The scientists try to escape the question by claiming that there was no time before Big Bang, wherefore there's no point in asking what was before it. That's actually the same excuse Augustine had already in the 4th century about a divine creation: God created time when He created the world, so there was no before.
But the old Greeks were aware that something cannot come out of nothing. The Big Bang must have come out of something, which initiated it. We may be stuck in this universe, in the middle of that cosmic explosion, but none of it could happen without something preceding it. In all eternity, some Greeks claimed.
A divine creation has the same problem: If God created the universe, what created Him? If He has existed forever, we still have no clue as to what He is and why He is.
Fundamentally, the question about a world origin, which has been asked in most cultures and eras of the world, is a paradox. It's like when kids ask why, why, why – at some point, there's no answer.
If existence is bound by the fundamental laws of cause and effect, as Aristotle claimed, we are as far from understanding the first cause as he was. Everything that exists must have a cause for its existence, so there's just no beginning.
I think we get stuck in this paradox because we believe in the concept of time, as sort of an entity of its own, a force ticking on from the past to the future. But time is really just a convention we have agreed on. A way of measuring change: Before it was like that, now it's like this. Without change there would be no time. Actually, without change there would be nothing at all.
So, the basic principle of the universe is change. Things move from here to there, things expand and contract, things get hot and then cold, things grow and decay. What happens is the change. The natural laws we have come up with so far are mere measurements of change. We should try to find the law of change.
Actually, the question of what became before the big bang has probably been answered. You are misinformed. There are a lot of theories and one of them will probably emerge as the consensus, just like the theory of the big bang has, by collecting evidence. You are building an "argument of the gaps". Just because we are not sure of the answer right now, doesn't mean we wont be, and that it will not have a clear meaning when we understand it.
ReplyDeleteOne theory is the one about an inflationary universe, read about it for example here:
http://www.superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo41.html
Also, I don't think you understand how physicists talk about time. It's not only that there was no physical time before the big bang, but time itself as a concept is useless as a concept when talking about the universe. Physicists and astronomers never talk about time like that when speaking about "time" in the universe. You also have to add in concepts about quantum states, space time, expanding space time, and so on. If you don't, the discussion is meaningless and void.
Scientists have never believed that something came out of nothing. You clearly lack understanding about quantum states. It's just that no physical matter existed, but matter can be made out of other things that doesn't require matter or time to come into existence. The Higgs bozon is an example, it gives things mass. Before that, they are unbound by space and time and could easily have existed before any "time" in the sense we know it existed. That doesn't mean it came to be out of "nothing".
Another theory, by prof. Penrose:
http://io9.com/5694701/does-cosmic-background-radiation-reveal-the-universe-before-the-big-bang
If you ask any theroetical physicist about how "something can arise from nothing", they will tell you how that is an absurd question and give multiple reasons why. It is simply a matter of understanding the complexity of the universe.
Interesting word, 'probably': "what became before the big bang has probably been answered."
Delete"Just because we are not sure of the answer right now, doesn't mean we wont be, and that it will not have a clear meaning when we understand it." Well, I never said that we won't, but you thereby state that we haven't yet. And of course something has a clear meaning once we understand it. That's tautological.
About physicists and time, they still seem to agree with Augustine.
As for something out of nothing: the question is what we regard as the universe, in the meaning all there is and ever was. Big Bang took place in something or it didn't take place at all. So, a universe excluding that something is not complete.
Stephen Hawkin has written alot about these issues in his books. Read them if you haven't.
ReplyDeleteI've read Hawking and some other books. So what?
DeleteYou've totally missed the point in this blog post Gandhiji87.....
ReplyDeleteSomething out of nothing is just absurd.
ReplyDeleteThe question is whether our universe popped directly out of The Nothing, or whether it was spawned by another universe which had previously popped out of The Nothing, In absurdum...
Kind of my take on it. On the other hand, so much about the universe seems absurd ;)
DeleteMaybe, just maybe the universe does not exist at all, but that seems even more absurd or...doesn't it? ;)
DeleteThe problem with the universe is that it causes similar insoluble paradoxes whether it exists or not. Something is wrong with our question.
DeleteYes, you're dead on.
Delete"An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions."