I think a lot of folks would agree with this. Of course, then, it begs the question of how anything started. And that's what is driving the non religious to chafe at this notion. Something had to then be the spark, and what was that spark?
I read a book about brane theory and since I am poor at math I didn't get much out of it. But I can imagine two membranes colliding and the energy resulting in a big bang. At the time they said gravity waves would have to be discovered and discussed different strategies for the discovery of said waves.
Physicists don't agree that the singularity that preceded the big bang came from nothing. That's a different question than whether the time we know in our universe is the same as any time that MIGHT have existed in that pre-singularity. But, there is a deeper issue here. When we don't know something, should we say "God did it"? Or, should we say, "I don't know."? There are LARGE numbers of things we don't know, so you really DO need to answer that question.
I suppose the first impression of this is that you'd equate "not knowing" without understanding faith. At some point, you have to actually demonstrate a trigger. a mechanism, that allowed for the all encompassing nothing to produce the spectacle that is our universe. And since we aren't able to provide an answer, you solution is to ignore the "we don't know" part and assert that suddenly, there cannot be a divineness to the explanation even though you just admitted you don't know. There are so many essential things that are beyond our understanding, like what is a soul. What creates sentience? What induces morality, none of which can today be defined within medical science. But instead of being open to all potentials, your inclination is to expressly negate that which you aren't comfortable with? Really? That doesn't seem very scientific. It reminds one of the whole flat earth experience. And the only answer then is "because I said so". So we don't know. But I'll express the idea that something of immense power had to happen to create the condition of existence. Do you agree? And to put if bluntly, if you don't know, admit that there are just questions that you cannot answer and be done with it without expressing a negative about something that you cannot know.
I'm fine with you having religious answers to ALL the questions you have. That is a strong human characteristic, demonstrated by the thousands upon thousands of gods - maybe millions. It's clearly important to humans. What I'm saying is that in science, as in the section in which you are posting, when the answer is not known, we tell the truth. It's not a matter of being "comfortable". It's not uncommon for the truth to be less than comforting, but when was THAT ever a valid measure? Many others see the FACT that humans don't know all the answers to be inspiring. One of the most exciting thing about science is that those who put in the time CAN actually find the answers to questions that no human has ever been able to answer!! How cool is that? It's just a fact that science has no possible way to address answers that are fundamentally religious - postulating a god or other undetectable supreme and intelligent force. Plus, I am fine with that. One has to know the capabilities of ones tools. Yes, a stupendous amount of energy was involved. Regardless of the source or physical size of that initial singularity, physicists point out that it had the energy responsible for all the mass and energy in this universe.
^^^ Fair enough. I'd then just ask that instead of negating a possibility, until science determines something, that science has just as much of a responsibility to view the question from all of the potential sides. Fair enough? I still think the most important question is the expansion one. As the universe continues to expand, what is it expanding into?
No, that's not how science works. "Fair enough" is when you express your religions and philosophical ideas in those threads where the tools of religion and philosophy may be applied. The model of physics that has major agreement in physics holds that the universe isn't expanding "into" something. The universe is all that exists. There isn't an edge somewhere. There are theoretical physicists who propose that there are other dimensions that our universe doesn't occupy. That's where multiverse and some other ideas come in. Some believe there is a possibility that the universe folds back into itself, such that if you could almost literally see forever, you might see the back of your head. This certainly is an interesting question. I think a more important question comes from the fact that we have quantum mechanics (where things in the incredibly small are studied) and we have Einstein (where we have gravity). Those two models have shown incredibly great performance. BUT, they don't agree!! I think this is a bigger deal, because it seems like a question similar in some ways to what happened when we had Newton and then Einstein came along and showed that there was a far larger context that included the cosmic speed limit and the effects of relativity, a far better idea on how time works, etc., etc. So, now we have GPS, for example. If another advance like that can happen, surely it could come from figuring out how to reconcile quantum mechanics and Einstein. And, who the heck knows what THAT would mean to us.
