A possible theory on what caused the 'Big Bang'?

[lw24]

Hi all,

I've been thinking about the Big Bang for a while now, and have come up with my own 'theory'. This is coming from a basic knowledge on astronomy and the universe (this forum, Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, GCSE Physics ), nothing really technical.

So, what caused the Big Bang. Well, no-one really seems to know. The main concept for my theory is that every black hole leads to a whole new 'space time', a new 'blanket' of space time, on which a new universe is created. So, matter is 'sucked' down the black hole, and due to the immense forces of gravity in a black hole, is squashed into a point of singularity. This in effect explains how all the matter was contained in such a small space. Matter keeps being sucked in until there's no more matter for the black hole to digest. Due to the immense pressure at the bottom of the black hole, the space time that the black hole is on bursts, releasing the matter onto the new set of space time, 'below' i guess you could say.

Diagram 1a: ----------------------- <--- Our universe/space time

Diagram 1b: ----------------------- <--- Different 'universe'/space time

Diagram 2a: --------\/------------- <--- A black hole on our space time

Diagram 2b: ----------------------- <--- Different 'universe'/space time

Diagram 3a: --------\ /------------- <--- Black hole splits, letting out the matter it contained

Diagram 3b: ---m-a-t-t-e-r-!------- <--- Matter 'drops' onto other space time

Now, I doubt this theory may be true, and as I am a 'beginner' in astronomy and knowledge of our universe, am unsure of what laws of physics it may be breaking etc. But who's to say our current understanding of the laws of physics are wrong?

Obviously, questions will be asked, such as, one black hole doesn't 'swallow' enough matter to create a universe, but as the 'Big Bang', apparently happenned 'everywhere', maybe numerous black holes could contribute to 'transporting' matter to different space times.

It could also be possible that some black holes never engulf enough matter for them to be able to burst. Also, the amount of matter a black hole engulfs would determine the outcome of the created universe. If there is LOADS of matter, then the new universe created on new space time may experience a 'Big Crunch', whereas, if there is less, it may experience a 'Big Freeze', as ours will (to my understanding).

What do you think?

Clear Skies

[Ursa Major]

Yeah, I agree with this theory. It all makes sense.

You could think of it as a star (Black hole) forming from clouds of gas (the universe), and then running out of hydrogen (matter) and then going supernova (big bang) and then forming a supernova remnant (new universe).

[Adamski]

Maybe our entire universe is just a speck of infomation within the smallest part of something elses genetic code and all the parallel universes are just other bits of info that then make up a small part of the dna strand that ultimately belongs to some space amoeba??? The possibilities are endless and it stresses me out. I like to dream about it though as i'm sure we all do .

[Macavity]

Similar(?) ideas recently in the news?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikodem_Popławski

Though sometimes, it's hard to tell!

[Doghouse]

dude, pass the munchies, you're blowing my mind!

[JulianO]

Its an interesting idea, but if true, what happens to the material that continues to fall into the black hole? It should be there in the new universe pouring out constantly, probably at all points in the new universe.

[star_chaser]

Its an interesting idea, but if true, what happens to the material that continues to fall into the black hole? It should be there in the new universe pouring out constantly, probably at all points in the new universe.

maybe once the black hole has consumed x amount of matter it implodes, explodes (or whatever it does) and comes to the end of its life resulting in another big bang (somewhere) and a new universe is created

and each new universe is smaller that the last just like star going supernova the elements then go on to make less and smaller stars

our univese could be a tiny one on the grand scheme of things

now who mentioned munchies

star

[JulianO]

maybe once the black hole has consumed x amount of matter it implodes, explodes (or whatever it does) and comes to the end of its life resulting in another big bang (somewhere) and a new universe is created

Well - then what causes it to implode/explode at a certain limit. It has already got so big that nothing can resist its imploding force of gravity, hence the black hole. There are supermassive black holes at the centre of most galaxies. weighing up to a billion times the weight of the sun (not an insubstantial mass on its own!). As far as we know - these black holes are alive and kicking, and show no signs of imploding. Of course no one has been up close and personal with one.

As far as a theory goes though, you either need some theoretical underpinning, some observational evidence, or use it to make verifiable predictions - or all three for preference, otherwise it has no basis for belief.

[George Jones]

Poplawski has:

1) taken a black hole spacetime and removed all of spcetime to the future of the event horizon;

2) taken a white hole spacetime and removed all of spacetime to the past of the event horizon;

3) glued the event horizon of what remains of the black hole spacetime to the event horizon of what remains of the white hole spacetime.

Something that "thinks" it is falling into a black hole reaches the "event horizon" and emerges into the white hole part.

