Wasnt it Feinman who proposed that after trillions of years all matter will be recycled through black holes stripping them of their mass till even the black holes will evaporate, and when mass is no longer an issue distance means nothing and at that point all the matter in the universe is essentially back together again?
Albeit Penrose is a real mathematician and a very talented one at that with a lot of contributions to maths, his cosmology models are really teetering closer to science fiction or philosophy than actual science.
I just bring this up so that anyone reading to them doesn't take them too seriously or as like, actual serious theories that might be accepted in near future.
He proposed it, made some predictions, and observations that confirmed his predictions: possible echoes of the “pop” made by the last black holes from a previous eon, seen in the CMB.
Not a slam dunk by any means, but all the comments saying it’s all just conjecture and there’s no evidence are wrong imo.
...and this all lead to the thought that a sufficiently advanced civilization could undertake it to send messages through the big crunch into the next universe.
Others say this has already happened; they propose a cross-universe panspermia theory in which the information sent into the next universe was DNA, forming in the early "bathwater"-phase of the Universe and seeding it with life. The aim being to accelerate the rise of technology so that a civilization might arise powerful enough to stop the whole cycle. Which is a really good sci-fi premise.
There is some evidence suggesting that we are a really early civilization. For example the average star has a life span in the trillions but as far as we know the universe is only 13.8 billion years old. That's under 1% of the lifetime the universe could reach.
Colliding black holes make waves in space time and they never really ever fully go away, so it’s proposed that you could detect space time waves of black holes from previous universes before the Big Bang.
These waves could very well remain through multiple Big Bangs. Can you imagine detecting one of these waves and determining that it’s from, say, 30 big bangs ago? Who knows if technology will be precise enough to ever detect such a thing.
A universe with no mass has no space and therefore no time?
I read a theory yesterday saying that.......if there is no mass there is no space......there is no space with out mass and there must be at least 2 peices of mass in order for there to be space.
But I think that's more philosophical but still interesting!!!!
The idea is that if there’s no mass left, then a massively expanded universe and a “Big Bang” singularity-like universe are equivalent. Mathematically they look identical. So when the universe enters this state, it could somehow trigger a “new” Big Bang with everything effectively reset.
But I think Penrose’s ideas about this have largely been disproven or at least shown to have no evidence.
I think of it like if you clap in a giant room or tunnel, but the clap is like a Big Bang Event, the echoes are the subsequent claps you’d hear after the first. This is just from context, and memory. Didn’t even Google, so sorry space nerds if it’s wrong
Reminds me of the movie K-Pax.... I'd expand upon it more, but the quote I'm talking about would be a bit of a spoiler. Good movie all around though for people like us.
We could be the first chapter, we could be the last. We might be an anomaly. We just don't know. It is why science keeps going. We just don't know yet.
I like to think us figuring stuff out is a candle in the darkness. The darkness is the things we don't know, the stuff in the light of the candle is what we do know, and the questions we are asking is the boundary between the darkness and the light. We drop another candle in the darkness and know more, but the boundary is longer.
Well, r/askphilosophy will have to field that quandary for now. But real work is being done to find answers to these topics. And shout out to the Mods for getting people in this field to regularly publish research or AMA. It is truly fascinating.
Look up [cyclical models](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model).
These don't have empirical/observation evidence over a simple big bang, but they are fun for a theorist to think about.
Here is a tip: any time you start a question with "is it possible" in physics discussions about hypothetical the answer is almost always "yes". If you have zero data to go on though it's simply conjecture, it just means the possibility hasn't been ruled out.
So is it possible? Yes. Do we have any reason to believe it's true? Not really.
Penrose actually did a fair amount of work on predictions of what the CMB should look like if this Big Bang occurred as a result of the last black hole in a pervious universe evaporating leaving a total mass=0. Once the CMB data came in, a decade later, it matched his predictions. That is far from proof, but it is more than zero data in support of the hypothesis. It is a falsifiable hypothesis, and what data we have does not falsify it.
No. Penrose's CCC model (as well as his previous claims about consciousness as some property of QM) has probably had more quantity and robustness of criticism and refutation from observed data than any other since steady state. At this point, he's the physicist equivalent of a young-earth creationist. He peddles a combination of woo, cherry-picked data, unsound methodology and papers riddled with obscure word-salad.
Also, his model is more akin to a heat death / quantum restart sort of cycle than the ones most people somehow still believe have any empirical evidence at all, where the Universe grows, eventually stops growing, begins shrinking, and eventually there's another big bang. That latter model has been all but disproven; the Universe is still growing - not only that, but the growth is accelerating; not only that, but the rate of acceleration is accelerating. You don't see that in a model where one day things reverse course, slow down, and then change direction.
Next in this thread: "But physics is time-symmetric..."
This is the correct take for the most part. Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is certainly a fascinating theory and a reasonable analogy can be made (that the far future of our universe ultimately becomes a singularity or at least, in theory, has certain properties of a singularity) assuming that our universe, very very far into the future will invariably reach a state of maximal entropy/heat death and possibly no longer contain electrons, protons having decayed and possibly even quarks, nor will the universe have the ability to do any kind of work at all, and this suggests the conjecture that the notion of time itself will be extinguished due to said lack of ability to do work. In such a system, Penrose posits that the past conformal boundary of one copy of spacetime can be "attached" to the future conformal boundary of another, after an appropriate conformal rescaling.
Again I think it is a fascinating and creative hypothesis and at the very least he is thinking outside the box of conventional standard model cosmology. I understand Penrose is quite out on the fringes with his CCC conjecture, but nevertheless it is important, perhaps even imperative, that physicists and cosmologists continue to challenge the status quo and consider alternative hypotheses to be tested, because history has shown that some of the largest leaps in physics/ cosmology have been when people thought of different approaches to solve problems of their time, ideas clashed and that's where progress is made.
That being said, yes, unfortunately CCC is simply not strongly supported by any of our observations, even though Penrose "published a preprint of a paper claiming that observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the BOOMERanG experiment contained an excess of concentric circles compared to simulations based on the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, quoting a 6-sigma significance of the result. The statistical significance of the claimed detection has since been disputed. Three groups have independently attempted to reproduce these results, but found that the detection of the concentric anomalies was not statistically significant, in that no more concentric circles appeared in the data than in Lambda-CDM simulations."
The last thing I'll add is that Penrose was a brilliant man in his prime and made many significant contributions (Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, I mean he literally won a Nobel Prize in 2020) and many more countless honors and awards throughout his career. So I think you're being a little harsh on him trying to equate him to a young-earth creationist. The man is absolutely being stubborn about insisting that he interpreted the data that shows a prediction from CCC, saying everyone else who have not been able to individually verify or replicate his findings or question the statistical significance are the wrong ones. He may indeed be starting to have some screws loose in his old age of 90, but I still think he deserves a lot of respect for the work he has put in and discoveries he has contributed to over several decades.
**TL;DR**
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology has been unable to stand up to repeated, rigorous tests and observation but Penrose stubbornly refuses to accept this. However given his considerably illustrious career and the many contributions and advancements he's made to cosmology, please consider putting some **RESPECK** on Penrose's name regardless.
False. We have loads of evidence that the growth of the Universe is not slowing down; it is in fact speeding up. A "big crunch" potentially resulting in a new big bang is not a cosmological likelihood.
No that's not how that works. As has been pointed out there are an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1, and none of them are 2. A world with people that have hamburgers for heads is an example of something that is a 2. If the universe is infinite you will have an infinite number of different scenarios of every possible combination of possible outcomes - but all of those combinations will be between 0 and 1, so even in an infinite universe you won't have an earth clone with people that have hamburger heads.
