e-mail help: Disorder increases in a finite universe. - Help.com

change is constant around the universe, when one star dies a new one will form.

This is a very complex question I think but I guess my answer would be Energy Never dies it only changes into something else.

E=mc2 :)

I really don’t want to put much thought into this…

So I won’t. :)

On day everyone still remaining on the planet will die. Same day. Dame time. Earth will no longer exist.

I don’t know when and I don’t know why.

Good luck on your knowledge seeking! And I really love your avatar. :)

Tictactomm wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
change is constant around the universe, when one star dies a new one will form.

Oh. Well that’s comforting. But if a star dies and another one forms, is there really any change at all? Or is there always, in the grand scheme of things, a constant number of these stars?

Order eternal, that’s the question.

lavoisier had shown that matter can move around from one form to another, yet it will not burst in and out of existence. this was one of the prime discoveries of the 1700s the universe is a fixed amount of mass, it will let stars grow and explode, it will let mountains form and collide and be weathered away by wind and ice, it will let metals rust and crumble. yet throughout this the total amount of mass in the universe will never alter; not even to the millionth of an ounce; not even if you wait for all eternity. if a city were to be weighed, and then broken by siege, and its buildings burned by fire - if all the smoke and ash and broken ramparts and bricks werw collected and weighed, there would be no change in the original weight. nothing would have truly vanished, not even the weight of the smallest speck of dust

by David Bodanis ( e = mc square )

actually, i think that it will spread, as if it where a soundwave, and keep going, but get weaker much much farther on in time.

but my beleifs are not constrained to the big bang.

i think that it is actually possible for some things to move out of time.

i dont think matter will move out of time, nor do i think that energy goes through it.

since this seems to cover everything, youd think that this doesnt make sense, but that leaves things that we dont know about.

like the soul. i think it can leave the timestream, in addition, there may be more things that we cannot yet measure.

just a theory.

Wow! Interesting discussion thread Tictactomm! I am honestly not sure what my thoughts are on this, but I like to see what others have to say and try and put the question into some kind of perspective. There are many different factors at work I would think - or maybe it is very simple when looking at things on a grand scale. What I understand is that most scientists have comparisons they look to from what we already can observe in space and time on a smaller scale. They draw up theories or assumptions based on those observations, but I too wonder about change … what is to be expected from what we already know or theorize about past observations or can we look at all to the past observations to know what to expect in this case? Yikes! Ya got me thinking!

LOL! Thats quite alright! I wanna see where it goes from here. ;) :))

it is like when you ad numbers and change numbers in to another direction like
06196103 06187103
30169160 30178160
36365263 36365263

but numbers can represent something else Matter,Velocity, Ect…

Tictactomm wrote:
So if you believe the big bang happened and you believe that this is a fixed, finite universe that is expanding in one direction, then you must also believe that time’s arrow points in only one direction. That direction, and the subsequent disorder of an expanding and finite universe, will eventually render all matter “meaningless” so to speak, regardless of what state that matter eventually becomes.

Pretty bleak.

But, and to my point of the post, if you believe that the universe will also contract at some point, does that force you to accept that time must also reverse direction, AND that the universe as it exists in space is eternal?

The no boundary proposal, predicts that the universe would start at a single point, like the North Pole of the Earth. But this point wouldn’t be a singularity, like the Big Bang. Instead, it would be an ordinary point of space and time, like the North Pole is an ordinary point on the Earth. According to the no boundary proposal, the universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter. the result of all that borrowing, was inflation. The universe expanded and borrowed at an ever-increasing rate. Fortunately, the debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe.

Eventually, the period of inflation would have ended, and the universe would have settled down to a stage of more moderate growth or expansion. However, inflation would have left its mark on the universe. The universe would have been almost completely smooth, but with very slight irregularities. These irregularities are so little, only one part in a hundred thousand, that for years people looked for them in vain. But in 1992, the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, COBE, found these irregularities in the microwave background radiation. It was an historic moment. We saw back to the origin of the universe. The form of the fluctuations in the microwave background agree closely with the predictions of the no boundary proposal. These very slight irregularities in the universe would have caused some regions to have expanded less fast than others. Eventually, they would have stopped expanding, and would have collapsed in on themselves, to form stars and galaxies. Thus the no boundary proposal can explain all the rich and varied structure, of the world we live in. What does the no boundary proposal predict for the future of the universe? Because it requires that the universe is finite in space, as well as in imaginary time, it implies that the universe will re-collapse eventually. However, it will not re-collapse for a very long time, much longer than the 15 billion years it has already been expanding. The collapse is not the time reverse of the expansion. The expansion will start with an inflationary phase, but the collapse will not in general end with an anti inflationary phase. Moreover, the small departures from uniform density will continue to grow in the contracting phase. The universe will get more and more lumpy and irregular, as it gets smaller, and disorder will increase. This means that the arrow of time will not reverse. People will continue to get older, even after the universe has begun to contract.

The conclusion is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn’t have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again. However, the contracting phase, will not have the opposite arrow of time, to the expanding phase. So we will keep on getting older, and we won’t return to our youth. Because time is not going to go backwards

By Pro. Stephen Hawking.

