Big Bang? We don't need no stinkin' Big Bang!

[Binkie The Clown]

From http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.


...SNIP...


Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.

More at the link above.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I'm not a physicist, and...

while I don't fully understand general relativity, I've always had a nagging question.

What was there before the beginning? Really now-- if the entire cosmos disappeared tomorrow, what would fill that vacuum? And how would it do it?

What is "nothing"? What would be here if there was no universe?

The only answer that fits into our simple brains would be some sort of multidimensional cycling. not a good answer, but pretty much as good as we can do.

[longship]

2. Richard Feynman was asked "Why is there a universe instead of nothing?"

He responded: "because nothing is unstable."

So it might make no sense to ask "what happened before the Big Bang?"

That's the best explanation I have heard. And I know that these answers are not very satisfactory.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Not satisfactory at all...

So why didn't Feinman just say "I don't know."

Because he didn't know, but wouldn't admit it, so he goes off on philosophical bullshit.

[longship]

6. Not philosophical, quantum field theory.

Also, he was making a humorous quip, which he was want to do.

He also is famous for saying that he is not afraid of saying he does not know.

I think he was just being humorous. It is a clever pun, after all.

Plus, Heisenberg pretty clearly states that nothing IS unstable, so there is nothing philosophical about such a statement.

Delta E * Delta t >= h-bar

But, who knows?

[Vincardog]

7. There was no "Before" the BB. Time/Space was created during the BB.

[rogerashton]

3. Earlier discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218180699

[Silent3]

4. This paper doesn't really call the whole idea of the Big Bang into question...

...just whether it started with a singularity or not -- something that scientists have long been suspicious or puzzled about anyway, since the math breaks down at that point.

We've still got plenty of evidence the entirety of the whole known universe came rushing out of an incredibly tiny, hot, dense, energetic space. I'd say that counts as a Big Bang no matter how you have to rewrite the story of the first few picoseconds.