The Big Bang Theory

[Eireann]

It’s the first I’ve read about Pius xii, anyway had this discussion many times with doubters, and I’ve always maintained if there was a “Big Bang” that it was by the very word of God that it occurred … as it says “let there be light”.

As Fr Peter Mary Rookey from Chicago said here in Ireland during his healing Masses, " His word is Life".

So if anyone is arguing that the " Big Bang" just occurred all by itself, then I find that argument ridiculous.

And that the same “Big Bang” just outta the blue created all the natural wonders of the world, and the stars in motion around each-other, and all the creatures under the sea and on earth, just as ridiculous.

Well you did ask.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m not a physicist, and my education and training does not qualify me to comment authoritatively on much of anything that’s ever said in this forum. Still, I like to hear the things people say, and read the things I read, and think about them.

I have read some of the Hawking stuff, and the “brane” stuff, and it’s all really interesting, and neat; though I would not understand a single one of the equations they use to make their arguments. Most of the symbols they use mean absolutely nothing to me.

Whether the Big Bang was, as someone suggested, the great “Fiat Lux” or whether “branes” ding together at times and create whole universes in so doing, is really kind of irrelevant to me, as I suspect it is with Heisenberg, when you’re talking about the existence and nature of God.

Possibly, whenever scientists figure out whether “branes” created the Big Bang (and lots of others we can’t see), then they might figure out where the “branes” came from; then they might figure out how wherever they came from came from. I don’t know, but it kind of seems to me they’re out on a level where the only way to demonstrate any of it is on a chalkboard. And even then, the Hawkings and all don’t always agree with one another, and on it goes.

It’s all okay with me, whoever is “right” until they start with the “always’s” and the “infinites” and the “eternals”, because, manifestly, those things are utterly beyond our power to penetrate, notwithstanding that they can put a horizontal “8” on a chalkboard, for example, to stand for one of them. They’re beyond our power to penetrate, because we, ourselves were not “always” or “infinite” or “eternal”. (though we are assured we are “everlasting”)

One thing though, that has really puzzled me for some time is this. Everybody seems to bog down on the “eternals” and the “infinites” and such. I don’t think anyone at all has ever claimed to understand them. Yet, almost everybody has some sense that they are real things. Now, it seems to me we have some kind of “wiring problem” that lets us, uniquely among known creatures, contain that paradox within the same consciousness. If all things we are, are somehow some “survival strategy”, (and I have seen attempts at explaining how that is, and they’re not very convincing) that really is pointless otherwise, then we are truly absurd creatures. We have a “survival strategy” that depends on a paradox we can never seem to resolve, but somehow keeps us alive. (cockroaches seem to survive handily without it, so it hardly seems mandatory) The next possibility is that we have simply not discovered yet how to understand that we will someday hold “infinity” in our minds. That seems just impossible by definition. Or, we are “imprinted” with a consciousness of something that really is, not our “survival strategy” but our “survival intimation” that comes from the outside. We know it’s there (and virtually everyone has always known that in some way), but we can’t really understand it and have a clear intimation that we can’t understand it in its fullness, now or ever, on our own.

So, we really seem to have a choice in what to believe. We either have to believe we (and our lives) are absurd (in our understanding of absurdity-without any purpose but existing, which we could do without the absurdity), or we have to believe there are things that are just beyond us notwithstanding that somehow we intuit them. If we intuit something that’s likely there, but which we cannot really uncover in full, then our intuition is likely through the agency of another. It does not seem possible to us that things like “infinity” and “eternity” can just “be there” because, being so far beyond our ken, they almost seem to demand some conscious source, and one with more facility than our own. Thus, we can believe in some being that really is in command of those seemingly unreachable things. We can call that being “X” or “the force” or God.

Anyway, I like thinking about such things.

 

[pprimeau1976]

The Big Bang Theory, Evolution, do not in any way pose a problem to my faith life. In fact, it lifts it up. It in no way contradicts what Scripture conveys. In fact a soundbyte of Star Wars is playing in my head:

“What I told you was true, from a certain point of view.”

It would have been a huge mistake to bestow to the writers of scripture innate scientific knowledge. I am sure that if Genesis was written the way the Big Bang Theory was written, Genesis would not be our first book of the bible. The reason is that man can only take on so much knowledge. If that doesn’t convince you, ask then why God went from being one God in Genesis to one God, Three Persons in Revelation. He knew that man could not comprehend his greatness, so he spoon fed him. The same could be said about the creation of the world.