I had an argument with a user on this site regarding Big Bang Theory. I researched alot on it and concluded the following points.

1. The Universe began from an initial point or singularity which has expanded over billions of years to form the universe, is called BIG BANG THEORY.

2. Due to expansion, the universe has naturally cooled from extremely hot state.

3. The expansion of Universe is still accelerating.

It also has a few Objections.

1. Can someone answer some questions not answered yet : i) What existed before the Big Bang? ii) What caused the Big Bang? iii) Is our universe, the only one?

2. Lemaitre described the Big Bang as a “Day without Yesterday.”

►Shizuko-Sophie◄ wrote:

A Human Being wrote:
.3. The expansion of Universe is still accelerating.

That is wildly disputed, the acceleration seems to be constant.

No, its not.

It is written in Quran (Our Holy Book), “And it is We who have built the universe with (Our creative) power, and verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it.” [51:47]

Tictactomm wrote:
After the big bang and as the universe expands out through a space/time continum, will it continue to expand until eventually there is nothing left?

Future according to Big Bang Theory:

i) The universe could reach a maximum size and then begin to collapse. It would be hotter and denser and will be in a state at which it was before.

OR

ii) The expansion could slow down, but will never stop. Star formation would cease as all the interstellar gas in each galaxy is consumed. The average temperature of universe would asymptotically approach absolute Zero creating neutron stars and Big Holes.

This argument about whether or not the universe had a beginning. It was conducted mainly on the basis of theology and philosophy, with little consideration of observational evidence. This may have been reasonable, given the notoriously unreliable character of cosmological observations, until fairly recently. The cosmologist, Sir Arthur Eddington, once said, ‘Don’t worry if your theory doesn’t agree with the observations, because they are probably wrong.’ But if your theory disagrees with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is in bad trouble. In fact, the theory that the universe has existed forever is in serious difficulty with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law, states that disorder always increases with time. Although the laws of science seemed to predict the universe had a beginning, they also seemed to predict that they could not determine how the universe would have begun. This was obviously very unsatisfactory. So there were a number of attempts to get round the conclusion, that there was a singularity of infinite density in the past. One suggestion was to modify the law of gravity, so that it became repulsive. This could lead to the graph of the separation between two galaxies, being a curve that approached zero, but didn’t actually pass through it, at any finite time in the past. Instead, the idea was that, as the galaxies moved apart, new galaxies were formed in between, from matter that was supposed to be continually created. This was the Steady State theory, proposed by Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle.

The Steady State theory, was what Karl Popper would call, a good scientific theory: it made definite predictions, which could be tested by observation, and possibly falsified. Unfortunately for the theory, they were falsified. The first trouble came with the Cambridge observations, of the number of radio sources of different strengths. On average, one would expect that the fainter sources would also be the more distant. One would therefore expect them to be more numerous than bright sources, which would tend to be near to us. However, the graph of the number of radio sources, against there strength, went up much more sharply at low source strengths, than the Steady State theory predicted.

There were attempts to explain away this number count graph, by claiming that some of the faint radio sources, were within our own galaxy, and so did not tell us anything about cosmology. This argument didn’t really stand up to further observations. But the final nail in the coffin of the Steady State theory came with the discovery of the microwave background radiation, in 1965. This radiation is the same in all directions. It has the spectrum of radiation in thermal equilibrium at a temperature of 2 point 7 degrees above the Absolute Zero of temperature. There doesn’t seem any way to explain this radiation in the Steady State theory.

Another attempt to avoid a beginning to time, was the suggestion, that maybe all the galaxies didn’t meet up at a single point in the past. Although on average, the galaxies are moving apart from each other at a steady rate, they also have small additional velocities, relative to the uniform expansion. These so-called “peculiar velocities” of the galaxies, may be directed sideways to the main expansion. It was argued, that as you plotted the position of the galaxies back in time, the sideways peculiar velocities, would have meant that the galaxies wouldn’t have all met up. Instead, there could have been a previous contracting phase of the universe, in which galaxies were moving towards each other. The sideways velocities could have meant that the galaxies didn’t collide, but rushed past each other, and then started to move apart. There wouldn’t have been any singularity of infinite density, or any breakdown of the laws of physics. Thus there would be no necessity for the universe, and time itself, to have a beginning. Indeed, one might suppose that the universe had oscillated, though that still wouldn’t solve the problem with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: one would expect that the universe would become more disordered each oscillation. It is therefore difficult to see how the universe could have been oscillating for an infinite time. This possibility, that the galaxies would have missed each other, was supported by a paper by two Russians. They claimed that there would be no singularities in a solution of the field equations of general relativity, which was fully general, in the sense that it didn’t have any exact symmetry. However, their claim was proved wrong. Many people hoped that quantum effects, would somehow smooth out the singularity of infinite density, and allow the universe to bounce, and continue back to a previous contracting phase. This would be rather like the earlier idea of galaxies missing each other, but the bounce would occur at a much higher density. However, I think that this is not what happens: quantum effects do not remove the singularity, and allow time to be continued back indefinitely. But it seems that quantum effects can remove the most objectionable feature, of singularities in classical General Relativity. This is that the classical theory, does not enable one to calculate what would come out of a singularity, because all the Laws of Physics would break down there. This would mean that science could not predict how the universe would have begun. Instead, one would have to appeal to an agency outside the universe. This may be why many religious leaders, were ready to accept the Big Bang, and the singularity theorems.

