What came before the Big Bang

[saac]

4 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Stockhausen's gearchange.

Olly

So he was to blame for Kraftwerk  

Jim

[Jimmy Rocket]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Who thought the earth was flat and when did they think it? Do you know?  Does anyone? This isn't science, it's history. Given that, in the past, communication over large distances was difficult, many communities did not write down their beliefs and that history is a long time, there will have been many beliefs and many changes in belief, few of them recorded. The throwaway notion that 'we used to think the earth was flat' is a careless assumption and demonstrably false. People had seen the earth's curved shadow cast upon the moon during an eclipse. They had seen receding masts set below the horizon. They had seen the constellations change when you traveled north or south but not when you traveled east or west. More subtly, in a way, Polynesian navigators managed to pass between islands using a knowledge which still eludes modern comprehension. 

So, with respect, when you say, 'The human race is just making up what it thinks happened because that's what we do.....' that is, in fact, exactly what you are doing. You are making up history.

All the great European navigators - Magellan, Columbus and the rest, knew that the earth was (roughly) spherical. No educated person needed proof of this by the time a circumnavigation did prove it.

Olly

Now you know in reality that it's not me making up history as it is widely documented. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

[jetstream]

6 hours ago, andrew s said:

The maths is quite comfortable with these points just like it is comfortable with open and closed intervals.

I am humbly going to ask what the definition of a singularity is? Any and all aspects of its definition is greatly appreciated and is the instant of the universe creation a singularity?

[jetstream]

6 hours ago, saac said:

You should disregard the rem "bang" completely it is misleading. The term was a pejorative criticism by Fred Hoyle  who disliked Georges Lemaître's  theory (he himself named it the Primeval Atom . It is wholly incorrect and misleading to think in terms of a physical bang - it leads to false assumptions and questions. 

Jim  

If we were going to replace the word "bang" what would it be with? What is the proper description of the event? I want to drop the phrase big bang and replace it with something so when I ask about it at least I know what to call it lol!

[andrew s]

11 hours ago, jetstream said:

I am humbly going to ask what the definition of a singularity is? Any and all aspects of its definition is greatly appreciated and is the instant of the universe creation a singularity?

In mathematics a singularity is in general a point or surface at which a given mathematical object is not defined. 

As that's very abstract so here is a simple example. Consider simple division of real numbers, e.g. 1/n. At the point n = 0 there is a singularity as division by zero is undefined. Informally we say it goes to infinity.

In spacetime, it is similar, again informally, we say the curvature of space time becomes infinite. 

George Jones who posts on SGL said this on Physics Forums.

"I am not sure that there is a completely accepted technical definition.

Roughly, a spacetime is singular if there is a timelike curve having bounded acceleration (i.e, a worldline an observer could follow) that ends after a finite amount of proper time. Singular spacetimes have "edges". How come of it? By the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, any "reasonable" classical spacetime must be singular. Very roughly, in any "reasonable" classical spacetime, gravity is so stong that the fabric of spacetime gets ripped, thus creating an "edge"."

Source https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-is-singularity.124016/

That is, if you or I approached a spacetime singularity carrying a clock when we got there and the clock would read a normal amount of time i.e. not infinity.

Personally I would say the initial instant t = 0 is singular but I am not an expert.

Regards Andrew
 

Edited June 10, 2020 by andrew s

[andrew s]

10 hours ago, jetstream said:

If we were going to replace the word "bang" what would it be with? What is the proper description of the event? I want to drop the phrase big bang and replace it with something so when I ask about it at least I know what to call it lol!

I don't have any better word that would be memorable and not misleading. Maybe @ollypenrice, @saac or @Macavity has a better term.

Regards Andrew 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

17 hours ago, Jimmy Rocket said:

I don't see how the human race can answer this question when we haven't even ventured out of our back yard, there will undoubtedly be new eliments, gasses, matter etc we have never encouted and could have had something to do with the development and fabric of the universe, we are trying to solve a problem with only a few clues.