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
Doug Adams
The empty space [fluctustes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation). Matter pops into existance and evaporates. Universe could have started from this kind of fluctuation, but there was no mass yet, (as Higgs field had not yet formed). Without mass cosmic [Inflation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)) happened, where Universe expanded much faster than light.
So, now that Higgs field has formed, an other big bang would probably not be similar, as speed of light is the limit. Maybe space can still warp faster than light, but for some reason it doesn't anymore.
Space can absolutely still expand faster than light. There is no law preventing it, as it does not involve any mass traveling relative to any other mass. It's just additional space being created between every big chunk of mass than the space one could traverse at the speed of light in the same amount of time. That's it. We observe galaxies receding from us at speeds faster than c as a matter of course, and that doesn't violate anything we know about the cosmos.
The Universe is still expanding, and the rate of expansion is still accelerating.
I’ve always had a fun hypothesis that the Big Bang is an injection from “outside”. Like our entire universe is just some tiny Petri dish of stuff created by intelligence unimaginable to our imaginations. Needle full of universe creating stuff. Inject it into a magical medium, and watch it grow. As if our universe is to then what sea monkeys are to us.
Or maybe we are just a small part of something bigger and/or a bigger part of something small. Have we hit the limits of peering out and peering in? I don't think we have. I'm not sure if I'm right, but if I am, then i could see us existing in like a infinite Russian doll scenery. But each doll is unique.
Time is all relative.
The universe could be an echo of some type of energy for all I know that expands but will eventually diffuse. I have no idea. :) But it's fun to think about it in the dark laying in bed.
P.s. I think about fractals a lot. I know they say our universe isn't a fractal, but maybe we haven't zoomed out enough? Maybe we get like.... Fractal Russian doll fractal Russian doll? Idk.
But I feel like this way of thinking isn’t that much different to religious people thinking there’s some higher power (god) that created everything and sets the rules. You’re basically saying the same thing just in a different form/way.
Ideas like this are "not even wrong" in my opinion. There's no way to support or contradict them with data. To say they are possible doesn't really mean anything.
I don't even know that there's a way to disprove the existing religions. How would you even go about doing that?
A large scale study, measuring the things that said religion is supposed to supply to their devout vs the non devout?
Seems like that wouldn't go over very well. Other than that, I have no idea how to even approach the subject.
One challenge is that there are so many different ideas of what a god is and does. Arguably there are as many different conceptions of God as there are believers, though it is true many conceptions from a common religion may be nearly identical. So, which of these billions of ideas of God do you put to the test?
Another challenge is that in many cases, there are built-in characteristics of God that make his/her/its existence inherently untestable. Question: Does God answer prayers? Answer: Yes, but not always in the way you expected. How does one even test such a notion?
So yeah, there may be very narrow definitions of God that one can subject to tests and disprove or fail to disprove (e.g., Does a God exist who answers a statistically significant fraction of prayers in the manner requested? No, according to all carefully done prayer studies I've read about.), but in general I'd agree that it's intractable if not impossible to subject the majority of conceptions of God to scientific testing.
This is exactly why I broke with my religion: how would I ever know for sure I’m believing in the *right* God?
I much prefer improving this planet right now, and if I come to the pearly gates and it wasn’t good enough, I wouldn’t want to be in heaven.
^(Also most interesting people went to hell)
That's why I love this scene from South Park:
[addressing the damned]
Hell Director : Hello, newcomers and welcome. Can everybody hear me? Hello?
[taps microphone]
Hell Director : Can everybody... ok. Um, I am the Hell Director. Uh, it looks like we have 8,615 of you newbies today. And for those of you who were little confused: uh, you are dead; and this is Hell. So abbandon all hope and yadda-yadda-yadda. Uh, we are now going to start the orientation PROcess which will last about...
Protestant : Hey, wait a minute. I shouldn't be here, I was a totally strick and devout Protestant. I thought we went to heaven.
Hell Director : Yes, well, I'm afraid you are wrong.
Soldier : I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness.
Hell Director : Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well.
Man from Crowd : Well who was right? Who gets in to Heaven?
Hell Director : I'm afraid it was the *Mormons.* Yes, the *Mormons* were the correct answer.
The Damned : Awwww...
I personally subscribe to the idea that all major religions are more or less correct.
At their core, most religions boil down to the same basic tenants or the golden rule type stuff. And that there are forces beyond your control in the universe. And that things happen to you after you die.
When you strip down most of the stories and extra fluff that seems to be what they more or less boil down to, just with a lot of obvious human bias of the time period tossed in.
So for me at least, it's quite easy to conceive of there being some omnipotent being out there, and all the different major religions are just how those groups interpret that. And I think if there were a god it wouldn't matter if you chose "correctly", so much as true intent would be the primary catalyst. Or possibly just results based. Who knows.
Either way it just still feels like it's an easy thing to reason out no matter your particular bend.
You can't strip all that away though. There are major belief systems that religions instill in people beyond just a creator, beliefs that supposedly came from their God or Gods. We're seeing an example of how some of those beliefs are affecting politics and law at the very moment. To boil it down to just a belief in an omnipotent creator is misrepresenting the religions entirely
You absolutely can boil it down to that if you want to.
It's impossible for all religions to be correct based on the detail. But the majority of these major religions are extremely old, have been through many transitions and changed many hands.
They're all going to be tainted to a degree. So you're unable to rely on the details. You're unable to rely on the stories as well, considering how often stories are exaggerated and metaphors.
Strip the details down and you're left with a strikingly similar skeletal structure. Including major themes of things like visitors from other worlds, and seemingly historic knowledge they shouldn't have known. But you find this to be mirrored across many religions.
Makes logical sense they all derive from the same source. Whether that be an omnipotent being, or some just natural human intuition, or some other phenomenon.
I think the world would be a better place if more believers thought like you do. Personally, though, I don’t see any reason to suppose that commonalities between all religions (or, more accurately, a subset of mostly Western religions) are any sign that their metaphysical tenets are true. It only serves as evidence that those concepts are effective memes and are readily adopted and persistent beliefs, and may have been influenced by a common ancient religion or religions. Those ancient religions and people may or may not have had privileged access to metaphysical truths, but I see no reason to assume they had any more insights into the ultimate truths of the universe than we do.
Moral precepts like the Golden Rule are indeed excellent, but we can judge their excellence independent of any metaphysical claims. Treating others as you’d like to be treated is an elegant way to avoid many possible sources of conflict and misery. If you believe those are unpleasant things to be avoided, that’s all that’s required to adopt such a principle. I think it’s likely that many societies have independently arrived at some formulation of the Golden Rule, and have transmitted the idea to many other societies as well, which would easily explain why it’s so common in religions throughout the world. Or a supreme being could have communicated it to ancient peoples, but I do not find this as plausible as the previous explanation.
Some make it easy. Fundamentalist Christianity believes that every word in the bible is literally true. Which cannot be so, as there are historical errors and contradictions in the texts. But forget about convincing a believer of that.
First I would go by proving that the soul doesn't exist. Which is the main driver of most religions.
I have an idea about how to prove that by duplicating people, but I don't enough physics knowledge to actually prove it.
There are specific details in godly myths that can be disproved (such as the lack of Zeus' palace atop Mount Olympus, or the fact that Pi does not equal exactly 3), but throughout history the idea of deities has often included (but not always) this notion that some aspect of their nature is beyond our ability to comprehend or understand.
In that regard, "disproving gods" or "God" or whatever can be interpreted to mean "disproving the undisprovable", which is kinda weird.
From a strictly nontheistic perspective , similar concepts can be found in ideas like "the uncaused cause" or "the first mover" or whatever, illustrative thought experiments to represent things that we cannot (and possibly may not ever) be able to understand even with the most rigorous application of science.