It seems that Quantum theory, on the other hand, can predict how the universe will begin. Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real, as what we call real time.

The three directions in space, and the one direction of imaginary time, make up what is called a Euclidean space-time. I don’t think anyone can picture a four dimensional curve space. But it is not too difficult to visualise a two dimensional surface, like a saddle, or the surface of a football. roposed that space and imaginary time together, are indeed finite in extent, but without boundary. They would be like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions. The surface of the Earth is finite in extent, but it doesn’t have any boundaries or edges. I have been round the world, and I didn’t fall off.

If space and imaginary time are indeed like the surface of the Earth, there wouldn’t be any singularities in the imaginary time direction, at which the laws of physics would break down. And there wouldn’t be any boundaries, to the imaginary time space-time, just as there aren’t any boundaries to the surface of the Earth. This absence of boundaries means that the laws of physics would determine the state of the universe uniquely, in imaginary time. But if one knows the state of the universe in imaginary time, one can calculate the state of the universe in real time. One would still expect some sort of Big Bang singularity in real time. So real time would still have a beginning. But one wouldn’t have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began. Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time. Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe.

The no boundary condition, is the statement that the laws of physics hold everywhere. Clearly, this is something that one would like to believe, but it is a hypothesis. One has to test it, by comparing the state of the universe that it would predict, with observations of what the universe is actually like. If the observations disagreed with the predictions of the no boundary hypothesis, we would have to conclude the hypothesis was false. There would have to be something outside the universe, to wind up the clockwork, and set the universe going. Of course, even if the observations do agree with the predictions, that does not prove that the no boundary proposal is correct. But one’s confidence in it would be increased, particularly because there doesn’t seem to be any other natural proposal, for the quantum state of the universe.

Hi tictactomm as always your ambition for disscusiomn of these topics is admirable :). You have asked a lot of questions in this post some are know others are not.

As for the universal expanstion verses the big cruch as it has been coined, well current findings support the theory of an ever expanding universe or a critically damped one. Personally i belive in the ever expanding one as the expansion is powered by the as yet unknown dark energy.

Next is the universe infinate, well if we belive in the big bang and that as the course of the cosmic microwave background radation, then yes the universe is infinate as that is why we see an isotropic distribution of radiation.

Right what else, ok the second law of thermodynamics and the increasing of entropy. WEll yes this has been shown in closed systems and this is the path our universe seems to have been following in all its observed forms and it makes sense. All things find their equilibrium and the ditribution of energy will slowly become equal. This is not to say there might not be strange effects in entropy and space time at black holes or in exotic or dark matter we do not yet know about.

As for is there a set order to things can things be truly random. That is a very interesting question. So far truly random things are few and far between and whilst there appear to be very random devices in this world and statisticaly random quantum events underpinning our universe. There is a sort of predictability and order to things in a sense. Which begs the question if there are caotic patterns to it. Also as a side note that i find most interesting, there is resaurch that has shown that people in lage numbers have been able to effect the course of previously truly random events. Which suggests that we may have the ability to alter the coures of our random events and existance in this universe.

Hope this might help, i didnt read all the above responses but any questions i can help with let me know :)

Good luck with your exploration for knowlage :)

Hey Bro! Been out of service, just like a piece of technology lately. I think time and space only exist on our plane so there is room for any number of possibilities. I also think maybe some people can go back and make changes in time….only because every time I start to share a memory from my childhood, people give me that ‘look’ and I know it is about perception (mine and theirs).

You’re making me think too hard and I have a headache right now! Talk to you later!

while everything is in motion i mean everything it is also expanding .Just logic!!!!

A Human Being wrote:
It also has a few Objections.

1. Can someone answer some questions not answered yet : i) What existed before the Big Bang? ii) What caused the Big Bang? iii) Is our universe, the only one?

2. Lemaitre described the Big Bang as a “Day without Yesterday.”

A few more Objections.

3. The physicists first based the theory on the simplest logic. Everything seemed to be moving away from the Earth, as if it were an expanding explosion. Then they set distances based upon the speed of light. But when they added everything together, there wasn’t enough time for matter to travel to its present location. So they said it got there almost instantly, and then the laws of Physics began.
Why didn’t the laws of Physics begin when matter got half way to its present location? What caused the laws of Physics to begin? The whole purpose is to deny the existence of Creator.

4. Physicists based their claim that the entire universe started at a very small point on a red shift in light. Red shift means spectral lines are located more toward the longer side than usual. It usually results from motion away from the observer. Since the more distant galaxies show more red shift, they are assumed to be moving away faster than closer ones. Supposedly, an explosion would do this, hence the Big Bang Theory.
But there are some quirky red shifts, such as quasars showing more than usual, while they cannot be that far away. A more logic explanation is that light loses energy when traveling for billions of years. One cause could be resistance in the ether which light travels through. Another cause could be “The Compton Effect,” which means matter which light contacts reduces its energy.

