Poll: The Big bang theory, Do you think its true?

[Kubanator]

The big bang theory is a theory: something that has not been proven. At most it can be considered an "educated guess".

Hahaha. No. There's a theory of gravity. There's a theory of electromagnetism.

As for this thread, science please. Nothing existed before the Big Bang is not literal, it means it's irrelevant what happened before the Big Bang, because a singularity destroys all information.

Gravity stops working when the distance between two objects is infinite. Meaning never.

Gravity reacts at the speed of light.

Photons have energy, therefore they have mass.

 

[Calatar]

The big bang theory is a theory: something that has not been proven. At most it can be considered an "educated guess".

Learn the difference between a hypothesis and a scientific theory.
This has a pretty good explanation.

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

Of course. Our whole universe was in a hot dense state, then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started.

Wait...

Yayyyy! ^_^

Spoiler: For you, my good sir.

[HEADING=1]And of course, your very own:[/HEADING]

Yes, I think the big bang theory is true. Nay, I believe it so. Like people above set, rinse and repeat.

 

[Lullabye]

hmmm, now i have another question. does gravity travel? you said it continues as long as space but does that mean its just there or does it travel like energy?

This is a good question. If matter suddenly sprung into existence at a point, it would create a gravitational field. This gravitational field would propagate out into space at the speed of light according to Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Sorry for this physicist explanation, but as I don't understand it perfectly myself, it's the best thing I have to go on. Forgive the confusing abstraction.
Think of it like this: space-time is a sheet spread flat. Think of a large mass as a bowling ball dropped on that sheet. Nearby the bowling ball, the sheet will become indented. Objects nearby the bowling ball start to slide down near the bowling ball (gravitational attraction). If that ball moves, it begins changing the indentation of sheet, starting with the space nearest to it. This creates a "ripple" effect throughout the sheet moving at the speed of light, as the sheet changes its shape to accommodate the new position of the bowling ball, though not instantaneously.

your explanation is much appreciated. it raises a plethora of other questions as well, but ill let wiki take care of those.

 

[Lullabye]

*Waves Creation flag around*

*Ducks and waits for the missiles*

Dont worry, we all know that the flying spaghetti monster created all.

 

[Zacharine]

The big bang theory is a theory: something that has not been proven. At most it can be considered an "educated guess".

The nice thing about science is that nothing can be proven, only disproven

A theory in science is a collection of concepts and abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties and governing rules that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed from available empirical data about such observations and is a body of principles used to explain a class of phenomena.

One might say that in science 'Theory' is the highest form of truth, since theories are constructed from facts and make testable predictions. But since all knowledge is provisional, we don't call theories 'truth' but rather take the provisional nature into account to use a more accurate description of 'theory'.

*Raises flame-shields*

EDIT: unsure if your post was sarcastic or not, but I'm not too good at detecting websarcasm so...

 

[ODLogan]

A theory is just something we're rolling with until a better one comes along.

That being said, I find most of the characters to be inaccurate, stereotypical portrayals, especially Leonard.

 

[pernastin]

Stand aside, I'm a nerd!

Firstly, as has been mentioned, the name "big bang" is basically a misnomer because nothing exploded. All that can be said is that at time "zero" everything was compressed down into a single point, or a "singularity", and what led to that cannot really be said, because basically the first thing we can observe came later when the universe had expanded to be diffuse enough for the first photons to move in space instead of being trapped by other particles. Those photons can still be observed and are known as the cosmic microwave background, which was predicted by the big bang theory, which entailed cosmic inflation. And I'm sure most would agree that predicting latter observations is a pretty good indication we're going in the right direction.

Of course there's many other lines of evidence like the continuing inflation and the fact that the farther away we look, the more different things look to how they look currently. In the light of the finite speed of light objects that are X lightyears away must of course be X years old, and this change in age corresponds with changes in what kind of stuff stars in that age group are made of. Most importantly older stars have higher amounts of Deuterium, aka Heavy Hydrogen, which is significant because Deuterium isn't created in any known event apart from the big bang and it's constantly being burned up by stars. So our sun for example has lower amounts of Deuterium than older stars, which can even be observed within our own galaxy.

