Talk:Big Bang/Archive 11

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Archive 11


Contents

Page Query

Does anyone know if there is a page pondering the cause of the Big Bang, not the event itself?

You're looking for cosmogony. --ScienceApologist 22:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I think a good way to tell something is missing from an article, is when the same question keeps coming up on the talk page. If our answer is "see cosmogony", would it be OK to add those words with that link at the end of the first paragraph? Art LaPella 23:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Excellent suggestion. So added. --ScienceApologist 23:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Featured article

This article is featured and yet it contains not a single inline citation... It risks being taken to WP:FARC... Mikker ... 17:37, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the article does have inline citations, they just are not in one of the footnote proposed formats. Since this is only a proposed policy and hasn't been adopted yet, I'm not sure that we need to change the style yet. --ScienceApologist 19:36, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Ummmm... correct me if I'm wrong but other than a single external ref, I see no inline citations, be it Harvard or Chicago. Mikker ... 20:26, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
There are citations in the old (now much disdained) hyperlink style to outside materials in the text to Hoyle's coining of the term for example. I think that we could have plenty of cases for cited references, so your point is taken. I only think that we should be careful in claiming that an article has no inline citations. Back when the article went through FAC, inline citations weren't as a big of a deal as they are now. --ScienceApologist 20:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Right... didn't mean to 'rub anyone's nose in it' - my message was meant as a 'heads up' of sorts. I think this is a great article but numerous (great) articles have recently been FARCed because they fail WP:V. My suggestion is to insert refs (Harvard or Chicago; not externals) where possible. Just a thought... :) Mikker ... 20:47, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the "heads up". I added references I knew off the top of my head. There are others that can be added, I'm sure, but do you think this will stave off a FARC? --ScienceApologist 21:26, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Don't mention it! Yes, what you've done is an improvement and I'm sure if other editors can help out most of the article can be refed in no time... (I do emphasise that external links are widely disliked - footnoting would help your case at FARC). As for staving off FARC: well, I'm not taking it there (feel bad enough already that I've said over at talk:gene that I'm taking THAT article to FARC). Mikker ... 21:56, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I added a comment about this to Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. While I don't really disagree that some sections of the article could use better referencing, I wonder what the standard for referencing should be for "high level" articles like big bang, which draw on and synthesize a number of lower level articles, like cosmic microwave background. –Joke 00:02, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Empty nest

User:FredrickS added a link to empty nest in the "speculative physics beyond the Big Bang" section. The link leads to a page that appears to be both original research and self-promotion (it's based on the contents of a book written by User:FredrickS).

If this is to be listed as a variant of the Big Bang model, it's going to need citations for academic publications about it before it can be added. None have been provided here or at empty nest to date. --Christopher Thomas 01:50, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I added some tags to the page and listed it on VfD. –Joke 01:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Silly Theory

How could the "Big Bang" happen without an action? It's not a well structured theory. 3/4/06 10:28 PM EST Dudtz

I think you're promoting the cosmological argument. We're trying to steer that kind of question to cosmogony. Art LaPella 03:43, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually there was an action... there has to have been an action... however its still unknown. --H0riz0n 05:35, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

God creating The Universe is an easier explination.Dudtz 8/3/06 8:47 PM EST

Hubble's law not believed by Hubble.

quoting from big bang entry "In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided an observational basis for Lemaître's theory. He discovered that, relative to the earth, the galaxies are receding in every direction at speeds directly proportional to their distance from the earth. This fact is now known as Hubble's law (see Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae by Edward Christianson). Given the cosmological principle whereby the universe, when viewed on sufficiently large distance scales, has no preferred directions or preferred places, Hubble's law suggested that the universe was expanding. "

Not according to Sandage

Ref: JOURNAL DE LA SOCIÉTÉ ROYALE D ASTRONOMIE DU CANADA Vol. 83, No.6 December 1989 Whole No. 621

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/diamond_jubilee/1996/sandage_hubble.html

Hubble concluded that his observed log N(m) distribution showed a large departure from Euclidean geometry, provided that the effect of redshifts on the apparent magnitudes was calculated as if the redshifts were due to a real expansion. A different correction is required if no motion exists, the redshifts then being due to an unknown cause. Hubble believed that his count data gave a more reasonable result concerning spatial curvature if the redshift correction was made assuming no recession. To the very end of his writings he maintained this position, favouring (or at the very least keeping open) the model where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift "represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature". This viewpoint is emphasized (a) in The Realm of the Nebulae, (b) in his reply (Hubble 1937a) to the criticisms of the 1936 papers by Eddington and by McVittie, and (c) in his 1937 Rhodes Lectures published as The Observational Approach to Cosmology (Hubble 1937b). It also persists in his last published scientific paper which is an account of his Darwin Lecture (Hubble 1953).