 

[Ridgerunner]

He knew that man could not comprehend his greatness, so he spoon fed him. The same could be said about the creation of the world.

I have sometimes thought that if, say, there was some kind of being having powers greater than our own, e.g., as much greater than ours are compared to a sea slug, the only way we could know anything about that being would be whatever it revealed to us in a way we could comprehend. Kind of like the sea slug. It knows nothing about me at all until, for example, I touch it. Then, my intervention into its life is all it knows still. But my intervention could even be deadly if, for example, I sat it on the seat of my car and took it for a ride. So I refrain from doing that, in consequence of which it does not get to experience what a ride in the country is.

Lots of people admit of the possibility that somewhere out there in the universe there could be creatures vastly greater than us (some say it must be, though I’m not persuaded of that yet). If the sea-slug-to-us distance is imaginable from us to such a being, then there is no way we can say, with any degree of confidence, that there cannot be a being worthy of being called “God”. Nor can we say, with any degree of confidence, that that being would be utterly uninterested in our being, any more than a sea slug could assume my indifference to it, or that such a being would not communicate with us in some manner that we could comprehend and that would not destroy us. We absolutely cannot say such a being cannot exist, and we cannot “limit” its being in our own minds, because its very being would be, by definition, beyond our powers of comprehension.

 

[john_doran]

1. what do I mean by getting their theories through the Big Bang. Simply put, the laws of physics shouldn’t break down regardless. Even at t=0, the laws of physics should still hold. So, if the laws of physics fall apart at t=0, then that means there is a problem with our understanding, but not physics. Physics doesn’t fall apart. Scientist are simply trying to find the right understanding that doesn’t fall apart.

well, it’s not that the laws of physics fall apart at the earliest moments following the big bang , it’s that our understanding of those laws fall apart.

in the planck era (t=0 until t=10^-43s), the distances were short enough, and the temperatures and densities were great enough, that a quantum theory of gravity is required to account for the events that transpired during that time. of course, we don’t have a good quantum theory of gravity, so we have absolutely no idea what was happening in the instants immediately following the big bang.

of course, we also have no idea if a quantization of general relativity is even possible (both loop quantum gravity and string theory - our best theories to date - are deeply problematic); we might discover that both general relativity and QED/QFT will have to be jettisoned in favor of a brand new theory, in which case it really does make some sense to say that the laws of physics (at least as we currently understand them) might fall apart as we probe the earliest moments of the life of the cosmos.

2) I mentioned that there was at least one theory that does explain it. I don’t know how I feel about it and haven’t done the digging, but it is called Membrane Theory. You may also have heard it called the Multiverse theory. The equations used for Membrane theory explain aspects in nature, such as weak gravity, but also explain the ‘how’ of the what started the universe. At a quantum level, energy fluctuates like a wave. This is sorta what zero point energy is, when two Membranes came extremely close, these fluctuation’s touched, combined, broke off from the old membranes, and created a new membrane, with its own rules and constants, and empty space, aka new universe. It explains where the energy for this universe came from, as well as what caused it.

i think you’re talking about M-theory (no one knows what the “M” stands for - the guy who came up with it has never said), in which there are, as you say membranes (“branes” for short), and the cosmology of branes is about as speculative as you can get.

zero point energy can be explained by M-theory, but it’s also a feature of both general relativity and quantum mechanics…

also, nothing in any physical theory explains where anything in the universe came from.

3) Can they test it… Some scientist think they can, but worry about the moral aspects… This will be a completely separate universe with its own rules, and maybe one day, if God allows, its own people.

when the Large Hadron Collider comes on line this year, there is hope that some of the outstanding theories will be testable (e.g. the higgs boson; aspects of string theory), but there is some serious doubt if, for example, string theory will ever be experimentally verifiable (lee smolin - one of the scientists behind loop quantum gravity - has written a good book on this).

