Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang?

[JB80]

I really wouldn't be surprised if both versions are out there in the media to be honest, it's a difficult concept to get around really.

It was only fresh in my mind as I read read something about just this recently, I apologize to yourself and the mods if it came across a bit confrontational as it really wasn't my intention.

Which show is this on discovery? I'm not sure we get the same shows at the same time here.

Anyway, even though I saw this show first time around it definitely warrants another watch. Just set it to record now.

[ismangil]

I really wouldn't be surprised if both versions are out there in the media to be honest, it's a difficult concept to get around really.

It was only fresh in my mind as I read read something about just this recently, I apologize to yourself and the mods if it came across a bit confrontational as it really wasn't my intention.

Which show is this on discovery? I'm not sure we get the same shows at the same time here.

Anyway, even though I saw this show first time around it definitely warrants another watch. Just set it to record now.

http://www.discoveryuk.com/web/stephen-hawkings-grand-design/

That one.

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[nickdud]

while watching this program one thing comes to my mind....

i thought of the exploding black hole/massive compression explosion idea about 10yrs ago on the m1 one very boring monday.... where do i claim my nobel prize please?

it was based on the idea that if you compress enough stuff enough it will eventually explode..... sadly i then arrived at my next broken lift(elevator to some of you) before i could publish my incomplete idea....

when i did email mr hawkin i was told he was too busy haha

[JimFR]

Thank goodness for BBC IPlayer ! thought I'd missed this (watched the Plane Crash instead !)

watching it on me V+ now...

[Islander]

Dirac had some interesting ideas on the nature of vacuum or nothing. His position was that it was effectively a sea of particles and antiparticles each cancelling out the effects of the other and rendering them undetectable (ok a gross simplification but the basic principle in a nutshell). It's been shown that particle/antiparticle pairs can spontaneously appear and annihilate from a vacuum and there's the Casimir effect. I'm keeping an open mind on the whole big bang issue.

[sologuitarist61]

These discussions do just seem to go round in circles and not achieve very much. For what it's worth I agree with most of Takahashi san's out burst.

I think a number of us agree with you Alastair, but perhaps not the way that it was put?

[LukeSkywatcher]

Stephen Hawking on his Grand Design series believes there is nothing before Big Bang, because time and space hasn't started.

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Thats my take on it. The Big Bang created time and space.

I should add that time as we know it is a manmade concept. Its only when we learned/decided to harness astronomical rotations around the Sun and the rotation of our planet that we came up with the concept of "time".

[Vince1963]

Does time really exist though? .. isn't this just an invention of the mind of man to control the masses.. Isn't everything with motion a time piece?, Think about it... If time and space are locked into a single continuum and space is not just expanding but is also accelerating then this must be true, that time must be going faster as well..And maybe the fallacy that people are living longer isn't true, We are living the same life period but because time is accelerating it gives the appearance we are living longer?..

I think i will start another thread with this.

[sologuitarist61]

Hi Vince, I suppose you are right to a degree and that it needs intelligence to notice time, but if the universe is expanding and stars are 'born' and 'die', then time must exist outside of our comprehension and must be an integral part of the universe.

Be interesting to know what others think though.

[Vince1963]

Hi Richard... I Guess time must be rhythm and motion and maybe all motion comes to a halt, Like the rhythm and motion of ones heart everything lives and everything dies but energy never dies it just changes shape and becomes something else like the universe, maybe it was something else and maybe it will be something else again.

[sologuitarist61]

Hi Richard... I Guess time must be rhythm and motion and maybe all motion comes to a halt, Like the rhythm and motion of ones heart everything lives and everything dies but energy never dies it just changes shape and becomes something else like the universe, maybe it was something else and maybe it will be something else again.

I must say that I happen to agree with you there Vince, I never have really 'bought' the Big Bang Theory and to me the Inflation model seems nothing but a fudge to fit in with what is observed. Though having said that, I have no idea what can take their place although the Horizon programme did bring up quite a few ideas that I personally found more palatable than the Big Bang, but it was interesting to see how most of the scientists themselves seemed to be veering away from it as well.

I know that they say that the Big Bang has been proved with observations etc, but when you start off with the observations and then make up the theory to fit, then that is pretty obvious I would have thought.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I agree that some parts like inflation do seem like a fudge. Unfortunately, nature does not have to behave in a way palatable to us . If you stand outside, shaking your fist at the sky, and scream at the universe "IT"S NOT FAIR!!!" the answer (if any) you would get is "Yes, and...?"

[sologuitarist61]

No, I perfectly agree with you Michael, nature will do what it wants and we have little choice but to observe, however I was merely making a personal statement of how things seem to be to me and I would not like thrust my opinions on anyone, but was merely making an observation on to what others have said.

It may be quite correct that the Big Bang happened, but I do feel that with our present state of understanding that it will more than likely be superceded, if not overthrown, by new evidence and new insights in the due process of time. It would appear from my understanding of the programme that many of those at the sharp end feel the same.

Occam's Razor say something to the effect that the simplest explanation is likely to be correct and I just find the Big Bang theory a bit strangein that respect. It in effect it states that the universe must at some point (excuse the pun) have been a singularity but does that necessarily follow? We look at the universe and it is expanding in all directions so if we rewound the universe it would be just as easy to imaging that the universe shrank and everything got smaller. To us from our expanded universe point of viewthe singularity was tiny beyond belief, but if everything in the universe shrunk at the same rate, then to them it would still appear to be a whole universe and they could look back and still see what to them is a singularity at the start of the universe, and so it goes around. What to us is tiny isn't necessarily so to those at a smaller scale and for all we know everything may have been smaller, even atoms.

Now I don't put this forward as reasonable theory, in fact I have only just thought of it in answer to your point, but it is another way of thinking of things that to most people might find more likely than us exploding out of nothing/no where.

[ismangil]

Like in Men In Black for the creatures that lived in the locker :-)

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[shinok]

so the universe isnt 6000-9000 years old?

ha ha ha and dinosaur bones weren't put here by god to test the faith of humanity