I've never been impressed with arguments along these lines. After all, I've never been to China but there is a great deal of indirect evidence that it exists.

Similarly, we have a great deal of evidence that the wider universe contains the same elements and follows the same rules of physics. Helium is a good example, it was discovered by looking at spectral lines from the Sun before it was found on Earth. Some things we really do understand very well. Relativity has passed every test in the most extreme natural laboratories we've been able to find, and spectral lines from distant Quasars show that the fine-structure constant cannot have changed by very much (or at all) over the history of the universe.

Modern physics and cosmology aren't so much wrong as incomplete, there is a classic Isaac Asimov essay on this subject. There is also a great deal we don't understand and a point we can't, and perhaps never will, go past.

[ollypenrice]

12 hours ago, Jimmy Rocket said:

Now you know in reality that it's not me making up history as it is widely documented. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

An interesting link: thanks. However, since it's about flat earth models it doesn't concern itself with spherical ones. The oldest recorded terrestrial globe dates from 150 BC and the oldest surviving one dates from 1492, predating Magellan's first circumnavigation by some thirty years. The replacement of the flat earth model with the spherical one was piecemeal and, indeed, is ongoing since there are plenty of odballs who deny the spherical Earth.

1 hour ago, andrew s said:

I don't have any better word that would be memorable and not misleading. Maybe @ollypenrice, @saac or @Macavity has a better term.

Regards Andrew 

It's an historical curiosity that the term 'Big Bang' was coined by a non-believer, steady state theorist Fred Hoyle and, quite possibly, was coined off the cuff. I think Andrew has pointed us in the direction of understanding why such an unscientific, even facetious, term has taken irrevocable hold. Being the loosest kind of metaphor imaginable it carries no baggage of preconceptions. It is an empty noise, if you like, and so a perfect label for something not conceivable in normal terms. It won't lead you astray because, as a term, it doesn't lead anybody anywhere. I suspect that's why it has stuck.

Olly

Edited June 10, 2020 by ollypenrice

[saac]

9 hours ago, andrew s said:

I don't have any better word that would be memorable and not misleading. Maybe @ollypenrice, @saac or @Macavity has a better term.

Regards Andrew 

For me I think of the singularity coming into existence - it was simply there where before it was not (although before does not necessarily make sense as before did not exist in our traditional understanding). It then expanded almost instantaneously - that for me is the big bang.   No explosions , no bang , but something far more complex and intriguing.  Lemaitre called it the Primeval Atom , not an event but a noun a thing . The media ran with Hoyle's pejorative Big Bang - snappy , catchy eye candy for newspapers, the public, graphic media designers, but less meaningful .  

Jim 

Edited June 10, 2020 by saac

[andrew s]

1 minute ago, saac said:

For me I think of the singularity coming into existence - it was simply there where before it was not (although before does not necessarily make sense as before did not exist in our traditional understanding). It then expanded almost instantaneously - that for me is the big bang.   No explosions , no bang , but something far complex and intriguing.  Lemaitre called it the Primeval Atom , not an event but a noun a thing . The media ran with Hoyle's pejorative Big Bang - snappy , catchy eye candy for newspapers, the public, graphic media designers, but less meaningful .  

Jim 

At least to me "Primeval Atom" gives the impression that there is an external, extrinsic view. An outside vantage point where you could observe it from and watch it unfold.

Regards Andrew 

 

[RayD]

17 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

there are plenty of odballs who deny the spherical Earth

Seems somewhat ironic that Flat Earthers are oddballs 😂

[saac]

1 hour ago, andrew s said:

In mathematics a singularity is in general a point or surface at which a given mathematical object is not defined. 

As that's very abstract so here is a simple example. Consider simple division of real numbers, e.g. 1/n. At the point n = 0 there is a singularity as division by zero is undefined. Informally we say it goes to infinity.

In spacetime, it is similar, again informally, we say the curvature of space time becomes infinite. 

George Jones who posts on SGL said this on Physics Forums.

"I am not sure that there is a completely accepted technical definition.

