Before the Big-Bang?

[Ian King]

I know that before the Big-Bang (supposedly) nothing, not even time and space existed.

How can this be possible.

The size of the Universe, and it come from nothing! I dont think so.
Surley its always been here?

I need answers damit!

:-)

[magicbeatle]

And what about the big crunch. Some cosmologists beleive that just as we started with a big bang that has been expanding in all directions ever since, one day the universe will start to recede until it totally vanishes in a big crunch. Now, if that is true then time will also come to an end along with all matter. My problem with that is this... If there is no longer any time or space, that must mean there was never any past, present, or future. And with no past, then we could not of ever existed.

[jake-the-peg]

"virtual" or other universes are a sterile concept. We have by definition no way of proving or disproving their existance nor will we ever have.

You might as well theorise that our universe is a component of some sort of "atom" on the shell of a tortoise.

However I'd suggest Occam's razor comes into play

http://www.answers.com/topic/occam-s-razor

In basic terms the simplest explanation is right!

[MargeB]

:-( I liked the idea of being a virtual character.

Magic, I was under the impression that OMEGA, the magic number that compares the ratio of expansive energy to contraction due to total universe mass, is greater than 1, so the universe will keep expanding forever? Maybe I'm out of date.

[kermit911]

Reminds me of the movie  **Thirteenth Floor**  Good Movie  :-)

[reportmonkey]

1.618

[magicbeatle]

MargeB, I dont know that much about the subject but am interested. It was just something i remember reading about. You sound like you know much more than i do about it, so perhaps it is my information that is out of date. Kermit, I agree with you entirely. 'The Thirteenth Floor' is an excellent movie.

[jake-the-peg]

Things are rather up in the air <ducks as heavy things are thrown in retribution for bad pun> with big crunches.

We see the universe expanding far faster than it should - NASA is planning a mission to intercept it and issue it with a speeding ticket - in the mean time this expansion is being caused by something called "dark energy" because we have absolutley no idea why at present.

[MargeB]

The Dark Matter Rap

My name is Fritz Zwicky
I can be kind of prickly,
This song had better start
by giving me priority
Whatever anybody says,
I said in 1933
Observe the Coma cluster,
the redshift of the galaxies
imply some big velocities.
They're moving so fast,
there must be missing mass!
Dark matter.


For nearly forty years,
the matter problem sits.
Nobody gets worried 'cause,
"It's only crazy Fritz."
The next step's not 'til
the early nineteen seventies,
Ostriker and Peeples,
dynamics of the galaxies,
cold disk instabilities.
They say: "If the mass
were sitting in the stars,
all those pretty spirals
ought to be bars!
Self-gravitating disks? Uh-uh, oh no.
What those spirals need is a massive halo.
And hey, look over here, check out these observations,
Vera Rubin's optical curves of rotation,
they can provide our needed confirmation:
Those curves aren't falling, they're FLAT!
Dark matter's where it's AT!


And so the call goes out for the dark matter candidates:
black holes, snowballs, gas clouds, low mass stars, or planets.
But we quickly hit a snag because galaxy formation
requires too much structure in the background radiation
if there's only baryons and adiabatic fluctuations.
The Russians have an answer: "Wr can solve the impasse.
Lyubimov has shown that the neutrino has mass."
Zeldovich cries, "Pancakes! The dark matter's HOT."
Carlos Frenk, Simon White, Marc Davis say, "NOT!
Quasars are old, and the pancakes must be young.
Forming from the top down it can't be done."
So neutrinos hit the skids, and the picture's looking black.
But California laid-back Blumenthal & Primack
say, "Don't have a heart attack.
There's lots of other particles
Just read the physics articles."

[MargeB]

Who's right? It's hard to know, 'til observation or experiment
gives overwhelming evidence that relieves our predicament.
The search is getting popular as many realize
that the detector of dark matter may well win the Nobel Prize.