done one of these in a while.
I really don't see what's left to say honestly
But we'll revisit a few things I suppose.
Excerpts from the article
followed w commentary underneath in parenthesis.
There will be a point made about a very subtle built in bias
that may have slipped you by.
Ask Ethan: How did the Universe truly begin?
"If you said "with the Big Bang," congratulations: that was our best answer as of ~1979. Here's what we've learned in all the time since."
:-).
That picture represents the universe from Big Bang till now.
All 13.8 billion years of it.
Outside of it is "Nothing"
Not empty space.
Hard concept but you need to keep it in mind.
Empty space is still "something" although it's empty.
Thank you Gerald Schroader.
A parking lot without any cars in it doesn't quit being a parking lot.
Space without anything in it doesn't quit being space.
Just...try and keep it in mind as we move along.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When it comes to the question of our cosmic origin, a series of remarkable observations led to the Big Bang becoming the leading theory describing our cosmic origins. However, it soon became clear that there were puzzles the Big Bang, on its own, couldn't explain, leading to a new theory that made incredible predictions that were later borne out: cosmic inflation."
(You see?
There was a "crisis in Cosmology" a while back and it didn't render the Big Bang obsolete.
The theory of "cosmic inflation" solved certain problems. It just begs the question now of, why are certain physicist so quick to jump to the conclusion there is a "crisis in cosmology?
Seems like the last time there was one it got solved. Why would we not think certain "problems" couldn't/wouldn't be solved again? If they were solved the last time?)
"Yet cosmic inflation, as we understand it, couldn't have been the absolute beginning of everything. The question of our ultimate cosmic origins are still an open one, from a scientific perspective."
(Sux for yawl lol, sorry, had too)
"One of the biggest questions — perhaps the biggest question of all — that we can ask about our Universe is where, if we go all the way back, it came from. Before the stars and galaxies, before the emergence of atoms, before the very first moment of time ever passed-and-elapsed, how did it all begin? It’s a question that many of us wonder about, and a question that, despite our best efforts, science still doesn’t have a convincing, compelling answer for
that’s supported by actual, measurable data."
(Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover,
he has put a sense of past and future
into their minds,
yet they cannot find out what God has done
from the beginning to the end.)
“I would like to read a discussion on why the big bang took place, the very [first] one, and not the simple answer that ‘[this] is a recurring event.'”
(Good, cause it's not,
not that is supported by:
"actual, measurable data"
anyway.
“[I]f eternal inflation is true, but time is still finite, where [might] the universe have come from? Because there still needed to be a beginning, right?”
(Exactly, how did the Quantum fluctuations get in the
"hypothetical inflation field" to "produce changes in the rate of expansion that are responsible for eternal inflation."?)
"To dive into this question and truly do it justice, we’re going to have to separate out three commonly confused and conflated things, and then talk about all three:
The hot Big Bang, as it applies to our Universe,
The theory of cosmic (or cosmological) inflation, and how it precedes and sets up the Big Bang,
And then the question of an ultimate beginning or origin to our Universe, and how both inflation and the original idea of the Big Bang are dissatisfying for providing such an answer."
"As a balloon inflates, any coins glued to its surface will appear to recede away from one another, with ‘more distant’ coins receding more rapidly than the less distant ones. Any light will redshift, as its wavelength ‘stretches’ to longer values as the balloon’s fabric expands. This visualization solidly explains cosmological redshift within the context of the expanding Universe. If the Universe is expanding today, that means it was smaller, hotter, and denser in the past: leading to the picture of the hot Big Bang."
(It's not complicated! Some of us like to say :-).)
"So if the Universe is expanding, what does that imply?
Going forward in time, it means that as space itself expands, the matter within the Universe dilutes to lower densities, because matter is made of a fixed number of particles, but as space expands, the volume it occupies continues to increase. Hence, the Universe gets less dense over time."
"However, that means if we consider what happens to the matter and radiation in the Universe if we run the clock in the other direction — backward in time — we find that precisely the opposite conditions would have occurred: the Universe, when it was younger, would have been both denser and hotter. Go farther back in time, and all the matter and radiation would have occupied a smaller volume, making the Universe denser. The light that was stretched by cosmic expansion, if you run the clock backward, would have had its wavelength shortened in the past, leading to hotter conditions and higher temperatures. And if you imagine going all the way back, as far as the laws of physics will let you, you’ll arrive at a singular state: where all of the matter-and-radiation were contained within a single point of infinite density and temperature."
