Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Harri on 06/12/2015 21:24:56
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Was everything that exists in our universe created at the big bang? Or have some things come into existence since the big bang through interactions and processes?
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Interesting question. The real answer to this if it exists can only be guessed at.
You see you are actually asking a question that is outside the realm of science. Science is very good at investigating and working out anything that has, is, or will happen in Spacetime.
The question you ask tries to put a before in Spacetime. The concept of before is a time coordinate reference and as such did not exist before spacetime.
Science can have nothing to say about the Big Bang. It can only start to explain anything after the Bang when the first moment of the Universe had already happened. That is when and where began.
Was everything that exists in our universe created at the big bang?
Therefore this question is something that can not be addressed scientifically.
At the time that the first moment has happened we find a Universe already huge as there is now one moment's worth of Spacetime in-between every one of the smallest possible subdivisions of Matter/Energy. Since that first moment Matter/Energy is believed to have been conserved. It can't be created or destroyed.
So this answers the second part of your question.
Or have some things come into existence since the big bang through interactions and processes?
As I said the first part of your question falls outside the realm of science and can only be guessed at. As your guess is as good as mine or anyone else's, I will not offer mine.
Unless by everything that exists you are also counting Spacetime itself and then the answer is that Spacetime has come into existence at the Big Bang and has been coming into existence ever since at an accelerating rate. As no conservation laws have ever been proposed to cover Spacetime, for every single "tick" of any conceivable clock, there is another unit of Spacetime in existence. Perhaps I should be calling it"'Timespace" instead.
Hope that helps
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Thanks for the answer. As you can tell from the question and from my other posts I am certainly not a scientist! I'm interested but unfortunately not intelligent enough.
'Since that first moment Matter/Energy is believed to have been conserved. It can't be created or destroyed.' I have read this before but I don't quite grasp what it means. Is it possible for you to put this isn't simple terms I might understand? If matter/energy can't be created or destroyed, can it decay over time?
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'Since that first moment Matter/Energy is believed to have been conserved. It can't be created or destroyed.' I have read this before but I don't quite grasp what it means. Is it possible for you to put this isn't simple terms I might understand? If matter/energy can't be created or destroyed, can it decay over time?
First, let me clarify something. Matter and Energy are one and the same thing. Matter encapsulates a certain amount of Energy in a frozen form. This is what that famous equation E=Mc^2 tells us.
The reason why I am making this clear is to avoid confusion with what today has been labelled "Dark Energy". Dark Energy is a place holder name for something we observe but don't understand. It is not necessarily energy, and certainly not in the way we talk about Matter/Energy. It is just an observation who's cause we have no explanation for.
OK. Having cleared that, let's address your questions.
What it means to be conserved is if we calculate all the Energy existing at the time of the Big Bang it will be exactly the same as all the Energy existing now. It has changed form, it has been separated by having to be spread over an ever increasing volume, but it is still all there. It can neither be created, (so the Universe will never have any more of it), or destroyed, (so the Universe will never have less of it.
Now can it decay over time? That depends on what you call decay. Entropy, like time is a one directional arrow when considering the Universe. Unlike time it can be made to reverse direction locally by the injection of more energy from outside that definition of local, but overall it still represents a one directional arrow just like time.
Is Entropy decay? It does not change the amount of Energy/Matter just it's Organization into less easily available forms. Is this decay? I don't know>
Also just looking at the matter phase of Energy, our prominent theory "The Standard Model" predicts that a proton should decay. We have never been able to witness anything yet to say this is so.
Just as a side note: Why I went to the trouble of separating out this misnamed (in my opinion) Dark Energy, is because whatever that placeholder name represents does not get conserved. It grows bigger with every moment that the Universe is said to exist. Like time and entropy it too has a one directional arrow and that direction is to always make it more.
Hope that was clearer than mud soup..
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Thanks, that really does clear matters up [:)]
I have been reading Richard Feynmans 6 Easy Pieces that has a chapter on the conservation of energy which is quite interesting. The first chapter about atoms I really enjoyed and I understood most of it. With the conservation of energy he talks about a boy and his toy blocks. As easy as it seems I was still having problems understanding what he was explaining. I don't know if you have read it or not? If I apply your reply, I think he is saying that the number of blocks the boy has remains the same no matter where the blocks are placed? The blocks are the energy/matter and the energy/matter stays the same no matter what.
Thanks again.