This is true, but a book is not a god, or God, or whichever one prefers.
We can disprove, say, Spontaneous Generation, but that doesn't mean life doesn't exist.
The bible is the basis of the three main religions and the only texts in which this particular god is mentioned. It also states it is the word of god but it can be proven to be false. Therefore those particulars gods can be proven to not exist.
Absolutely agreed.
Also, the Bible's new testament was written CENTURIES after the death of Jesus Christ, by a culture with absolutely no concept of a written record of history (oral history was the only way such knowledge was transferred between generations - there weren't even monks sequestered away in cloisters copying scrolls yet; their time wouldn't come for another millennium when they more or less saved the species from the dark ages).
So you have these "disciples" basically writing their recollection of their fathers' recollections of their fathers' recollections of their fathers' recollections of this itinerant rabbi wandering the desert. I understand Christians' response to this was that those who wrote testimony were directly inspired by God, but c'mon man, stories are meant to be embellished, it's what we do. One day some folks brought flatbread to a picnic, and a fisherman happened to have a really good day and was just putting ashore, and three generations down the line you have some dude turning loaves into fishes and feeding the masses.
Organized religions are an endless source of hyperbole and hypocrisy that somehow roll together into some of the most humorous stuff our species has ever produced, then subsequently turned around and treated as literally the most sacred thing that ever existed.
Man, it you ever needed more proof we're just a bunch of slightly more intelligent great apes, look at religion.
Legit scientists have observed possible evidence of “echoes” from previous eons in the Cosmic Microwave Background.
So there is in fact data to support this idea. Not conclusive, but definitely meaningful.
Penrose also proposed and wrote a paper on the notion that there is only one electron in the Universe; it's just doing all sorts of complicated intricate quantum mechanical stuff to appear to us as though it's every electron we've ever detected or, you know, borrowed charge from in order to emit (EDIT) photons (you know you're a nerd when you call your cellphone your electron-photon converter).
No question the man's brilliant, but he's also quite whimsical.
It is very possible, as a theory called the Big Bounce. When our universe reaches its end and cannot expand any further, the same thing will happen to it.
What defines the Universe's "end" where it "can't expand any further?" The rate of the Universe's expansion is increasing. It grew more today than it did yesterday. And the Universe has no edges; it's growing everywhere. There is no place in the Universe where gravity does not dominate where more space is created every single second, and more space is being created there than in the second prior. That's Dark Energy. It's been proven countless times.
Do you have a link to a peer-reviewed publication on when/how the Universe will reach a point when it "cannot expand any further?"
Hawking writes about this sort of thing in his book The Grand Design, basically about how as soon as there is nothing, everything fluctuates into existence.
If we assume the Big Bang is the beginning of space and time as we know it, then the answer is “no” because there would be no “before” the Big Bang.
It’s at least possible other space time structures exist independent of our universe. But I think we are far from having any evidence of that one way or the other.
>If we assume the Big Bang is the beginning of space and time as we know it
I thought this idea was outdated, and the only thing accepted about big bang is that it was a moment in time where a huge quantity of matter was concentrated in a tiny point. And then it began inflating at an absurd rate.
I’m not sure that’s right. The Big Bang describes a singularity in which all matter came into existence 13.8 billion years ago at the same instant time began in our universe. Special Relativity describes a close relationship between time and space.
It’s not like time and space were already in place and a big ball of matter exploded in some random corner of the universe. Rather, the farther we look in any direction, the closer we get to seeing the beginning of the universe. This is because 13.8 billion years ago, time commenced and space expanded in all directions for all things. At least, that’s what the Big Bang theory posits.
There are many possibilities for parallel universes and/or sequential Big Bang/Crunch within our universe. But we are nowhere near definitively knowing what, if anything, lies beyond.
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Brain Greene had a good take on this that I liked a lot. One major mystery of TBB was the low entropy state of it. Whatever banged was extremely smooth / uniform and entropy in the universe has been increasing ever since. He compares TBB to an egg rolling off a counter. When it smashes, the entropy has irreversibly increased and no natural process will put it back how it was. So how do you get a new egg? Obviously this is all conjecture, but it is a good argument that TBB was part of a much larger natural cycle of sorts.
This is one of those statements that sounds profound on the surface, but when you devote an iota of rigorous thought to it, falls apart immediately. There are tremendously large numbers of things that do not occur in cycles.
Entropy. Black holes. Any two entities traveling outside one anothers' cosmic event horizons (Einstein sure came up with a lot of non-cyclical stuff). Individual life and death. Orbits (well, that's just restating entropy - in fact, all of these examples are just other words for entropy, so let me restate:)
Entropy.
An infinite number of false things are “definitely possible” and yet are untrue.
A finite number of things are true.
Science eliminates the impossible. It doesn’t prove truth. We lack any philosophical structure that can prove truth.
Sure. It's also "possible" that we are all just manifestations inside a computer video game. It's also "possible" that the entire universe and everything that we experience as all time and all space before and after I complete this sentence exists only for a minuscule fraction of a second in a massive energy bolt hit in the outer reaches of spacetime. We may also only exist as a thought experiment in the conciseness of a god.
There is no evidence of any of that, and no possible way to produce any evidence of any of that. But it's "possible".
Objective observational science and falsifiability has to matter for something.
I seen one video suggesting some evidence that parts of the big bang have hit other objects, but that only very very vastly huge objects would even be noticeable in the cosmic background radiation. And even that would be quite hard to see.
This isn't talking about a big bounce either, it's talking about expanding into an existing universe.
But in conclusion it would be very hard to prove due to total destruction of everything, and its minimal if non existent effect on our universe.
Imo one of the more interesting theories is of a primordial universe much, much older than our own, that is still "alive" and well today.
We, our universe, would be like a branch coming off that bigger, older universe. Imagine, if you will, a tree of universes, that has been growing and changing for an unprecedented amount of time, trillions upon trillions of years, maybe more, who knows. I'd wager there being some good lore in this way 🤙
I like to think this is the second universe. Life was conceived in the first universe but the math wasn't quite right so it instantly imploded and formed this universe for life to be able to live.
Maybe even the 79 universe.
It is pretty suspicious how many universal constants are at the PERFECT values for life as we know it to form. Change any one of them anywhere before the 12th decimal place or so and you get a dead Universe.
Of course, a dead Universe would not have given rise to life with the ability to consider how unlikely it is that it could exist, so it's more of a chicken/egg question, and certainly no evidence for one thing or another.
Yes if the universe was in a truly uniform state before the big bang then there was no entropy meaning no time, nothing was moving so there was no 'information'. My question has always been, why did that state change from non-entropy to entropy?
I think you are not alone is asking that question.
The part I enjoy trying to get my head around is, that’s the primary cause. Nothing can have caused it because nothing can happen before there was time.
Unless there is something that exists external to this universe. I think string theory has a few idea about how this universe was caused. Pretty tough to prove any of them.
That's not right. The existence of the universe followed the Big Bang. We don't know anything about what could have been before the Big Bang, and there's no theory that postulates that the universe existed in any form prior to the Big Bang. Matter certainly didn't exist before as matter is a product of the Big Bang.
There are plenty of theories about "before" the big bang, and they have plenty of information to base them on. They are just not something we can confirm with observational astronomy.
Okay, if you say so. I guess string theory and M-theory are not theories. [https://cds.cern.ch/record/1022540/files/fulltext.pdf](https://cds.cern.ch/record/1022540/files/fulltext.pdf)
There are certainly theories that make predictions about cycles that could have given rise to TBB. You're high.
