Why do scientists think there was a big bang?

[uwot]

I'm revamping the book; making it clearer (hopefully) and getting rid of distractions. You can see the first part on the blog. If it still doesn't make sense, I would love to hear your comments. https://willijbouwman.blogspot.com

[QuantumT]

It wasn't a bang, 'cause there was no audio. It was a sudden huge expansion.

[uwot]

Ah well, there's that cornerstone of modern cosmology fucked then.

[QuantumT]

Ah well, there's that cornerstone of modern cosmology fucked then.

How is it fucked? We call it a bang, because it behaved like an explosion.

[Atla]

It wasn't a bang, 'cause there was no audio. It was a sudden huge expansion.

But could it have been sudden, if presumedly there was no time before it either?

[-1-]

It wasn't a bang, 'cause there was no audio. It was a sudden huge expansion.

Sure, there was no digital audio, with Dolby noise reduction and with a Moog synthesizer counter-point base for harmonizing effect. But there was an old-fashioned, analogue signal, within the matter that connected. Outside the matter there was no sound.

[-1-]

It wasn't a bang, 'cause there was no audio. It was a sudden huge expansion.

But could it have been sudden, if presumedly there was no time before it either?

That's a good question, if one considers several definition to "sudden". To avoid the debate, one could say there was an expansion in a relatively short period of time.

I am no cosmologist or Quantum Mechanic (Licenced), so I I don't know what a "relatively short time" is in real measure of time. Picaseconds? Quasimodoemberevo seconds?

[-1-]

If there is a big bang, and nobody nearby, does the big bang still make a sound?

[Atla]

That's a good question

Nah I was just joking, of course the moment of the Big Bang can't be sudden. That's applying temporality to something timeless.

"After" the moment of the Big Bang, expansion happened though, and maybe after a while, it's assumed that there was this sudden, symmetry-breaking inflation for a few Kratosatyauristen seconds. And such symmetry-breaking really bothers me, it doesn't just happen without something causing it.

If there is a big bang, and nobody nearby, does the big bang still make a sound?

Almost certainly yes. But I approach the contents of the human mind from a largely electromagentic perspective and I may be wrong.

[-1-]

But I approach the contents of the human mind from a largely electromagentic perspective and I may be wrong.

I also usually shake the contents well, having approached it from a distance, so the electromagentic colour does not bunch up.

[henry quirk]

I rather like the notion that everything had its source in a point-singularity.

I also enjoy the idea that the Great Explosion is still going on, that we're ephemerals in the midst of it, thinkin' Reality is all stable and shit when -- really -- it's all in flux.

It's not nihilism, but it sure takes the edge off.

[QuantumT]

It wasn't a bang, 'cause there was no audio. It was a sudden huge expansion.

But could it have been sudden, if presumedly there was no time before it either?

The math says is happened in less than a second. The definition of "sudden". Like magic. Poof, the universe was born.
But it happened soundless, because there was no gas for sound to travel in. It was a silent explosion.
And yes, time started simultaneously with it. One could say the first milliseconds was the most eventful ever in our universe.

[Impenitent]

If there is a big bang, and nobody nearby, does the big bang still make a sound?

ask a tree

-Imp

[Greta]

From an article I was reading this morning:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/big-boun ... -20180131/

With a single initial ingredient (the “inflaton field”), inflationary models reproduce many broad-brush features of the cosmos today. But as an origin story, inflation is lacking; it raises questions about what preceded it and where that initial, inflaton-laden speck came from. Undeterred, many theorists think the inflaton field must fit naturally into a more complete, though still unknown, theory of time’s origin.

In terms of narrative, I currently prefer the idea of a "big birth", where a new universe may form from the void left by the last.

[Greta]

Probably too much emphasis is placed on what was originally supposed to be a joke name to mock the idea https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/artic ... .28/302975. It's misleading.

What we have is a "big grow" at a rate that we perceive as overwhelming explosive force. I suppose if you are tiny enough, what might be slow growth for extremely big things would seem explosive. For instance, think of the Earth orbiting the Sun at 107,000 km/h. Pretty fast, right?

That's the Earth taking a whole hour to move about four to five times its own diameter. Imagine walking at three metres per hour. You would hardly seem to be moving. Yet that's four or five times the diameter of the most spheroidal person imaginable. For most of us the equivalent would be much less again.

Yet the Earth's imperceptibly slow ooze around the Sun is about thirty times the speed of our fastest jet flying over its surface. It's over forty times the speed of a bullet. The Earth's extremely slow orbit around the Sun is at an explosive speed to us tiny humans.

The Sun's speed around Sag A* of 828,000 km/h - less than a single of its own diameter in an hour - is a simply devastating speed for us, over 200km/s.

Bring this notion to a universal scale and, whatever the universe would be to itself (if it thinks), it would seem to be slowly growing like many things within it. However, what would be imperceptibly slow growth at a universal scale is perceived by entities of our scale as explosive inflation that exponentially dwarfs lightspeed.

Funny old world, eh?