Is eeryone happy with the Big Bang? I'm not.

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience Archive' started by astrocat, Nov 19, 2010.

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  1. astrocat Registered Senior Member

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    Every picture I see illustrating the Big Bang always has the Universe expanding in straight lines!. Now, I was taught that there are no straight lines in Space - certainly not drawn with a ruler.

    What's wrong with this picture?
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Everything that moves moves in a straight line unless some other force acts on it.
     
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  5. ULTRA Realistically Surreal Registered Senior Member

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    Agreed. Also remember a picture cannot give you the true sense of what the universe looks like being only two dimentional.
     
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  7. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    If your universe only had one perfectly spherically symmetrical star, then light travelling directly away from that star would still appear to be going in a straight line, as seen by someone standing on the surface of that star (Superman could probably survive that, I imagine). So you can still have straight lines. Also, you can't really illustrate the Big Bang as some exploding ball, because we live in a theoretically infinite universe with no well-defined centre.

    Re spidergoat: General Relativity allows for particle paths to curve without those particles being acted on by external forces (gravity isn't really a force in GR, the concept of an inertial/rest frame just gets redefined).
     
  8. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    It sounds like you have a problem with how authors try to explain the big bang in low-level science books that are aimed at people without much background in math or physics. Such books often have simplistic drawings or analogies that try to give lay-people the gist of the subject, but aren't necessarily 100% technically accurate.
     
  9. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    Almost sure expansion occured in straight lines.
     
  10. woowoo Registered Senior Member

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    Speaking as a lay person who has taken the time to listen to public
    lectures by qualified cosmologists and particle physicists I am struck
    by the level of uncertainty within the scientific community, how is
    the lay person supposed to be convinced if scientists openly admit to
    only having a partial understanding of 4% of the energy in the Universe.
    For the most part we must accept the BB as an article of faith.
     
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    woowoo:

    It's because of the big bang theory that we think we only know about 4% (or whatever it is) of the energy in the universe.

    Without the big bang theory, we wouldn't be able to put any kind of percentage on it.

    The big bang theory is not an article of faith, though. It's supported by very solid science - millions of pieces of independent data that all point in the same direction.
     
  12. woowoo Registered Senior Member

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    yeah i know its very good science, COBE and the like, but if we are able to
    perceive so little, it's a big leap to imagine
    that what we do know supports a notion about the origin of everything
    that includes the greater part we don't know about. :scratchin:
     
  13. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    Straight line on the earth's surface is an arc.
    So what is a straight line on the ground and what is in space without gravity?
    Or in space with different concentrations of gravity?

     
  14. ULTRA Realistically Surreal Registered Senior Member

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    That is a rather perceptive question. Nobody really knows just how far gravity extends from an object into space. It is probably fair to say space gets pretty warped where gravitational fields overlap. A quanta of light might then appear to have a non-linear trajectory through this area.
    There are huge tracts of space known as voids that are empty as far as we can tell. It is likely spacetime is fairly smooth there.
     
  15. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    ...as time was created when the Big Bang happened- the Big Bang physically actually happened. Matter and energy in all directions all at once- expanding through now-defined space.

    50.001% of all matter was positively charged and 49.999% was negatively charged. Why? Because if the universe was 50/50, it would be a non-universe... it would quickly undergo heat death with no observers. Only a "+1" universe can produce what we perceive as the universe- full of "physical stuff".

    Branes interacting and colliding. Only with this collision, there was a remainder: 4%. This became all the energy and matter in the universe. The other 96% is brane matter.
     
  16. keith1 Guest

    How likely? Given the theoretic understanding of quantum fluctuating dynamics of empty space, and the notion that these "huge tracts' of empty space are so vast, that they define vast.
     
  17. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    Rule 1 when learning 'pop science', ALWAYS take it with a pinch of salt. A picture can only convey so much and when its aimed at people who are not familiar with the details then the details are going to be skipped or corners cut. For instance, in GR gravity is not exactly like a rubber sheet with a ball placed in it.

    If you want to know the specifics of how the big bang involves spacial expansion then examine the FRW metric, which describes space-time expansion, including the exponential increase experienced during inflation.
     
  18. ULTRA Realistically Surreal Registered Senior Member

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    Until we probe these voids, I cannot answer that. However if there are vacuum variations there as seems probable, there is probably some distortion..And yes, they are truly vast. With nothing (known) there to produce any gravity the only source would be external - which goes back to the question: how large is gravity's sphere of influence?
     
  19. Shadow1 Valued Senior Member

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    i think you have a mind to make your own 3d picture in your head, i mean, you can can creat something, that you imagine in your mind and see it in your mind right? then do it

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  20. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    if you aren't happy with the big bang, don't you think you should discuss it with the bb first?
     
  21. synthesizer-patel Sweep the leg Johnny! Valued Senior Member

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    So? the OP has a picture
     
  22. keith1 Guest

    It is likely these empty regions are remnants of the early dynamics of the universe, because such large spaces would not have had time to form otherwise?
     
  23. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    I thought and I decided.
    I am happy with the Big Bang because it allows my existence.
    And about the picture, may be incorrect because "nobody" was there to take a picture.
     
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