Study Hints At Time Before Big Bang 408
canadian_right informs us that scientists from Caltech have found hints of a time before the Big Bang while studying the cosmic microwave background. Not only does the study hint at something pre-existing our universe, the researchers also postulate that everything we see was created as a bubble pinched off from a previously existing universe. This conjecture turns out to shed light on the mystery of the arrow of time. Quoting the BBC's account: "Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular. Describing the team's work at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in St Louis, Missouri, co-author Professor Sean Carroll explained that 'a universe could form inside this room and we'd never know.'"
first post from (Score:5, Funny)
Re:first post from (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Personally, I think if nothing else, the smell is indeed QUITE spectacular and I don't know how he expects to pinch one off in a room full of observant scientists with no one noticing the utterly out of place voiding process.
Re:first post from (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Object naming (Score:5, Funny)
Universe newUniverse = new Universe(oldUniverse);
A Boon to all New Yorkers (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I hope the rest of your place is filled with cash...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Why aren't you subletting?!?
Listen; (Score:3, Insightful)
~ e.e.cummings
What did you expect to see? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really though, what (in the background radiation) would point to no time before the big bang? A Kotch curve? A Hilbert curve? Complete order and continuity? I fail to see how 'blips' in the cosmic background radiation proves anything about time before the big bang.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm just saying it seems like quite a stretch.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure that you could take any axis and get around 10% difference in fluctuations, it is fairly randomly dispersed after all, this should happen.
Quite.
Quite wrong, actually.
If you are measuring the cosmic background radiation, you are detecting photons.
If the background radiation is truely random, and you sample 100 photons, the chances of one 'side' being 10% stronger than the other are not that unlikely.
If you sample 1M photons, the chances of one 'side' being 10% stronger than the other is vanishingly small. At this point, you should start to rethink your hypothesis (that the cosmic background radiation is truely random, coming in from all directions
I think you mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think you mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think you mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I think you mean... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I think you mean... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, it might even pinch off a new universe...
AFAIK (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, AFAIK a lot of it has a lot of possible solutions, and for some they don't even have the equations (yet), so there's not much of a prediction you can do with it. So far the majority of it isn't even as much a theory, as in something where you plug your values in a clear formula and get a prediction, but more of a theory that a theory might exist.
Or to put it otherwise, it's more of a mathematical construct than physics. Don't get me wrong, maths is a very very useful tool. Essential, even. But if I'm allowed a bad analogy, it's a bit like a painter's brush: it can be used to paint anything, regardless of whether it's real or outright impossible in the real world. You can use it to paint Mona Lisa or Escher's impossible pictures. So is maths. You can describe an infinity of possible universes with it, most of which have nothing to do with ours. You can use it to describe light propagation through ether, or the raisin pie atom model, or the ancient geocentric model, or even the counter-Earth ideas from waay back, all of which by now we know to be false. It becomes physics (or generally science) when you can test that formula against the real universe and see if it fits or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You can use it to describe [...] even the counter-Earth ideas from waay back
I didn't know you could describe third-rate SciFi-as-an-excuse-for-BDSM hrough mathematics. Were Norman's publisations peer-reviewed? (Given their literary qualities I doubt it.)
SciFi with BDSM AND Mathematics? I find myself intrigued with your ideas, Sir, and would like to subscribe to your publications.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
but it remains a great piece of data.
Re:AFAIK (Score:5, Informative)
You see, it's used for deciding between two propositions. "The universe exists" might be one, but you need another to decide... so let's pick an obvious alternative. "The universe doesn't exist." OK. Now we try to apply the razor. Only there's a problem, see. Occham's Razor can only be applied when both theories fully explain the observations; only one "multiplies entities beyond necessity" -- which is fancy talk for "includes more than the other," basically. The problem here is the alternative hypothesis, "the universe doesn't exist" is going to require a
So I'm only really responding to you because at least one mod thought what you said was clever. With no malice, I'm telling you it's not clever, it's ignorant. A lot of people misunderstand Ockham's razor and jokes like yours don't help the matter any.
If you are saying that the existence of the universe would not have been
I hope that helps someone.