(Two points:
One for the scientist, who doesn't believe the Book
(you know which one :-),
and the other for the believer of the book
who doesn't believe the science.
1) I reiterate:
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
2) Matthew 19:26
But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
So? To the scientist:
Don't ever gonna tell me you're gonna figure it all out, you're not, and to the believer who doesn't think the science behind it is possible? God in the flesh said otherwise.
Just because certain groups of both of those types of individuals cant wrap their heads around what I just said (Or more than likely they just don't wanna) don't mean it isn't so.
"...as far as the laws of physics will let you,..."
This is really key.
It's not that there wasn't anything there before the big bang.
It's that the laws of physics don't allow us to get past certain barriers to observe, measure, quantify etc what was there.
A theologian might argue its for a reason
See Ecc 3:11.
A fish can only jump so high out of the water.
etc.)
"There is a large suite of scientific evidence that supports the expanding Universe and the Big Bang. At every moment throughout our cosmic history
for the first several billion years,
the expansion rate
and the total energy density
balanced precisely,
enabling our Universe to persist and form complex structures. This balance was essential if complex structures, like stars and galaxies, were to arise within the Universe."
("For the first several billion years"
The expansion rate of the universe has changed.
This has theistic implications.
As in:
the·ism
/ˈTHēˌizəm/
noun
belief in the existence of a god or gods,
especially belief in one god as creator of the universe,
intervening in it
and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.
Plus?
No stars?
No carbon.
No Carbon?
No life.
Almost like an entity wanted it that way.
And?
"the expansion rate and the total energy density"
weren't the only things that were
"balanced precisely"
"Martin Rees formulates the fine-tuning of the universe in terms of the following six dimensionless physical constants.[2][18]
(My favorite guy BTW :-).
We'll just look at one of them:
Epsilon (ε), a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force.[19] If ε were 0.006, a proton could not bond to a neutron, and only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the Big Bang. Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less than about 50%.
(As for the "other physicist?
Come explain away
all the other "initial conditions",
"constants"
and "parameters"
of the universe
for me. I'll be waiting.)
"Cosmic inflation"
(I know it's long
but it has to be included to get to the point :-)
"But even as evidence was accumulating for the hot Big Bang in the 1960s and 1970s, puzzles emerged as well: things that were observed, but that the Big Bang itself couldn’t explain. For example, if the Universe began from a singular state of arbitrarily high temperatures and densities, then there are at least three observations that simply don’t make sense."
"The horizon problem: if we look in different directions, we see the Universe as having the same temperature and density everywhere. But even since the start of the hot Big Bang,
these regions
never had time
to communicate,
exchange information,
or reach thermal equilibrium
with one another.
So how did they evolve to reach the same temperature and conditions everywhere?
(What makes anybody think regions of the universe could:
communicate,
or
exchange information?)
The flatness problem: in an expanding Universe, in general, there’s a “fight” between the initial expansion rate that drives things apart and the gravitational effects that work to bring everything back together. In our Universe, we observe that these two opposing forces are pretty much perfectly, exactly balanced, leading to an exactly spatially flat Universe. So why was our Universe born with those properties?
The monopole (or ancient relic) problem: if the Universe reached these arbitrarily high temperature and energy conditions, then why are there no exotic, leftover heavy relics: right-handed neutrinos, magnetic monopoles, and other particles that should be observable and left over today?
(See Ecc 3:11
THE FOLLOWING IS WHERE I REALLY TOOK EXCEPTION TO THIS PIECE
and shows:
"a very subtle built in bias
that may have slipped you by.")
"We can always shrug our shoulders and mutter something like,
“Those must’ve just been the initial conditions, or the way the Universe was born,”
but that runs counter to the enterprise of science. "
(NO! 100% patently false. It most assuredly does not
"run(s) counter to the enterprise of science"
"There is a simple principal
which is a bar against all information,
which is proof against all argument
and which cannot fail
to keep a man or woman
in everlasting ignorance.
This principal is contempt prior to investigation."
