[Akabiz (OP)]

I am definitely not a physicist or astronomer by any means but I have a theory.  What if the Big Bang was not the beginning of the Universe but just an event in the universe?  The Big Bang could be an event that pushes dark matter outward like a large earthquake creates a tsunami in the ocean.  This could explain why the universe seems to be expanding faster in one direction then the other.  Also it could explain how HD 140283 looks like it’s older than the universe.  If this Big Bang event took place and the wave of dark matter overtook HD 140283 instead of destroying it, that would explain why it looks older then the universe.  Like the way a tsunami could overtake an island leaving it permanently covered by water.  The water is new but the island is older because it was there prior to the event.  So as the dark matter continues to extend outward from the event but it has left behind planets that were there prior to the Big Bang.  I know this is probably a stupid theory and has been thought of already and can immediately be disproven but thought I would throw it out there.  I love thinking about the universe and what is out there.  Thanks for your time and please don’t be too harsh.

[RobC]

Sean Carroll believes the universe is infinite in both directions i.e. it never had a beginning, it was always there and it will never end.

[Bogie_smiles]

I am definitely not a physicist or astronomer by any means but I have a theory.  What if the Big Bang was not the beginning of the Universe but just an event in the universe?  …
I love thinking about the universe and what is out there.  Thanks for your time …

As an elder member but with no administrative or operating connection to the Naked Scientists, welcome. I too love contemplating the nature of the universe and theorizing “what ifs” so I hope that you plan to engage in discussion at TNS.

In reply to the question positing no beginning, I would side with the thought that the Big Bang was not the beginning of the universe but was the initial event in our observable arena within the greater universe. I think of our observable universe as the space connected to our “local” big bang event which could certainly be one of an endless scenario of multiple similar events of “expansion, overlap, crunch and bang” here and there, now and then, across an infinite and eternal universe.

These collapse/bangs could be expected to expand, as ours appears to be doing, and eventually expansion could lead to arenas intersecting and overlapping with each other, causing the gravitational formation of galactic matter and energy into big crunches, which in turn reach a critical capacity and collapse/bang. Just speculating when I say that .

[Colin2B]

I am definitely not a physicist or astronomer by any means but I have a theory.  What if the Big Bang was not the beginning of the Universe but just an event in the universe? 

It depends what you mean by ‘the universe’. Some, as @Bogie_smiles says take it to mean what we see today, others as @RobC indicates take it to mean a continuum in which a number of catastrophic events have occurred. Whichever way we take it, in our particular universe we don’t really know what happened before the period called inflation - although most cosmologists agree that there wasn’t a big bang from a singularity, to start everything off.
What happened before inflation is open to speculation, but no one is likely to be taken seriously unless they know a lot of physics and cosmology and can put together a very detailed hypothesis.

Certainly there are many who would say that there was not a period where nothing existed, probably as many would say it’s likely nothing existed before our universe.

[yor_on]

I'll go with Sean and Collin :)
It was there, we can 'see' it looking back. But that doesn't tell us any more than that was when time started to 'tick', for us

13.7 (8) billions years ago, which may change :)
Time is a very strange idea.

[CG]

Who's to say we aren't looking at ourselves when looking at the universe? Maybe gravitational lensing is acting like a mirror and we are looking at our own selves.

[Bill S]

Hi CG, welcome.

Who's to say we aren't looking at ourselves when looking at the universe?

Humphrey Bogart would have liked that.  “Here's looking at you, kid,"

On a more serious note:

Maybe gravitational lensing is acting like a mirror and we are looking at our own selves.

This could let in CTCs and all the speculative flapdoodle that goes with them.  I don’t know enough about gravitational lensing to make an informed comment, but I struggle to think of a way in which it could give rise to a mirroring effect on a global level.  It will be interesting to see what the experts think.

[Bill S]

Certainly there are many who would say that there was not a period where nothing existed, probably as many would say it’s likely nothing existed before our universe.

Has anyone in the latter group actually explained how we could be here if there had ever been “nothing”? 

Fellow posters will know (only too well) that I subject TNS to recrudescences of the something from nothing debate, but I really am trying to keep an open mind. 

[yor_on]

Maybe there exist a third possibility Bill, that we 'exist' as defined by the standard theory, universe included. But as you go down in scale we 'dissolve' into particles and forces. Gravity shrinks space according to relativity, and 'photons' acts and get acted upon by gravity. It seems to fall back on a question of 'energy'. With a infinite amount of energy, how would gravity behave?

Presume a infinite magnitude of energy, can there be created a toy model of a 'point'? We don't have one 'point' of conception though for this universe, as far as I see those 'points' exist everywhere. And we don't want to introduce a 'outside' because the logic for that will only lead us astray. It all hinges on dimensions being a construct though, not a origin. If that is correct then what you and me are becomes something more than just the sum of our parts.

[Bill S]

Maybe there exist a third possibility Bill, that we 'exist' as defined by the standard theory, universe included.

That sounds a bit philosophical.  Who/what specified the “standard theory”?  How would that explain how something could come from nothing?

It seems to fall back on a question of 'energy'. With a infinite amount of energy, how would gravity behave?