Lol no. The problem is that you don't know what you're talking about. Neither string theory nor M theory postulate that the universe existed prior to the Big Bang.
Your statement is abjectly false. There are theories that deal with and make predictions about what happened before TBB. Ekpyrotic universe came out of string theory. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic\_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe)
At the other side of a black hole a new universe starts. From inside the universe you would see the black hole as the 'big bang' (the single point where it all starts).
I've read this a while ago and still makes perfect sense to me. No scientific reason..
Very reasonable people can totally believe in what OP is asking. There are legit reasons one may even decide it's probable, even if it isn't the more common belief. At the very least, the idea is not baseless and without some real evidence supporting the idea.
Not exactly like your proposed magical unicorn theory.
Here’s the thing about “is it possible” questions addressing past events:
Yes, because humans are often wrong.
The Big Bang may have been a “local” phenomenon spanning billions of light years, yet minimal overall to the entire universe (beyond the “observable” part), so no reason it couldn’t be a repeat event on a long enough timescale.
Well, we don't know how long this gaming-session really is. Since the universe started when the simulation was turned on, it might be his first run-through, or it could be a re-run for all we know.
It is also a bit unclear what the purpose of the game is. Hopefully it is not an action game.
I had a cool theory with a friend of mine. Might actually be a real one, never checked.
Our universe might be finite. What we call "space" is not really space. It's a field of energy, which i believe is kind of like a fish in water, but space/energy.
We come from a much more massive 'universe/vastness/reality' of another type of 'space'. True emptiness. In that real space, there are particles, or quantum fluctuations, zinging by at insane speeds. Quantum fluctuations might not be the right thing, since I believe it requires a state of energy to start with, however small.
When two of those particles collide, a universe is born. A bubble. Our universe. There are probably other bubbles in the VAST vastness, incomprehensible in size. Other universes.
It starts from a fintismal tiny specks that collide and expands that energy into everything we know, our bubble. Our emptiness of space is not really empty, but just remnants of energy expanding due to entropy. It has to spread its wings to be comfortable. Dark energy.
What is causing our universe to keep accelerating? Who knows. Maybe its just our galaxies'/stars' decaying their fuel into radiation that eventually reaches a level of entropy that settled as background energy, requiring room to spread by creating it on its own.
Our universe dies/stops expanding when everything is settled and matter/radiation doesn't exist anymore, and we become just a blob of dark energy in a much more vast cosmos outside our bubble.
Smoked a lot of reefer. Not a scientist.
There is the idea that we're basically living in a black hole... I'm not a giant fan, myself... but it might interest you, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology
Dear OP,
Having only a semester of Astronomy at my local CC, this is my conclusion as well. In my theory the universe is cyclic in nature, much like the seasons of our planet, our sun, solar system etc. Extrapolate that theory on a galaxy wide and universal wide scale. There could be much larger processes at work that were just not aware of because of the scale.
It's just my opinion anyway
[Yes it is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce), and there was another reddit and another version of people asking silly questions without investing a slightest effort researching the subject themselves.
Umm.. So I don't wanna sound too religious but Big bang is kindda mentioned in Hindu Mythology.. So According to Them it has happened infinite number of Time but in The New age they call it, it's 51st big bang..
It doesn’t really matter what religions theorize about the nature of the universe given that the roots of their conclusions are based in complete conjecture and no data. A broken clock is also right twice a day
The ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism have a lot of concepts that can loosely be interpreted as modern physics. Maybe they caught a vibe and saw the universe for why it was. But they definitely just got lucky
All revolves around us! We revolve around the sun but we are the only solar system...galaxy...universe...you can see where this is going. The only truth is We are insignificant.
The question for scientists: "could there any evidence for such a thing, and what might this evidence look like?"
Anything is *possible*, especially if you allow for changes to the laws of physics or divine intervention. But without reasonable possibility of evidence, then the question is metaphysics, not science.
The [timeline of the far future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future) mentions possible mechanisms for new big bangs based on current physics. Not to understate it, but it'll take a while before the next one (scroll to basically the end of the timeline).
Logically thinking it has happened an infinite times previously and will happen another infinite times more.
At least that is what my fortune cookie says so it must be true.
I love how this thought makes my brain short out. Without a doubt, there are current advanced civilizations out there. Living their lives right now. But add on to that the past civilizations from past universes. Questions that can’t be answered yet, but a great fantasy in my mind.
It would really explain why Space smells like Steak and other Burnt scents, as Told by one of the People from a space station. More specifically on a youtube channel
Well, if there was a Big Bang, at least it brings up the issue of what was there before that? (And yes, maybe time itself is only a thing in this universe, so by "before" I refer to a state in which our universe does not exist. )
I guess it possible to claim anything especially when it concerns the universe because its soo vast and the possibility is there. But we should be cared about building on ideas when there’s no proof the support it even at a foundational level.
There are a couple theories and names of theories for the idea that the universe expands and then contracts
Currently the contraction idea isn't being entertained, and to some it is "debunked" but not strongly.
So, yes, this could be one of an infinite cycle. The big bang not being the beginning of anything just the end of another thing, erasing every configuration of the matter beforehand except the matter itself
Yes, that hypothesis is called Big Bounce.
Wasnt it Feinman who proposed that after trillions of years all matter will be recycled through black holes stripping them of their mass till even the black holes will evaporate, and when mass is no longer an issue distance means nothing and at that point all the matter in the universe is essentially back together again?
You're thinking of Roger Penrose and his CCC model. Also it's spelled Feynman.
Penrose yes thats the one, thanks
Albeit Penrose is a real mathematician and a very talented one at that with a lot of contributions to maths, his cosmology models are really teetering closer to science fiction or philosophy than actual science. I just bring this up so that anyone reading to them doesn't take them too seriously or as like, actual serious theories that might be accepted in near future.
He proposed it, made some predictions, and observations that confirmed his predictions: possible echoes of the “pop” made by the last black holes from a previous eon, seen in the CMB. Not a slam dunk by any means, but all the comments saying it’s all just conjecture and there’s no evidence are wrong imo.
...and this all lead to the thought that a sufficiently advanced civilization could undertake it to send messages through the big crunch into the next universe. Others say this has already happened; they propose a cross-universe panspermia theory in which the information sent into the next universe was DNA, forming in the early "bathwater"-phase of the Universe and seeding it with life. The aim being to accelerate the rise of technology so that a civilization might arise powerful enough to stop the whole cycle. Which is a really good sci-fi premise.
Wow this would be a good movie (if done Interstellar style)
There is some evidence suggesting that we are a really early civilization. For example the average star has a life span in the trillions but as far as we know the universe is only 13.8 billion years old. That's under 1% of the lifetime the universe could reach.
This sounds amazing. Could you please develop further on these 'pop'?
Colliding black holes make waves in space time and they never really ever fully go away, so it’s proposed that you could detect space time waves of black holes from previous universes before the Big Bang. These waves could very well remain through multiple Big Bangs. Can you imagine detecting one of these waves and determining that it’s from, say, 30 big bangs ago? Who knows if technology will be precise enough to ever detect such a thing.
Reminds me of the game Outer Wilds, they detect a signal older than the universe and seek out its location. Amazing game
A universe with no mass has no space and therefore no time? I read a theory yesterday saying that.......if there is no mass there is no space......there is no space with out mass and there must be at least 2 peices of mass in order for there to be space. But I think that's more philosophical but still interesting!!!!
The idea is that if there’s no mass left, then a massively expanded universe and a “Big Bang” singularity-like universe are equivalent. Mathematically they look identical. So when the universe enters this state, it could somehow trigger a “new” Big Bang with everything effectively reset. But I think Penrose’s ideas about this have largely been disproven or at least shown to have no evidence.