 

[john_doran]

4) Ether… Ether is a theory that was extremely popular in the Latter half of the 1800’s. The wave properties of light were starting to become understood, but there was a problem, what propagated the wave. When you drop a rock in the water, the ripples are propagated by the water. Sound is propagated by Air, Light however, seemed to not have any medium that it traveled through. so, the theory of ether developed. An invisible, untouchable, untestable ‘substance’ that was used to propagate light. This turned out to be wrong. I kinda feel like dark matter is todays Ether personally, but then again, I could be wrong. Anyway, the whole point of this is that very popular theories, no matter how popular fall away when proven wrong.

the aether was never proven not to exist; what happened was that einstein simply assumed that it didn’t exist at the very start of his seminal 1905 paper on special relativity. einstein was a student of ernst mach, who was a staunch positivist who hoped one day to see physics expressed simply in the language of sensations - for him, if something was experimentally unverifiable, it didn’t exist. thus, einstein did away with the aether as an untestable phenomenon. which, of course, is about as far from “proving” anything as you can get.

heindrik lorentz, for example, produced a fully workable theory of relativity that includes the aether…

and not only is there dark matter to worry about these days, but also dark energy; the amount we don’t understand about our universe is enough to make one’s head spin.

 

[DaveBj]

My speciality isn’t philosphy or astromony, rather the creative arts and animal studies, but I will venture my opinion anyways:

SOMETHING had to cause the Big Bang, and that would be God. Science can argue the universe down to one tiny grain of dust, or one single atom, but where did that grain of dust or atom come from? What caused it to come into being? And that is where God comes in.

To quote one of my all time favorite TV shows and one of the best Catholic characters on TV (IMO), Agent Scully of X-Files fame: “Science tells us how. It doesn’t tell us why.”

bows How’s that for a first post?

God said, “Let there be…”, and
BANG!
There it was!



DaveBj

 

[Ridgerunner]

Reading Doran and Heisenberg, I must say that I am genuinely impressed with the kinds of folks you sometimes run into in here. I mean that sincerely, notwithstanding that I don’t understand what they’re saying.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

bows How’s that for a first post?

Respectable! Welcome to CAF! :tiphat:

 

[Ani_Ibi]

icxc nika:

Science and research depends on money, and the funding for it.

OK. I hear ya. I think this is worthwhile discussing – but on another thread along with some history of science.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

heisenburg:

Again… to you as well, please forgive me if my words came out as harsh.

Oh, goodness! Not harsh at all. Clear-eyed and a little robust at the edges. The thing is that we don’t sulk but come back with more questions, more clarity, more insights, and more fun things to think about. That suits me just fine, heisenberg!

heisenburg:

You are right that its OK to question and Ask, i am never opposed to that, I am simply opposed to statements made as fact, that are false.

Understood. On this particular thread so far, my comments have been very brief and mainly questions if I remember correctly. But those questions have sprung out of my statements made on other threads which were – if anything – respectably referenced. Yes, they could have been better referenced, but folks still have to read them! And yes they could be plain wrong.

As for being wrong:

Failure is the true test of greatness.
Failure is practice for success.

I’ll peruse your answers to my questions in a later post. Thank you.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

heisenburg:

what do I mean by getting their theories through the Big Bang. Simply put, the laws of physics shouldn’t break down regardless. Even at t=0, the laws of physics should still hold. So, if the laws of physics fall apart at t=0, then that means there is a problem with our understanding, but not physics. Physics doesn’t fall apart. Scientist are simply trying to find the right understanding that doesn’t fall apart.

Fair enough. I simply don’t know if physics breaks at t=0 or not. Does anyone?

At this point, it seems to me that we go with a hypothesis: either physics breaks or physics doesn’t break. And we test that hypothesis. Agreed?

But can you clarify ‘hypothesis’ for me? It seems that a hypothesis is a set of propositions to explain a phenomenum. Same with ‘theory.’

The problem with t=0 is that so far we cannot observe it. So is it truly a phenomenon?

So what term can we give the Big Bang? I suggest the Big Bang Problem. Because that is what it is: a problem. And problems have solutions.

Now I am attracted to the notion that “physics doesn’t fall apart.”

I could be wrong. But so could any number of folks in the past who came up with new solutions to problems framed in new ways.

It seems to me that what folks are saying when they are saying that at t=0 is that physics cannot be seen. Therefore it breaks.

Obviously new observational science will go after that problem like a dog on a bone.

And obviously new theoretical science will reframe the problem for observational science like a mosquito in a swamp.

It could be illogical to say that physics breaks. Folks have tried in the past to say that quantum theory (which is a part of physics) breaks causality. But Feynman and Hawking have retrieved causality and brought it back into the fold of quantum theory.

If causality is gone then logic is gone.