It doesn't mean that, though (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, but that's not what Occam's Razor is about. You may predict or explain any event or thing, no matter how complicated. Occam's Razor is only about _how_ you explain it.
Basically, imagine that you walk through an apple orchard on a windy day, and an apple falls on your head. Let's pick two possible explanations:
1. Probably the wind shook a branch and an apple fell.
2. The Illuminati hired a secret Ninja clan from Japan, to follow you around and drop an apple on your head when a good opportunity presents itself. And they picked a windy day so the rustle of leaves would hide their noises.
Basically Occam's Razor just says that if explanation #1 explains it well enough, go with explanation #1. There is no need to complicate it with unneeded extra elements.
Incidentally, from a science point of view, #1 also has _some_ predictive power. You can, for example, calculate what the probability is to get hit by an apple, or in what season it's more likely, or whether you need to wear a hard hat or it'll likely be just a minor bruise. Explanation #2 is pretty worthless, since there's no way to predict who the Illuminati want to drop an apple on and on what date. You don't even know whether to wear a hard hat, since they might drop an apple made of lead if they want to. (Ninjas can do stuff like that;)
On the other hand, if explanation #1 doesn't explain it, _then_ you can look for a more complex explanation. E.g., if you were walking through a banana plantation and an apple fell on your head, maybe it wasn't the wind after all.
But again, this all has to do with the explanation, not with the thing you explain or predict.
Re:It doesn't mean that, though (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
We can reconstruct the way ours seems to have worked. Sorta like looking at where the shrapnel went, scratching our heads, and going, "the bomb must have been _there_." But even with bombs, you can't really extrapolate much from a sample of one. If you did, you could
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I must have misunderestimated the ire of the cosmic physicists on
Re:What did you expect to see? (Score:5, Interesting)
And a civilisation like the Time Lords that's had spacetravel for thousands or millions of years and knows how to harness the power of blackholes would be plausibly be capable of this sort of thing. I certainly wouldn't expect them to be flying around in the sort of spaceships we'd design based on our current knowledge of technology.
So I'm not surprised either
Actually the odd thing about Doctor Who is that there is no evidence that the people that wrote it knew anything about physics, so the Tardis isn't supposed to be a pocket universe, but I can quite see explaining all the Tardis's odd properties using this model.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Think of a 2d world, with another 2d world intersecting it. The cross section is far smaller than the 2d world that is intersecting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What did you expect to see? (Score:5, Informative)
Sean Carroll conceded that this might just be a coincidence, but pointed out that a natural explanation for this discrepancy would be if it represented a structure inherited from our universe's parent.
FSM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What did you expect to see? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, if I remember right, he regularly publishes at the Virginia Academy of Science annual meetings, and has also written a small (90 pg) book that he self published, just to get the ideas out there (ISBN 0976894726 - Thoughts on the Electron Mass).
To the point of what he's expected to see here: he's pointed out that if you have a galaxy at the center of a collapsing black hole, and are in the galaxy, you cannot tell the difference between that event and a big bang. Moreover, once the SC-radius has formed, you cannot tell whether you are inside the black hole, or outside it as the rest of the universe collapses into it's own black hole. Moreover, because light that goes out from the universe / black hole gets redirected back inwards, you cannot tell the boundary of a black hole from the boundary of a universe. They are, by dual definition, identical.
However, initial formations of the universe are seldom for every formation of a black hole. Therefore, it is more probable that our big bang was nothing more than the collapse of a black hole.
Olber's paradox is a big problem (Score:2)
No it isn't. (Score:3, Interesting)
In this theory, the parent universe is not visible. Our universe separated from it at the Big Bang. There was a time before, but that doesn't mean you can see an infinite number of stars
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a flame, just asking...
