<p>Maybe the conservation of mass and energy is wrong, it is a law that is perceptional to us.</p>
<p>read what I said. There is not neccessarily some “chain” of causation. blah blah blah. Refer to previous posts. Anybody who knows some physics will tell you the same thing that I have. You can have perfectly consistent universes (for example, using the “no boundary” condition of stephen hawking) which do not require a beginning nor an end.</p>
<p>Space does not have to expand into anything. THe commonly used analogy is using a balloon with dots on it. As you blow the balloon, the “space” expands, and observers who live on the surface of the balloon would observe everything moving away from them. THis is essentially a 2-D analogue of what is going on in our universe. We see everything moving away from us in a manner consistent with space itself expanding. Again, when you are thinking of space expanding into something, that does not make any sense because that requires some sort of space outside of space.</p>
<p>The big bang did not arise “from” the primoridial elements; those elements arose from the big bang, and were not actually the first particles to arise either.</p>
<p>Sure conservation of mass and energy may be wrong- it is an empirical observation after all. But there is no reason to posit some more complicated law to explain why mass and energy seem conserved. In fact, conservation of mass and energy arises from certain symmetries in the universe. To give up that law is to also give up these symmetries (for example, the translational and rotational symmetries of physical law). Because those symmetries are so fundamentally true intuitively, it seems quite unlikely that conservation is not true, unless these symmetries break down in some situation.</p>
<p>There is no reason that things cannot exist forever. Anyway, the big bang was time 0. The origin. THe beginning. No, there does not “need” to have been something before that.And then: ta-da! Conservation is not violated because there is no period of time in which there there was nothing.</p>
<p>Also: source of discrediting of standard big bang model? As far as I know, no way of getting empirical evidence for “cyclic universes” has been thought of.</p>
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<p>The Big Bounce model doesn’t discredit the BBT, it offers possibilities for existences before the Big Bang. It’s just one of many other postulations. </p>
<p>Loop quantum gravity presents the Big Bounce as one alternative to the spacetime singularity that accompanies the Big Bang. Far from empirical, but this is where the idea stemmed.</p>
<p>someon… you are like going against the big bang theory. If space is not expanding (which is theory hence dark matter and energy), then why does everyone believe it is? I am not too much interested in your theories anymore, they are widely not accepted, no offense, even the article you posted said that space is expanding? My point was how could it be expanding?</p>
<p>AHH!!! Seriously if there was no period of nothing, then how can there suddenly be something? I mean seriously, I want an apple to appear right now, out of nothing! And then I can start time when it appears… out of nothing! What a joke</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, none of this really matters or has any effect on your life. Unless of course you go on to get a career in these fields and have no effect on the lives of people outside those fields. Fascinating how that can happen, isn’t it?</p>
<p>I’m referring to the standard big bang model. I know that there are other possibilities. I don’t know how you got the idea that I said that space was not expanding. The point that I was making is that space does not have to expand “into” anything. It’s a flawed premise. Sure it’s strange intuitively. (dark matter has nothing to do with it as far as we know)</p>
<p>Second paragraph:</p>
<p>you are still thinking in terms of some time before the big bang.</p>
<p>heaven: who says what does and does not matter?</p>
<p>I suppose the best argument I can make for you, that some sort of cause is not always necessary for a universe, is that such a universe, described by the no boundary condition, is mathematically consistent.</p>
<p>Yeah heaven, I can’t agree with you. Why wouldn’t it matter? Most people are content with not concerning themselves with things that will never affect them. That is so lame. Come on! </p>
<p>Anwyay someone… I don’t know. Like I said it is really easy to believe that the big bang indeed created the universe. However if it created the universe, the what CAUSED the big bang. Alright, it understand why it is hard to look at stuff like that, seriously I can see that it would not make neccesary sense to even question the before… merely because all measurable time started with the big bang, and the creation of our universe. </p>
<p>Also if not for dark matter and dark energy, the total energy and matter of the world would only be like 76% traceable, therefore there is like 24% missing, some scienctist came up with the theory of dark matter and energy, (yada yada), and it is not neccesarilly true, and right, yet we can only challange our previous knowledge and guess at new theories for what is next.</p>
<p>Anyway maybe there was never a beginning and maybe will never be an end, my arguement, or question was simply how could that be? I mean as humans, and with our logic level, we could possbily never comprehend soemthing existing forever simply because we have no proof or evidence, therefore, it is out of our realm to know if something can exist forever. </p>
<p>You seem to not want there to be any possibility of what came before. Maybe you’re right. But how can something not have a beginning? Every human life has a beginning, every star has a start, every planet and elements on a planet have a start, so why wouldn’t the thing that started this?</p>