Some folks are trying to say that the universe is not caused. And that therefore the Big Bang was not caused. And therefore physics breaks. And therefore there is no logic in the pre-universe or in the early universe.

One way proponents of an uncaused universe defend their point of view is to accuse those of us who subscribe to a caused universe of having no imagination: we can’t understand the existence of non-causality because we have no imagination!

Um… :doh2: :doh2: :doh2: :doh2: :doh2: Mega d-oh!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

heisenburg:

I mentioned that there was at least one theory that does explain it. I don’t know how I feel about it and haven’t done the digging, but it is called Membrane Theory. You may also have heard it called the Multiverse theory. The equations used for Membrane theory explain aspects in nature, such as weak gravity, but also explain the ‘how’ of the what started the universe. At a quantum level, energy fluctuates like a wave. This is sorta what zero point energy is, when two Membranes came extremely close, these fluctuation’s touched, combined, broke off from the old membranes, and created a new membrane, with its own rules and constants, and empty space, aka new universe. It explains where the energy for this universe came from, as well as what caused it.

:yup: Where did the Membranes comes from?

heisenburg:

The Next question stands, well, what created the MultiVerse.

:bigyikes: D-oh! We are thinking the same thoughts!

heisenburg:

dunno, God can still be the answer.

:heaven:

 

[freesoulhope]

and not only is there dark matter to worry about these days, but also dark energy; the amount we don’t understand about our universe is enough to make one’s head spin.

What the hell is dark matter? Are you talking about the darkness in the universe?

 

[Nullasalus]

What the hell is dark matter? Are you talking about the darkness in the universe?

In a way.

Dark matter = hypothesized matter that calculations suggest should be in the universe, but don’t seem to be. So it’s supposed to be present yet eluding direct detection (responsible for some gravity effects, etc.) Mind you, I’m anything but a physicist - just offering up a quick explanation as I know it.

Though some don’t believe it exists. So I’ve had the joy of reading physics news sites, with the headline ‘First evidence of dark matter photographed with long-range x-ray camera’, and beneath it the headline ‘Physicist challenges existence of dark matter’.

 

[john_doran]

What the hell is dark matter? Are you talking about the darkness in the universe?

no - dark matter is matter that is dark in the sense that we have yet to observe it; it is supposed to constitute most of the matter in the universe.

the reason we believe that it exists is simply because, for any given volume of space in the universe, there has to be enough mass for gravity to keep all of the stuff in that volume from flying apart; as it turns out, there’s just nowhere nearly enough visible matter to account for the relatively slow velocities of the objects in the universe. thus, there must be “dark matter”.

we just haven’t found it yet.

 

[Mr.Ruggerio]

Hmmmm…

Let’s see…Religion not rationale, but science is. Right? Wrong. Consider that science now postulates white holes (think anti-black hole). The big bang is an explosion that happens within a black hole. A miniature universe is created at the core of the black hole, which expands into our extra dimensions. Matter that could not escape the intense gravitational pull of the black hole instead is sent speeding into the newly expanding baby universe. Our entire universe is simply a point of singularity within another universe. Sure that makes more sense that Trinity.

Oh yes. What about dark matter and dark energy. Not directly observable. A necessary postulate that accounts for 96% of the matter in the universe, cosmos expansion, etc., but cannot be seen. Sounds slightly supernatural to me.

It’s supposedly illogical for theologians to infer the existence of the supernatural (so say the scientists) but dark matter, black holes of infinite mass, etc are completely acceptable.

I think religion’s got the edge on science here.

 

[freesoulhope]

we just haven’t found it yet, but where gonna tell you its there any way; and you have to believe it because where scientists.

You seem to me to be well informed on things, so im going to pose this qeustionto you.

Have you noticed that, we speak of the big bang giving birth to time space and matter, yet the universe is expanding; but in to what? If space is a product of the universe, then it seems irational to think of it expanding since the universe as a whole would need something to expand into. Do you get what i am getting at?

Why do scientists avoid this phenoemon?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

heisenburg:

1. Can they test it… Some scientists think they can, but worry about the moral aspects…

Please forgive the fuzziness of this post. I’m tired and it’s hard for me to find images to express difficult thoughts. heisenberg, maybe you can nip and tuck what I have here?

A scientist would have ethical worries, not moral worries.