[star_chaser]

Well - then what causes it to implode/explode at a certain limit. It has already got so big that nothing can resist its imploding force of gravity, hence the black hole. There are supermassive black holes at the centre of most galaxies. weighing up to a billion times the weight of the sun (not an insubstantial mass on its own!). As far as we know - these black holes are alive and kicking, and show no signs of imploding. Of course no one has been up close and personal with one.

As far as a theory goes though, you either need some theoretical underpinning, some observational evidence, or use it to make verifiable predictions - or all three for preference, otherwise it has no basis for belief.

i was not trying to sound like i know what im talking about. just thinking aloud more of a what if than a theory and not expecting anyone to believe me

star

[lw24]

It's good to see a bit of debate

I'm not expecting it to change the way we look at the universe or anything ridiculous like that, it's just something I thought could be plausible.

Clear Skies

[Ad Astra]

Hi all,

I've been thinking about the Big Bang for a while now, and have come up with my own 'theory'. This is coming from a basic knowledge on astronomy and the universe (this forum, Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, GCSE Physics ), nothing really technical.

So, what caused the Big Bang. Well, no-one really seems to know. The main concept for my theory is that every black hole leads to a whole new 'space time', a new 'blanket' of space time, on which a new universe is created. So, matter is 'sucked' down the black hole, and due to the immense forces of gravity in a black hole, is squashed into a point of singularity. This in effect explains how all the matter was contained in such a small space. Matter keeps being sucked in until there's no more matter for the black hole to digest. Due to the immense pressure at the bottom of the black hole, the space time that the black hole is on bursts, releasing the matter onto the new set of space time, 'below' i guess you could say.

Sorry mate,

Your theory violates a lot about what we know of black holes and entropy. I would recommend you delve a little deeper. Try John Barrow's "Book of Universes" or Gribbin's "In Search of the Multiverse". Barrow will painlessly take you through the 'Universe' concept historically and bring you up to date on current thinking. Gribbin will then take you a bit beyond this with current thinking on Quantum theory and multiverse theory. When you say "No one seems to know what caused the Big Bang", that's not really true. We have lots of good ideas that are firmly grounded in mathematics and backed up by current observational evidence.

M-Theory (multiple string theory) does provide quite a bit of guidance as to how a Bang might create a Universe. Theory also contends that the "constants" of Nature that are so necessarily fine tuned to allow life may be set randomly at each 'creation event'. This will lead you quite naturally to the Anthropic Principle (both 'strong' and 'weak' versions) and seminal works by Tippler and Barrow (The Cosmic Anthropic Principle) and David Deutch (The Fabric of Reality). If you get deep enough into it that you want to probe some alternate theories, I can strongly recommend Roger Penrose's "Cycles of Time" - but I will warn you that this one will require quite a bit from you on the mathematical side. Prof. Penrose will take you through it one step at a time, but you will find you want to read this one with a pad of paper and pencil (and a good internet connection) handy to help you understand it.

A bit of judicious reading seems to be in order. You will want to bring your self up to date with thinking on Big Bangs and Multiverse Theory which has changed radically since 1990.

You can see some reviews of these books in the Equipment Review forum.

Cheers,

Dan

[George Jones]

We have lots of good ideas that are firmly grounded in mathematics and backed up by current observational evidence.

There are a number of ideas, but, in my opinion, it's a bit of a stretch to say that these ideas "are firmly grounded in mathematics", and I know of no idea about what caused the Big Bang that is "backed up by current observational evidence."

See also

http://stargazerslounge.com/astro-lounge/116580-big-bang-wet-splat.html#post1595418.

Don't I get me wrong - I do think that informed scientific speculation is worthwhile and important, and I do enjoy reading and studying such speculation.

[scogyrd]

Wasn't the ptolemic theory "firmly grounded in mathematics and backed up by current observational evidence" too?

[JulianO]

Wasn't the ptolemic theory "firmly grounded in mathematics and backed up by current observational evidence" too?

Well sort of - except they kept having to add epicycles within epicycles to match theory to reality. See here for a good description. So it was the mismatch between theory and reality that helped overturn it. Plus the Copernican model makes everything soooooo much simpler.

[George Jones]

As honest mathematics, gravity (general relativity) is far better understood than the other three forces (quantum field theory), and far better understood than the candidates for quantum gravity.

I don't mean problems with interpretation of the meaning of quantum theory, I mean just the mathematics as understood by mathematicians, and I don't mean the level of difficulty or complexity of the mathematics. Also, I don't mean non-relativistic quantum mechanics, even though the mathematics of non-relativistic quantum mechanics is more difficult and subtle than the mathematics of general relativity.