Why is such contempt to initial conditions shown here?
It couldn't be due to the theistic implications of showing design and thereby needing a designer could it?
In every other scientific investigations
ALL THINGS
are to be considered
until they can
REASOBNABLY
be ruled out.
THAT IS SCIENCE.
SAYING BEFOREHND:
"WELL THAT JUST CANT BE IT."
ISNT.
The question to ask ourselves here is:
WHY IS THERE A DIFFERENT STANDARD BEING INVOIKED FOR THE
QUESTION OF:
"how did it all begin?"
WHY IS THAT STANDARD GLOSSED OVER IN THIS INSTANCE?
"Instead,
we look for a mechanism
that would mandate
and set up these conditions."
Newsflash:
You just ruled it out
before you even got started.
John 4:24
God is a spirit...
That is your "mechanism"
that you are looking for.)
"That mechanism sprung forth in 1980 in a remarkable paper by Alan Guth, who noted explicitly that an early, rapid, and relentless phase of exponential expansion — where the Universe’s energy was not distributed among matter and radiation quanta, but rather was inherent to the fabric of space itself (either in a field or via some other mechanism) — would solve all three of these problems.
(Newsflash:
Didn't solve the problem.
It still exist.
What was
"the mechanism"
by which
"a field"
arrived on the scene,
or?
If it was:
"some other mechanism"
What was it?)
"...something else became remarkably clear: that inflation would provide a quantum mechanism for seeding the Universe with initial imperfections, or the seeds of cosmic structure, that would later become observable in detail."
(Okay great, don't have a problem with any of it, but how did:
"a quantum mechanism for seeding the Universe with initial imperfections"
get there?
What was "the mechanism"
that put the "quantum mechanism"
in place?
The problem is still there.)
"The quantum fluctuations inherent to space, stretched across the Universe during cosmic inflation, gave rise to the density fluctuations imprinted in the cosmic microwave background, which in turn gave rise to the stars, galaxies, and other large-scale structures in the Universe today. This is the best picture we have of how the entire Universe behaves, where inflation precedes and sets up the Big Bang. Unfortunately, we can only access the information contained inside our cosmic horizon, which is all part of the same fraction of one region where inflation ended some 13.8 billion years ago."
(Lets review:
"Unfortunately,
we can only access the information
contained inside our cosmic horizon"
Again Ecc 3:11 yo.
You will never comprehend what infinite wisdom has done, or can do, start to finish. None of us, not in this existence we wont.
and?
INFORMATION
is always a sign of a conscious
sentient intellect,
a brain.
There's not one recorded instance anywhere,
ever, of it having just spontaneously coming into existence on its own,
nor of it evolving over time
nor of it randomly assembling itself together.
I would go on about the DNA Molecule and the information it contains, but I digress)
INFORMATION
is always the result
of an intellect
trying to tell you something.)
"Because inflation represents an exponential expansion of space, though, rather than one that terminates in a singularity like the original model for the Big Bang, however, it sets up a very different picture of the beginning: of a “whoosh” that led to a Big Bang, rather than the emergence of time and space from a singular state."
Remember I said earlier:
All 13.8 billion years of it.
Outside of it is "Nothing"
Not empty space.
Hard concept but you need to keep it in mind.
Empty space is still "something" although it's empty."
Now is where we are going to apply it.
Blue and red lines represent a “traditional” Big Bang scenario, where everything starts at time t=0, including spacetime itself. But in an inflationary scenario (yellow), we never reach a singularity, where space goes to a singular state; instead, it can only get arbitrarily small in the past, while time continues to go backward forever. Only the last minuscule fraction of a second, from the end of inflation, imprints itself on our observable Universe today. The size of the now-observable Universe could’ve been no smaller than about 1 cubic meter in volume at the start of the hot Big Bang.
(Remember:
With God anything is possible.
If spacetime starts at the big bang as suggested?
Then what does the
"Inflationary scenario"
described above
exist in?
Covered this before:
"CREATE
To many of us, the word generally implies an action by something that has not existed before is brought into being. The biblical words do not necessarily mean "to create out of nothing.
