Alright so I've been thinking about existence for the past couple of days now and I've stumbled into a question that I don't know a lot about. With my limited knowledge of the universe and how it works I know about the Big Bang and how it is thought to be a point of singularity and a big flash of light that created everything, but if a big flash of light created everything then wouldn't something have to be moving faster than the speed of light to act as a catalyst. And since time isn't a constant wouldn't time not be a factor during the Big Bang itself? I mean since the closer to light speed you get the more time slows down wouldn't that big flash happen at a point where time isn't moving since everything would've been moving at the speed of light. Which raises another question that I referred to with something moving faster than the speed of light to create the Big Bang, which wouldn't that be moving backwards in time?? I don't know what to make of it and black holes give me the same type of questions. But, maybe this is what Alan Watts means when he says that there's is no past or future only a now. If anyone could explain that would be great!
No real explanations can be given but possibilities as we have no recording of it. Whatever theories we have today will undoubtedly be vastly different if we are still around 100 years from now. Some things are beyond our science at the moment..well many things are. I for one think its all like the 13th Floor
Keep in mind the speed of light is thought to be the speed limit of particles/waves through the vacuum. So the speed of light is not a restriction on space expanding. On the contrary, the density of space is inversely proportional to the speed of light. This means space dictates the speed of light not the other way around. Also time is interrelated with space so you are correct, movement through space is movement through time.
The big bang didn't produce a "flash of light". Light didn't shine for about 400,000 years after the big bang. Just sayin'.
Do you have a somewhat in depth knowledge of this? I ask because i have a few followup questions if you do.
Thanks, i guess we will see how it goes haha. So the initial roughly 400,00 years was a self-contained plasma of which no light escaped correct? Is it thought space was expanding faster than the 'ball' of plasma but light itself was not allowed to escape? Im trying to figure out why they say light didnt propogate for that long, and what they mean by that. It seems that in order to say light didnt shine for 400,000 years it would imply either the plasma was expanding at the same speed as space (thus there would be no external vantage point to observe light) or space did expand faster but light couldnt escape. Or, i suppose, the plasma wasnt emitting light, but plasma at that energy level seems like it would. Thanks bro
Okay.. here goes. All the matter in the universe formed up until 1 microsecond after the Big Bang. The universe was about 600 million miles in diameter at this point. 1 second after the Big Bang, temperatures dropped low enough allowing protons and neutrons to form stable bonds. This is known as nucleosynthesis. Thus the universe was dominated by hydrogen nuclei and helium nuclei(ionized plasma) This reduced the number of particles in the universe dramatically, but there were still countless leptons-light particles with negatively charged electrons. Electromagnetic radiation, such as light photons, bounced back and forth between the leptons and nuclei, creating a fog which prevented them from coalescing. Scientists call this an Opaque universe. About 300,000 - 400,000 years later, temperatures were low enough to allow electrons to combine with atomic nuclei. Due to this bonding of electrons, the number of particles dropped extremely fast and the fog of the cosmos cleared. Photons were now able to travel in straight lines. Light was able to shine throughout the universe. It's my guess that the ball of ionized plasma expanded at the speed of light, as did space at the time (space didn't initially expand faster than light), but was so dense light couldn't 'shine'. I guess you can consider it a glow, even though we can't observe it through telescopes. I know I didn't answer it exactly. Great question, though. I'm gonna try and figure that out sometime. Hope this helped.
Nice reply! It leads me to a whole lot more question though haha. I wonder if it has been experimentally verified that super hot (or maybe its density that matters?) plasmas trap light or if its merely conjecture? Ill have to do some digging myself.
There is overwhelming evidence that stars do this. Light photons created in the cores of stars can take 100,000 years to escape. The star is so packed with matter that photons continuously bounce off of them in a sort of zig zag until, by chance, they escape. Then it takes about a month to get through the convection zone, then 8 minutes to Earth. I wish I had an astrophysicist to carry around in my pocket so I could ask them questions.
What NorseMythology said. We take our understandings of the laws of physics and plug in the numbers, so to speak. That's how we knew about black holes before they were actually discovered(via general relativity)
The black holes predicted by GR definitely do not and cannot exist, it failed there. Nothing could escape its gravitation it was assumed, the bottom was a singularity, which results in a loss of information which violates quantum theories principles. Also singularities result in infinities. Here we have a clear contradiction between physics models. What will they do? Another ad hoc bandaid or mathematical airbrushing? I hope not.
I've always believed in the singularity explanation. I feel like some things just are. As far as they know I feel like they have a fair amount of evidence to support the theories they have in place. Makes my head hurt to try and think about it though. What are some alternative theories other than the singularity/infinite point?
White holes ( essentially the black hole collapses then rebounds and reemerges) or black holes dont exist. There are other possibilities too. As far as i can tell, the reason they thought black holes existed was because general relaivity predicted them. Then we found out the math didnt add up, so in my opinion there is no longer a good reason to assume they exist.