What If the Big Bang Wasn’t the Beginning? New Study Proposes Alternative

Was the universe created with a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, or has it been expanding and contracting for eternity? A new paper, inspired by alternative explanations of the physics of black holes, explores the latter possibility, and rejects a core tenant of the Big Bang hypothesis.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

What If the Big Bang Wasn’t the Beginning? New Study Proposes Alternative

Was the universe created with a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, or has it been expanding and contracting for eternity? A new paper, inspired by alternative explanations of the physics of black holes, explores the latter possibility, and rejects a core tenant of the Big Bang hypothesis.

more…

> “The Big Bang as the initial singularity is only a speculation,”

Yeah, that’s rather like saying that general relativity is only a speculation.

> it proposes that the universe is eternally undergoing a cycle of contraction and expansion

That hypothesis is not new, the version with general relativity dates back to the 1920s. It was killed off by the laws of thermodynamics by Richard C. Tolman in 1934. The death of the hypothesis was confirmed in 1992 by the COBE results, and again by 1998 by the discovery of the universe’s accelerating expansion.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

What If the Big Bang Wasn’t the Beginning? New Study Proposes Alternative

Was the universe created with a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, or has it been expanding and contracting for eternity? A new paper, inspired by alternative explanations of the physics of black holes, explores the latter possibility, and rejects a core tenant of the Big Bang hypothesis.

more…

> “The Big Bang as the initial singularity is only a speculation,”

Yeah, that’s rather like saying that general relativity is only a speculation.

> it proposes that the universe is eternally undergoing a cycle of contraction and expansion

That hypothesis is not new, the version with general relativity dates back to the 1920s. It was killed off by the laws of thermodynamics by Richard C. Tolman in 1934. The death of the hypothesis was confirmed in 1992 by the COBE results, and again by 1998 by the discovery of the universe’s accelerating expansion.

“Killed off”?

Of course it bloody well wasn’t.

The hypothesis of the big bang having no precursor is based on untestable assumptions, so alternative hypotheses with other untestable assumptions are inherently unkillable.

mollwollfumble said:

> “The Big Bang as the initial singularity is only a speculation,”

Yeah, that’s rather like saying that general relativity is only a speculation.

How so? General relativity is a theory supported by experimental data. What experimental data supports the existence of the initial singularity?

esselte said:

mollwollfumble said:

> “The Big Bang as the initial singularity is only a speculation,”

Yeah, that’s rather like saying that general relativity is only a speculation.

How so? General relativity is a theory supported by experimental data. What experimental data supports the existence of the initial singularity?

The AI running this place is getting good.

I just tried to submit a reply questioning GR, and it made me re-login, and lost the post in the process.

The AI running this place is getting good.

I just tried to submit a reply questioning GR, and it made me re-login, and lost the post in the process.

———-

Like the two black cats in The Matrix…

esselte said:

mollwollfumble said:

> “The Big Bang as the initial singularity is only a speculation,”

Yeah, that’s rather like saying that general relativity is only a speculation.

How so? General relativity is a theory supported by experimental data. What experimental data supports the existence of the initial singularity?

I said cyclic universe was killed off.

That’s different to big bang denialism, which can only be refuted by the combination of Occam’s Razor and continuing experimental evidence to higher and higher accuracy.

I could list a plethora of experimental tests and theoretical explanations confirming the hypothesis that time started at the big bang singularity. I can remember a dozen or so without even trying.

Apologies for me getting emotional about this matter.

There are two issues here:

1. Cyclic universe – completely ruled out by experimental data because our present universe can’t and will never collapse. Dark energy ensures that.

2. Avoidance of singularity – this has been a theoretical football for the past 92 years, ever since Hubble proved the expansion of the universe in 1925. That the universe may have begun as a singularity has been a theoretical possibility since then. Way back before that, by the year 1610 Kepler knew that the universe couldn’t be infinite in both time and space when he formulated what later became known as Olbers Paradox.

For me, the final proof that the universe began in a singularity was the proof that any disturbance on the surface of a Kerr black hole by an infalling mass created disturbances within that black hole that closed off the throat of the wormhole. This theoretical proof didn’t occur all at once but slowly in a series of three papers by three different authors over a period of about a decade. The first concluded that closure of the wormhole by gravitational waves was a possibility, the second that it was a high probability, the third that it couldn’t be avoided. I asked for clarification about this on the Physics Forum, and that’s what we unearthed.

Why a Kerr black hole – because conservation of angular momentum says that it’s a theoretical certainty that every black hole is a Kerr black hole.

Some theoretical physicists disagreed with this. One widely popularised one said that a Kerr black hole could be held open by exotic matter – matter with an inverse relationship between pressure and density – but it was agreed on the Physics Forum that exotic matter of this type could not exist (except as a metamaterial, and that isn’t any use here). A second widely popularised one was that dark energy could hold a Kerr black hole open. Again this can’t happen because it requires a type of dark energy that is completely ruled out by astronomical observation.