Roughly, a spacetime is singular if there is a timelike curve having bounded acceleration (i.e, a worldline an observer could follow) that ends after a finite amount of proper time. Singular spacetimes have "edges". How come of it? By the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, any "reasonable" classical spacetime must be singular. Very roughly, in any "reasonable" classical spacetime, gravity is so stong that the fabric of spacetime gets ripped, thus creating an "edge"."

Source https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-is-singularity.124016/

That is, if you or I approached a spacetime singularity carrying a clock when we got there and the clock would read a normal amount of time i.e. not infinity.

Personally I would say the initial instant t = 0 is singular but I am not an expert.

Regards Andrew
 

Andrew has given us an insightful description here and I'm going to take the time reading through his link to the Physics Forum for further background.  I think with many of these abstract concepts, singularity , infinity  etc ( which are properly rooted in Mathematics) , the difficulty comes in translating these descriptions to what we experience in reality.  In the realm  of Mathematics the presence of infinity generally causes no great concern and there are rules for handling it. However  in physics and the physical world infinity is slightly more problematic  because it is not something we can perceive to be possible. I have read that when Physicists are developing a theory the presence of infinity in the mathematics is usually a sign that something has gone wrong (generally their boundary assumptions ).  For a basic understanding I think it helps if we start with a High School Physics definition  - so for me my understanding of a singularity is " a state (a point )  with no physical dimension  and hence infinity small volume" . To describe that  Mathematically is well outside my understanding so I am left with my basic understanding; I say it quickly and don't dwell too long on it (demons lurk inside)  . As for the conditions at the start of the Universe (the big bang) I think of that singularity (no dimension , infinitely small and infinitely hot )  which then for some reason, not fully understood, went through a period of rapid inflation then expansion.   I don't know how they calculate it but I have read on various text books that the inflation period took the universe from the singularity to something the size of a grapefruit; and we complain of congestion on our roads today !

Jim

Edited June 10, 2020 by saac

[saac]

23 minutes ago, andrew s said:

At least to me "Primeval Atom" gives the impression that there is an external, extrinsic view. An outside vantage point where you could observe it from and watch it unfold.

Regards Andrew 

 

I know that can be problematic Andrew as it introduces a potential falsehood but I wonder if it is something we can ever truly isolate ourselves from.  Perhaps we, our minds, are that outside vantage point. 

ps - Does not "the big bang" do exactly the same . We ask what it exploded into - there is that extrinsic view again . 

Jim 

Edited June 10, 2020 by saac

[ollypenrice]

9 minutes ago, andrew s said:

At least to me "Primeval Atom" gives the impression that there is an external, extrinsic view. An outside vantage point where you could observe it from and watch it unfold.

Regards Andrew 

 

I agree. That's why I think the term Big Bang has endured. It can name what we're talking about without predisposing us to think in any particular way, including a way which involves taking a fallacious extrinsic view.  (Those writing about Darwinism encounter the extreme difficulty of doing so without using terms which contradict the very points that they are trying to make. It can be hard to avoid implications of design or purpose in describing evolutionary processes. Similarly I think the debate over human and artificial intelligence is rendered almost impossible by the anthropomorphic terms in which computers are discussed. We are told that computers have 'memory,' that they search and retrieve, that they select and so on. If we use these terms then we are starting off the discussion with an innate bias.

Olly

[andrew s]

9 minutes ago, saac said:

I know that can be problematic Andrew as it introduces a potential falsehood but I wonder if it is something we can ever truly isolate ourselves from.  Perhaps we, our minds, are that outside vantage point. 

ps - Does not "the big bang" do exactly the same . We ask what it exploded into - there is that extrinsic view again . 

Jim 

And one peculiar point I see,

As one of many ones to me,

As truth is gathered, I rearrange,

Inside out outside in, inside out, out side in

Perpetual change

 

Jon Anderson & Chris Squire

I shall be singing that to myself all day now. Oh Yes I will.

On the PS yes.