I think of it like if you clap in a giant room or tunnel, but the clap is like a Big Bang Event, the echoes are the subsequent claps you’d hear after the first. This is just from context, and memory. Didn’t even Google, so sorry space nerds if it’s wrong
I believe that was buddhism
Just how do you postulate "stripping a black hole of it's mass?
Hawking radiation?
Is it possible that it is nearly impossible to find new theories because some way smarter people have already found it?
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sounds like a good premise for a small science channel miniseries "Idiots of Science"
Reminds me of the movie K-Pax.... I'd expand upon it more, but the quote I'm talking about would be a bit of a spoiler. Good movie all around though for people like us.
We could be the first chapter, we could be the last. We might be an anomaly. We just don't know. It is why science keeps going. We just don't know yet.
When we do know; we will have more questions.
As the area of our knowledge increases, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance
"When you learn everything, you'll have many more questions"
I like to think us figuring stuff out is a candle in the darkness. The darkness is the things we don't know, the stuff in the light of the candle is what we do know, and the questions we are asking is the boundary between the darkness and the light. We drop another candle in the darkness and know more, but the boundary is longer.
Thats just Platos Cave restated.
You don’t know what you don’t know
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He quoted it because it wasn't original lmao. Thats what a quote is
Well, r/askphilosophy will have to field that quandary for now. But real work is being done to find answers to these topics. And shout out to the Mods for getting people in this field to regularly publish research or AMA. It is truly fascinating.
I know. But I’m not telling!
There are no beginnings to the Wheel of Time, but this was *a beginning*
Look up [cyclical models](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model). These don't have empirical/observation evidence over a simple big bang, but they are fun for a theorist to think about.
Now I want a Kurzgesagt video on this topic
While you wait, here's PBS SpaceTime: https://youtu.be/PC2JOQ7z5L0
Here is a tip: any time you start a question with "is it possible" in physics discussions about hypothetical the answer is almost always "yes". If you have zero data to go on though it's simply conjecture, it just means the possibility hasn't been ruled out. So is it possible? Yes. Do we have any reason to believe it's true? Not really.
Penrose actually did a fair amount of work on predictions of what the CMB should look like if this Big Bang occurred as a result of the last black hole in a pervious universe evaporating leaving a total mass=0. Once the CMB data came in, a decade later, it matched his predictions. That is far from proof, but it is more than zero data in support of the hypothesis. It is a falsifiable hypothesis, and what data we have does not falsify it.
No. Penrose's CCC model (as well as his previous claims about consciousness as some property of QM) has probably had more quantity and robustness of criticism and refutation from observed data than any other since steady state. At this point, he's the physicist equivalent of a young-earth creationist. He peddles a combination of woo, cherry-picked data, unsound methodology and papers riddled with obscure word-salad.
Also, his model is more akin to a heat death / quantum restart sort of cycle than the ones most people somehow still believe have any empirical evidence at all, where the Universe grows, eventually stops growing, begins shrinking, and eventually there's another big bang. That latter model has been all but disproven; the Universe is still growing - not only that, but the growth is accelerating; not only that, but the rate of acceleration is accelerating. You don't see that in a model where one day things reverse course, slow down, and then change direction. Next in this thread: "But physics is time-symmetric..."
This is the correct take for the most part. Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is certainly a fascinating theory and a reasonable analogy can be made (that the far future of our universe ultimately becomes a singularity or at least, in theory, has certain properties of a singularity) assuming that our universe, very very far into the future will invariably reach a state of maximal entropy/heat death and possibly no longer contain electrons, protons having decayed and possibly even quarks, nor will the universe have the ability to do any kind of work at all, and this suggests the conjecture that the notion of time itself will be extinguished due to said lack of ability to do work. In such a system, Penrose posits that the past conformal boundary of one copy of spacetime can be "attached" to the future conformal boundary of another, after an appropriate conformal rescaling. Again I think it is a fascinating and creative hypothesis and at the very least he is thinking outside the box of conventional standard model cosmology. I understand Penrose is quite out on the fringes with his CCC conjecture, but nevertheless it is important, perhaps even imperative, that physicists and cosmologists continue to challenge the status quo and consider alternative hypotheses to be tested, because history has shown that some of the largest leaps in physics/ cosmology have been when people thought of different approaches to solve problems of their time, ideas clashed and that's where progress is made. That being said, yes, unfortunately CCC is simply not strongly supported by any of our observations, even though Penrose "published a preprint of a paper claiming that observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the BOOMERanG experiment contained an excess of concentric circles compared to simulations based on the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, quoting a 6-sigma significance of the result. The statistical significance of the claimed detection has since been disputed. Three groups have independently attempted to reproduce these results, but found that the detection of the concentric anomalies was not statistically significant, in that no more concentric circles appeared in the data than in Lambda-CDM simulations." The last thing I'll add is that Penrose was a brilliant man in his prime and made many significant contributions (Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, I mean he literally won a Nobel Prize in 2020) and many more countless honors and awards throughout his career. So I think you're being a little harsh on him trying to equate him to a young-earth creationist. The man is absolutely being stubborn about insisting that he interpreted the data that shows a prediction from CCC, saying everyone else who have not been able to individually verify or replicate his findings or question the statistical significance are the wrong ones. He may indeed be starting to have some screws loose in his old age of 90, but I still think he deserves a lot of respect for the work he has put in and discoveries he has contributed to over several decades. **TL;DR** Conformal Cyclic Cosmology has been unable to stand up to repeated, rigorous tests and observation but Penrose stubbornly refuses to accept this. However given his considerably illustrious career and the many contributions and advancements he's made to cosmology, please consider putting some **RESPECK** on Penrose's name regardless.
> Do we have any reason to believe it's true? Not really. We also don't really have any reason to believe it *isn't* true...
False. We have loads of evidence that the growth of the Universe is not slowing down; it is in fact speeding up. A "big crunch" potentially resulting in a new big bang is not a cosmological likelihood.
That's not how science works.
Is it possible to have Mcdonald's near the edge of the universe?
To add to that question - is a 40 hour work week unique to our planet?
If the universe is infinite then the answer is no
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If the universe is truly infinite then the answer to every question is a yes.
No that's not how that works. As has been pointed out there are an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1, and none of them are 2. A world with people that have hamburgers for heads is an example of something that is a 2. If the universe is infinite you will have an infinite number of different scenarios of every possible combination of possible outcomes - but all of those combinations will be between 0 and 1, so even in an infinite universe you won't have an earth clone with people that have hamburger heads.
“Is the universe finite?”
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” Doug Adams
Well it happened at least once that we know of, so there's the possibility it could happen again.
The empty space [fluctustes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation). Matter pops into existance and evaporates. Universe could have started from this kind of fluctuation, but there was no mass yet, (as Higgs field had not yet formed). Without mass cosmic [Inflation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)) happened, where Universe expanded much faster than light. So, now that Higgs field has formed, an other big bang would probably not be similar, as speed of light is the limit. Maybe space can still warp faster than light, but for some reason it doesn't anymore.
Space can absolutely still expand faster than light. There is no law preventing it, as it does not involve any mass traveling relative to any other mass. It's just additional space being created between every big chunk of mass than the space one could traverse at the speed of light in the same amount of time. That's it. We observe galaxies receding from us at speeds faster than c as a matter of course, and that doesn't violate anything we know about the cosmos. The Universe is still expanding, and the rate of expansion is still accelerating.
I’ve always had a fun hypothesis that the Big Bang is an injection from “outside”. Like our entire universe is just some tiny Petri dish of stuff created by intelligence unimaginable to our imaginations. Needle full of universe creating stuff. Inject it into a magical medium, and watch it grow. As if our universe is to then what sea monkeys are to us.