Tommysun 06:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't make this article erroneous, only misleading. A qualifyer like "(but not to Hubble)", with a footnote, may be appropriate. Harald88 10:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
    • A.Bellamy 15 March: But contrary to Harald88's non-standard logic, if Tommysun is right and Hubble did not believe in recession or expansion, then surely on any normal logic the Wikipedia article's claim that Hubble "discovered that, relative to the earth, the galaxies are receding in every direction at speeds directly proportional to their distance from the earth" is FALSE, and thereby ERRONEOUS on this point on the normal meaning of 'erroneous' i.e. FALSE. Such a significant falsehood about scientific discovery surely cannot be dismissed in a footnote. The interesting issue then becomes that of who first put this theoretical construction on Hubble's data and when it became generally accepted. As a matter of related interest, in a kind of half-way house position in his 1930 bestseller 'The Mysterious Universe', Sir James Jeans accepted Hubble's data as indicating recession and an expanding universe, but also accepted Zwecky's 'tired-light' hypothesis, whereby he maintained the observed red-shift was due to a combination of tired-light and recession. This was in order to conclude a much slower expansion and thus older universe than otherwise if the red-shift was wholly due to recession, and thus to remove the contradiction between the accepted age of the Sun being greater than the supposed 'observationally supported' age of the universe (i.e. the estimated age of the expansion), and hence to avoid this refutation of the then expanding universe theory. In general of course the BBT (i.e. BB theory of the age of the expansion) was initially falsified by observationally supported facts of the age of various components of the universe being greater than that of the expansion. Was Hubble himself maybe chary of expansion for such reasons ?
I commented on the cited part. However, I had not noticed the miseading and POV intro. I correct that. Harald88 07:51, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Historical

Historical = Pertaining to History

The big bang theory pertains to the history of the evolution of the universe. That means it pertains to a history, thus making it a historical theory (but actually it is more than one historical theory since there are variations of the Big Bang theory, but the general concept is the same). Problems such as origin of the universe are solved by taking known current facts and deducing the past from them using a form of critical reasoning. The same is true with crime scene investigation. Make no mistake, the various timelines of the Big Bang itself proves that it is attributed to historical theories.

A question

Did the Big Bang actually make the space of the universe? I do not think that is possible :\. I was thinking there could always have been an unlimited amount of space, but the big bang just spread out the matter of the universe. After a while, all the matter from the universe could get pulled into one spot because of gravity and create anoher big bang. Is there a theory for that?

See Big Crunch and oscillatory universe. Art LaPella 02:23, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Expansion faster than the speed of light?

Howdy all. I just read this AP article: Evidence for Universe Expansion Found at SFGate.com. While it is very interesting, I'm having trouble understanding how the "marble-sized" Universe could suddenly expand to "a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second." This would seem to be faster than the speed of light. How is that possible, even in the early Universe? Did the speed of light become fixed at a later time? Thanks. --NightMonkey 22:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

See cosmic inflation. --ScienceApologist 16:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
In easy-to-understand terms, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in space. But the Big Bang was an expansion of space itself, not THROUGH space. JF Mephisto 09:14, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I just had the exact same question. I'm reading a great book on the universe and couldn't get my mind around the massive expansion in the first few seconds. JF Mephisto's simple explanation is great -- one of the moderators might consider adding it to the article (or to cosmic inflation). Sincerely beautiful article, by the way! --nathanbeach 02:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

center of the universe

Does the universe have a center point? If it evolved from a speck of some very small dimensions, that speck must have had a center, but if the universe of today has no center, where did it go?

And if the speck was finite, how cold some consider today that the universe is infinite?

