No, if one assumed an infinite time ago that means that it never was created, but rather always existed.  I know the concept of infinity is far harder to grasp than it it is to say it.  It’s completely different from the concept of extremely large which is what most people imagine.

Occam
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Write4U - 28 March 2011 12:44 PM

  But that would not solve the riddle. It is akin to saying God created everything, end of story.

Saying the universe keeps recycling itself is akin to saying “We’ve solved the riddle, end of story.”

brightfut - 28 March 2011 06:15 PM

Write4U - 28 March 2011 12:44 PM

  But that would not solve the riddle. It is akin to saying God created everything, end of story.

Saying the universe keeps recycling itself is akin to saying “We’ve solved the riddle, end of story.”

First, I am a strong believer that there was an ultimate beginning, perhaps not this universe. After that recycling may well be a plausible explanation. Of course it still does not explain how.
The notion of an infinite universe which has always existed seems unlikely to me. How do we explain away the echos of a Big Bang. Moreover, if the universe has expanded this much in just 15 billion years, how can we reconcile an expanding universe which has always existed? IMO, that makes no sense at all.

I still believe in a singularity which was an inevitable result of a single instant when there was nothing (no time, no space), which according to binary law had to be followed by a single instant where there was something (singularity). This would be the first (mega) quantum event, where everything happened all at once in a single point, resulting in the inflationary period, which then ordered itself in accordance with universal laws and spacetime as we know it had begun.

Note that even in my tongue in cheek doughnut shaped universe which originates from a black<white hole singularity, there is a single point from which everything originates.

The idea that [infinity = always existed] doesn’t sound like my concept of infinity.  It could be other’s concept of infinity. The idea that the universe always existed in its current form or that it keeps repeating a cycle would fit the notion of “always existed.”  However, in extremely long time spans this is not was has been observed in the universe.  Things change and they don’t go back to the way they were.  While the universe does repeat itself in some ways, such as fractal patterns and stars explode and then congeal and form stars again, the universe also has a linear component.  The linear component contradicts the idea of “always existed.”  I was thinking more along two possible lines.  One would be a chain of events where one thing creates another, that thing changes, then creates something else and this chain continues indefinitely into the future and into the past.  Or infinity could be explained by a chain of events that goes back until it gets to a point where any meanings of existing or not existing dissolve away and going any further back becomes pointless.  This could be the point of singularity you are talking about, Write4U.

To me the concept of an infinity of nothingness (no space) is meaningless in itself. IMO, the most plausible concept would be an infinitely small singularity of nothingness, which by some fundamental law of causation cannot be allowed to exist and thus had to change the very moment it came to be a singularity (the beginning). Perhaps the instantaneous implosion of nothingness, created a metaphysical “tension” which released itself as an unimaginable explosion of pure energy.

How do you count time in the absence of everything?  An interval of a billion years would equal to an interval of a single instant.
Example: a computer in “off” state does not experience time. But the moment you turn it “on” its clock begins to count time. This is how I see the beginning. A single instant of nothingness without time (“off”), somehow materializing itself into a state of “on”, and the beginning of reality and time (as we know it).

I believe that the notion of time being the first property of infinity is false. Time is a result of reality renewing itself (quantum), in the absence of reality, time is not needed (created) and becomes irrelevant.

I see the Beginning as an instantaneous event. It all began with a single instant of a singularity, which “had” to express itself as a BB. The rest is history. This does not mean the chain of events started 15 billlion years ago (as it did for us). The first universe may well have been created long before ours came to be. But in the absence of time before the first event, the first event was the Beginning of the cosmos.

I just came across the following sentence by Sean Carroll on Coyne’s blog where they discuss theology and cosmology:

“The singularity at the Big Bang doesn’t indicate a beginning to the universe, only an end to our theoretical comprehension.”

I like that.

I like it, too, George.  Since I’m an optimist I’d make only a slight addition.  I’d add between “our” and “theoretical”, “present”.

Occam

Sure, sounds good to me, too.

“The singularity at the Big Bang doesn’t indicate a beginning to the universe, only an end to our theoretical comprehension.”

quoting George.

that sounds lovely to me

missmac - 01 April 2011 02:07 PM

quoting George.

I wish! 

missmac - 27 March 2011 12:40 AM

I believe the big bang theory to provide the most logical explanation for the formation of our solar system…......... HOWEVER - the origin of that initial matter is impossible to explain.

Does anyone think we will ever discover how the first form of matter came in to existence?

Oh man, even trying to come up with explanations trips me out.

A correction: the Big Bang explains the beginning of our universe, not the formation of our solar system. We are gaining a pretty decent understanding of how solar systems form, and will gain greater understanding as scientists crunch the data the Kepler satellite is downloading.

There are many mathematical theories of what may have existed before the BB, but they are all untestable at present. We may never know the origin of the initial mass (it was not matter as we know it). No previous information survived the cosmic expansion due to the extreme heat and pressure involved. How extreme? Extreme enough that spacetime itself expanded much faster than the speed of light. I checked my notes from last semester to get the exact figures. The universe expanded to larger than our solar system in the first 10^-43 second after the BB. Because there is no outside to our universe the only way the universe could cool was through expansion. After three minutes baryonic matter began to form, and the universe was one billion Kelvin. At this time the universe consisted mainly of hydrogen and free neutrons. At this point the universe was cool enough for deuterium, helium and lithium to form. After about 15 minutes the universe was too cool for nuclear fusion, and matter stopped forming*. The Electromagnetic Force ruled the universe for the next 50,000 years, when it became cool enough for electrons to join atomic nuclei, at which time the universe was still about 16 million Kelvin and atomic fusion restarted. After 200 million years the universe cooled to about 60 Kelvin and atoms began to form together in clumps. For the next three billion years the first stars and galaxies formed.

*This means the universe had a 12 minute window to form particles of matter, and the early universe consisted of about 90 percent hydrogen, 10 percent helium and a trace of lithium, but mostly energy.

As for the expansion rate of the universe, two teams working independently in 1998 used Hubble Space Telescope observations to measure the expansion rate. Much to their surprise they found the expansion rate is accelerating. No one predicted this, and scientists still have no idea what is causing the acceleration. They dubbed the mechanism Dark Energy as placeholder while they work on the problem. Computer simulations and observations reveal that Dark Energy comprises 70 percent of the universe, Dark Matter 26 percent, and what we know as normal matter only four percent.

Edit: I went back to my notes from last semester and corrected the timeline for the Big Bang

This is one of the things I love about this site.  Reading posts like the above to expand my knowledge and clarify my thinking.  Thanks, Darron.

Occam

It’s nice to have a question about topic x and then have someone who is studying x in college answer it for you!