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The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 14, 2013 at 9:34 am
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2013 at 9:35 am by little_monkey.)
Often theists have made the argument that the universe comes from a singularity (BBT) and claim that only God could have created that singularity. I made my arguments here that the universe was never a singularity: http://soi.blogspot.com/
Any comments?
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 14, 2013 at 11:29 am
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2013 at 11:31 am by Anomalocaris.)
(March 14, 2013 at 9:34 am)little_monkey Wrote: Often theists have made the argument that the universe comes from a singularity (BBT) and claim that only God could have created that singularity. I made my arguments here that the universe was never a singularity: http://soi.blogspot.com/
Any comments?
State of the art in physics can not reach to the point where singularity occurs, so we know nothing further of what happened before we actually come to singularity. So singularity is a stand in for "unknown". But at the points after the notional singularity when modern physics can still reach, the universe was already so compact that if matter was all there was, it was already inside its own schwartzchild limits. So the schwartzchild argument fails the smell test. The argument probably fails due to lack of account for negative gravity and dark energy in the energy equation, nor the inflation and expansion of space itself.
Some theories suggests that right before the comfort zone of modern physics, but after the notional singularity, gravity was briefly repulsive instead of attractive. If true, this would put paid to any schwartzchild like argument about how big the universe must have been at the beginning.
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 14, 2013 at 1:22 pm
(March 14, 2013 at 11:29 am)Chuck Wrote: (March 14, 2013 at 9:34 am)little_monkey Wrote: Often theists have made the argument that the universe comes from a singularity (BBT) and claim that only God could have created that singularity. I made my arguments here that the universe was never a singularity: http://soi.blogspot.com/
Any comments?
State of the art in physics can not reach to the point where singularity occurs, so we know nothing further of what happened before we actually come to singularity. So singularity is a stand in for "unknown". But at the points after the notional singularity when modern physics can still reach, the universe was already so compact that if matter was all there was, it was already inside its own schwartzchild limits. So the schwartzchild argument fails the smell test. The argument probably fails due to lack of account for negative gravity and dark energy in the energy equation, nor the inflation and expansion of space itself.
Some theories suggests that right before the comfort zone of modern physics, but after the notional singularity, gravity was briefly repulsive instead of attractive. If true, this would put paid to any schwartzchild like argument about how big the universe must have been at the beginning.
Thanks for the comment. Yes indeed, at planck level no one really knows what happens. In fact Arkani-Hamed has argued that at planck level, any energy used to probe that scale would result in that probing energy collapsing into a black hole, hence nature has tricked us in denying any investigation at planck level. The only way out of this is if GR and QM are no longer valid at planck scale.
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 14, 2013 at 1:31 pm
From the beginning of time by Stephen Hawking.
Quote:At this time, the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe, would have been on top of itself. The density would have been infinite. It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang. The universe will evolve from the Big Bang, completely independently of what it was like before. Even the amount of matter in the universe, can be different to what it was before the Big Bang, as the Law of Conservation of Matter, will break down at the Big Bang.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 14, 2013 at 1:44 pm
(March 14, 2013 at 1:31 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: From the beginning of time by Stephen Hawking.
Quote:At this time, the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe, would have been on top of itself. The density would have been infinite. It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang. The universe will evolve from the Big Bang, completely independently of what it was like before. Even the amount of matter in the universe, can be different to what it was before the Big Bang, as the Law of Conservation of Matter, will break down at the Big Bang.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html
Thanks for the info. I find Hawking's take on this too speculative. It leaves the whole question wide open for theists to twart it in such ways to support their own position.
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 14, 2013 at 1:50 pm
(March 14, 2013 at 1:44 pm)little_monkey Wrote: It leaves the whole question wide open for theists to twart it in such ways to support their own position.
What makes you think they won't do that anyways?
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 14, 2013 at 2:35 pm
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2013 at 2:53 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(March 14, 2013 at 1:31 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: From the beginning of time by Stephen Hawking.
Quote:At this time, the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe, would have been on top of itself. The density would have been infinite. It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang. The universe will evolve from the Big Bang, completely independently of what it was like before. Even the amount of matter in the universe, can be different to what it was before the Big Bang, as the Law of Conservation of Matter, will break down at the Big Bang.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html
The notion that information can somehow ever be lost through any event, such as passage through event horizon, or big bang itself, was championed by Hawkings. But it seems to have come under serious attack by professionally, if not popularly, equally prominent physicists in the last 20 years. Recently falsifiable predictions of exactly how data about the previous universe would menifest itself as observable phenomenon in our own universe have been published.
(March 14, 2013 at 1:50 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: (March 14, 2013 at 1:44 pm)little_monkey Wrote: It leaves the whole question wide open for theists to twart it in such ways to support their own position.
What makes you think they won't do that anyways?
They will do it no matter what, but what they do will add more confusion if it appears to the laymen to slide neatly through loopholes in scientific understanding that the laymen have understood to exist through popular science literature.
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 15, 2013 at 7:40 pm
(March 14, 2013 at 1:50 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: (March 14, 2013 at 1:44 pm)little_monkey Wrote: It leaves the whole question wide open for theists to twart it in such ways to support their own position.
What makes you think they won't do that anyways?
Take the case with Kauss' arguments in "A Universe From Nothing". It leaves the door wide open for: 1) how do you know that the energy of the universe is exactly zero? Where's the evidence? 2) No one has ever observed a universe “popping” into existence. How would the universe do that? Then you need to come up with hyper-laws, laws that exist before the universe existed, and how would you account for that?
You can see there is a whole can of worms with Krauss and those who claim the universe popped out of existence from "nothing". OTOH, stating the universe was never a singularity forces everyone to think in a different direction.
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 16, 2013 at 1:03 am
This entire argument proves only one thing that I can think of; that there are a lot of unanswered questions. Reading the OP link only proved this author had nothing more than an algebraic understanding of physics and cosmology. Which frankly is fine and more than most people, but the extrapolation to objectively deny the concept of a singularity based universal origin is just completely false. There is no objective proof of the beginning (or if there was a beginning) to be had. It makes far more sense to acknowledge what we are uncertain about and then find ways of becoming certain.
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RE: The Universe Was Never a Singularity
March 16, 2013 at 8:39 am
(March 14, 2013 at 9:34 am)little_monkey Wrote: Often theists have made the argument that the universe comes from a singularity (BBT) and claim that only God could have created that singularity. I made my arguments here that the universe was never a singularity: http://soi.blogspot.com/
Any comments? Obviously it was never a singularity, lol. The more appropriate question is - was it empty, and if so, do the properties of the universe indeed cause matter to self-create?
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