Big Bang

[wesgerrard]

What was there before the big bang?

[dawkins]

Eh. Firstly, I did not say that the universe will have a big crunch. I said it could carry on expanding or have a big crunch. and yes I'm aware of the big rip, I think that is in the link too I don't think anybody professes to know with certainty what will happen but with current knowledge there are a number of possibilities and I just wanted to convey this.

Secondly, I merely stated that because one can measure the size of the universe (known universe) it cannot by definition be never ending because it is bounded. I took the phrase "never ending" to mean of infinite size. As you correctly pointed out from the link that I provided, the universe is thought to have a finite size which is expanding. Even if the universe did pop out of nothing during Planck Time then it still has a beginning and if its expanding it has a size. I think that is obvious.

Thirdly, even for you Clanad its leftfield to say most astrophysicists believe the universe popped out of nowhere without a singularity. This is simply not true.

D

[Clanad]

I'm willing to meet you half way D... we'll call it a 'singularity' if you wish, however the problem arises in that the term is usually applied to zones which defy our current understanding of physics. They are thought, as you know, to exist at the core of "black holes." Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that finite matter is actually squished into infinite density, which is precisely the problem in your application of this definition of the term to the universe. It is generally agreed that it began as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something- a singularity, if you wish, sans the squishing. Where did it come from? We don't know. Why did it appear? We don't know... and possibly never will...
My copy of Science says "...three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space. According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy." Certainly sounds like an apt description of ex nihilo, wouldn't you agree?

Contd.

[Clanad]

Contd.

If we want to call it a singularity, so be it, but all we do know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist... and neither did we.
As one well authenticated, peer reviewed astrophysicist puts it "...The potentiality for the existence of the universe could not have lain in itself, since it did not exist prior to the singularity. On the theistic hypothesis, the potentiality of the universe's existence lay in the power of God to create it. On the atheistic hypothesis, there did not even exist the potentiality for the existence of the universe. But then it seems inconceivable that the universe should become actual if there did not exist any potentiality for its existence..." (Emphasis mine). It seems to me therefore that a little reflection leads us to the conclusion that the origin of the universe had a cause.

[mibn2cweus]

Makes me wonder what will happen first:
our understanding of the universe or
our understanding of each other?

Zeus, another cup a jo please!