Ok, that last answer probably wasn't clear enough on the "fair enough" point. The catch is that science has no possible way of including the ideas you are identifying. Science was designed as a method of examining the universe through observation and testing. So, one precept is that any hypothesis is required to have a way of proving it false if it is false. You'll notice that excludes "string theory" as well as religion, etc. So, there is also theoretical physics, but there it's required that there be a concrete way to show how those ideas derive the physics of this universe. The answer can't be that the cosmic consciousness did it! So, it's just a constraint of science, a tool created by humans for a particular purpose. The most science can say is that those ideas aren't ideas of science. I know there are those on the board who would like to think that science can address religious issues in some way. For example, maybe there is a way to prove god doesn't exist. Or, maybe science should try to include ideas that have absolutely NO relation to science, or whatever. But, it doesn't work that way. It's more like what the last couple Popes have said - that science is a separate realm.
lol!!! Anything it may be "expanding into" can not be observed, does not exist in our space time, and we have no reason to believe that it has spacial/temporal properties anything like what we got. other than that...
Interesting. I'd guess that if this universe were fully homogenous, we'd be dead! But, it's not. We have heat and cold, mass and no mass, etc. So, the laws of thermodynamics offer opportunity, not death.
This isn't like writing fairy tales. It is based on mathematical models describing the nature of existence. Eventually we may know which model is correct. But this could take days, years, or centuries. We won't know until we know. That in turn could lead to discoveries and technologies beyond our imagination; just as science has already lead to discoveries and technologies a person a century ago couldn't have imagined. The irony of people dissing science while using a super-super computer that could fly 20 space shuttles at once, that fits in their pocket, is beyond laughable.
I personally like the model that has an infinite number of universes constantly bubbling up from the quantum foam. So there are an infinite number of universes. I like this because it explains how we got so lucky that the physical constants have just the right values, so we can exist. With an infinite number of universes, it is guaranteed that every once in awhile a universe bubbles up where matter can exist, like ours. Currently we don't know why the physical constants have the values they do. We discover them and measure them. No theory predicts these values. We only know that with a small change to any value, no matter could exist. The multiverse hypothesis removes the mystery.
I said "matter" but I should have said atoms could not exist. This idea of something coming from nothing is only one of a range of possibilities. It is not the only possible scenario. One model from String Theory has the universe existing as a ten-dimensional hypersurface that "collapsed" into the 4 dimensions we know. The other six dimensions are now hidden as the physical forces in nature. The collapse is what we call the big bang. If everything came from nothing, then the sum of all that exists is still nothing.
We know that answer. By definition the universe isn't expanding into anything. Space itself is expanding.
The expansion of the universe isn't just planets, nebula, and stars moving away from some imagined center. Space itself is expanding. And it isn't expanding "into" anything. Existence itself is expanding. Space does not exist beyond the edge of the universe. Not an easy concept.
"We are beginning to see how universes can be created,' Professor Harrison says. 'A small amount of matter -- roughly 10 kg -- at very high energy is forged into a black hole. Under the correct conditions, the interior of the black hole inflates into a new universe that endures for billions of years and contains billions of galaxies.' " At most, he argues, human intelligence is only one million years old. 'If we can already see how in principle universes can be created, then surely our descendants in the far future will have the knowledge and technology to design and create them." - Prof Edward R. (Ted) Harrison, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, London Times, June 1999
It's a logic pretzel. Circular, and self defining. I can see why some might like it. It doesn't then actually explain the phenomenon. It's the scientific equivalent to saying, "it is what it is'..
No, it is what the math tells us. Then we try to understand it. That is how physics works and always has. You comment shows that you entirely missed the essence of it.
Example of understanding the math. The energy is equal to the mass times the speed of light squared. This tells us how much energy we can expect from a mass, say like a sphere of Plutonium releasing its energy in a nuclear explosion. But because the speed of light is a constant, it also tells us that mass and energy are somehow the same thing. We now know that mass is just one manifestation of energy.