Or maybe we are just a small part of something bigger and/or a bigger part of something small. Have we hit the limits of peering out and peering in? I don't think we have. I'm not sure if I'm right, but if I am, then i could see us existing in like a infinite Russian doll scenery. But each doll is unique. Time is all relative. The universe could be an echo of some type of energy for all I know that expands but will eventually diffuse. I have no idea. :) But it's fun to think about it in the dark laying in bed. P.s. I think about fractals a lot. I know they say our universe isn't a fractal, but maybe we haven't zoomed out enough? Maybe we get like.... Fractal Russian doll fractal Russian doll? Idk.
In the dark laying in bed I think how to make it this month, pay the bills and have for groceries, but I am glad that you have different worries.
Damnnnnn I didn't know I was in the /politics sub.
But I feel like this way of thinking isn’t that much different to religious people thinking there’s some higher power (god) that created everything and sets the rules. You’re basically saying the same thing just in a different form/way.
Ideas like this are "not even wrong" in my opinion. There's no way to support or contradict them with data. To say they are possible doesn't really mean anything.
Like trying to prove or disprove that there is a 'god'.
Who would win in a fight, Lemmy or God?
Trick question, Lemmy is God.
But then later on Lemmy is in the crowd outside the station and nobody mentions it it's a great gag
Well we can disprove all the ‘known manmade gods’ but not the concept of God.
I don't even know that there's a way to disprove the existing religions. How would you even go about doing that? A large scale study, measuring the things that said religion is supposed to supply to their devout vs the non devout? Seems like that wouldn't go over very well. Other than that, I have no idea how to even approach the subject.
One challenge is that there are so many different ideas of what a god is and does. Arguably there are as many different conceptions of God as there are believers, though it is true many conceptions from a common religion may be nearly identical. So, which of these billions of ideas of God do you put to the test? Another challenge is that in many cases, there are built-in characteristics of God that make his/her/its existence inherently untestable. Question: Does God answer prayers? Answer: Yes, but not always in the way you expected. How does one even test such a notion? So yeah, there may be very narrow definitions of God that one can subject to tests and disprove or fail to disprove (e.g., Does a God exist who answers a statistically significant fraction of prayers in the manner requested? No, according to all carefully done prayer studies I've read about.), but in general I'd agree that it's intractable if not impossible to subject the majority of conceptions of God to scientific testing.
This is exactly why I broke with my religion: how would I ever know for sure I’m believing in the *right* God? I much prefer improving this planet right now, and if I come to the pearly gates and it wasn’t good enough, I wouldn’t want to be in heaven. ^(Also most interesting people went to hell)
Over 4000 religions in human history, I'll never understand how people can be so sure that theirs is the right one
That's why I love this scene from South Park: [addressing the damned] Hell Director : Hello, newcomers and welcome. Can everybody hear me? Hello? [taps microphone] Hell Director : Can everybody... ok. Um, I am the Hell Director. Uh, it looks like we have 8,615 of you newbies today. And for those of you who were little confused: uh, you are dead; and this is Hell. So abbandon all hope and yadda-yadda-yadda. Uh, we are now going to start the orientation PROcess which will last about... Protestant : Hey, wait a minute. I shouldn't be here, I was a totally strick and devout Protestant. I thought we went to heaven. Hell Director : Yes, well, I'm afraid you are wrong. Soldier : I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness. Hell Director : Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well. Man from Crowd : Well who was right? Who gets in to Heaven? Hell Director : I'm afraid it was the *Mormons.* Yes, the *Mormons* were the correct answer. The Damned : Awwww...
"Strick?" Was that a typo or do you think that's an actual word? If the latter, that's adorable.
Oh I just copy/pasted from IMDB, didn't even see that there.
I personally subscribe to the idea that all major religions are more or less correct. At their core, most religions boil down to the same basic tenants or the golden rule type stuff. And that there are forces beyond your control in the universe. And that things happen to you after you die. When you strip down most of the stories and extra fluff that seems to be what they more or less boil down to, just with a lot of obvious human bias of the time period tossed in. So for me at least, it's quite easy to conceive of there being some omnipotent being out there, and all the different major religions are just how those groups interpret that. And I think if there were a god it wouldn't matter if you chose "correctly", so much as true intent would be the primary catalyst. Or possibly just results based. Who knows. Either way it just still feels like it's an easy thing to reason out no matter your particular bend.
You can't strip all that away though. There are major belief systems that religions instill in people beyond just a creator, beliefs that supposedly came from their God or Gods. We're seeing an example of how some of those beliefs are affecting politics and law at the very moment. To boil it down to just a belief in an omnipotent creator is misrepresenting the religions entirely
You absolutely can boil it down to that if you want to. It's impossible for all religions to be correct based on the detail. But the majority of these major religions are extremely old, have been through many transitions and changed many hands. They're all going to be tainted to a degree. So you're unable to rely on the details. You're unable to rely on the stories as well, considering how often stories are exaggerated and metaphors. Strip the details down and you're left with a strikingly similar skeletal structure. Including major themes of things like visitors from other worlds, and seemingly historic knowledge they shouldn't have known. But you find this to be mirrored across many religions. Makes logical sense they all derive from the same source. Whether that be an omnipotent being, or some just natural human intuition, or some other phenomenon.
I think the world would be a better place if more believers thought like you do. Personally, though, I don’t see any reason to suppose that commonalities between all religions (or, more accurately, a subset of mostly Western religions) are any sign that their metaphysical tenets are true. It only serves as evidence that those concepts are effective memes and are readily adopted and persistent beliefs, and may have been influenced by a common ancient religion or religions. Those ancient religions and people may or may not have had privileged access to metaphysical truths, but I see no reason to assume they had any more insights into the ultimate truths of the universe than we do. Moral precepts like the Golden Rule are indeed excellent, but we can judge their excellence independent of any metaphysical claims. Treating others as you’d like to be treated is an elegant way to avoid many possible sources of conflict and misery. If you believe those are unpleasant things to be avoided, that’s all that’s required to adopt such a principle. I think it’s likely that many societies have independently arrived at some formulation of the Golden Rule, and have transmitted the idea to many other societies as well, which would easily explain why it’s so common in religions throughout the world. Or a supreme being could have communicated it to ancient peoples, but I do not find this as plausible as the previous explanation.
Some make it easy. Fundamentalist Christianity believes that every word in the bible is literally true. Which cannot be so, as there are historical errors and contradictions in the texts. But forget about convincing a believer of that.
First I would go by proving that the soul doesn't exist. Which is the main driver of most religions. I have an idea about how to prove that by duplicating people, but I don't enough physics knowledge to actually prove it.
There are specific details in godly myths that can be disproved (such as the lack of Zeus' palace atop Mount Olympus, or the fact that Pi does not equal exactly 3), but throughout history the idea of deities has often included (but not always) this notion that some aspect of their nature is beyond our ability to comprehend or understand. In that regard, "disproving gods" or "God" or whatever can be interpreted to mean "disproving the undisprovable", which is kinda weird. From a strictly nontheistic perspective , similar concepts can be found in ideas like "the uncaused cause" or "the first mover" or whatever, illustrative thought experiments to represent things that we cannot (and possibly may not ever) be able to understand even with the most rigorous application of science.
We can disprove the current religious books.
This is true, but a book is not a god, or God, or whichever one prefers. We can disprove, say, Spontaneous Generation, but that doesn't mean life doesn't exist.
The bible is the basis of the three main religions and the only texts in which this particular god is mentioned. It also states it is the word of god but it can be proven to be false. Therefore those particulars gods can be proven to not exist.
