Big Bang Theory or can we drop 'theory' now?

[Moonliner]

From the news today:

Originally Posted by News

By the faint cosmic glow of the oldest known light, physicists say they have found evidence that the universe grew to astounding proportions in less than the blink of an eye.

Two comments on this..

I guess that sort blows the "nothing is faster than light" theory. Unless light was a lot faster back then....

Also, can you name anything in nature that happens once? Planets, stars, hurricanes, rain, etc?? Why would you think there was only one "big bang"? I'd guess our 'big bang' was just one of an uncountable number of similar events and that our current concept of the 'universe' is really just one little drop in an ocean of "big bangs".

[Ghoulish Delight]

Two answer your two questions:

1) Essentially, yes the speed of light was a lot faster back then. At least, so goes a current viable theory, that the density and extreme temperature of the universe meant the speed of light was faster (i.e., the speed of light in a vacuum is constant for any single state of the universe. At this point, the rate of expansion has slowed enough that the continued variation is imperceptible on a human scale)

2) You've hit upon another common viable theory, that the universe does through periodic expansion and contraction. Some observations seem to suggest that perhaps the current rate of expansion is slowing, signaling that the next contraction is coming "soon" (i.e., several billion years).

[scaeagles]

In a battle of the four fundamentals forces - being electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravity - gravity will win every time. May take a while, but it will, and eventually the universe will collapse back upon itself.

[JWBear]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

In a battle of the four fundamentals forces - being electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravity - gravity will win every time. May take a while, but it will, and eventually the universe will collapse back upon itself.

Dinner at Milliways, anyone?

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Two answer your two questions:

2) You've hit upon another common viable theory, that the universe does through periodic expansion and contraction. Some observations seem to suggest that perhaps the current rate of expansion is slowing, signaling that the next contraction is coming "soon" (i.e., several billion years).

No, what I am saying is that there are "big bangs" going off all the time all over the place. What we currently see and think of as "The universe" is but one grain of sand to the true universe.

Also, just for the record, current observations show that the rate of expansion is not slowing. It is in fact Accelerating.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

In a battle of the four fundamentals forces - being electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravity - gravity will win every time. May take a while, but it will, and eventually the universe will collapse back upon itself.

Not necessarily. You are assuming a universe that is essentially coasting. That does not seem to be the case. As I posted above the "universe" has been shown to be accelerating.

[innerSpaceman]

And since "science" comes up with something new every decade (collapsing, accellerating, warbling), let's just assume we will really never know what's going on.

There may in fact be zillions of universes existing all at once, on different planes of existence. Or there may be just one, our own. If just one, what is "beyond" that one universe? For that matter, if there are a zillion, what is beyond the zillion of them?

Unanswerable questions, fun to ponder.


Though it doesn't matter a whit in my daily life, I am unaccountably thrilled to be amoung to first generations of humans to know that we live on the outer arm of the quadrillionth galaxy in the known universe (which may or may not be one of many now existing, or periodically existing due to endless expansion and contraction) - - that the earth beneath us is changing and moving all the time, with continents joining together in mega-gloms and separating again with oceans filling in between - - that humans are the latest blip in eons of different life forms on the planet, constantly evolving, elephants ages after mastodons, birds ages after dinosaurs, dinosaurs ages after each other (Disney was wrong: The Tyronnosaur 'fighting' that stegosaurus are separated by a lava stream of several hundred million years) - - and that all the life on this planet that now lives or ever died has been constructed from the atoms of the stars that lived and died long before our sun burned hot in space.


None of this gets me so much as a cup of coffee, but I love knowing it.

[Gemini Cricket]

I have a horny friend who is 6'8". He calls himself the Big Bang.

[Prudence]

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
It's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
Through an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Prudence

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
It's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
Through an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Don't let NA catch you making a python reference or you'll be turned over to Dimsdale straight away and you without a hedgehog I might add.