Regards Andrew

Edited June 10, 2020 by andrew s

[saac]

38 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

An interesting link: thanks. However, since it's about flat earth models it doesn't concern itself with spherical ones. The oldest recorded terrestrial globe dates from 150 BC and the oldest surviving one dates from 1492, predating Magellan's first circumnavigation by some thirty years. The replacement of the flat earth model with the spherical one was piecemeal and, indeed, is ongoing since there are plenty of odballs who deny the spherical Earth.

It's an historical curiosity that the term 'Big Bang' was coined by a non-believer, steady state theorist Fred Hoyle and, quite possibly, was coined off the cuff. I think Andrew has pointed us in the direction of understanding why such an unscientific, even facetious, term has taken irrevocable hold. Being the loosest kind of metaphor imaginable it carries no baggage of preconceptions. It is an empty noise, if you like, and so a perfect label for something not conceivable in normal terms. It won't lead you astray because, as a term, it doesn't lead anybody anywhere. I suspect that's why it has stuck.

Olly

And yet it does carry baggage , preconceptions and does lead many astray.  The questions are well known - "what did it explode into ",   "what did it expand into"   "where did it explode".  The term is really only useful as pop art - it has no scientific capital and I would be surprised if it is ever used by professional cosmologists. 

Jim 

[andrew s]

@saac in the Physics Forums link George referenced a book which he recommended.  I would trust his judgement but I have not read it.

Regards Andrew 

[saac]

5 minutes ago, andrew s said:

@saac in the Physics Forums link George referenced a book which he recommended.  I would trust his judgement but I have not read it.

Regards Andrew 

Thanks Andrew, could be worth a try to ease lock down confinement. Trying to learn the electric guitar at the moment - every bit as challenging as cosmology and particle physics   

Jim 

[ollypenrice]

26 minutes ago, saac said:

And yet it does carry baggage , preconceptions and does lead many astray.  The questions are well known - "what did it explode into ",   "what did it expand into"   "where did it explode".  The term is really only useful as pop art - it has no scientific capital and I would be surprised if it is ever used by professional cosmologists. 

Jim 

I'm sure it is used by professional cosmologists. It was coined by one, after all, and I've heard several use it. Of course it's nothing more than a handy label and it does carry some baggage, as you say. I still think it carries about as little as any term can be expected to.  

Language itself carries quite a lot, unfortunately. The fact that we have a subject-verb-object structure so deeply embedded can try to lead us astray. We say 'It is raining,' for instance. But what is? Immediately there is a ghost in the room. Why don't we just say, 'Raining.' It's perfectly reasonable for verbs denoting the actions of sentient creatures to have subjects but there is always that lurking anthropomorphism when actions are performed by non-sentient beings. (As in that statement, for instance! 🤣)

Olly

[saac]

1 minute ago, ollypenrice said:

I'm sure it is used by professional cosmologists. It was coined by one, after all, and I've heard several use it.

Olly

It was Olly , but his intentions were less concordant and more deprecating- not all scientist are above such Machiavellian play.  Hoyle as you pointed out earlier being a supporter of the steady state theory was openly hostile to Lemaitre's proposal and ridiculed it at every opportunity.  The recent renaming of Hubble's Law to Lemaitre-Hubble law would no doubt be greeted with similar acerbic commentary from Hoyle. 

Each year I spend as much time correcting the misconceptions of the term "big bang" amongst my students as I do pulling weeds from my garden.  The one useful purpose I will concede to its use is that that it provides the students with an opportunity to arrive at a more secure understanding.  

Jim 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

26 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

We say 'It is raining,' for instance. But what is? Immediately there is a ghost in the room. Why don't we just say, 'Raining.'

There are other ways of expressing this but I'm not sure the (anthropomorphised) forum censor will play ball.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Knight of Clear Skies

[Tenor Viol]

48 minutes ago, saac said:

Thanks Andrew, could be worth a try to ease lock down confinement. Trying to learn the electric guitar at the moment - every bit as challenging as cosmology and particle physics   

Jim 

If it's any consolation, I'm primarily a 'classical' amateur musician on cello and I also play sax. I've started trying to play electric bass which is utterly alien to me and currently doing my head in! I can read music in all 4 standard clefs, so that's not a problem...

