Somehow the Big Bang accord and the universe expanded.
Theists claim that the universe was created by a higher power, but the problem is religion there’s too many with their own ideas of creation. SHIT. I think I am confusing myself.
There’s something like 10,000 religions all having their own ideas of creation, none seem to agree with each other. There’s only one logical answer if a God did not create the universe, then it just happened… and we don’t actually know what happened.
We can however observe about where first light would have came from, and that light got here billions of years after the fact. If a god created all things, then that God was probably drunk.
Anyways this is more for the Theist out there, but I don’t mind other atheists getting into the conversation.
Imagine you are witnessing childbirth. One moment, there is just the mother, and then, poof, a child. Did that child come from nothing or was there a cause?
If we make an analogy to cosmology, we can see the child, but we can not see far enough back in time to see the birthing process or the mother.
To continue David’s analogy:
The baby was born with a cloud of ions around it which slowly dissipated. Ions essentially scatter light randomly, making it impossible to see anything but randomness before the cloud dissipated.
What makes the modern big bang theory so great is that: it is insensitive to the initial conditions. Meaning you are essentially guaranteed to have this expansion event.
What makes it so frustrating is: it is insensitive to the initial conditions. You can not use photons to gather information about earlier periods.
part of the problem is the phrase Big Bang has several different meanings. Originally was was a pejorative term (meant to indicate how ridiculous the theory sounded). Sometimes it means the surface of last scattering. Sometimes it means the theory used to model the evolution of the universe after the surface of last scattering. Sometimes it means the model before the surface of last scattering. And finally sometimes it means a very special event that might be called creation or a beginning that presumably took place 100’s of thousands of years BEFORE the surface of last scattering.
Here is what you can take to the bank: the Big Bang theory does not describe creation. The theory starts with the universe already existing, and being full of preexisting hydrogen plasma. This hydrogen plasma is the surface of last scattering. This scattering surface makes it impossible to do photon astronomy. As I think David pointed out, there is some hope of doing astronomy with other particles that don’t interact with this surface.
Your conclusion is not a logical result of your premise. The argument; though, invalid and fallacious may in fact be correct. You merely have to try a different structure.
After the beginning of the rapid expansion (which is a more realistic term) the cosmos was a translucent soup. Then particles combined, and released photons. That is the cosmic microwave background, that event which occurred after the beginning of rapid expansion. That is why optics are limited, because light did not shine until a period (380,000 years) after the rapid expansion began.
Our optics allow us to explore to the beginning of the cosmic microwave background, theory has taken us to the instant of rapid expansion, but what was before, we do not know.
Right, something that does not interact strongly with hydrogen plasma. Gravity and neutrinos come to mind, but I don’t know anything about these kinds of astronomy.
I never believed gravity waves would be detected in my lifetime. LIGO blows my mind. I had read extensively about it (and previous) experiments, but I never thought any of them would be sensitive enough. It really is amazing.
Life is amazing. My Great Grandmother rolled into Kansas in a covered wagon, young enough not to remember much of the adventure, and lived to see men on the moon. She died at 106.
I remember black and white TVs with coat hangers for aerials and tubes in the back that you could replace when they burned out. I’m hoping for life verified on another planet or even ‘first contact’ before I pass away. Gravity waves are an awesome move in the right direction. Now that we found them, perhaps we can unify them with the other constants of the universe… “The Unification Theory” What would it mean??? I wonder?
This new measurement is only possible because the researchers are able to determine fluctuations of the mirror positions to less than a thousandth of a proton diameter.
Religion only exists because it meets some human needs, If religion suddenly/quickly ceases be ,with what will you replace it?
It is my hope that religion will continue to slowly fade away as more societies evolve beyond a subsistent existence.
A biblical quote just popped into my head;. First Corinthians :" When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
I think religious superstitions can be pretty childish, providing a crutch for parts of life a person doesn’t want to face. Personal oblivion for example…
I’m no expert in all this cosmology stuff, but I do know that it’s an area where the actual, real cosmologists themselves are doing loads of good work. So here is a playlist of YouTube Videos, about the origin of the universe, and the Big Bang. I hope it’s OK to post this, with the idea that others like me, can watch them, and get some grasp of what is going on in the minds of the experts. At the very least, I will say that it beats merely say: “Goddidit”.
The last video clip is of Sean Carroll being interviewed on the topics in question, and I think he says: “We don’t know the answers to many of the questions, but we’re not resorting to any so-called supernatural answers”.
Spot on! That has always been my main contention as well. Religion served our ancestors well. It was a bonding agent. It helped them form clans, tribes, communities, and nations,
It has been suggested that the very reason for the failure of other hominoid species to survive was their inability to bond, to become socially reliant upon one another,
What will replace the underlying social structure when the main religions on the planet are no more. Will the human race reach a state of anomie? Will the lack of social norms drive us like lemmings to our doom? What will the next great human bonding force be?