5. The total context shows that there no Big Bang. The distance problem is an example. Physicists claim the universe is about 15 billion years old. When they look at a galaxy which is 15 billion light years away, they say they see it shortly after the universe began. How did it get that far away in such a short amount of time? If it traveled at the speed of light, it would have taken 15 billion years for the light to get to Earth. It doesn’t add up. One tenth the speed of light would be a more realistic velocity for matter to travel. It would than have taken 150 billion years to get that far from the Earth. To fix that contradiction, physicists contrived a bit of absurdity called inflation, which means the universe expands instead of objects moving. Then objects can separate without moving. This is after denying that there is anything in space. Emptiness cannot expand without being something.

6. The inflation concept adds more contradictions. The closest objects would have been expanding by inflation, just as the more distant objects. This means every star in the Milky Way Galaxy, which Earth is a part of, would need to be more than 15 billion light years apart, and the Milky Way would be invisible. To get inflation to work, it had to magically put everything where it is now located in near Zero time – some things moving a long distance, and some things moving a short distance. Inflation had to work like the hand of God, in Zero time and without laws of Physics. It only differs from God in being spelled differently.

7. It is obvious from observations that everything in the universe is about where it always has been, and it doesn’t move very much. But physicists cannot explain how it got there. They have a terrible need to justify their atheism by denying that God could have created Galaxies and stars where they are, so they synthesize absurdities to prove that it didn’t happen. Trying to prove that God didn’t do what He did isn’t science, its corrupt religion. Religion needs to stay out of science. This means that if science can’t determine how the universe got where it is, there is no justification in contriving absurdities such as the Big Bang Theory to explain it.

8. Inflation is the term physicists are using to explain how all matter went from an infinitesimally small point to the size of the universe in near instant time. It means nothing moved with velocity, while the universe expanded causing pre-matter to separate.
This is a new method of science, where laws of nature are changed without a physical phenomenon existing to explain it. It is a principle synthesized out of words without a basis in laws of nature.

9. At questions are two methods of changing location. Elsewhere in science, change of location is called motion, which is quantitated as velocity. The new method of changing location doesn’t involve motion. How do you tell whether motion is involved or not? There is no natural phenomenon to indicate which method of changing location applies. The only determining factor is whether one is trying to rationalize the Big Bang.

10. Big Bang creates a need for pre matter to change location, while normal concepts of motion cannot be used, because nothing can move that fast. So a new concept was created saying location changes without motion. It’s creating a concept for rationalization purposes with no natural phenomenon as the basis.

11. This result stems from the motive of disproving a Creator. Atheists in physics claim that the Big Bang Theory proves that random motion created the universe instead of God. As evidence increases to indicate that galaxies were created in approximately their present location, physicists add rationalizations to the Big Bang Theory instead of admitting they are wrong. They are at a point of making a mockery of science instead of admitting that PROOF is PROOF.

12. The Big Bang may explain the origin of the universe, but it doesn’t explain the origin of the primordial dust cloud. This dust cloud (which, according to the theory, drew together, compacted and then exploded) had to come from somewhere. After all, it contained enough matter to form not just our galaxy, but the billion other galaxies in the known universe. So where did that come from? Who, or what, created the primordial dust cloud?

hi A Human Being whilst you have grasped very many of the scientific consepts that are proposed for the universes creation, some of your inferences and points lack a more advanced understanding of the subject area that would answer a lot of your questions. As for the comparison of physics to a belief in god, well that completly misses the point. Science and faith are polar opposites and scientists are not atheists and we do not try and prove or disprove god, we look for causes and effects discriptions of the world that can be proved thats all.

Im sorry im not sure i have the time right now to go through all your points and explain more detailed evidance and reasons for the theories as they stand as i have to teach in a few mins. But one of the two major things i need to correct you on are your last two points.

Fistly we are not atheists we are looking for theories that can be proved and which the evidance shows, if the evidence ever did show a creator we would be happy to say so :). secondly a theory is just that, its our best idea at the moment. we never say anything is right in science and it is a fundimental guideline that nothing can be proved only disproved. WE are not so arogent to say that we know exactly how it all works, we are just looking and exploring and finding what evidance shows us.

Your last point about a primordial dust cloud……. that is not in the theory and never has been, so far we can only lagically with evidance theorise about the fist few microseconds after the big bang, no one has anyidea or evidance for anything before that.