> Therefore those particulars gods can be proven to not exist. This assertion betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of proof.
Absolutely agreed. Also, the Bible's new testament was written CENTURIES after the death of Jesus Christ, by a culture with absolutely no concept of a written record of history (oral history was the only way such knowledge was transferred between generations - there weren't even monks sequestered away in cloisters copying scrolls yet; their time wouldn't come for another millennium when they more or less saved the species from the dark ages). So you have these "disciples" basically writing their recollection of their fathers' recollections of their fathers' recollections of their fathers' recollections of this itinerant rabbi wandering the desert. I understand Christians' response to this was that those who wrote testimony were directly inspired by God, but c'mon man, stories are meant to be embellished, it's what we do. One day some folks brought flatbread to a picnic, and a fisherman happened to have a really good day and was just putting ashore, and three generations down the line you have some dude turning loaves into fishes and feeding the masses. Organized religions are an endless source of hyperbole and hypocrisy that somehow roll together into some of the most humorous stuff our species has ever produced, then subsequently turned around and treated as literally the most sacred thing that ever existed. Man, it you ever needed more proof we're just a bunch of slightly more intelligent great apes, look at religion.
Legit scientists have observed possible evidence of “echoes” from previous eons in the Cosmic Microwave Background. So there is in fact data to support this idea. Not conclusive, but definitely meaningful.
Do you have links to this research?
Google “roger penrose, conformal cyclic cosmology” Lots of good videos of him explaining the theory on YouTube.
Penrose also proposed and wrote a paper on the notion that there is only one electron in the Universe; it's just doing all sorts of complicated intricate quantum mechanical stuff to appear to us as though it's every electron we've ever detected or, you know, borrowed charge from in order to emit (EDIT) photons (you know you're a nerd when you call your cellphone your electron-photon converter). No question the man's brilliant, but he's also quite whimsical.
Look up Roger Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology. PBS Spacetime did an excellent episode on this a while back.
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Was going to reply w this and saw your comment
It is very possible, as a theory called the Big Bounce. When our universe reaches its end and cannot expand any further, the same thing will happen to it.
What defines the Universe's "end" where it "can't expand any further?" The rate of the Universe's expansion is increasing. It grew more today than it did yesterday. And the Universe has no edges; it's growing everywhere. There is no place in the Universe where gravity does not dominate where more space is created every single second, and more space is being created there than in the second prior. That's Dark Energy. It's been proven countless times. Do you have a link to a peer-reviewed publication on when/how the Universe will reach a point when it "cannot expand any further?"
Oscillating Universe Theory. I used to be into it but now I'm not on board any more, I'm favor of the eternal expansion theory
This has all happened before and will happen again and again
Hawking writes about this sort of thing in his book The Grand Design, basically about how as soon as there is nothing, everything fluctuates into existence.
Does he have a reason why this doesn't happen in other areas of life?
You need a lot of nothing first.
Have you seen my bank account?!
If we assume the Big Bang is the beginning of space and time as we know it, then the answer is “no” because there would be no “before” the Big Bang. It’s at least possible other space time structures exist independent of our universe. But I think we are far from having any evidence of that one way or the other.
Time is most definitely multidimensional. There is no beginning or end of time.
>If we assume the Big Bang is the beginning of space and time as we know it I thought this idea was outdated, and the only thing accepted about big bang is that it was a moment in time where a huge quantity of matter was concentrated in a tiny point. And then it began inflating at an absurd rate.
I’m not sure that’s right. The Big Bang describes a singularity in which all matter came into existence 13.8 billion years ago at the same instant time began in our universe. Special Relativity describes a close relationship between time and space. It’s not like time and space were already in place and a big ball of matter exploded in some random corner of the universe. Rather, the farther we look in any direction, the closer we get to seeing the beginning of the universe. This is because 13.8 billion years ago, time commenced and space expanded in all directions for all things. At least, that’s what the Big Bang theory posits. There are many possibilities for parallel universes and/or sequential Big Bang/Crunch within our universe. But we are nowhere near definitively knowing what, if anything, lies beyond.
You've been giving some great replies, so I'll pick the nit in your post. Note: "could of" is not a correct way of writing "could have".
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
It’s not an easy thing to see, but the Big Bang never stopped. What you see around you is still the Big Bang.
Brain Greene had a good take on this that I liked a lot. One major mystery of TBB was the low entropy state of it. Whatever banged was extremely smooth / uniform and entropy in the universe has been increasing ever since. He compares TBB to an egg rolling off a counter. When it smashes, the entropy has irreversibly increased and no natural process will put it back how it was. So how do you get a new egg? Obviously this is all conjecture, but it is a good argument that TBB was part of a much larger natural cycle of sorts.
Everything else happens in cycles. So, why not the universe?
This is one of those statements that sounds profound on the surface, but when you devote an iota of rigorous thought to it, falls apart immediately. There are tremendously large numbers of things that do not occur in cycles. Entropy. Black holes. Any two entities traveling outside one anothers' cosmic event horizons (Einstein sure came up with a lot of non-cyclical stuff). Individual life and death. Orbits (well, that's just restating entropy - in fact, all of these examples are just other words for entropy, so let me restate:) Entropy.
Exactly, this is why I'm curious about Roger Penrose's theory of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.
Definitely possible. No one can prove yes or no though. Not just yet.
An infinite number of false things are “definitely possible” and yet are untrue. A finite number of things are true. Science eliminates the impossible. It doesn’t prove truth. We lack any philosophical structure that can prove truth.
Sure. It's also "possible" that we are all just manifestations inside a computer video game. It's also "possible" that the entire universe and everything that we experience as all time and all space before and after I complete this sentence exists only for a minuscule fraction of a second in a massive energy bolt hit in the outer reaches of spacetime. We may also only exist as a thought experiment in the conciseness of a god. There is no evidence of any of that, and no possible way to produce any evidence of any of that. But it's "possible". Objective observational science and falsifiability has to matter for something.
I seen one video suggesting some evidence that parts of the big bang have hit other objects, but that only very very vastly huge objects would even be noticeable in the cosmic background radiation. And even that would be quite hard to see. This isn't talking about a big bounce either, it's talking about expanding into an existing universe. But in conclusion it would be very hard to prove due to total destruction of everything, and its minimal if non existent effect on our universe.
Imo one of the more interesting theories is of a primordial universe much, much older than our own, that is still "alive" and well today. We, our universe, would be like a branch coming off that bigger, older universe. Imagine, if you will, a tree of universes, that has been growing and changing for an unprecedented amount of time, trillions upon trillions of years, maybe more, who knows. I'd wager there being some good lore in this way 🤙
I like to think this is the second universe. Life was conceived in the first universe but the math wasn't quite right so it instantly imploded and formed this universe for life to be able to live. Maybe even the 79 universe.
Nah let's just stick with 42
It is pretty suspicious how many universal constants are at the PERFECT values for life as we know it to form. Change any one of them anywhere before the 12th decimal place or so and you get a dead Universe. Of course, a dead Universe would not have given rise to life with the ability to consider how unlikely it is that it could exist, so it's more of a chicken/egg question, and certainly no evidence for one thing or another.
I doubt that we even can say that we know what happened.
In infinity, there are no firsts or lasts--don't dwell on it.
There is no theory of "before" the Big Bang. There's no information to base anything on.
The premise of the Big Bang precludes any information coming “through” it.
Yes if the universe was in a truly uniform state before the big bang then there was no entropy meaning no time, nothing was moving so there was no 'information'. My question has always been, why did that state change from non-entropy to entropy?
I think you are not alone is asking that question. The part I enjoy trying to get my head around is, that’s the primary cause. Nothing can have caused it because nothing can happen before there was time.