I've read the Elegant Universe (I think that was the title -- which incidentally has a very good exposition of relativity) and while it's all nice and dandy on paper, I'm waiting for some kind of real life validation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mathematical models like this are worth pursuing for their own sake. History has shown that solving seemingly esoteric mathematical problems has lead to a huge number discoveries about 'reality' since Newton's time. Some examples of the
MIB (Score:3, Funny)
some people have said (Score:5, Funny)
Others argue that this has already happened...
thhgttg
Re: (Score:2)
Ooops...? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
What if you had egg bacon spam and sausage?
read this back in 2000 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:read this back in 2000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you read about the idea 10 years ago doesn't make this any less significant.
scratch Big Bang, read Cosmic Strangulated Hernia (Score:4, Insightful)
Interestingly if they've found evidence of something from before the Big Bang then our entire notion of spacetime having being created at that point are mute, it's not a Big Bang, perhaps a Cosmic Strangulated Hernia?. This then is the biggest news in physics since, well, since forever. To have then described something of the nature of that preexisting universe
This idea is hardly new. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This idea is hardly new. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, they (should) ask do the "ordinary" physical laws explain the fluctuations? Next, if they have shown that _none_ of the physical laws _can_ explain the fluctuations, they should ask can this be a _new_ physical law to be _added_ to the existing ones? Next, if they have shown that adding such a new law is _inconsistent_ with existing laws, they should ask whether some of the existing laws are _wrong_?
If at the end of all that mountain of work, they still cannot fit the observation to a natural explanation, they should leave it at that and let somebody smarter go through their arguments to find what they missed.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Really, what does this mean? (Score:3, Interesting)
This almost sounds like pseudoscience. Time as we know it can only be defined in our universe because this is the only place we can measure it. There is no logical reason whatsoever to believe that there was a 'before' the Big Bang because you can't assign any physical meaning to 'before' (as in 5 s before or 10 years before).
Re:Really, what does this mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly if our Universe is embedded a wider multiverse you could define time in such a way that you can have time before the big bang. But it's the fact that the universe is embedded in something else which is interesting to most people.
To me it seems appealing that the multiverse is in some steady state even if the
Re:Really, what does this mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
What we are doing is conjecturing. We know there is no experimental way to find out about meta-universes a posteriori, so we theorize a priori. One of my favorite a priori meta-universes that is completely consistent with our own universe is a computer simulation. In the same way that a computer on Earth can simulate the Universe in the game Pong without the physical laws being even remotely similar, our Universe could be simulated with the physical laws different from the simulator. That is, of course, if a simulator exists, which I don't know nor do I think we can ever know (unless the programmers put in Matrix-like quirks).
I like the Pong example because you have a definite way to measure time (via position and velocity in the game, where velocity is the position increment per for loop). You can even pause the game in our Universe and it won't affect the time measurement in the game. If you paused the game for 1 second, let it continue for 5 s, and the paused it for 10 years, and then let it continue, the in game time would only be due to the position and velocity of the ball in the game. This is a great illustration of how even time isn't connected in the Pong Universe and our own.
Why do we think that our concept of time in our balloon-like universe necessarily has to be the same as that of some conjectured universe that we might have come from?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Fred Hoyle proposed Steady State theory because you don't have a "moment of creation" that you need to explain. It didn't work, but if our universe
Re: (Score:2)
To me it seems appealing that the multiverse is in some steady state even if the universe isn't because that avoids the Big Bang being some sort of unique, magic Act of Creation.
That's fine, but then you have to explain the multiverse in terms that are appealing (and by appealing I assume you mean some way that will not require any power, intelligence or authority greater than your own..). I don't have a problem with the Universe having been created, I think it's just as plausible that something created this Universe - though I don't know how whatever created it managed to come into existence, or always was in existence. It would be nice to think that there is another plane that w
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That's fine, but then you have to explain the multiverse in terms that are appealing (and by appealing I assume you mean some way that will not require any power, intelligence or authority greater than your own..).
Well no power that wasn't described by equations and in someway hardwired into reality. Certainly no intelligence. If the theory was complete it would explain the Big Bang.
I don't have a problem with the Universe having been created, I think it's just as plausible that something created this Universe - though I don't know how whatever created it managed to come into existence, or always was in existence.
Well our local bit of spacetime came into existence in the Big Bang. I just want an explanation for how that happened.