Oddly, if you look at original manuscripts for the renaissance and Jacobean era, authors would put in a preface of their understanding of 'cosmology' trying to link say the theory of music with mathematics, particularly geometry,  and astronomy: the Grand Unified Theory of an earlier era. An example being the English viol player Christopher Simpson's book "The Division Violist" (this is about playing 'divisions', which we would call variations or improvisation). The opening section is all about relating these things together. I have a facsimile edition in my study.       

[saac]

1 hour ago, Tenor Viol said:

If it's any consolation, I'm primarily a 'classical' amateur musician on cello and I also play sax. I've started trying to play electric bass which is utterly alien to me and currently doing my head in! I can read music in all 4 standard clefs, so that's not a problem...

Oddly, if you look at original manuscripts for the renaissance and Jacobean era, authors would put in a preface of their understanding of 'cosmology' trying to link say the theory of music with mathematics, particularly geometry,  and astronomy: the Grand Unified Theory of an earlier era. An example being the English viol player Christopher Simpson's book "The Division Violist" (this is about playing 'divisions', which we would call variations or improvisation). The opening section is all about relating these things together. I have a facsimile edition in my study.       

The  "music of the spheres" ;  like you said maybe an early attempt at a Grand Unified Theory.  I guess it was all part of the "sublime" movement to recognise or reflect the  perfection of nature and to make us part of it.    The linkage between music and mathematics is fascinating. There are lots of YouTube videos which express Pi musically but I've  found this one really satisfying - I find it amazing how the melody he generates with Pi  is pleasing to the ear  - not just random numbers  and notes. 

Re my guitar playing attempts. I was a little concerned that perhaps I'd left it too late in age and that I would just find it too difficult contorting my fingers into unimaginable and unnatural positions   My progress is glacial but I am finding it really enjoyable. I must admit I love just holding musical instruments, but they are more than just pleasing objects - they hold so much potential.  My daughter is my teacher - she is learning the electric guitar too (already plays violin and ukulele  and studies music at school).  To some extent we are learning together but she moves through it way quicker than I do .  I celebrate when I can play a single chord calling her down to listen to my achievement;  she rolls her eyes and says "well done, now what about the other 6  in the opening of Hotel California" ! Praise as only a teenager knows how  

 

Jim 

 

[Tenor Viol]

1 hour ago, saac said:

The  "music of the spheres" ;  like you said maybe an early attempt at a Grand Unified Theory.  I guess it was all part of the "sublime" movement to recognise or reflect the  perfection of nature and to make us part of it.    The linkage between music and mathematics is fascinating. There are lots of YouTube videos which express Pi musically but I've  found this one really satisfying - I find it amazing how the melody he generates with Pi  is pleasing to the ear  - not just random numbers  and notes. 

Re my guitar playing attempts. I was a little concerned that perhaps I'd left it too late in age and that I would just find it too difficult contorting my fingers into unimaginable and unnatural positions   My progress is glacial but I am finding it really enjoyable. I must admit I love just holding musical instruments, but they are more than just pleasing objects - they hold so much potential.  My daughter is my teacher - she is learning the electric guitar too (already plays violin and ukulele  and studies music at school).  To some extent we are learning together but she moves through it way quicker than I do .  I celebrate when I can play a single chord calling her down to listen to my achievement;  she rolls her eyes and says "well done, now what about the other 6  in the opening of Hotel California" ! Praise as only a teenager knows how  

 

Jim 

 

I didn't start playing cello or sax until in my 50s. Plenty of people start much older than that. Here's a picture from my facsimile edition of the Simpson manuscript I mentioned - over the page it then links in the celestial sphere

[andrew s]

Such harmony. If you want a stretch as we exit lockdown try:

Godel Ecsher Bach  an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter 

Regards Andrew