses into a big crunch, there won't be another big bang. Can't remember off-hand exactly why.

Well...
1. So? The main problem with the universe always existing is that there seems to be a good deal of evidence that this claim is false. Since Theism is not falsifiable, this isn't really a problem for it. (Unless you think it's non-falsifiability is a problem, which is beyond the scope of this thread.)
2. The difference between God and the Universe is that God is supposed to be self-caused. The Universe is not. In other words, God is his own explanation, but the Universe needs some explanation outside of itself, even if it's always existed. (Why is there something rather than nothing?)
3. In traditional Christianity, God is held to be outside time. Within this view, the question "What was there before there was the universe?" doesn't make sense -- there was no 'when' before God created the universe.

Not as weird as your post... :)

The universe expands into nothingness, going on until the ambient temperature is pretty much zero everywhere, and until all the mass in the universe is dead and derived of energy.

The fact that the speed of light limits our visibility is hardly mysterious or anything; it's just a fact of nature, just like you can't look over the horizon. Or would that be weird too?

So am I to take it that you are promoting the view that something can physically expand into nothing?

:crazy:

Hydrogen and oxygen, the universe is 98% hydrogen

Um, nothing. There was nothing before the big bang. Technicallly speaking, since time didn't exist before the big bang, I don't think you can even really say "before the big bang"

It is a hard concept to wrap my mind around.

Define "nothing"... :)

The universe is multi-dimensional and infinite. The part of the universe containing mass and/or energy is expanding into that infinity. So there isn't even a question of the universe expanding into nothing. It's expanding into something, but that something (outside of this area with mass/energy) contains nothing. Eventually, all the energy and mass will be *almost* gone, and the universe will once again contain (almost) nothing.

It's just a matter of words fucking things up, okay? Without this confusion, there wouldn't even be a problem.

The standard cosmological picture does not say that the (stuff in the) universe expands to fill up an infinite empty space. It says that space itself is expanding. That's a completely different concept. There isn't any terribly good analogy for this, but its completely self consistent mathematics.

To the original question, nobody has any answers much better (or worse) than god.

There has been some recent progress though. Tracing back the big bang eventually leads to an infinite density universe. The infinity signals the break down of classical physics. Someone recently showed that the big bang singularity does actually "fix itself" in loop quantum gravity (the main competitor to string theory. the two are more or less on equal footing right now). Since this initial state is now relatively well-defined, I think some kind of answer might be around the corner.

There will still a "what was before that?" question, but I think there is always something that just has to be accepted as axiomatic. Why are the laws predicting these things the way they are? They just are. If there's a deeper theory, then you can ask the same question again, but the process never ends.

Asking what was "before" the Big Band is meaningless.

Current theoretical astrophysics holds that time is itself a dimension, and only came into existence after the universe expanded from the singularity at the Big Bang.

In other words, there WAS no "before"...

Mr Mephisto

"Time", as you term it, doesn't exist now. It is as meaningful to discuss what came before the Big Bang as it is to discuss what is happening in the present. Time is an artificial construct of the human mind to support the notion of causality.