Before the big bang

[mollykins]

I'm sure its not just me that finds it hard to comprehend what what before the big bang.

I asked my newly qualified chemistry teacher who has a phd in chemistry 'if in all chemical reactions nothing is gained or lost, just changed around, how can you have nothing before the big bang then lots of elements after it' as we are told that there was nothing before the big bang, it flumuxed him.

so how you can you have nothing then probably an infinite amount of stuff in the universe?

[ll_billym]

Before the big bang there was not 'nothing', there was something that, at the time of the 'bang', expanded to create the universe.

The early elements were created by nuclear reactions of sub-atomic particles combining together to form atoms, rather than chemical reactions.

[mollykins]

But where did that something come from?

[Sqad]

molly...;-) "nothing doesn't have to come from somewhere, as it will only exist and become an entity, when something stops it from becoming nothing.

Your question should be where did the subatomic particles come from and in the future all will be revealed by science..............in my opinion.

[mollykins]

well where did they come from, you've jsut said that they were just there.

[joggerjayne]

I don't understand any of this, but ...

... I'm with Molly on the "something from nothing" conundrum.

[mollykins]

teachers always bang on about how, when you're writing a chemical equaion, both side have to be equal because nothing is lost or gained, so how do they explain nothing, or maybe a few particles or something, then a whole universe being created.

did you notice the pun?

[Sqad]

molly...I have answered that...as of now we do not know BUT

////in the future all will be revealed by science..............in my opinion.////

[joggerjayne]

The pun, as in ...

... in seeking to explain "nothing" (ie. total lack of original matter) they explain "nothing" (ie. provide no explanation whatsoever) ?

[ChuckFickens]

Nobody knows.

The big bang theory explains very nicely everything that has happened after the event and fits in with all the observable evidence, but it makes no attempt to explain what happened at the point of the event or prior to it, in fact even the first few minutes after the event are beyond our current understanding as there would have had to be matter in existence in states that it is not possible for us to recreate (the Large Hadron Collider will go some way towards this if and when it works, but not fully)

(big bang theory on a sunday morning!! bit much eh? :))

[joggerjayne]

Not used to doing the big bang on a Sunday morning.

[Sly,Duck]

If that Hadron collider recreates something. How will they stop it if that something carries on recreating that something

[ChuckFickens]

it might make the Mayan calendar correct :)

[jason.p]

We're all (or most of us) assuming that the big bang theory is correct. As chuck says, it fits neatly with events "after" and appears to obey the laws of physics as we know them, but goes nowhere in explaining the "before". I'm sure that if and when gravity is fully understood, and possibly Higgs Boson type particles are discovered, the big bang theory may well be modified to suit. That is what science is all about, and what makes it so fascinating.
One of the problems is that we cannot grasp the concept of infinity. How can there be "nothing"??

[ll_billym]

Yes, that's right, nobody knows what caused the big bang.

But your question was asking about chemical reactions and what I was trying to say is that the reactions were nuclear rather than chemical so you won't be able to explain it with chemistry.

[jake-the-peg]

Firstly there is no such thing as "before" the big bang

I know that takes a lot of getting your head around I've been going through it regularly on here and a lot of people still ask the question.

You see Time is not really the way you think it is. It can slow down and speed up but we live on a nice average planet with average speeds and average gravity and so we never see the weird sides to time.

Time is actually deeply connected to physical space.

Now here's the tough bit The big bang was *not* some explosion into a pre-existing space vacuum

*Space and Time both started at the big bang!*

There was no time before it. Given that even the words "before the big bang" don't actually have any meaning - It's a bit like asking what you were doing before you were conceived.

As for everything coming from nothing - again that's only surprising because you only see a small section of reality - it would be pretty amazing don't you thing if the Unverse worked the same at incredibly high energies and densities as it does at thirty degrees Celcius and at our gravity etc.

Of course it doesn't. At very small levels you get massive quatities of particles popping in and out of existance all the time. These are responsible for Hawking Radiation around black holes. (A black hole is a bit like a big bang in reverse) So that fact that massive (not infinite) amounts of matter should come into existance is not that surprising. What is odd is that the same amount of anti-matter did dot also spring into existance and anihalte the matter - this is "spontaneous symmetry breaking" and is an aera of great scientific interest.

Alas our chances of ever building a CERN big enough to test this is vanishingly small

[bigbrain_biggerego99]

Perhaps there was nothing before something. Perhaps at some time, there will be some sort of a temporal phenonamon (Basically, something that meddles with time) and at a certain point in time. A big bang will happen and create the universe again. Before the big bang, there may have been an old universe. Just wiped out by the big bang. And we could be next. For all we know. We are the "something thousanth" hmans that have existed. And because it's time travel (And therefore a headache), something will have went back in time, where, in an amount of time, the history may innevitably repeat itself. Then, you can't go before that time because an erlier version of whatever will have already done something like that. So it's a loop that can go on forever.
That's one of many theories made by me.

[Clanad]

JTP and I have had this discussion before... many times over the years. We've agreed (at least in my view) to disagree re: "... At very small levels you get massive quatities of particles popping in and out of existance all the time..." And the disagreement centers on the phrase "popping in and out of existance..." I maintain (with a modicum of scientific backing) that the particles are only "popping in and out" of observation, not existance.

Fact is, we have fairly good mathmatics (albeit, at the quantum level) backing the "Big Bang" back to Planck Time... the smallest amount of time (or distance) that can be persuasively shown to have existed. Planck Time equates to 10^-43 seconds or the time it takes a proton to travel Planck Length (1.6 x 10-35 m).
Granted, bog-standard (love that thoroughly British phrase) physics appears to break down at Planck time, but by interpolation on must consider that the remaining micro-micro seconds "before" Planck time must equate to original comming into existance...
from nothing.

At any rate, even more perplexing is the "Inflationary Phase"... but that's another subject.

You may wish to cnsider also, that the geometry of the known universe is most likely flat like a sheet of paper.. not, as most surmise, a globe shape...

[Clanad]

Lastly, "big brain's" response doesn't answer the age old question of where the "original" came from, now does it? Just kick's the can down the road somewhat...

[thedodge]

If the universe is flat and is expanding all the time will we one day fall over the edge.

[jake-the-peg]

Yes, the reason that we have agreed to differ is because the Plank time is a Quantum of time. You cannot have an interval of time smaller than it in the same way you cannot have half an electron or half a quark.

Consequently any time earlier than that is zero - which is where you have no time.

It's another example of the way time is different from the way we normally think of it in our everyday lives.