Answering the cosmic riddle of existence
I don't believe there was a Big Bang. I believe the universe is creating and unmaking matter all the time. Like religion helps people believe they have an afterlife, I think this theory exist out of our desire, or need, to have our questions answered (in a way that we like normally). As the concept of an eternal cosmos seems unacceptable these days. The Big Bang theory in my opinion has been shaped to fit our unanswered questions.
I don't want to debate about whether there was or wasnt a Big Bang. Instead I'd like to ask you all to talk about, before the Big Bang.
Mostly I hear or read that 'before' is not valid, as time began then, not existing previously. However this singularity must have been caused, or led up to in some way.
I can't see how our universe could lead to a Big Bang scenario. Meaning it looks to be only once, like a firework, as there's no way our universe is heading towards another BB. Or does it really yo-yo back and forth???
I don't want to debate about whether there was or wasnt a Big Bang. Instead I'd like to ask you all to talk about, before the Big Bang.
Mostly I hear or read that 'before' is not valid, as time began then, not existing previously. However this singularity must have been caused, or led up to in some way.
I can't see how our universe could lead to a Big Bang scenario. Meaning it looks to be only once, like a firework, as there's no way our universe is heading towards another BB. Or does it really yo-yo back and forth???
Comments (59)
Just a figment of my imagination, but it makes me content to consider it.
Kind of like this?
(In my own voice.)
How the universe ends might tell us something about what the beginning ultimately meant—that is, not much, I suppose.
It seems like a leap of faith to me. There are other explanations for expansion or the microwave background which I find more plausible. Not to mention most professionals now agreeing that General Relativity is incorrect or incomplete, yet it's used to work out the details of the Big Bang.
And yes I wanted to know how many people really think about bubble/multiverse theories in a serious manner.
That would be a bit of an insult to cosmologists, then.
There was a big bang - this is the most revisable of the three. But current evidence points to a big bang, whatever might have preceded it.
There is no God - In my view this isn't even slightly questionable. The notion of there gods is ridiculous and many aspects of it are incoherent. It's just absurd, childish shit that people made up to explain their experiences when there weren't better ways to explain them.
There is only one universe - this is primarily a matter of definition, although part of it is also that physicists can veer into absurd/idiotic (at least if not meant as fantasy/SciFi) explanations when they start positing things like the multiverse interpretation of qm.
I like your views on religion. We should have moved past it years ago. Still, with regards to the evidence of the BB, I think it's not quite substantial enough. Then I consider the size of the universe and try to envisage how it could possibly of come from one single point? How it got there? How could it happen again? So I'm left with many new questions just because this answer solves a few other previous ones. Now I see it used like the implementation of dark matter and energy to fill in blanks.
I think it's important to recognize that when we conceptualize and imagine universes, we always keep a human point of view on it. What we cannot do is get the view from "somewhere else" or "everywhere" or "nowhere". None of these views are amenable to us, thus views of all existence are not amenable to us, other than our own conceptualizations.
It depends on whether you would call the sum of all that exists anywhere the universe or, if there are different pockets, you decide to call these more than one universe. If it is a multiverse, then is that one universe with many separate 'part?. IOW one could defininition away the idea of universes, that is, in the plural.
The only fact about where it all started (if it has started) is that we do not know. And probably we will never will. And that is, undoubtedly, the greater issue: how can our existences, extremely equipped to be praised as superiors and illuminated, can deal with this? We can´t, we will never will, and it is this duality that impels us to search further. My faith (and please remember that faith is, by definition, not subject to logical and formal counterarguments) is that human time will not be enough to get a final answer.
(Important note : I have read all about black holes, dark matter and energy, gravitational ripples, string theory, inflation, quasars, Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and also Harry Potter)
Is beg to differ. After all, there is no other way for a universe to be perceived. It can't be seen or experienced but it's within the reaches of thought surely. I don't claim to have an exceptional mind, far from it. Still I can imagine these ideas and conceptualise them. Even though I could never witness such a thing.
I commented above, "There is only one universe - this is primarily a matter of definition,"
For example, if we define "universe" as "everything that exists," then you can't have more than one.
Yes, for if it happened once, then it can happen again and did happen before, too.
Perhaps it would be better to accept that the nature of the real cannot be captured, but only glimpsed, in thought; which should not be all that surprising when you think about it.
And acknowledging that we don´t comprehend most of it, it´s the best way to get there.
Quoting James Pullman
Do you think it is plausible that we could come to know the answers to these seemingly intractably antinomial questions?
we may not have the time (as species) and it may not be finite (all of this, i mean).
Nevertheless, i´m the first to get on the ship that goes out for looking. Because, like i stated, i do not know. And if there is an answer i want it.
Yes, I agree with you that it's good to try to understand as much as possible, while always being mindful of the paradoxes and limitations of reason and empirical investigation.
there are no paradoxes here, neither limits to reason/logic (they are limitless by definition). Only possibilities of time and/or size constrictions (for now...)
So, it seems that in regard to other universes and how we can conceive of their temporal relationships to ours (i.e. before or after) there is an inherent paradox, given that we think of space and time as being only within universes (universes being thought of as space/time continuums).