I think I could go on for a long time about this and nobody would care, so I'll just end this with a repeat of the complaints about not having the coveted "It's definitely the best approximation of the truth we have right now." -poll option. Now to get me my morning cup a' tea or four...

 

[gim73]

Somebody asked the question 'how do we know the universe is 13 billion years old'. Well, just like we know that the earth is 4.5 billion years old because of the laws of thermodynamics and radioactivity, we know that the universe is that old because of light. We know how fast it travels in a vacuum, so we know how far away the most distance stars are. We won't see any stars past this threshhold because the light hasn't had long enough to reach us.

Then we have the cool stuff with alternate dimensions meeting M theory, where the interaction of two parallel dimensions actually creates the energy produced in the big bang. This is cool because it actually explains where the energy of the big bang came from.

 

[Zacharine]

The reason the theory is incorrect is it leaves to much to the mind. Our universe in its Infinite size was compressed into a space small as if not smaller then a thimble then a volatile "explosion" made the universe. To much left open.

As a curiosity, what question is left unaswered? What is left 'open'?

Space itself was compressed to a size smaller than a teacup. Asking what was/is outside is meaningless, since without space there can be nowhere and all space was compressed. Hence literally there was nowhere else.

Asking what was before is meaningless as well. Space and time are invariably tied together: you can't have one without the other. That is why we call it space-time. Now, sicne there was no space outside of big bang, there was no time either. So, there is no such thing as 'before' the big bang as time itself would not have existed.

Then the space expanded, most likely due to some kind of inflaton field. The details are a bit fuzzy, because recreating such a field is impossible without using most of the energy in the universe. As a result of space expanding faster than the speed of light, the average temperature of the universe cooled down, enough for matter to begin to exist. As space expanded more and more, it cooled down even further. After a few hundred thousand years, stable atoms began to form as the average temperature dropped below 5000 degrees C. These were mostly hydrogen, as it is the simplest atom possible. Some helium was born as well, but only in minor quantities. Universe was composed 90% hydrogen, 10% helium at the beginning (by weight, 75% and 25% respectively) This is in accordance of what predictions state should be the outcome and it also happens to be an observed fact in the universe today: the four moust common elements are Hydrogen (750,000), Helium (230,000) Oxygen (10,000) and Carbon (5,000) as parts per million. These four elements make up 99,5% of the detectable matter, which makes up around 4% of the universe.

Since all elements heavier than helium are born from stars, the amount of hydrogen in the universe will continue to decrease as time goes on.

Since atoms were forming, the photons which previously were bouncing between them in a sort of 'cage' could suddenly zip around mostly unhindered. Since the super-dense , super-hot quantum foam that was the universe wasn't perfectly uniform (chaos theory, Uncertainty principle and virtual radiation make it impossible), matter formed in clumps and pockets. Because of this, the distribution of photons travelling freely is not uniform either.

The result is the cosmic microwave background radiation we have detected today. Images of it are freely available on the 'net. The clumps and pockets of matter would later become stars and galaxies. The universe continues to expand and cool to this day.

What is unclear? What is left unaswered?

 

[Ryuk2]

Then again, I might have a completely wrong idea about what the big bang theory is.

Oh, yes! You got it completely wrong. Big bang was when matter was ''born'' out of energy, there was no explosion. How the universe was born is completely different story and it was mostly slowly developed process.
I recommend checking out the big bang theory, it's interesting stuff. I don't think it's 100 % true, but it's on the right path and i consider it the best theory.
The biggest problem with the theory is, that it's called 'Big bang' and people immidiatly thing that that was an explosion out of nowhere.

