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What is the Origin of the Universe?

  • 13 votes
  • 1 vote
  • 11 votes
  • 9 votes
  • 12 votes
Anemynous 7 Apr 14
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18 comments

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1

1st came the Bang, followed by the Enormous expansion..which is accelerating as I write this..cool, huh?

2

I like to call it the big change instead of the big bang because most likely the mark of time for this universe may have started for this universe at the point of the "big bang" Thinking how things evolve mater and energy has always been will always be, it just recycles over repeatedly. To boot if the universe is expanding it can not just be expanding into nothing some form of matter beyond the universe is being distorted to allow the universe to expand.

2

Its very simple - the Universe has always been here, and always changing. There was no beginning.

gater Level 7 Apr 14, 2018
4

I like Futurama's explaination. Fry, Bender, and the Professor are in a "forward-only" time machine. They go so far into the future that they see our sun become a red giant, engulf Earth, then dwindle into nothing. As time goes on, other stars go out, and they are left only in darkness. Then an explosion happens. It's the Big Bang! The universe begins anew; and they realize that the universe goes in an ongoing cycle. Big Bang --> death --> Big Bang --> death, etc

Perpetual universe. I think something like that makes sense... But exactly how it perpetuates and does it's thing isn't clear. The big bang describes the earliest point we have capacity to comprehend presently. Just like former horizons in understanding, I think it represents a limitation in human perception... not a limitation of the universe itself. Even if we except the notion of timespace as a singularity in the earliest moments of the universe... what is it that disturbed the universe from this state? Some energy or condition had to influence that state for it to expand in the first place... and in order for that to happen, we have to infer a principal that precipitates from a mechanism "outside" the chronology of the known universe...

In 1970 Poul Anderson wrote a book called, "Tau Zero", about a starship that kept going and finally back around to another Big Bang.

5

Awesome, now we shall determine the origin of the universe based on popular opinion.

"Big Bang" isn't an appropriate name for the universe, and was actually a derisive insult, but it stuck. The Big Bang isn't the best theory we've got based on current knowledge.

The best evidence for the theory is that we've made numerous discoveries since the BBT was first advanced that were predicted by it. Cosmic background radiation, rapid expansion, and the temperature of the universe are the biggest discoveries that completely concur with what we should've expected to see if the BBT actually occurred.

Remember, the big bang theory describes only the origin of our universe, not anything prior to it. Don't confuse the origin theory with speculation about the state of our universe or others before it happened.

JimG Level 8 Apr 14, 2018

Right with ya. I'm just curious as to what the popular opinions are in this demographic.
The last option in the poll is my present perspective. For me it was an epiphany that there may simply be no origin to the universe at all... the more I thought about, the more I realized that there was absolutely no reason or evidence to believe the "universe" had any firm "origin". In our personal lives, things don't just "appear"... everything comes from somewhere else. How the heck did we get it in to our minds that there is some ultimate beginning when there is absolutely no precedent whatsoever to suggest there is one?

Fred Hoyle was a Steady State theorist , he coined the saying Big Bang.

@buzz13 Exactly! It's kind of ironic that he coined that phrase out of scorn for the theory.

2

I couldn't do the poll 'cos my answer wasn't an option. The furthest we can go back thus far is the big bang (and all the bits round that), what happened to cause that is.............I don't know.

2

Truthfully, I don't care. I don't believe we're ever going to know for sure. At least not in my
lifetime. I'm completely satisfied with the Big Bang.
I have other things to do.

5

What if we aren't the only 'universe' out there? What if we are in just one of many?

Could be. Like a boiling cauldron, with each universe as one bubble in the brew....

We are 1 of many

1 universe - infinite worlds with life

1

I believe that the universe has always existed, but has gone through many alternating stages of extreme xpansion and contraction.

3

Time began at the Big Bang so considering what happened before it is truly meaningless. Sometimes we have to let go of trying to reason an idea and just accept.

[hawking.org.uk]

What is it then that influenced the universe to shift out of it's timeless state? What change can be enacted outside of time?

As for your last statement. I'm an Atheist... ahem, I don't just "accept".

@Anemynous touché

1

The Universe has always been here - the Big Bang was a relatively recent event .

gater Level 7 Apr 14, 2018
1

Someone asked the Dali Lama if Buddhists believed in the BBT, and he answered, “yes, but bang, bang, bang.”

Yes... I can imagine two perpetual models. One would be the same universe constantly "banging" and "crunching" through infinite time... The other would be a multiverse where the most apt analogy I can think of is boiling fluid, where each universe is a "bubble" in the boil. right now, I think evidence is leaning more towards the latter (if either of them at all), though I am fond of the former myself. Hey, maybe both? Maybe each multiverse "bubble" is also banging and crunching...

I think there’s a fair amount of evidence for the BB, but I’m certainly unqualified to evaluate it. I’d prefer it if there were some evidence for a first cause, a trigger. Otherwise, it all seems like mysticism to me. In trillions of galactic/universe revolutions, I can imagine that random chance eventually brings circumstances together in such a way that anything is possible, but I can’t see how that could occur after the heat death of the universe.
As for parallel universes, it all seems like total speculation at this time. I’d love to hear about anything substantive.

1

I lean toward BBT, but really who knows? Altho, BSD sitting around, bored, decides to start a universe but obviously has no solid plan on where to go with it isn't actually an option for me.

0

I don't know. it's too deep for me so I keep my blinkers forced on and deal with things that I can do something about.

0

Life is much more tenacious than we give it credit for. Yes this planet has shrugged off many life forms in its history but to think that ours is the only planet/place that life can or does exist in the universe is idiocracy. I think that life exists in one form or another in any place it possibly can. Just because it isn't 'human' or 'sentient' (in our definition of it) doesn't mean it isn't alive. I live in the desert of Arizona and all around me I see 'life' coming out of the cracks in the concrete and asphalt around me. No water, no care, no one making it happen. Everywhere I go I see 'life' coming out of the woodwork. "Life" as we know it, will in one form or another exist if it can. If it can't, it won't. Period.

0

I don’t spend too much time dwelling on it, but my theory would be the Big Bang.

0

God farted and there you go.

0

I'm a big banger, but who knows? Maybe reptilians just flipped a late switch on their latest science project.

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