Hope this helps :)

“What existed before the Big Bang?”
It seems fairly likely that there was a Big Bang. The obvious question that could be asked to challenge or define the boundaries between physics and metaphysics is: what came before the Big Bang?
Physicists define the boundaries of physics by trying to describe them theoretically and then testing that description against observation. Our observed expanding Universe is very well described by flat space, with critical density supplied mainly by dark matter and a cosmological constant, that should expand forever.
If we follow this model backwards in time to when the Universe was very hot and dense, and dominated by radiation, then we have to understand the particle physics that happens at such high densities of energy. The experimental understanding of particle physics starts to poop out after the energy scale of electroweak unification, and theoretical physicists have to reach for models of particle physics beyond the Standard Model, to Grand Unified Theories, supersymmetry, string theory and quantum cosmology.
This exploration is guided by three outstanding problems with the Big Bang cosmological model:
1. The flatness problem
2. The horizon problem
3. The magnetic monopole problem

Flatness problem

The Universe as observed today seems to enough energy density in the form of matter and cosmological constant to provide critical density and hence zero spatial curvature. The Einstein equation predicts that any deviation from flatness in an expanding Universe filled with matter or radiation only gets bigger as the Universe expands. So any tiny deviation from flatness at a much earlier time would have grown very large by now. If the deviation from flatness is very small now, it must have been immeasurably small at the start of the part of Big Bang we understand.
So why did the Big Bang start off with the deviations from flat spatial geometry being immeasurably small? This is called the flatness problem of Big Bang cosmology.
Whatever physics preceded the Big Bang left the Universe in this state. So the physics description of whatever happened before the Big Bang has to address the flatness problem.

Horizon problem

The cosmic microwave background is the cooled remains of the radiation density from the radiation-dominated phase of the Big Bang. Observations of the cosmic microwave background show that it is amazingly smooth in all directions, in other words, it is highly isotropic thermal radiation. The temperature of this thermal radiation is 2.73° Kelvin. The variations observed in this temperature across the night sky are very tiny.
Radiation can only be so uniform if the photons have been mixed around a lot, or thermalized, through particle collisions. However, this presents a problem for the Big Bang model. Particle collisions cannot move information faster than the speed of light. But in the expanding Universe that we appear to live in, photons moving at the speed of light cannot get from one side of the Universe to the other in time to account for this observed isotropy in the thermal radiation. The horizon size represents the distance a photon can travel as the Universe expands.
The horizon size of our Universe today is too small for the isotropy in the cosmic microwave background to have evolved naturally by thermalization. So that’s the horizon problem.

Magnetic monopole problem

Normally, as we observe on Earth, magnets only come with two poles, North and South. If one cuts a magnet in half, the result will not be one magnet with only a North pole and one magnet with only a South pole. The result will be two magnets, each of which has its own North and South poles. A magnet cut in half still has two poles
A magnetic monopole would be a magnet with only one pole. But magnetic monopoles have never been seen? Why not?
This is different from electric charge, where we can separate an arrangement of positive and negative electric charges so that only positive charge is in one collection and only negative charge is in another.
Particle theories like Grand Unified Theories and superstring theory predict magnetic monopoles should exist, and relativity tells us that the Big Bang should have produced a lot of them, enough to make one hundred billion times the observed energy density of our Universe.
But so far, physicists have been unable to find even one.
So that’s a third motivation to go beyond the Big Bang model to look for an explanation of what could have happened when the Universe was very hot and very small.

Inflationary universe?

Matter and radiation are gravitationally attractive, so in a maximally symmetric spacetime filled with matter, the gravitational force will inevitably cause any lumpiness in the matter to grow and condense. That’s how hydrogen gas turned into galaxies and stars. But vacuum energy comes with a high vacuum pressure, and that high vacuum pressure resists gravitational collapse as a kind of repulsive gravitational force. The pressure of the vacuum energy flattens out the lumpiness, and makes space get flatter, not lumpier, as it expands.
So one possible solution to the flatness problem would be if our Universe went through a phase where the only energy density present was a uniform vacuum energy. If this phase occurred before the radiation-dominated era, then the Universe could evolve to be extraordinarily flat when the radiation-dominated era began, so extraordinarily flat that the lumpy evolution of the radiation- and matter-dominated periods would be consistent with the high degree of remaining flatness that is observed today.
This type of solution to the flatness problem was proposed in the 1980s by cosmologist Alan Guth. The model is called the Inflationary Universe. In the Inflation model, our Universe starts out as a rapidly expanding bubble of pure vacuum energy, with no matter or radiation. After a period of rapid expansion, or inflation, and rapid cooling, the potential energy in the vacuum is converted through particle physics processes into the kinetic energy of matter and radiation. The Universe heats up again and we get the standard Big Bang.
So an inflationary phase before the Big Bang could explain how the Big Bang started with such extraordinary spatial flatness that it is still so close to being flat today.A magnet cut in half still has two poles
Inflationary models also solve the horizon problem. The vacuum pressure accelerates the expansion of space in time so that a photon can traverse much more of space than it could in a spacetime filled with matter. To put it another way, the attractive force of matter on light in some sense slows the light down by slowing down the expansion of space itself. In an inflationary phase, the expansion of space is accelerated by vacuum pressure from the cosmological constant, and light gets farther faster because space is expanding faster.
If there were an inflationary phase of our Universe before the radiation-dominated era of the Big Bang, then by the end of the inflationary period, light could have crossed the whole Universe. And so the isotropy of the radiation from the Big Bang would no longer be inconsistent with the finiteness of the speed of light.
The inflationary model also solves the magnetic monopole problem, because in the particle physics that underlies the inflationary idea, there would only be one magnetic monopole per vacuum energy bubble. That means only one magnetic monopole per Universe.
That’s why the inflationary universe theory is still the favored pre-Big Bang cosmology among cosmologists.
But how does Inflation work?