What would those ethical worries be? Testing the multiverse would involve what? Playing with energies so enormous that whole universes could be resorbed back into the primordial slime?

heisenburg:

This will be a completely separate universe with its own rules, and maybe one day, if God allows, its own people.

Not following you. Can you flesh this out a bit more so that I can follow what you are saying?

My understanding is that it was possible to create our universe by means of Membrane Collision. But that it was also possible to create one other universe or many other universes by means of Membrane Collision.

It is conjecture – but plausible conjecture – that each universe could have its own – distinct – rules. But then that would mean that the physics which we know is incomplete (we already know that it is) and could only be known by… what? By observing the other universes. Or by observing the effects of the other universes on our universe if that is possible.

Is observing the other universes possible?
Is observing the effects of the other universes on our universe possible? Thoughts?

If the creation of our universe was random, then it is probable that other universes also emerged from Membrane Collision. In fact it is possible that Membrane Collision is statistically a predictable phenomenon. A matter of course. The norm rather than the exception.

A predictable phenomenon would be obviously very very attractive to a physicist because it would mean that physics was not broken – at least not at the Membrane level of existence.

I’m thinking of a kind of primordial entropy but don’t know what I’m talking about so will pass the ball to you, heisenberg. Here catch! Oh wait, one would have to formulate the payoff within the primordial slime for the entropy caused by the Membrane Collision. Here catch again!

On the other hand, if the emergence of our universe from the primordial slime was the result of a unique, one time only Membrane Collision…

… then what? We would still have to formulate the payoff within the primordial slime for the entropy caused by the Membrane Collision.

continued…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

To figure our way through this, we would have to do a compare and contrast between on the one hand the payoff and entropy in a universe emerging randomly and on the other hand the payoff and entropy in a universe emerging uniquely.

Einstein said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe.

Yet the notion that causality, logic, and physics cannot be broken is in the statistical analyses of random emergence.

This would mean that God does not play dice within a uniquely emergent universe.
It could even mean that God does not play dice within any emergent universe – whether that emergence is random or unique.
It could mean that God does play dice in the primordial slime.
It could mean that God simply isn’t in the primordial slime at all.

Let’s see.

God doesn’t change. Our emergent universe changes. Therefore God is not within our emergent universe in the first place so, if he is playing dice somewhere, it ain’t here.

Where is He? Let’s look for Him in the primordial slime. Let’s assume that He is there.

Now let’s ask what does ‘random’ mean in the primordial Membranes when time itself is altered?

Again it is from what point in the entropic trail we make the observation. Which brings us back to the approach set out by Feynam & Hawking in the flexiverse – except going further back before the Big Bang:

What looks like randomness to us from our point on the entropic trail allows us to preserve causality and logic. Therefore, for us, physics does not break.

From the start point where entropy = 0, time is undefined, therefore randomness is undefined, therefore causality is undefined, therefore logic is undefined. This is the no-boundary condition. Intuitively.

Under the no-boundary condition, is physics broken? I say that physics also is undefined. This undefined physics must be what Barfield was describing as “original participation.”

So I am not sure the ‘uniqueness’ or ‘randomness’ of emergence from the primordial Membranes is even relevant.

But I do believe that the no-boundary condition does not necessarily break physics. From our position on the entropic trail; in other words from where we are observing our universe and from where we are looking for conditions which existed before our universe.

Summary:

I think that believing that it is possible to “look through the Big Bang” in the 21th Century is at least as worthwhile as believing we could land a -]woman/-] man on the moon in the 20th Century.

And about the folks who want to believe in the possibility that physics can be broken: Sometimes folks try to understand how things work by breaking them. So while I believe it is a good idea to trust in the unbreakability of physics, let’s not be too harsh on those who are trying to break physics. We both have the same aim: to understand how things work.

Further thoughts on the entropic trail. Our universe has entropy. Eventually entropy will increase to the point where everything is so far apart and so disorganized that things will stop working and we’ll freeze.

Entropy is the arrow of time. Entropy is mortality.

We know that time did not exist before the Big Bang. Mathematically this is so. Time was, if anything, one or more dimensions of space. And as someone pointed out before on this thread, the closer we get to the Big Bang the greater the effect of gravity and therefore the greater distortion of time.

Did the pre-universe exile the entropy inherent in Membrane Collision into emergent universes? Thus ensuring immortality in the primordial slime? This point of view is consistent with if not strictly equivalent to Barfield’s thinking. … end of post