The Hebrew words. A number of Hebrew words are used of fashioning, shaping, or making an object: the word bara, however, is distinctive. In the Qal stem it is used only of God's activity, thus making it a technical theological term. The emphasis in bara is not on making something from nothing but on
initiating an object or project.
There are certain things that only God is capable of initiating and thus of giving being.
Bara occurs in the Qal stem, indicating actions that fall outside the realm of human competence, in the following Scripture passages:
Ge 1:1,21,27; 2:3; 5:1-2;6:7; Nu 16:30; Dt 4:32;
Ps 51:10; 89:12,47; Ecc 12:1; Isa 4:5; 40:26,28;
41:20; 42:5; 43:1,7,15; 45:7-8,12,18; 54:16; 57:19; 65:17-18; Jer 31:22, Am 4:13:Mal 2:10)
I just dont think most of these physicist types or believers either for that matter quite grasp this concept.
Where is the other creation story that matches up as well? What faith is it from? What book is it in?
You already know the answers. People just don't want to admit it to themselves and its gonna cost them their eternity, and its just...sad...just truly sad...
So the question to
"What was God doing before he created the universe?"
Could be answered with:
"Working on inflationary models.
Initial conditions.
Quantum fluctuations
Universe constants,
parameters
Whatever the f*&^
he wanted to be doing,
He's God.)
"An ultimate beginning?
Now, we get to address the really big questions: what does all of this mean for the “true” beginning of the Universe, if such a thing even existed?
Back when we were only considering the hot Big Bang (without inflation), we could extrapolate back and reach a singular state — where the size of the Universe would go to zero — in a finite amount of time. But because inflation expands space in an exponential fashion, it’s impossible to extrapolate it back to a singularity; with exponentials, it would take an infinite amount of time to go back to a state where the Universe had zero size.
To make matters worse, the observable evidence that we have for inflation, where these
quantum fluctuations generated by inflationary processes
(What was the mechanism that got the
"quantum fluctuations"
or the
"inflationary processes"
started again?
Things don't just "invent" themselves
because they decide to.
If they did?
We would see this repeated.
We don't.
So again I ask:
What was the mechanism that got the
"quantum fluctuations"
or the
"inflationary processes"
started again?)
get imprinted on our visible Universe in ways we can measure and detect, is confined to only about the final ~100 or so “doublings” of the Universe before inflation ends.
This is monstrously insufficient for what we want to know, as this corresponds only to a time period of about the final ~10-32 seconds before inflation ends and gives rise to what we know as the hot Big Bang.
( How many times you gotta say it?
There is a book that is being proven true
right in front of your eyes
this day in age that explains that:
If we were hoping that we could just “push off” a singular beginning to an earlier epoch,
inflation squashes that hope;
there is nothing
we can observe
that tells us anything
about what,
if anything,
gave rise to inflation."
You'll never prove it with science.
That's only
what is observable, measurable or quantifiable, if not directly?
Then indirectly
by the effects we see
of what we are investigating that are: observable, measurable or quantifiable
(The effects that is)
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith
is the substance
of things hoped for,
the evidence
of things not seen.
Remember the italicized portion of that scripture.)
"One aspect of inflation that’s fascinating is known as eternal inflation. If you look at the details of how inflation works,
pretty much
(SUBTLE BIAS ALERT AGAIN,
I cant believe he even said it:
"Pretty much"
doesn't that:
"runs counter to the enterprise of science."?
But discounting initial conditions before even considering them as an option does?
THIS
is exactly the kind of crap I got problems with.)
Imagine if a theologian said that.
"Pretty much"
Would the physicist not laugh themselves out of their chairs?)
any model of inflation that you can construct that actually works — that gives you enough inflation to solve those three problems with the original Big Bang and produces the quantum effects necessary to seed the Universe with the imperfections that lead to our large-scale cosmic structure — will cause your Universe to expand in such a way that while inflation ends in some regions of space (like our own), leading to a hot Big Bang, there will be infinitely more, surrounding regions where inflation continues, generating more space that continues to inflate."
"In other words, once inflation begins, it not only wipes out any information of what existed before, but the inflationary state will persist, eternally, into the future."
(No kidding?
"The mechanism"
you are looking for designed it that away.
"the inflationary state will persist,
eternally, into the future"
Exactly
its called an expanding
UNIVERSE.