So then we might say that the wider multiverse just is the universe, but if we go that way then we must relinquish the idea that the universe began with the Big Bang, and perhaps the idea that our "universe" is causally or energetically closed as well.
The other problem is as to whether, given that other universes are separate space/time continuums, we could ever have any empirical evidence that other universes exist.
But at this point we already know that the fabric of space-time is 70% filled with something with do know what it is, and if/when we find out, it might turn out to be just that we only understood 30% of the fabric of all there is.
The implication of dark energy is huge, it´s scientifically accepted/true that we don´t know what the f... is going on! ;)
There can’t be much of a conversation if you rule out of bounds the POV most will have.
It sounds like you would prefer Hoyle’s Steady State universe which some followed until the more compelling BB theory was proposed. You might even prefer an earlier view —
Everyone gets confused by their own egos. I do no believe that paradoxes can exist off metaphysics. Bis belief can also be my ego getting in the way
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant%27s_antinomies
The quantum foam is believable, it being confirmed by QCD predictions and measurements, plus noted by Casmir's plates being drawn together. It is as a Sea of Possibility. In the quantum foam, virtual particles pop in and out, always in pairs of matter and anti-matter. They appear but must then go away very quickly, this somehow satisfying the debits and credits on the ledger of nature's thumbnail account.
Something went out of kilter.
The quantum foam can't go away; it is still with us today.
On a separate and perhaps off-topic tack, I'm interested to know where you think Kant took "steps beyond his knowledge". The one place I can think of is in regard to the "transcendental subject or ego", which is, in my view, in light of his own philosophy, an illicit thinking of the noumenal.
As for there being other universes, the term is left completely undefined.
For instance, the region of space centered 100 billion light years away is 'another universe'. It is as detached from us as the parallel world where the dinosaurs still live today.
Does that distant universe exist? Does it have a defined state? I say no, it doesn't, because to say it has such a state is a couterfactual statement. I personally have rejected the principle of counterfactual definiteness and thus pretty much would not say that such places (like the universe separated from us only by distance) exist in any meaningful way.
In the finite/infinite universe antinomy (all antinomies are describe as a "big" Antinomiy). Either if it is or not finite, Kants' conclusions do not seem consistent.
- If it is finite, we still got a lot to discover, and there are no boundaries that divide the universe, it might or not exist something else (or Kant did not defined the universe correctly or does not defines boundaries correctly - there is no Canada beyond its' boundaries/frontiers);
- If it is infinite, is it obliged to be understood? Or more, can´t human perception development also not be infinite, and thus open the possibility that it might be understood? Or is it that Kant limits human understanding by its' mind understanding?
Continuing this line of though, have you ever read/considered Sartre, or Camus. Or even better, Henry Miller and Bukowski. Or going harder on Kafka, Dostoevsky and Goncharov?
Kant is so insipid...it is just formality...I´m sorry, just my opinion. And i think you are eager and full of life, and deserve other perspectives...
No disrespect meant ;)
Conceptualuzations of the universe and the universe are two different things. To take the perspective of the universe is to jump over the impossible. Conceive all you want but at the end of the day that is all it is when you are contemplating the universe as a whole. We can only conceive of the universe in a very specific way. We see things from the human scale, physically and metaphorically.
Gravity is created by matter and it only effects matter - it has no effect on space or time.
Time is a constant - it does not / can not, slow or stop.
My interpretation of the antimonies is that reason is limited by experience (not to say that reason is derived from experience), so one cannot through reason or experience determine the truth of the thesis or the antithesis. I may be wrong.
Though what do we do with this. Does this idea of yours preclude getting more information/comign to a closer model of reality? If it does't then how do we use the idea? How would one know you are correct, that we have reached the limit already`? How do know what future evidence will or will not refine about our knowledge and models?
No problem. I have read Sartre's Nausea, and some of Being and Nothingness and Camus' L'Etranger and The Rebel as well as several of Dostoevsky's, Kafka's and Henry Miller's works many moons ago when I was 17, 18 and have also revisited some of them from time to time in the intervening 45 odd years. Never really read much of Bukowski or any of Goncharov. None of those writers bar Sartre I would consider to be serious philosophers, anyway.
Kant is not a poetic or literary kind of writer, but I would say his work is very far from insipid. To each his own, I guess.
My thoughts are often aligned with Janus’. I love Kant.
We can always learn more about the physical world as it is presented to our reason, but reason cannot give us the things in themselves, or noumena. The noumenal world is inherently out of bounds from our perceiving minds.
I haven't proposed any limits or that we have "reached" any limits. We can develop ever more elaborate models that we may think are "closer to reality", but how would we really know? I have said that we may have good reason to think that reality may be "glimpsed". If so, then there is nothing to stop us gaining more comprehensive glimpses. Even if we knew that our models do reflect reality (whatever we might think that means) how could we ever know how comprehensive they are? In any case I am not recommending curtailing inquiry or speculation; they are integral parts of what enriches life, and the concern about the supposed "veracity" of our models is more or less irrelevant anyway, except when it comes to empirical matters.