The vacuum energy that drives the rapid expansion in an inflationary cosmology comes from a scalar field that is part of the spontaneous symmetry breaking dynamics of some unified theory particle theory, say, a Grand Unified Theory or string theory.
This field is sometimes called the inflaton. The average value of the inflaton at temperature T is the value at the minimum of its potential energy at that temperature. The location of this minimum changes with temperature, as is shown in the animation to the right.
For temperatures T above some critical temperature Tcrit, the minimum of the potential is at zero. But as the temperature cools, the potential changes and a second minimum develops in the potential at a nonzero value. This signals something called a phase transition, like when steam cools and condenses into water. For water the critical temperature Tcrit where this phase transition happens is 100°C, or 373°K.
The two minima in the potential represent the two possible phases of the inflaton field, and of the Universe, at the critical temperature. One phase has the minimum of the field f=0, and the other phase represents the vacuum energy if the ground state has f=f0.
According to the inflationary model, at the critical temperature, spacetime starts to under go this phase transition from one minimum to the other. But it doesn’t do it smoothly, it stays in the old “false” vacuum too long. This is called supercooling. This region of false vacuum expands exponentially fast, and the vacuum energy of this false vacuum is the cosmological constant for the expansion. It is this process that is called Inflation and solves the flatness, horizon and monopole problems.
This region of false vacuum expands until bubbles of the new broken symmetry phase with f=f0 form and collide, and eventually end the inflationary phase. The potential energy of the vacuum is converted through to kinetic energy of matter and radiation, and the Universe expands according to the Big Bang model already outlined.
A testable prediction?

It’s always good to have testable predictions from a theory of physics, and the inflation theory has a distinct prediction about the density variations in the cosmic microwave background. A bubble of inflation consists of accelerating vacuum. In this accelerating vacuum, a scalar field will have very small thermal fluctuations that are nearly the same at every scale, and the fluctuations will be have a Gaussian distribution. This prediction fits current observations and will be tested with greater precision by future measurements of the cosmic microwave background.
So are all the problems solved?

Despite the prediction above, inflation as described above is far from an ideal theory. It’s too hard to stop the inflationary phase, and the monopole problem has other ways of resurfacing in the physics. Many of the assumptions that go into the model, such as an initial high temperature phase and a single inflating bubble have been questioned and alternative models have been developed.
Today’s inflation models have evolved beyond the original assumption of a single inflation event giving birth to a single Universe, and feature scenarios where universes nucleate and inflate out of other universes in the process called eternal inflation.
There is also another attempt to solve the problems of Big Bang cosmology using a scalar field that never goes through an inflationary period at all, but evolves so slowly so that we observe it as being constant during our own era. This model is called quintessence, after the ancient spiritual belief in the Quinta Essentia, the spiritual matter from which the four forms of physical matter are made.
So where does string theory fit in all of this? That’s the next topic.

A big complicating factor in understanding string cosmology is understanding string theories. String theories and M theory appear to be limiting cases of some bigger, more fundamental theory. Until that’s sorted out, anything we think we know today is potentially up for grabs.
That being said, there are some basic issues in string theory cosmology:

1. Can string theory make any cosmological predictions relevant to Big Bang physics?
2. What happens to the extra dimensions?
3. Is there Inflation in string theory?
3. What can string theory tell us about quantum gravity and cosmology?
Low energy string cosmology

Most of the mass in our Universe appears to occur in the form of dark matter. One leading candidate for the composition of this dark matter is something called a WIMP, a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. One strong candidate for the WIMP comes from supersymmetry.
The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) predicts the existence of spin 1/2 fermions called neutralinos that are the fermionic superpartners of the neutral gauge bosons and Higgs scalars. Neutralinos would have a high mass but interact very weakly with other particles. They could make up a significant portion of the mass density of the Universe without emitting light, so that makes them good candidates for the mysterious source of dark matter in the Universe.
String theories require supersymmetry, so in principle, if neutralinos were discovered to make up cosmic dark matter, that would be good. But if supersymmetry were unbroken, fermions and bosons would be exactly matched in the Universe, and that’s not the way things are. The really hard part of any supersymmetric theory is to break the supersymmetry without losing all the advantages of having had the supersymmetry to begin with. (It’s very much one of those proverbial cake situations.)
One of the reasons particle and string physicists have liked supersymmetric theories is that they predict zero total vacuum energy, because the fermion and boson vacuum energies cancel each other out. When supersymmetry is broken, the fermions and bosons don’t exactly match any more, the cancellation doesn’t occur any more.
There seems to be pretty good evidence from the red shifts of distant supernovae that the expansion of our Universe is accelerating due to something like a vacuum energy or a cosmological constant. So whatever path by which supersymmetry is broken in string theory needs to lead at the end to the right amount of vacuum energy to account for this observed acceleration. This is a theoretical challenge, because supersymmetry breaking seems to give too large a contribution.

Cosmology and extra dimensions

Superstring cosmology is enormously complicated by the presence of those pesky six (or seven in the case of M theory) extra space dimensions that are required for quantum consistency of the theory. Extra dimensions that just sit there are challenging enough to deal with in string theory, but in the framework of cosmology, the extra dimensions are evolving in time according to the physics of the Big Bang and whatever happened before it. So what keeps the extra dimensions from expanding to get as big as the three space dimensions that we observe and measure in our Universe?
But wait - there’s a complicating factor to the complicating factor: a superstring duality symmetry known as T duality. When a space dimension is rolled up in a circle of radius R, the resulting string theory ends up being equivalent to another string theory with a space dimension rolled up in a circle of radius Lst2/R, where Lst is the string length scale. For many of these theories, when the extra dimension radius R satisfies the condition R = Lst, the string theory has an enhanced symmetry with some massive particles becoming massless. This is called the self dual point and has special significance for many reasons.
This duality symmetry has led to an interesting proposal for pre-Big Bang cosmology where the stringy Universe starts out flat, cold and very large instead of curved, hot and very small. This early Universe is unstable and starts to collapse and contract until it reaches the self dual point, where it heats up and starts to expand to give the expanding Universe we observe today. One advantage to this model is that it incorporates the very stringy behavior of T duality and the self dual point, so it is a very inherently stringy cosmology.

Inflation vs. the giant brane collision

What does string theory predict for the source of the vacuum energy and pressure necessary to drive the inflationary period of accelerating expansion? Scalar fields that could inflate Universe at GUT scale could also be involved in breaking supersymmetry at just above electroweak scale, determining coupling strengths of gauge fields, and maybe even providing the vacuum energy for a cosmological constant. String theory contains the ingredients to build models with supersymmetry breaking and inflation or quintessence, but the trick is to get all the ingredients to work together, and that is still, as they say, an active area of research.
A current alternative model to inflation is the giant brain collision model, also known as the Ekpyrotic Universe, or the Big Splat. This intriguing model starts out with a cold, static five-dimensional spacetime that is close to being perfectly supersymmetric. The four space dimensions are bounded by two three-dimensional walls or three branes, and one of those three-dimensional walls makes up the space that we live on. The other brane is hidden from our perception.
According to this theory, there is a third three brane loose between the two bounding branes of the four dimensional bulk, and when this brane hits the brane we live on, the energy from the collision heats up our brane and the Big Bang occurs in our visible Universe as described elsewhere in this site.
This proposal is quite new, and it remains to be seen whether it will survive careful scrutiny.

The problem with acceleration

There is a problem with an accelerating Universe that is fundamentally challenging to string theory, and even to traditional particle theory. In eternal inflation models and most quintessence models, the expansion of the Universe accelerates indefinitely. This indefinite acceleration leads to situation where a hypothetical observer traveling forever through the Universe will be eternally blocked from seeing any evidence of most of the Universe.
The boundary of the region beyond which an observer can never see is called that observer’s event horizon. In cosmology, the event horizon is like the particle horizon, except that it is in the future and not in the past.
From the point of view of human philosophy or the internal consistency of Einstein’s theory of relativity, there is no problem with a cosmological event horizon. So what if we can’t ever see some parts of the Universe, even if we were to live forever?
But a cosmological event horizon is a major technical problem in high energy physics, because of the definition of relativistic quantum theory in terms of the collection of scattering amplitudes called the S Matrix. One of the fundamental assumptions of quantum relativistic theories of particles and strings is that when incoming and outgoing states are infinitely separated in time, they behave as free noninteracting states.
But the presence of an event horizon implies a finite Hawking temperature and the conditions for defining the S Matrix cannot be fulfilled. This lack of an S Matrix is a formal mathematical problem not only in string theory but also in particle theories.
One recent attempt to address this problem invokes quantum geometry and a varying speed of light. This remains, as they say, an active area of research. But most experts doubt that anything so radical is required.

http://www.superstringtheory.com/

stop copying and pasting in such mass form
if you dont take the time to write it, people wont take the time to read it.

find small points, and try to keep it a little more compact.

heres a wrench in all of these theories.

einstein proposed that time is only a demension. moreover, he proposed that gravity may even pull on it.

it has been observed that if you take two synchornized watches to very high point, and one to a very low point, becuase of the diffrences in gravity that one will be a few milliseconds ahead of the other within a certain amount of time.

i believe it would take a few months or so…

but does that mean that if you got far enough out of gravity that time would stop for you? or if you go into enough it would speed up?

i really would like to pursue the point of time being something that actually could be a factor, and could tell us more about the creation/beginning of the world than many other things.

Can you tell me in small points or in a more compact form so I can understand, what you are saying regarding……. It very vague ?

As for the copying and pasting, that was for better understanding of info I found on the net regarding “What existed before the Big Bang?” for thous who are interested in it.

i sure can.

1. basically, im saying that time is relative, and it may be different speeds in different gravitational conditions.

2. it may have to do with the matter at hand, in that it could explain some missing pieces of the puzzle.

anything else? notice how it didnt take 6 posts? or 2 hours to read..

Intricate Fire wrote:
i sure can.

