If the Universe has no beginning?

@Agneta,

Hmmm... Back to the 'eternal universe' and the erasure of the last 100 years of science.

That damn Big Bang must go. It's just too supernatural

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

That damn Big Bang must go. It's just too supernatural

It doesn't seem supernatural to me. But I'm inclined to say "I don't know", when I don't know, and not to assume that something must be supernatural when I don't know. But that's just me.

I grew up down the street from the physicist who discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, and he originally believed that the Universe must be (and have been) eternal, even as his own discoveries were telling a different story. If I remember right, it took him years to overcome the dogmatic beliefs he had grown up with and to accept what the evidence was telling him.

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@Leadfoot,

The Big Bang fits into this mathematical model. What they did was use quantum trajectories, in which points never cross each other, in place of classical geodesics where points do cross, which is where problems arise when trying to figure what occurred before the singularity of the Big Bang.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

I grew up down the street from the physicist who discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Penzias or Wilson?

1 Reply

The "inflationary period" requires acceptance of the concept of particles traveling at speeds greater than c.

It might be more in keeping with Occam's Razor to simply extend whatever expansion mechanic is being used further back in time, so that the model doesn't rely on a shift in expansion speed.

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@Agneta,

Quote:

What if the theory... is wrong?.. logical and likely that the Universe has always been here ,,,

'zakly Angie, you've hit it on the head precisely

But the idea of forever bothers me. If anything that can happen, will, then by chance every possibility has already happened an infinite number of times, even this present universe with you and me chatting. Then there's an infinite number just like this'n' at this moment, except one iota different. One germ on one of my teeth is out of place by one micron

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

Leadfoot wrote:
"That damn Big Bang must go. It's just too supernatural"

It doesn't seem supernatural to me. But I'm inclined to say "I don't know", when I don't know, and not to assume that something must be supernatural when I don't know. But that's just me.

But that's what I mean. I was speaking from the stand point of a scientist like your past neighbor (or yourself) - The supernatural is completely unacceptable.

From that standpoint, the position of 'I don't know' must be taken in order to maintain the chosen world view. What is implicit in the 'IDK' is the assumption that science will eventually discover a natural cause for it or alternatively, what we think we know about the universe's origin must be wrong, there was no Big Bang.

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@centrox,

centrox wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:
I grew up down the street from the physicist who discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Penzias or Wilson?

Both actually, but Bob Wilson was the one I knew the best. His son and I were best friends, so I was hanging around their house a lot. We are still friends with them and Bob and Betsy visit my mom from time to time for dinner.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

What is implicit in the 'IDK' is the assumption that science will eventually discover a natural cause for it or alternatively, what we think we know about the universe's origin must be wrong, there was no Big Bang.

Concluding that there was no Big Bang isn't the only alternative to discovering a natural cause for something. The other alternative is simply to keep saying I don't know, and to keep learning and refining the model. And that's exactly what science does and will continue to do.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

the position of 'I don't know' must be taken...what we think we know about the universe's origin must be wrong, there was no Big Bang.

I don't know either bt the Big Bang seems pretty certin. However, it doesn't explain 'ceation,' so we hafta assume the Big Bang expansion, evolution, slowdown, Big Crunch, Big Bang sequence goes on forever

https://www.space.com/29517-is-the-big-bang-cycling-through-time.html

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity...the Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity.....

It is naive to think that this is a question of physics. It aint (apart from "theoretical" physics).

It's a philosophical question, that's all.

Acquinas made the "cosmological argument" for the existence of "God" (a prime mover, or "uncaused cause") by pointing out the nonsense of positing an infinite regression of cause and effect.

The internal contradictions are self-evident. Acquinas required one to accept the proposition that every event has a preceding, and hence pre-existing, cause. But the "solution" to the problem which he offered required one to deny that fundamental premise---so why should it have been accepted in the first place?

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

Leadfoot wrote:
"What is implicit in the 'IDK' is the assumption that science will eventually discover a natural cause for it or alternatively, what we think we know about the universe's origin must be wrong, there was no Big Bang. "

Concluding that there was no Big Bang isn't the only alternative to discovering a natural cause for something. The other alternative is simply to keep saying I don't know, and to keep learning and refining the model. And that's exactly what science does and will continue to do.

Umm.. I thought that's what I just said there.

But my main point was that anything 'supernatural' (outside the science of physics) is Never an alternative for folks like your neighbor (or yourself). That is the basis for why some scientists become 'Big Bang Deniers'.

1 Reply

@layman,

Hey dude, been awhile, glad to see you're still around.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

But my main point was that anything 'supernatural' (outside the science of physics) is Never an alternative for folks like your neighbor (or yourself). That is the basis for why some scientists become 'Big Bang Deniers'.

Let me see if I understand this... you are saying that some scientists become big bang deniers because they don't agree with the inherent requirement of science, namely that the supernatural cannot be involved. Is that right?

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Let me see if I understand this... you are saying that some scientists become big bang deniers because they don't agree with the inherent requirement of science, namely that the supernatural cannot be involved. Is that right?

Leddy can speak for himself, of course, but no, I don't think he's sayin that. Like me he's essentially sayin it aint even a physics question. It's philosophical.

The mere fact that some physicists (notoriously naive philosophically) want to believe and pretend that it's a question of empirical physics is irrelevant.

1 Reply

@layman,

layman wrote:

Leddy can speak for himself, of course, but no, I don't think he's sayin that. Like me he's essentially sayin it aint even a physics question. It's philosophical.

The Big Bang model itself is a physics question because it does not model anything which came before it. The question of what came before it is merely speculation, so I can see how that might be considered philosophical (whereas I consider it just guesswork).

But to me, Big Bang denial would necessarily be an objection to the physics of the model, and not to preconditions because no preconditions are included in the model. So there's an inconsistency here.

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@AngleWyrm-paused,

Quote:

The "inflationary period" requires acceptance of the concept of particles traveling at speeds greater than c.

It doesn't require speeds faster than c if we put a limit on how compact the initial universe was before the inflation period started. If all of space and matter is quantized then there is a limit ot how small the intitial universe before the Big Bang inflation period started as stated in the BVG theorem. That thereom proposes that the Big Bang is not necessarily the beginning of the universe but a transition to a more perfect universe.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

But to me, Big Bang denial would necessarily be an objection to the physics of the model, and not to preconditions because no preconditions are included in the model. So there's an inconsistency here.

reminder wrote:

(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The theorists who were cited in the article which is the subject of this post obviously object to the "physics" of the big bang model, and have consequently proposed an alternative model. Are they not "scientists," by your definition?

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@layman,

You could probably concoct a virtually infinite number of speculative mathematical models to "explain" these things. But that would not make it a matter of empirical evidence, which is impossible in this case.

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@layman,

I'm not qualified to judge the people in the article, or their understanding of the model. I was only responding to the specific comments being presented by the people I'm responding to (you included).

1 Reply

If the Universe has no beginning?

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