Exactly! It is so by definition. We don't even know what it definitively means to say there is a "noumenal world", but at the very least 'noumenal" signifies what is beyond the limits of our knowledge. To say there are no inherent limits to discursive knowledge would be absurd and hubristic.
Physicists seem to think there are ways to confirm or at least add evidence there are parallel universes. Cosmologists in general don't see themselves as simply making up models that cannot be tested.IOW our knowledge could continue to expand and not just be
They see cosmology and physics as expanding the models over time, and including empirical suport I do agree more with the idea that it would be hard for us to be certain we were finished.
That there was nothing beyond what we have modeled and confirmed.Quoting Janus
Sure, it seems, from my limited perspective, that there would always be a chance there was something beyond all we have modeled. Like even if we confirm empirically Tegelmarks's Level 4 Multiverses in fact exist, perhaps there's even more we still don't know. Though I find speculating about what we cannot know or will never know, well, speculative....:razz:
If we look back in the history of science the idea that there are other galaxies, which we have pretty darn well confirmed, which provides part of a greater model, etc., would have been beyond the speculations, even, of most people. And if someone explained to an early Enlightenment scientist about the Big Bang, they might have been skeptical we could ever gather any evidence of things that happened billions of years ago. IOW what seems like we might or might not even glimpse, might become clearer as time goes on.
But I am more aligned with your point about being sure we have the final, now we know that there's nothing beyond these/this. I just think that up to that, we might get much more than glimpses, models we can be very confident in, if not even visting other parts of the new larger whole.
We see thing on far more scales than just the standard human perception. Since the invention of the telescope/microscope, we see much deeper. Know more than our physiology would allow on its own. As we have become more and more technological, I believe our ability to conceive of thing is growing with it. Saying it's impossible is akin to giving up.
What is time dilation then? Clocks in different frames of reference tend to disagree. I'm assuming you have a different approach as it's not really debatable wether it happens or not.
How do we know what "actual" time is, if it's distinct from what we can measure?
Quoting James Pullman
The reason Kant says the universe cannot have a boundary is that a boundary can only be perceived between two distinct entities. Do you disagree with that?
Quoting James Pullman
When Kant talks of the universe in the context of his antinomies, he means the physical universe, i.e. the universe that humans perceive. Since humans cannot perceive infinity, the universe cannot be infinite.
Continuing pre Bang scenarios…
Some matter had to have avoided being annihilated by anti-matter. There are a billion photons now for every proton, so that means that at least 2x10**9 pairs did so right away. The Bang was so great and perhaps there was inflation, too, and so many pairs of virtual particles had to have been driven apart so quickly that they couldn't annihilate, which is fine, but we are more concerned with what made the Bang.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation
If reality has different times in relation to the distance from the gravitational source, then time is different. There is no other time than the time that reality is following. From a physicalists perspective you are falsely making time transcendent.
Also, the antithesis that the universe is finite cannot be perceived. That is what makes it an antinomy.
'Infinite' refers to a sequence or an extent, 'Eternal' refers to time. Neither one can complete, and so neither one is an actual that can be accomplished.
Einstein's great insight was that time had to give, and so it had to become a variable.
Humans can conceive of infinity. No one can perceive infinity.
The concept of time stems from our perception of change, and time is defined relationally. For instance I might say "time runs slow today", because compared to other days I perceive today to be longer than other days. Usually we compare our perception of a process with that of another perceived process, which we call a clock, and which we define to be a reference process.
So in order to say that a clock runs slow, we can't say that in an absolute sense, we have to compare it to another reference process, so another clock. So when we talk of gravitational time dilation, we're fundamentally saying that a clock in a given gravitational environment runs diffently compared to a clock in another gravitational environment.
It is usually assumed that all processes in the vicinity of the clock are affected and not just the process of the clock, but experiments that test gravitational time dilation make a comparison between specific reference processes, they don't test all processes, so strictly speaking tests of gravitational time dilation have only shown that different gravitational environments affect specific processes differently.
In all this there is no "time" that runs slower in some places than in some others, people sometimes say that clocks run slower because time is dilated, that's a fallacy of reification, of treating time as having an existence independent of how we define the concept through our measurements. Which links back to what gater said, that gravity has an effect on devices whose measurements we call time, gravity has an influence on processes, not on some reified "time", in that sense I agree with him.
But then he talks of "actual time" that remains "constant" and is not affected by gravity, but that's a reification or a tautology at best, if we want we can define the reference processes as clocks in a space far from any gravitational source, but then these clocks aren't affected by gravity by definition. If we define "actual time" as the measurement shown by clocks not affected by gravity, then by definition gravity doesn't affect these measurements, so saying gravity doesn't affect "actual time" is a tautology, whereas implying "actual time" is something other than the measurement shown by these clocks is to make again the fallacy of reification, or to treat it as some transcendent entity, so in that sense I agree with you.
We perceive change, and change is relational, no need to talk about "actual time" that exists independently of that, what we call time is how we choose to measure that relational change, it's not some concrete external entity that flows.