1. basically, im saying that time is relative, and it may be different speeds in different gravitational conditions.

2. it may have to do with the matter at hand, in that it could explain some missing pieces of the puzzle.

anything else? notice how it didnt take 6 posts? or 2 hours to read..

so this the answer to wrench in all of these theories :)

“but does that mean that if you got far enough out of gravity that time would stop for you? or if you go into enough gravity time would speed up? ”

No gravity is present within the universe. According to theory, the reason mass is proportional to gravity is because everything with mass emits tiny particles called gravitons. These gravitons are responsible for gravitational attraction. The more mass, the more gravitons. Gravity is a natural phenomenon by which ALL objects with mass attract each other. It is a very, very weak force which continues over very long distances and is not opposed by any type of ‘anti-gravity.’ When an object (like an astronaut) is so far from a large object that can exert a large amount of gravitational force (like the Earth) that they can no longer feel this force, this is called zero gravity.

Technically, because everything with mass exerts the force of gravity, which works well over long distances, there is no such thing as zero gravity.

In general relativity, clocks at lower potentials in a gravitational field — such as in proximity to a planet — are found to be running slower. Gravitational time dilation is the effect of time passing at different rates in regions of different gravitational potential; the higher the local distortion of spacetime due to gravity, the slower time passes. Even rays of light (which have zero mass) bend in the presence of a gravitational field. In special relativity, clocks that are moving with respect to an inertial system of observation are measured to be running slower. This effect is described precisely by the Lorentz transformation.

i take it back anon.
if you provide information that is so on target to whats being said,
copy paste away.

excellent stuff, i really didn’t want to explain all that.

The fact that even though the gravity doesn’t seem to pull on people when they get far enough away, but is still actually there, would help explain why if th “gravity effects time” theory is true, that people in space and seemingly beyond the pull of the earth dont slip right out of time.

relatively, they would live forever if being in less gravity sped up time. but, since there may still be some, it raises the question that if we could ever fully escape gravity, completely, to actual zero gravity, could we live infinitely in relativity to the earth? or maybe its even possible to generate some kind of anti gravity, which may cause time to reverse.

we dont have the technology yet, but if we do get it, i hope im alive to see it.

also, that would mean that time in black holes could stand still, or even go backwards.

also, if a single piece of matter creates gravity, and that gravity does cause time to exist, then it would be like a chain reaction that spreads out. space would spring into existence as it got pulled on by gravity.

ben_j_richard wrote:
hi A Human Being whilst you have grasped very many of the scientific consepts that are proposed for the universes creation, some of your inferences and points lack a more advanced understanding of the subject area that would answer a lot of your questions. As for the comparison of physics to a belief in god, well that completly misses the point. Science and faith are polar opposites and scientists are not atheists and we do not try and prove or disprove god, we look for causes and effects discriptions of the world that can be proved thats all.

Im sorry im not sure i have the time right now to go through all your points and explain more detailed evidance and reasons for the theories as they stand as i have to teach in a few mins. But one of the two major things i need to correct you on are your last two points.

Fistly we are not atheists we are looking for theories that can be proved and which the evidance shows, if the evidence ever did show a creator we would be happy to say so :). secondly a theory is just that, its our best idea at the moment. we never say anything is right in science and it is a fundimental guideline that nothing can be proved only disproved. WE are not so arogent to say that we know exactly how it all works, we are just looking and exploring and finding what evidance shows us.

Your last point about a primordial dust cloud……. that is not in the theory and never has been, so far we can only lagically with evidance theorise about the fist few microseconds after the big bang, no one has anyidea or evidance for anything before that.

Hope this helps :)

First of All, I want to say that faith and Science arent different from each other. They have a correlation. If you have faith, you’ll believe on Science. You’ll believe on a Proof. I know we can only assume about the things we dont know. No religion tells us about what caused the Big Bang or anything related to it.

You are also right in many aspects. We are just only assuming. We arent 100% sure about anything in Science.

And you are a Physicist! How can I argue with you? :)

firstly ,what is Religion ? Science and Religion has nothing to do with each other .
Nothing at all.Religion is a Fairytale spinning from one Generation to another with no basics to go on.None what so ever .Like i said once before Fear is in any Human,some one smart enough realized that long time ago and took advantage of it and even today we have School Hours for religion.We be better of teaching the young once synchronized swimming instead.Well, People are gullible and like some one before me once said ,there is a Fool born every minute and nothing will change in attitude.
Remember we are in the Computer Age all we need is some one in this Generation or the next even the next after that to play and fiddle with some totally unrelated things,bang another Bill Gates !!!!Remember the year 2000 every one did not know what will happen with our Computers,Planes may fall down Nuclear Rocketstations may start of by themselves Programs were sold doing absolutely nothing some one before me said that long time ago and it still works today .A Wise Men does not need Wisdom and a Fool does not want Wisdom .coming Back to what i wanted to say all along is Science is Life ,Motion Time and Space .Religion is empty nothing,silch………………………….

You know, I don’t believe in the big bang theory, I’m just replying and late I might add because you are my friend and I didn’t want you to think I ignore your invitations. Interesting topic and as usual above my head.