Thank you.Legoff 07:02, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Please see the Reference Desk for factual questions not directly related to the article. -- Ec5618 07:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

News from NASA

Here is some fresh news from NASA about the Big Bang. I don't know if any of this information can be useful to this article, but maybe we can use the image, because "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted"? --Andrew c 17:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the universe center and infinity question (above): I have spent a frutless hour at REFERENCE without a hit. So, p;ease reconsider and let someone respond to me. Legoff 03:31, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Observed vs. inferred velocities

There isn't a clear distinction between inference and observation in the case of the Hubble flow. In fact, the recessional velocities are actually artifacts of the expansion of space, so to claim that they exist at all is problematic. However, their inference is equally problematic from this regard. What we should do rather is make it clear that this analysis was based on observation and falsifiable theory development. --ScienceApologist 08:45, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Your suggestion sounds good to me; my improvement was not meant to be final (but why did you revert my version if you hold that there isn't a clear distinction?!). This one is better: The observed redshifts of distant galaxies follow Hubble's law and are commonly interpreted as being the result of recessional velocities. The Big Bang theory is a logical consequence of this interpretation. Harald88 16:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I dislike this version too because it assumes an "interpretation" rather than an observation for recessional velocities as though there is that much of a distinction. This one is better:
The Big Bang is a consequence of an observed correlation between distances and recessional velocities summaried by Hubble's law that taken together with...
No, the whole point as explained in the discussion above is that velocity is an interpretation of redshift with which not all sources fully agree, and in particular Hubble himself disagreed with it. Hubble's law correlates not velocty but redshift with distance! Thus your phrasing is just as misleading as the existing text. Thus, what do other editors think of:
The Big Bang theory is based on an observed correlation between distances and redshift summaried by Hubble's law. The theory postulates that this redshift is fully due to recessional velocities, and taken together with...

Harald88 20:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"summarized". "summaried" gets 13,400 Google hits but I didn't find it in any dictionaries. Art LaPella 20:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
What Hubble disagreed with is beside the point. Claiming that velocity is an interpretation of redshift belies the fundamental 1:1 correspondence that is verified by independent tests. Therefore the velocities are "observed".

To put it another way, there was a time when the caloric was not recognized as a form of energy. But to claim that when someone observes a thermodynamic process they are "interpreting" the presence of energy is just silly. They observe the presence of energy per definition. --ScienceApologist 21:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

What Hubble disagreed with should not be used in connetion with his name: that is definitely misleading, as already stated by another editor above. And you suggest here that what a large number of scientists write in peer reviewed papers, is "silly". That is very POV, and you have the right to your opinions, but not to push your opinion in Wikipedia. Please try again to come up with a phrasing that is NPOV; meanwhile I revert to the less POV version which we agree is open for improvement. Harald88 11:54, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Since the Hubble Law is verifiable as it is described in the text, to make the bold claim that such descriptions "should not be used" (is this a moral should, an editorial should, or an original research should?) is outlandish and in violation of Wikipedia's editorial policy regarding reporting of current, up-to-date verifiable facts. Your revert is unjustified and your advocacy of this as neutral is frankly, outlandish. If you cannot address the verifiable facts of the matter, there is no justification for your editorial opinion. --ScienceApologist 13:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Amazing: ScienceApologist does not know Hubble's Law?! (...) I'll rewrite that sentence with that law correctly stated. Harald88 19:49, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The question of universal irregularity

The Big Bang is now accepted widely in scientific circles. We believe that all the known and unknown universe originated from a very small and very dense ball of extremely hot matter, which expanded in all directions at enormous speed. We cannot be sure of the original size of this fiery ball. I think some scientists refer to it as a "singularity", much the same as the centre of a black hole. If a singularity is a point of infinite density and is also infinitely small, then I see a problem with the obvious irregularity and random nature of the universe, even going back to very early times, when the first conglomerations began to take shape. The problem is this: If the universe expanded from a point source of zero dimensions, then in my view it would have had to expand in a perfectly uniform and regular way, and could not have given rise to the highly chaotic and random universe that we see all around us today. However, if the size of the singularity is anything other than infinitely small, then the seeds of all this randomness and irregularity that we now see were contained in that original small fiery ball.- goddlediddles 22 March 2006

Quote from Big Bang: "... the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this,...". Quote from cosmic inflation:"As a direct consequence of this expansion, all of the observable universe originated in a small causally-connected region. Quantum fluctuations in this microscopic region, magnified to cosmic size, then became the seeds for the growth of structure in the universe...". Art LaPella 23:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The only theory?

Is Big Bang the only theory or are there any others? Igor Skoglund.

The big bang is the only theory supported by an overwhelming majority of professional astronomers, cosmologists and physicists. See non-standard cosmology for all the rest. –Joke 18:12, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Interesting that you should ask. There has been a concerted effort by several Wikipedia editors to minimize in all Wikipedia articles any mention of alternative theories. Links are immediately removed from templates; edit summaries usually contain specious reasoning. — goethean ॐ 18:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, those cabals really put a bee in my bonnet. --ScienceApologist 18:38, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
So do non-denial denials. — goethean ॐ 19:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
And I wasn't referring to a cabal. When I mention certain more sensitive editors by name, I get accused of mounting personal attacks against them. — goethean ॐ 19:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe you should consider avoiding these kinds of comments altogether, anonymous or personalized. --ScienceApologist 20:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I'll consider the source. — goethean ॐ 21:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with both Joke and Goethean. There should be no doubt about what is the most succesful and popular theory to date, but it's a bad sign if people start asking if there any other theories - that's an indication of poor presentation. Harald88 21:38, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Do you have the same criticism of electromagnetic radiation? There are other theories about what light is, after all.
Interesting article! But I can't find anyone asking such a question on that Talk page. Also, probably many editors will disagree with the oversimplistic opening phrase of that article, but the photon model is discussed lateron - thus I don't think there is much risk that such a question will be asked. Harald88 11:43, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
The point is that articles on Wikipedia about science topics tend to preempt such questions. Just because no one asked questions on the talk page doesn't mean that questions cannot be asked. While electromagnetic radiation may be superficially less controversial than the Big Bang, a consistent policy would require us to address all cases equally. I think as per your comments here we would have to modify that page and hundreds of others on science-related topics. THere is a reason we have an undue weight section of NPOV, it's to make it clear that summary articles on large topics do not need to treat alternatives with kid gloves (or even treat them at all).
Mistaken: that article suggests no specific model to be the only one. Apart of that, Wikipedia is work in progress, indeed that article can be improved too. Please don't put the NPOV policy on its head to make people believe that it condones dogmatism and POV pushing: it doesn't. And please stop wasting my time with such useless arguments. Harald88 17:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
This article doesn't suggest that the Big Bang is the only model either as it does mention the nonstandard cosmologies in a manner appropriate to their notability and their acceptance. --ScienceApologist 17:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Cosmos expanded faster than the speed of light?

I'd learned something about big bang before I came to this article. I remember I read somewhere that the farthest extreme in the universe that man can "see" is about 10 - 20 billion light years away. But according to the big bang theory, the history of cosmos began 13.7 billion years ago marked by an explosion. If so, the cosmos must have expanded at some stage with a speed greater than the speed of light so as to achieve its current dimension, but this obviously sounds absurd to the ear of anyone who knows the basic laws of physics. Where did my logic go wrong? --Lightdawn 06:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Space is not a physical object but just a metric and can expand faster than the speed of light. See cosmic inflation. --ScienceApologist 14:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

...about 13.7 billion years ago

Where is the reference for this number... I think its old. Even Hawking, Greene and others are not nailing down an exact time for the begining and from what I can remember from listening to hawkings books and Greens all notable scientists are putting the figure between 15+ billion years (with a max of 18). I think this information is a bit old and someone need to update it with the latest info. --H0riz0n 05:45, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe its right... I see Hubble telescope info says 13-14. --H0riz0n 05:52, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Number is correct. The discovery of dark energy pushed the Age of the Universe down. --ScienceApologist 05:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, the 13.7 is the latest estimate, based on new data. The 15+ billion estimates were older, and now obsolete--AaronM 17:54, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Horizon problem -- negation

Actually Hawking has proven that information can travel faster then light in his black hole research. He found that black holes do in fact emit light/energy due to the quantum teleportation priciple -- Hawking Radiation. So why couldnt the universe expand from the quantum state in a similar manner, thus travelling faster than the speed of light and creating those regions in disputed in the Horizon problem? --H0riz0n 06:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Space can expand faster than light without violating relativity because a vacuum contains no information transfer mechanism (information must transmit through the vacuum). Hawking radiation isn't precisely information traveling faster than light (which violates special relativity) -- instead it is a consequence of quantum tunneling. However, quantum tunelling could be a cosmogony explanation and there is mechanistic applications of it found in cosmic inflation. --ScienceApologist 05:39, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Revert edits

Today, User:Enormousdude made the following two edits:

  • removed
the Belgian Catholic priest as characterizing Lemaître
  • added the following parenthesis to the heading section
(natural evolution of universe constantly takes place).

IMHO, none of these edits improved the article. Especially the last one with its link to the evolution-article is irrelevant and should be reverted. --Sir48 16:48, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not taking sides, but such revert explanations should be encourages. :) Art LaPella 18:26, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Technical name

Shouldn't we call this by it's more proper name, the Standard Model of Cosmology? Or at least mention that it is called that? Just a suggestion SA@calcnet 03:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it, the "standard model" of cosmology (aka classical cosmology) is the cosmology associated with matter domination (omega_matter > 0), where flatness was not assumed (omega_k >= 0), and dark energy was ignored (omega_lambda = 0). This was replaced in the mid-nineties with the Lambda-CDM model which is the current "model" where omega_lambda + omega_matter = 1 and omega_k = 0. This is different from the Big Bang which doesn't distinguish between particulars. --ScienceApologist 05:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Missing part

At the Overwiev there is an incomplete sentence:

There is no compelling physical model for the first 10-33 seconds of the universe, before the phase transition called for ??????? by grand unification theory.

-- Harp 12:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Huh? The phase transition is called for by GUT. Maybe the wording is awkward, but there isn't anything missing in the sentence. --ScienceApologist 12:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry my English is not to good :-( -- Harp 16:04, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Big bang and Planck density

Could somebody please explain how these fit together? How can a "singularity" be more dense than Planck density? Is it the assumption that natural constants do not exist in a singularity? What is the evidence for such an assumption? (Oddy 07:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC))

The big bang is predicted to be a singularity if one models it solely using the equations of General Relativity. As you've noticed, quantum mechanical effects are expected to become significant as density approaches the Planck density, or as temperature approaches the Planck temperature, or as spacetime curvature becomes more severe than a specific value relating to Planck's constant. The four forces are also expected to unify under these conditions, further complicating the model. For these reasons, the Big Bang model is only considered valid after a certain point in time (often assumed to be the Planck Epoch, but possibly later depending on how unification works). The evolution of the universe prior to that time is unknown (we don't yet have models of how physics works that would apply under the conditions expected to be present). --Christopher Thomas 21:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Christopher. Means to me that the universe started as an "object" of Planck density once the Planck epoch ended. Assuming that the mass (=energy) of the universe remained constant, since, what was the "diameter" of that object? Why did it expand considering the huge gravitational force applying? Oddy 09:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The size of the universe at Planck density could have been just about anything. In the simplest GR-based model, it was (and is now) infinite, being zero only at time zero. In practice, observations can only place a lower bound on the size of the (observable and non-observable) universe, based on the fact that if it was less than a certain size before cosmic inflation, the ability of distant parts to interact with each other would have left a detectable imprint on the cosmic microwave background. To the best of my knowledge, the estimated size of the universe today based on CMB observations is "anywhere from 150 billion light-years to infinite", but a) I could easily be misremembering the exact figure quoted and b) the results of that particular paper were not verified by other papers, so it can't be considered a verified, accepted value. To backtrack to the size when it was at Planck density, if you assume that it has a finite, known size today, you still have to make assumptions about the nature of the force that caused inflation, so you'll get varying answers. Short answer is "we don't know, and won't until we have a much better understanding of the mechanism underlying cosmic inflation".
Be advised that the model of when the universe approached the Planck density is derived mostly using GR, which means it isn't trustworthy, as we expect gravity to behave in a modified manner at those energies, and don't presently have a good model of how it would behave.
As for why the universe expanded, the short answer is "because it was energetically and entropically favourable for it to do so". See cosmic inflation for details. The idea is that, in the early life of the universe, a field existed in it that exerted a very extreme repulsive force. The repulsive dark energy observed today may or may not be a vestige of this type of effect. We don't know what causes either of these. We have several models of possibilities, but they'll only be verified when we can either directly examine systems with energies in the scale where these fields become important (i.e. in a really powerful particle accelerator), or when observations of the universe rule out all but one variant of M-theory or quantum gravity or what-have-you, and produce additional support of whatever the remaining model is, pinning down the form of a theory of everything which would let us make predictions at higher energies than we can directly examine.
Right now, you appear to be applying lower-energy models to this situation, and will of course get contradictory results (the models aren't accurate when applied to the Planck regime). --Christopher Thomas 06:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Density before the Big Bang

Correct me if I am wrong, but if space(time) did not exist as such before the Big Bang, it would be correct to say that not only was it "enormously dense" but infinitly dense (and therefor infinitly hot?). --Friðrik Bragi Dýrfjörð 13:44, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a difference between space existing and occupying a size of zero and space not existing at all. --ScienceApologist 14:11, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

As Thomas mentioned above and I agree: "The evolution of the universe prior to that time (the end of the Planck epoch) is unknown". Indeed, we never will know and it would be a waste of time to speculate about. The universe cannot have become "real", i.e. subject to the laws of physics, before the Planck epoch was over. Assuming it had a "density" exceeding the Planck density before and during the Planck epoch (natural constants not applying, therefore), it must have "expanded" to an object of Planck density when "entering real life". That leads to the question I raised earlier: Why did it, as an object of Planck density, expand further? Temperature can't be the driving force because a "real life object" cannot be more "hot" than Planck temperature.Oddy 21:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Read about cosmic inflation and particular the false vacuum associated with the inflaton field. There are a number of suggestions for why expansion happened in the first place but one is that the universe "rolled" down the potential and others include such suggestions as the universe "tunneled" into being with the expansion intact. --ScienceApologist 21:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree about us "never knowing" what happened at or before the Planck epoch. My statement was simply that we'd need a good model of quantum gravity, and more likely a Theory of Everything, before we could make predictions with any confidence in their accuracy. --Christopher Thomas 21:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The discussion slipped away from the aspect of looking into the implications of Planck density on what happened around the big bang. Having followed the advice of Science Apologist and read along the hyperlinks I ultimately ended up again and again with terms like hypotheses, speculation, do-not-know etc. So, my intent still is to look to things that are pretty well known, here the Planck density defined by the natural constants. You inevitably get to Planck density if you track the universe back in time. Forward in time it is believed to expand, i.e. becomes less dense. Hence backward in time it was more dense. Going backward far enough it therefore must have been an object of Planck density. Going back further to an object with "supra-Planck density" means that the natural constants no longer apply. As we never will know which constants applied instead (if at all) we never will really know what was going on in the Planck epoch or before. Hence, "reality" started when the Planck epoch was over and there was an object of Planck density. The question then is: do the properties of an object of Planck density allow to happen what we believe has happened later? Please focus your response to this aspect. Oddy 03:13, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you meant that would be a good question for a scientific paper. Several Wikipedia policies agree that Wikipedia expects its editors to present mainstream opinions and sufficiently notable minority opinions, not to decide which opinion is true. Art LaPella 03:41, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
You make several statements here that I don't think are logically supported. Specifically:
  • Your statement that the universe inevitably reaches even Planck density as one tracks backward in time isn't accepted as fact. The prediction is based on expressing the universe's expansion in terms of general relativity, and so will break down at the point at which GR ceases to be an accurate model. While our current best guess is that this occurs somewhere near Planck temperature and/or density, there are other possibilities (the most notable recent one was the idea that extra dimensions in string theory may not be curled down to the Planck radius, which would lower the energy at which gravity unifies with the other forces to something closer to the GUT scale). Experimental tests of this particular hypothesis have been performed, though they were only able to rule out a small range of the options. Whenever a GUT-energy collider is built, it'll similarly narrow down options, so this is an area of testable research, not philosophical handwaving.
  • Your statement that backwards in time from the Planck density, the universe must have been more dense, is emphatically not accepted as fact. It only looks that way if you're using GR to model the universe, and you're explicitly in a region where GR ceases to be a useful model. We'll only be able to make useful predictions when we have a model that applies to systems that approach the Planck density. People have tried to look at this situation (and others in the same domain, like black hole collapse) using things like string theory, but enough assumptions have to be made (with our present incomplete understanding of physics in that regime) that varying answers are obtained. Wait until we have an experimentally-tested model of string theory or quantum gravity before expecting any kind of authoritative answer.
  • Your statement that in a system with "supra-Planck density", natural constants don't apply, seems to have been pulled out of thin air. A more correct statement would be to say that the idea of a "system with density greater than Planck density" isn't compatible with our present, incomplete, models of physics. If we have a system where our models predict this kind of situation, it doesn't mean the universe breaks down - it means the tool we're using to _model_ the universe breaks down. Wait for better tools to be discovered and verified.
  • Your conclusion that "reality started when the Planck epoch is over" is not supported by your evidence, for reasons explained above. The actual situation is that our models of reality are only accurate for times substantially after the Planck epoch.
  • Your question "do the properties of a Planck object allow (X)" cannot be answered with present physics, for the reason repeatedly stated above. We do not (yet) have an accurate model of how a system with Planck density behaves.
Does this clarify what people have been saying to you? --Christopher Thomas 05:50, 20 May 2006 (UTC)