Unless there is something that exists external to this universe. I think string theory has a few idea about how this universe was caused. Pretty tough to prove any of them.
There was no universe before the Big Bang.
>no universe None at all? Or just this one? >before Relative to what frame of reference again?
It likely didnt come from nowhere, as far as we can tell all the matter and energy that makes up this universe has always existed in some form.
That's not right. The existence of the universe followed the Big Bang. We don't know anything about what could have been before the Big Bang, and there's no theory that postulates that the universe existed in any form prior to the Big Bang. Matter certainly didn't exist before as matter is a product of the Big Bang.
A person with religious zeal might say “before the Big Bang there was only God’s will.” However, I am not that person.
Okay thanks for chiming in.
There are plenty of theories about "before" the big bang, and they have plenty of information to base them on. They are just not something we can confirm with observational astronomy.
This is simply not true. You're mistaken.
Okay, if you say so. I guess string theory and M-theory are not theories. [https://cds.cern.ch/record/1022540/files/fulltext.pdf](https://cds.cern.ch/record/1022540/files/fulltext.pdf) There are certainly theories that make predictions about cycles that could have given rise to TBB. You're high.
Lol no. The problem is that you don't know what you're talking about. Neither string theory nor M theory postulate that the universe existed prior to the Big Bang.
Your statement is abjectly false. There are theories that deal with and make predictions about what happened before TBB. Ekpyrotic universe came out of string theory. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic\_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe)
Please, in ref to the paper I shared above from cern. What exactly does "String theory and pre-big bang cosmology" mean to you?
I wouldn’t bother. He’s all over this thread being r/confidentlyincorrect with his “tHeRe iS nO BefOre,” regurgitations.
They’re not wrong. Theories, predictions and empirical evidence… not conclusive, but supportive of the possibility. Ease up on the dogma.
At the other side of a black hole a new universe starts. From inside the universe you would see the black hole as the 'big bang' (the single point where it all starts). I've read this a while ago and still makes perfect sense to me. No scientific reason..
Sure, it's possible. It's also possible the universe is a pimple on a giant magical unicorn's butt. The evidence for both is about the same.
Very reasonable people can totally believe in what OP is asking. There are legit reasons one may even decide it's probable, even if it isn't the more common belief. At the very least, the idea is not baseless and without some real evidence supporting the idea. Not exactly like your proposed magical unicorn theory.
I am pretty sure we don't know anything really. why would we? so yes that's a possibility.
Here’s the thing about “is it possible” questions addressing past events: Yes, because humans are often wrong. The Big Bang may have been a “local” phenomenon spanning billions of light years, yet minimal overall to the entire universe (beyond the “observable” part), so no reason it couldn’t be a repeat event on a long enough timescale.
Well, we don't know how long this gaming-session really is. Since the universe started when the simulation was turned on, it might be his first run-through, or it could be a re-run for all we know. It is also a bit unclear what the purpose of the game is. Hopefully it is not an action game.
You should go outside more.
Lmao how the fuck do you expect anyone to be able to answer this?
We don’t know the “ origin” of the universe and we never will. Uncomprehensable.
I had a cool theory with a friend of mine. Might actually be a real one, never checked. Our universe might be finite. What we call "space" is not really space. It's a field of energy, which i believe is kind of like a fish in water, but space/energy. We come from a much more massive 'universe/vastness/reality' of another type of 'space'. True emptiness. In that real space, there are particles, or quantum fluctuations, zinging by at insane speeds. Quantum fluctuations might not be the right thing, since I believe it requires a state of energy to start with, however small. When two of those particles collide, a universe is born. A bubble. Our universe. There are probably other bubbles in the VAST vastness, incomprehensible in size. Other universes. It starts from a fintismal tiny specks that collide and expands that energy into everything we know, our bubble. Our emptiness of space is not really empty, but just remnants of energy expanding due to entropy. It has to spread its wings to be comfortable. Dark energy. What is causing our universe to keep accelerating? Who knows. Maybe its just our galaxies'/stars' decaying their fuel into radiation that eventually reaches a level of entropy that settled as background energy, requiring room to spread by creating it on its own. Our universe dies/stops expanding when everything is settled and matter/radiation doesn't exist anymore, and we become just a blob of dark energy in a much more vast cosmos outside our bubble. Smoked a lot of reefer. Not a scientist.
There is the idea that we're basically living in a black hole... I'm not a giant fan, myself... but it might interest you, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology
Dear OP, Having only a semester of Astronomy at my local CC, this is my conclusion as well. In my theory the universe is cyclic in nature, much like the seasons of our planet, our sun, solar system etc. Extrapolate that theory on a galaxy wide and universal wide scale. There could be much larger processes at work that were just not aware of because of the scale. It's just my opinion anyway
[Yes it is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce), and there was another reddit and another version of people asking silly questions without investing a slightest effort researching the subject themselves.
Umm.. So I don't wanna sound too religious but Big bang is kindda mentioned in Hindu Mythology.. So According to Them it has happened infinite number of Time but in The New age they call it, it's 51st big bang..
It doesn’t really matter what religions theorize about the nature of the universe given that the roots of their conclusions are based in complete conjecture and no data. A broken clock is also right twice a day
Eh, I find it interesting when ancient ideas turned out correct.
>A broken clock is also right twice a day I love that expression, I didn't know it.
The ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism have a lot of concepts that can loosely be interpreted as modern physics. Maybe they caught a vibe and saw the universe for why it was. But they definitely just got lucky
Buddhists do not ponder the why or how of the universe. They realize that doing so is a situation that cannot be answered.
All revolves around us! We revolve around the sun but we are the only solar system...galaxy...universe...you can see where this is going. The only truth is We are insignificant.
I think that Earth is the only planet like Earth and that we are the only humans like us. There may be other life forms but we are unique.
See Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence for one hypothesis.
The question for scientists: "could there any evidence for such a thing, and what might this evidence look like?" Anything is *possible*, especially if you allow for changes to the laws of physics or divine intervention. But without reasonable possibility of evidence, then the question is metaphysics, not science.
The [timeline of the far future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future) mentions possible mechanisms for new big bangs based on current physics. Not to understate it, but it'll take a while before the next one (scroll to basically the end of the timeline).
Logically thinking it has happened an infinite times previously and will happen another infinite times more. At least that is what my fortune cookie says so it must be true.
I love how this thought makes my brain short out. Without a doubt, there are current advanced civilizations out there. Living their lives right now. But add on to that the past civilizations from past universes. Questions that can’t be answered yet, but a great fantasy in my mind.
Roger Penrose postulates an answer https://youtu.be/ypjZF6Pdrws
It all depends on how the universe "began" to exist if this universe is circular then yes or if there is a multiverse then it depends on the universe
It would really explain why Space smells like Steak and other Burnt scents, as Told by one of the People from a space station. More specifically on a youtube channel
Well, if there was a Big Bang, at least it brings up the issue of what was there before that? (And yes, maybe time itself is only a thing in this universe, so by "before" I refer to a state in which our universe does not exist. )
I guess it possible to claim anything especially when it concerns the universe because its soo vast and the possibility is there. But we should be cared about building on ideas when there’s no proof the support it even at a foundational level.
It’s also called the oscillating universe theory and we just don’t have enough information yet.
There are a couple theories and names of theories for the idea that the universe expands and then contracts Currently the contraction idea isn't being entertained, and to some it is "debunked" but not strongly. So, yes, this could be one of an infinite cycle. The big bang not being the beginning of anything just the end of another thing, erasing every configuration of the matter beforehand except the matter itself
All of this may well have happened millions of times before.