We have 0 evidence.
None.
of anywhere
in this one
of there being:
"infinitely more,
surrounding regions
where inflation continues,
generating more space
that continues to inflate"
Just because a theory gets some things right?
Doesn't mean it gets everything right.
"faith
is the substance
of things hoped for"
If it sounds like certain scientist are:
"Hoping"
for some things?
That they cant see?
It's because they are.)
"Sporadically, due to the same quantum fluctuations that seed the structure of the Universe..."
(Im sorry, I think I must have missed something, where did those same quantum fluctuations come from again?
Oh yeah
"The emphasis in bara is not on making something from nothing but on initiating an object or project. There are certain things that only God is capable of initiating and thus of giving being...")
"...even eternal inflation has its limits: it’s only eternal to the future, not to the past. In fact, it can be (and has been) proven that inflationary spacetimes are not past-timelike-complete, and must have emerged from some prior, non-inflationary (and possibly singular) state itself."
(Do you ever get the impression they are trying to work around something that cant be worked around?
Like Oh IDK, THE TRUTH maybe?
Yeah, go with that
"inflationary spacetimes...
must have emerged
from some prior,
non-inflationary
(and possibly singular)
state itself.
why don't we?)
"From whatever pre-existing state started it, inflation predicts
that
a series of independent universes
will be spawned
as inflation continues,..."
(SUBTLE BIAS ALERT AGAIN
Just because it
"predicts it"?
Doesn't make it so.
And?
As it was stated earlier:
"pretty much"
any model of inflation that you can construct that actually works...will cause your Universe to expand in such a way that while inflation ends in some regions of space (like our own), leading to a hot Big Bang, there will be infinitely more, surrounding regions where inflation continues, generating more space that continues to inflate."
Apparently?
There must be some inflationary models that work but that don't cause:
your Universe to expand in such a way that while inflation ends in some regions of space (like our own), leading to a hot Big Bang, there will be infinitely more, surrounding regions where inflation continues, generating more space that continues to inflate.
Why are we not hearing about them?
Why were they not included?
Do they:
"run counter to the enterprise of science"?
Or did the author just show you
his bias by not including them?
And If that's the case?
Why would he do such a thing?
Long story short:
This concept is nonsense and the author knows it.
Why else would he state:
"Pretty much"
and then leave the alternatives out?
any model of inflation that you can construct that actually works...will cause your Universe to expand in such a way that while inflation ends in some regions of space (like our own), leading to a hot Big Bang, there will be infinitely more, surrounding regions where inflation continues, generating more space that continues to inflate."
with each one being completely disconnected from every other one, separated by more inflating space. One of these “bubbles,” where inflation ended, gave birth to our Universe some 13.8 billion years ago, with a very low entropy density, but without ever violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It is unknown what spawned the state of inflation, only that it couldn’t be eternal to the past."
You can’t weasel your way out of this past-timelike-incompleteness by appealing to alternatives to inflation either, such as bouncing cosmologies or cyclic cosmologies, as those have been shown to suffer from the same problems. But that, alone, isn’t enough to tell us that the Universe must have begun from a singularity, either.
All of which is to say:
The hot Big Bang may be the best description we have of our early Universe, but it wasn’t the very beginning,
as there’s a cutoff in how far back you can extrapolate the temperature and density of our matter-and-radiation rich Universe.
Before the hot Big Bang, there was a period of cosmic inflation, which set up and gave rise to the hot Big Bang,
(If:
cosmic inflation,...
set up and gave rise to the hot Big Bang...?
Then what set up and gave rise to cosmic inflation?
Oh yeah...:-)
where space was full of energy, not matter-and-radiation, and expanded relentlessly and in an exponential fashion.
But inflation couldn’t have gone on forever,
and must have arisen
from some pre-existing,
non-inflationary state
that we can,
unfortunately, say very little about,
(Ecc 3:11)
except for the large number of things that we can firmly state it couldn’t have been.
As much as I’d love to give you an answer to the question of a “first cause” for existence,
the truth is
that we don’t yet (and may never) know how, or even if, things truly began."
Dear Ethan
You may not and may never know how things began.
Some of us do.
And quite obviously
Things began.
or we wouldn't
be here
in our universe
discussing them.