And now this new paper on avoidance of singularity. I’m not even going to read the technical article here because it has to rely on some unsubstantiated assumption.

So much for the theory. Now for the astronomical observations.

The maximum possible size for a singularity-avoiding big bang has shrunk remarkably, and is still shrinking. Even before the advent of cosmic inflation it had been proved by observation that the present observable universe was once shrunk into a volume smaller than that of a single subatomic particle. Now we have astronomical observations pushing back to a time 10 ^-36 seconds after the big bang singularity. One year after the big bang, the diameter of the present observable universe was 1 parsec, within spitting distance of the diameter of a black hole containing the same mass. 10 ^-6 seconds after the big bang the entire mass of the observable universe was jammed into a region 1 metre across.

The classical radius of an electron is 10 ^-16 metres. So experimental observations tell us that the entire mass of the observable universe after 10 ^-36 seconds was crammed into a ball whose diameter was a hundredth of a trillionth of the diameter of an electron.

Anyone who has the sheer unadulterated gall to simultaneously claim that the entire observational universe fitted into a ball a hundredth of a trillionth of the diameter of an electron and yet still misses a singularity is a candidate for a mental asylum. That’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times closer to the singularity of a black hole than to its event horizon.

Don’t know if it’s of any relevance but in this mornings news feed:

IT’S almost as far into space — and back in time — as we can see.
It’s a black hole.
A big one. Some 800 million times the mass of our own Sun.
It’s also so far away, it must have been chewing its way through the assemble gas clouds and early stars of the infant universe itself.

It shouldn’t exist.

It lived at a time shortly after clouds of energetic particles cooled into nitrogen gas, when the universe was only just inventing the idea of stars.

EXPLORE MORE: Can black holes prove the Big Bang didn’t happen?

It had reached its size just 690 million years after the point beyond which there is nothing. The most dominant scientific theory of recent years describes that point as the Big Bang — a spontaneous eruption of reality as we know it out of a quantum singularity.
But another idea has recently been gaining weight: that the universe goes through periodic expansions and contractions — resulting in a “Big Bounce”.
And the existence of early black holes has been predicted to be a key telltale as to whether or not the idea may be valid.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/black-hole-at-the-dawn-of-time-challenges-our-understanding-of-how-the-universe-was-formed/news-story/3279356705a47d45416ae2e6ead41175

AwesomeO said:

Don’t know if it’s of any relevance but in this mornings news feed:

IT’S almost as far into space — and back in time — as we can see.
It’s a black hole.
A big one. Some 800 million times the mass of our own Sun.
It’s also so far away, it must have been chewing its way through the assemble gas clouds and early stars of the infant universe itself.

It shouldn’t exist.

It lived at a time shortly after clouds of energetic particles cooled into nitrogen gas, when the universe was only just inventing the idea of stars.

EXPLORE MORE: Can black holes prove the Big Bang didn’t happen?

It had reached its size just 690 million years after the point beyond which there is nothing. The most dominant scientific theory of recent years describes that point as the Big Bang — a spontaneous eruption of reality as we know it out of a quantum singularity.
But another idea has recently been gaining weight: that the universe goes through periodic expansions and contractions — resulting in a “Big Bounce”.
And the existence of early black holes has been predicted to be a key telltale as to whether or not the idea may be valid.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/black-hole-at-the-dawn-of-time-challenges-our-understanding-of-how-the-universe-was-formed/news-story/3279356705a47d45416ae2e6ead41175

Well they weren’t your words but I’ve always said everything comes down to expansion and contraction and it works even if there was or wasn’t a big bang.

mollwollfumble said:

Now we have astronomical observations pushing back to a time 10 ^-36 seconds after the big bang singularity.

That sounds interesting. Can you supply details (or a link)?

Well it seems the bond mystery has been solvered. It was just a cock-up at their end – she thought she’d sent me the form to sign but hadn’t. She’s getting on to it now.

Bubblecar said:

Well it seems the bond mystery has been solvered. It was just a cock-up at their end – she thought she’d sent me the form to sign but hadn’t. She’s getting on to it now.

…not that the universe was depending on my estate agent for its origin, which is fortunate.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Now we have astronomical observations pushing back to a time 10 ^-36 seconds after the big bang singularity.

That sounds interesting. Can you supply details (or a link)?

Link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_

“In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10 ⁻³⁶ seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to sometime between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the singularity. Following the inflationary period, the Universe continues to expand, but at a less rapid rate.”

mollwollfumble said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Now we have astronomical observations pushing back to a time 10 ^-36 seconds after the big bang singularity.

That sounds interesting. Can you supply details (or a link)?

Link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_

“In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10 ⁻³⁶ seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to sometime between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the singularity. Following the inflationary period, the Universe continues to expand, but at a less rapid rate.”

Using hypothesised inflation, which is based on a hypothesised initial singularity, as conclusive evidence for an initial singularity, seems a little circular.