<p>But really heaven! How can you say that this doesn’t matter?! Even if I never get into this field, it doesn’t matter! It is interesting to consider and look at.</p>
<p>additionally, heaven, that kind of thinking is stifling to human knowledge. Who’s to say that this knowledge cannot be useful in some way? One only needs to look at the history of mathematics to realize that the most useless-seeming fields can sometimes become extremely useful. Linear algebra, for example. Number theory. Group theory. And so on.</p>
<p>Dark matter and energy are predicted to make up 95% of the mass/energy of the universe. There is strong empirical evidence for the existence of both.</p>
<p>Alright, I can see what you are trying to find out. I’m not sure if people will ever come to an intuitive understanding of something without cause because of what you just said: everything appears to have one. We have not experienced anything that cannot be attributed to some cause so some sort of uncaused thing is not part of out “common sense.”</p>
<p>Quantum theory has numerous examples of things that defy common sense. Quantum tunneling and uncertainty are strange. In fact, it is not deterministic. That is, theoretically, if I had, say, a piece of radioactive uranium, each of the atoms has a certain probability of decaying in some specified time interval. Now when a particle decays, there is no apparent thing causing the decay to happen at that particular moment. There seems to be an element of chance. And in fact, there are certain phenomena that have been proven to be just this, uncaused and random. The test used bell’s inequalities if you want to find out more.</p>
<p>Perhaps the folks over at physicsforums.com might be able to answer your questions better. I’m certainly not an expert on the matter.</p>
<p>Unprovable speculation about the origin of the universe really is inapplicable. Sorry but that’s true.</p>
<p>And there’s no such thing as useless or seemingly useless math. Sorry but that’s true.</p>
<p>As for “before the big bang”</p>
<p>“According to the standard big-bang theory the universe came into existence in a moment of infinite temperature and density some ten to fifteen billion years ago. Again and again when I have given a talk about the big-bang theory someone in the audience during the question period has argued that the idea of a beginning is absurd; whatever moment we say saw the beginning of the big bang, there must have been a moment before that one. I have tried to explain that this is not necessarily so. It is true for instance that in our ordinary experience however cold it gets it is always possible for it to get colder, but there is such a thing as absolute zero; we cannot reach temperatures below absolute zero not because we are not sufficiently clever but because temperatures below absolute zero simply have no meaning. Stephen Hawking has offered what may be a better analogy; it makes sense to ask what is north of Austin or Cambridge or any other city, but it makes no sense to ask what is north of the North Pole.”</p>
<p>— Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory</p>
<p>Point-set topology. Do you honestly see any use for it? It at least seems useless. I can create my own logical systems arbitrarily. I don’t see where you get the idea that there is no such thing as useless math.</p>
<p>Nobody could have predicted that number theory could be used for encryption, say, 200 years back (as encryption is a very modern concept). And who could have thought that linear algebra could be used for quantum theory, which wasn’t invented yet.</p>
<p>Hypotheses for the origin of the universe such as the big bang theory are falsifiable, and have evidence. Thus, to certain standards of “proof,” you might consider it provable. And if you don’t, think about the other unprovable things that have application ie. all of physics.</p>
<p>In fact, we know that there is something wrong with relativity and quantum mechanics because of this probing into the origins of the universe. They break down when you try to extrapolate too far into the past, and you end up with a lot of dividing by zero and the like. Refined theories of physics are prime candidates for “things with application.” A knowledge of quantum theory for example, makes your computer possible.</p>
<p>The environment of the big bang is a prime “laboratory.” It is sort of like the highest energy particle accelerator we can have. It is a great place to probe into when we explore theories that can only be tested with extremely high energies.</p>
<p>If you are talking about what came “before” the big bang… it is presumptuous to think that there could not possibly be any empirical evidence for something like the “big bounce,” or some difference between a bounce universe and a standard-big-bang universe.</p>
<p>Maybe this post is overkill. After all, you don’t actually have an argument.</p>
<p>EDIT: Thank you above poster, I think that quote does a better job of trying to explain that concept than what I could come up with</p>
<p>Lol, well there may be no point to some people, but like I said if everyone had the same opinions the sun would be a god, the sky and ocean, etc.</p>
<p>lol I was joking</p>
<p>Anyway from the OP and only browsing the thread I was referring more to the dumbed-down existential philosophy than the dumbed-down physics.</p>
<p>*** is this thread about anyway?</p>
<p>^I think that we should just go along with it.</p>
<p>** Who are you? **</p>
<p>As far as I know, I’m a person (not a plant).</p>
<p>** And Where do you come from? **</p>
<p>That question could be interpreted in a multitude of ways.</p>
<p>** How can nothing create nothing (or god create himself)? **</p>
<p>Does nothing even exist?</p>
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</p>
<p>I knew it!</p>