 

[Calatar]

Anywho, now since our universe is filled with matter and all and its all attracting each other....it makes since it will all eventually come together right? Now all that matter and energy coming together can only mean one thing. A BFE(Big F@%#ing Explosion) I mean, just look at our earth or sun. Tell me matter and energy isn't volatile.
Now for the point.

Why do people not think this theory correct or even possible? Do you think it sounds about right?

This is actually a matter of much debate, more historically than presently actually. However scientists have observed that the universe is expanding at an expanding rate. IE, the universe is not only not coming to crunch together, but it is going to grow forever. The mechanism for this counter-intuitive expansion is theorized to be Dark Energy, an entity currently under furious study from the scientific community. This Dark Energy would actually compose the majority of energy in the entire universe, matter included (according to E=mc^2). In effect this Dark Energy accelerates the expansion to a degree far beyond that of the acceleration all bodies have towards each other due to gravity.

(Not to be confused with similarly named Dark Matter. Dark Matter is one of a few possible explanations for significant fluctuations in orbits and trajectories for astronomical bodies, and would contain the same gravitational properties as ordinary matter. In fact, gravity is the only way we have been able to observe this matter, as it has so far been completely transparent to electromagnetic radiation. Dark Matter, if it exists, would compose the majority of matter in the universe. Its existence is currently debated.)

Spoiler: Picture of Mass-Energy Proportions (Wikipedia)

As you can see, observable matter makes up very little of the universe according to these theories.

 

[Calatar]

What is unclear? What is left unaswered?

I think that this is plainly too conceptually difficult to grasp for many people. You present a good explanation why there is no "before" the big bang. Outside-the-3d-box thinking is difficult for me, and I speculate, most other people. Space-time is a 4th-dimension concept (or a 3+1 dimensional concept?) which already confuses many people. I don't quite understand the idea of "space" itself expanding; I probably should get around to reading a Stephen Hawking book or three myself.

I hypothesize that theoretical physics and many of the works thereof are essentially out of mental reach for the majority of people, even with people like Stephen Hawking (and you) attempting to simplify it for the ambitiously-minded layperson.

 

[Zacharine]

What is unclear? What is left unaswered?

I think that this is plainly too conceptually difficult to grasp for many people. You present a good explanation why there is no "before" the big bang. Outside-the-3d-box thinking is difficult for me, and I speculate, most other people. Space-time is a 4th-dimension concept (or a 3+1 dimensional concept?) which already confuses many people. I don't quite understand the idea of "space" itself expanding; I probably should get around to reading a Stephen Hawking book or three myself.

I hypothesize that theoretical physics and many of the works thereof are essentially out of mental reach for the majority of people, even with people like Stephen Hawking (and you) attempting to simplify it for the ambitiously-minded layperson.

That it is. Unfortunetaly most people can't understand that common sense is worth less than nothing when it comes down to science. Common sense is possibly the greatest bane science has known for the past millenia. So when people rely on common sense instead of knowledge, they understandably get a 'does not compute' error in their heads when they touch upon the deeper aspects of modern physics. And since they rely on common sense most of the time, they reject the scientific explanation as false in favor of common sense. Thus making scientist bang their heads against walls in frustration when explanations are given.

An unfortunate fact. Luckily evidence is the only thing that counts in science, not what the masses think.

 

[Skeleon]

I guess it is correct although I'm not sure on the details (considering the large possibilities within the theory).
Was there a universe beforehand that collapsed into the singularity before expanding again?
Was that singularity the first or simply the latest in a long line of singularities?
Or was the universe truly created from nothing through quantum fluctuations?
I've heard a lot of hypotheses. Not being a cosmologist myself, I can only "get them" partially.
But from what I understand they all have some evidence for and against them.
So while I'm not sure on the specifics of the Big Bang, I think it was true.

 

[mykalwane]

Well the thing I like about the Big Bang theory is that it still doesn't explain how things became stuff. It still says out of nothing something came which agrees with the whole a deity could create something. So in a way the Big Bang theory gives evidence to god, just as string theory gives proof that out of a voice something was created.