From the preface of Quantum Field Theory: A Tourist Guide for Mathematicians by Gerald Folland (2008):

"Sixty years after the growth of quantum electrodynamics (QED) and forty years after the discovery of the other gauge field theories on which the current understanding of the fundamental interactions of physics is based, putting these theories on a sound mathematical foundation remains an outstanding open problem ..."

[scogyrd]

Well sort of - except they kept having to add epicycles within epicycles to match theory to reality. See here for a good description. So it was the mismatch between theory and reality that helped overturn it. Plus the Copernican model makes everything soooooo much simpler.

I'm going to be honest here and say that as a layman I fail to see the difference between creating epicycles to make your theory fit reality and inventing things like inflation to make your theory fit reality.

[JulianO]

I'm going to be honest here and say that as a layman I fail to see the difference between creating epicycles to make your theory fit reality and inventing things like inflation to make your theory fit reality.

There isn't a lot of difference really. Inflation "fixes" a number of issues with the big bang that are hard to explain otherwise (horizon, flatness etc). However inflation also introduces other problems (island universes, continuous inflation etc).

So at the moment it sort of fixes more than it solves, but I suspect that a better theory will eventually come out that explains more. So I think we're about at the epicycles stage in terms of big bang theory. Lots of things sort of patched up, lots of predictions that can't be validated yet, the whole string theory stuff.

[scogyrd]

This is what I think too. Thanks for replying.

[slimfb]

dude, pass the munchies, you're blowing my mind!

my kinda guy

[ollypenrice]

Wasn't the ptolemic theory "firmly grounded in mathematics and backed up by current observational evidence" too?

No. Modern scientific method specifies that a single contradictory observation renders a theory invalid. Setting aside the small inaccuracies of the Ptolmaic model, one unanswerable violation was provided by the moon. In Ptolemy its distance from the Earth varied enormously, enough to show a huge visual variation in angular size. No such variation is observed.

Olly

[ollypenrice]

Well sort of - except they kept having to add epicycles within epicycles to match theory to reality. See here for a good description. So it was the mismatch between theory and reality that helped overturn it. Plus the Copernican model makes everything soooooo much simpler.

Not so fast! There are more epicycles in De Revolutionibus that there are in Ptolemy. In the Commentariolus, Copernicus' early prospectus, the system was indeed simple. By the time he was through it was a nightmare of epicycles and equant points, a load of mathematical and geometric alchemy set upon turning ellipses into circles. Only when restructured by Kepler did the 'Copernican' system (which might just as well be called the 'Aristarchan' system) become simple.

What fascinates me here, though, is why Gallileo wrote about the beautiful simplicity of the Copernican system when, in its final form, it wasn't. Had he read it, or did he only read the Commentariolus?

He was pretty cursory in reading the work of others, it seems, preferring to start from scratch himself.

Olly

[scogyrd]

No. Modern scientific method specifies that a single contradictory observation renders a theory invalid. Setting aside the small inaccuracies of the Ptolmaic model, one unanswerable violation was provided by the moon. In Ptolemy its distance from the Earth varied enormously, enough to show a huge visual variation in angular size. No such variation is observed.

Olly

Wasn't the problem of the moon solved by adding more epicycles though?

I don't know why but I thought that by the time of Galileo they had the theory practically sewn up and it was the phases of Venus that proved that the geocentric system was wrong because it showed that Venus orbited the Sun and not the Earth.

[ollypenrice]

Wasn't the problem of the moon solved by adding more epicycles though?

I don't know why but I thought that by the time of Galileo they had the theory practically sewn up and it was the phases of Venus that proved that the geocentric system was wrong because it showed that Venus orbited the Sun and not the Earth.

You've got me on the moon diameter. I thought it remained an anomaly so I'll need to go back to my books.

I think you are right that the phases of Venus did for Ptolemy. However Tycho's system would also have produced phases in Venus so victory was still to be won at that stage. To my mind Gallileo's greatest contribution to the heliocentric model was to remove the physical objections to a movng earth via Gallilean relativity. Otherwise, with his big mouth, his contribution was to get De Revolutionbus suspended by the church!

Olly

[cellarsleep]

The best theory i have yet heard is that the universe eventually expands to such an extent that the paradigm of size is rendered obsolete. in this condition, ie an infinite state, the infinitely small (a singularity) is indistinguishable from the infinitely large (umm... cosmic butter spread evenly on a infinitely large slice of toasted space-time) and so the big bang, is actually a recalibration of zero. i like this because of its elegance, the characteristic of truth. i also like the idea of causality beginning with its idealisation.