Doesn’t that depend on how you define “infinite amount”?  Do you really mean “infinite” amount, or just an amount that is so large that we cannot measure it?

[yor_on]

What I thought of referring to the standard theory is that is the best we have for the time being, but who and what defined it is a pretty long story. It's a model so maybe I should have named it that instead of calling it a theory. infinite should be infinite, there's a difference between assuming that a infinity is something countable although not possible for us to count and infinite as in uncountable. If you take religion I seem to remember a saying in where God can keep count of it all " how not one sparrow falls, that our heavenly Father, does not see it." and what it could be seen to represent is the first proposition in where a 'infinity' becomes something 'countable', although not for us.  But that's not my view of it. If you think of a infinite universe then the idea must be that no matter where you are you still will find a 'bubble of light' around you 13.8~billion light years, no matter how far you go. That I think is a good example of a real infinity.

[yor_on]

You can also think of a infinity as something represented by 'photons' which represent a limit of propagation 'c'. If we assume that you could take a particle of mass and wind it up to being infinitely close to 'c'. Would you expect it to meet a wall somewhere? The universe must 'shrink' for it but will it 'stop' its propagation?
=

you will need some presumptions for that one, as ignoring gravity and being in a 'perfect vacuum', but the idea still works.

[Bill S]

The reason I queried the “standard theory” was that you seemed to be presenting it as a possible answer to my question: “Has anyone in the latter group actually explained how we could be here if there was ever “nothing”?”.

For me, the something-from-nothing question is closely linked to thoughts about infinity and eternity.   

Occasionally, I quote Krauss as saying: “By nothing, I do not mean nothing…..” I admit that this is only part of what he said, so is probably not a fair quote.  I defend it on the grounds that, for me, it sums up the something from nothing argument as it is customarily presented; and it’s “fun”.

One may, perhaps, need to take a closer look at his book to register his admission, towards the end, that every-thing he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted.

It seems that it all hinges on the laws of quantum mechanics.

Where are these laws supposed to have come from? Surely quantum mechanics must be something, or be relate to something; and that something must have predated the “writing” of the laws.  Krauss - a little grudgingly – confesses to not having a clue on this particular issue.  Somehow, he seems to think it doesn’t matter.  Possibly, it doesn’t matter, but I have a feeling that the question as to how – not why – we are here is something that scientists should not relegate to semantic triviality.

[Bill S]

A long history underlies the search for, and interpretation of, the fundamental laws of nature; but these laws take it for granted that there is, essentially, a persisting, physical “something”.

The fundamental physical laws that Krauss talks about are the laws of relativistic quantum field theories.  Presumably, these quantum fields constitute the most up-to-date version of the underlying “something”.  The scientific “world view” has become more arcane, but the basic position has not changed.

[yor_on]

That's a difficult proposition Bill, that it doesn't matter. I would say it do matter, at least for me. There are some things I try to avoid, like creating self fulfilling ideas. Like circles inside circles inside circles of logic. They don't lead anywhere. But it's also a question of how you define it. Can one just find a way to define it in where it makes sense it will be interesting. As for example the way I want to define dimensions as something 'created' instead of a origin. To me it makes sense :)

[yor_on]

For your other post I would refer to statistics, and the way we try to interpret those.

[AustinnEp]

The first sentence from the SpaceDaily article reporting this caught my attention:Although for five decades, the Big Bang theory has been the best known and most accepted explanation for the beginning and evolution of the Universe, it is hardly a consensus among scientists.

[Bill S]

A quick skim through the article left me thinking: It's an interesting article, but what's new, here? Could the most significant word be "reintroduces" ?  He seems to hold an outmoded view of the "Big Bang Singularity", and describing the Big Bang as an explosion is a bit misleading.

I'll try to find a few minutes to read it properly; I might need to apologise to the author.

[jeffreyH]

Sean Carroll believes the universe is infinite in both directions i.e. it never had a beginning, it was always there and it will never end.

Entropy? Heat death? You would need a way of perpetually undoing the increase in entropy AND be consistent with the laws of thermodynamics.

[esquire]

As  for common science dogma, everything in the Universe is a wave. That implies momentum and locality cannot be mutually established under the uncertainity principle. The Big Bang Theory, says it occurred 14.5 billion years ago, this is a measurement of velocity in light years and an assumption of locality. 14.5 billion light years ago to present, is a velocity approximation. 14.5 billion years ago is also  a locality assumption.

Is the Universe's initial rapid expansion an exception to the uncertainity principle? Backwards engineering the Universe's age for locality and expansion velocity,  says it is.

The Higgs Boson creates a wave energy signature at the location of the particles collision. Its gaussian wave signature is recorded and it energy disappears from sensor detection. The magnetic resonance detectors which are capable of recording objects at the speed of light, observe the Higgs Boson at the initial location with its speed of light velocity. So, initially, it's wave location, and it wave velocity are determined. But then it's energy disappears completely, with no sign of decay or annilation of its energy which is a violation of the law of conservation. This presents an issue, how and where did this energy disappear to?  Such are the mystery's of science!