It's like the water cycle. Once you read that you know people understand this stuff properly. If people told you that it rained because God wanted it to or that there is a singularity at the bottom of the drain where the
it's not then the "Big Bang" (Score:3, Interesting)
What they mean is a time before the point in time at which proponents of Big Bang theory consider a singularity to have existed
Incidentally the report of having form at it's start is rather reminiscent of running start theory popular in ID, or possibly creatio-ex-materia.
Membranes? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Membranes? (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively... (Score:3, Insightful)
I take that to mean that universes could also be destroyed spontaneously...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I for one... (Score:2)
Call me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How about publication in Scientific American [sciam.com]?
I would now like to be a philology nazi. (Score:4, Interesting)
Good show about the microwave radiation, though. Now, let's hope that there isn't a film of Angels & Demons that is conveniently timed or anything.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to be confused with Multiverse.
Our pocket is but one Universe.
Re:I would now like to be a philology nazi. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Languange and definitions evolve. Get over it. The term 'multiverse' has been around for a long time as has the concept of multiple 'Universes'. Relax. Have a beer.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
What is the root and history of the word 'pedantic'?
Paidagogos, from Greek (paidos = child + agogos = leader), implied either a harsh schoolteacher, or a slave who escorted a child to school and generally watched over his education in a strict fashion. This later translated to Latin as paedagogus, and then French as pedagogue, where implications meant strict learning, down to correcting the most minor details. To the point, pedantic Is, of course, of (or like) a pedagogue. ....not to be pedantic or anything.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not useful to deliberately confuse the natural language sense of a word with a technical word of the same spelling and only somewhat related meaning. Other terms (such as the "brane" that you suggest) are biased towards particular interpretations of the data and are thus not desirable.
I would also like to be a philology "nazi" (Score:5, Funny)
Word definitions and connotations have a tendency to move around quite a bit. The word "stink" for example, was once a neutral term to describe something giving off a scent, and now has decidedly negative connotation, if not being outright denotative of giving off a bad odor. Similarly, nazi once meant the members of the political party that established a murderous and expansionist totalitarian regime in Germany. Now it used to describe someone who likes to pick on people's misuse of its vs. it's.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Time flies like an arrow... (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like philosophy and not science. (Score:2, Insightful)
i always thought the big bang was bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
once we thought the earth was the center of the universe. we threw that centrism out the window. can't people see that the big bang theory is the same kind of centrism?: "this is all we know, therefore, that's all there is"
if there is anything science teaches us, it is that we are not the center of everything
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I think you need to watch this [badastronomy.com].
Re: (Score:2)
I think you need to watch this [badastronomy.com].
I don't think the poster meant "centrism" in the literal sense, but in a more abstract sense. I.e. that it's naive to think that the big bang started it all, just because we have our single reference point (our universe). Like before as we thought we were the center of the Universe, just this time in a larger scale.
North of the North Pole anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
As Hawking put it; asking what happened before the Big Bang is like asking what's north of the North Pole.
What I take from his statement is that the universe can possibly map to a system with complex numbers where concepts similar to north of the North Pole exist. However, time does not apply until there are particles interacting with each other at rates that can be described with probability functions.
The rates must be non-zero otherwise the universe would be over instantly. Going faster than the speed of light would be the same as going faster than the speed of time. Is this article claiming otherwise?
What if.... (Score:2)
I really shouldn't be allowed on the internet this time of day.
Re: (Score:2)
LEELA: Bender, quit destroying the universe!
Apparent Formula for Cosmological Success (Score:5, Funny)
2. Define new branch of mathematics that can support a complex multi-dimensional model reinforcing your baseless conjecture.
3. Publish in academic journals and popular media.
4. Lecture to gullible masses.
5. Profit!
6. Avoid performing any work beneficial to mankind. ~
My pet theory (Score:2)
SF Reference (Score:2)
Co-Author Sean Carroll's blog (Score:3, Informative)
longer articles (Score:5, Informative)
lets call it "foreplay" (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets now call pre-big bang time "foreplay".
Judging from the summary... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Lunchtime doubly so.
Not Exactly, (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If there are no observable effects of a time before the big bang, then it's not particularly interesting to talk about it. If there ARE observable effects, then it's VERY interesting to talk about it.