Horizon - What Happened Before the Big Bang?

nitrogen

Anyone else catch this on BBC? It really presents some fascinating ideas about cosmology.

I'm wondering, what was the wooden puzzle that everyone was playing with?

nozzferrahhtoo

Love to hear more about it or if someone has a link I would love to hear it.

I am a little worried by the title however because it is on the face of it very misleading. Time itself was created by the big bang event. Therefore words like "before" do not actually apply.

Whatever the description of the transition event between the universes current form and the singularity it expanded from may turn out to be if we discover it... it almost certainly will not be a description phrased in temporal language of this sort.

IamtheWalrus

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I am a little worried by the title however because it is on the face of it very misleading. Time itself was created by the big bang event. Therefore words like "before" do not actually apply.

One scientist agrees with you.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vdkmj

rccaulfield

What if time is currently running backwards and WE are what happened before the big bang? Just a silly thought before a much needed coffee. In all honesty though the physics of the universe can run both ways- is there a cylce of big bang/ big collapse? Why not?

Capt'n Midnight

rccaulfield wrote: »

What if time is currently running backwards and WE are what happened before the big bang? Just a silly thought before a much needed coffee. In all honesty though the physics of the universe can run both ways- is there a cylce of big bang/ big collapse? Why not?

There is the little problem that the universe appears to be expanding and the nature of the arrow of time

thebouldwhacker

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I am a little worried by the title however because it is on the face of it very misleading. Time itself was created by the big bang event. Therefore words like "before" do not actually apply.

I think I have seen this show, its on google video, I'll have a look and put up a link if I can find it.

Re the quote, its thesis is that the big bang came from two parallel universes colliding and created our big bang therefore time was in existence before our modest universe came to be.

Amalgam

Youtube user TheChipsnbeer66 has it in their uploads, along with several other recent Horizon features.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheChipsnbeer66#p/u

rccaulfield

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

There is the little problem that the universe appears to be expanding and the nature of the arrow of time

What do you mean the arrow of time exactly?Whats expanding got to do with a problem with reversal of the laws of physics?

Anonymo

Well the arrow of time is a real issue in cosmology. The question of what happened before the big bang is, as others have said, not sensible within our universe. However, this is our physical time. The notion of time that people refer to for a multiverse theory or others is a little different and is subject to some controversy. Nonetheless, we all have intuition for what the question 'what was there before the big bang?' The problem about understanding this question is that very near the big bang we don't have a reliable theory. We need quantum mechanics and general relativity to work together in that regime. The problem is that they are incompatible. The underlying issue is that general relativity assumes that you can probe down down to a point, while quantum mechanics says there's a minimum length you can resolve... this becomes important when (like near the big bang) you have a huge mass in a very small volume. This documentary talks a bit about some theories that attempt to resolve this, i.e. string theory. Linde, who is brilliant, works on the multiverse theory. Turok, another brilliant guy, doesn't believe in the theory of inflation and has come up with some really interesting ideas such as the cyclic universe model (where the universe is continually expanding and contracting). Of the others, Smolin works on an alternative to string theory known as loop quantum gravity. It's a theory even less developed than string theory. It's pretty bizarre that Mersini-Houghton was put forward as the star of this program given the presence of Linde and Turok. Her claims that her theory has been proven is a matter of debate. To be honest, it's not really believed by people working in the area. So take her claims with a pinch of salt.

Akrasia

While time is a dimension that is relative and subjective to a certain degree, causality does appear to be a law, that the cause always 'preceeds' the effect.

in that context, whatever caused the big bang would be considered to have been before the big bang, so while time itself (for our universe) started at the singularity, if the singularity had a cause (eg two dimensions colliiding, or exploding black holes or whatever) than that cause could only be described as happening before the effect?

4gun

This might seem like a very silly question..:o
If the expansion of the universe is accelerating would that mean that the rate of time was accelerating also ...would an observer from out side our universe see things move more slowley in the past
or is time totally constant through out

AlmightyCushion

4gun wrote: »

This might seem like a very silly question..:o
If the expansion of the universe is accelerating would that mean that the rate of time was accelerating also ...would an observer from out side our universe see things move more slowley in the past
or is time totally constant through out

If it did I don't believe we'd have any way to test it so we wouldn't know.