Events prior to Big Bang?

So God was taking target practice and the Big Bang is just where and when the arrow hit the Bull's Eye?

I do have some questions and musings about inflation I will put into a post after I finish reading a possibly somewhat related article in Dec 2010 Sci Am.
 
I'm sorry. How are concentric rings of microwave energy surrounding galaxies evidence of events before the Big Bang? Couldn't there be 1 million other plausible explanations? Plus how would energy existing concentrically around an object be evidence of cycles? The scientist is trying to explain the inflation of the universe. He is saying there must be inflationary cycles. So where is the evidence of deflation of the universe?

Seems more like the guy made a story he has been wanting to tell for a very long time and stuck a scientific observation in the middle of it.
 
nothing x's no one equals everything

whiteflag.gif
 
god was blowing up a big paper sack and then he hit his hands together and............bang!!!!!!!!

If they had had paper bags back in the days when those bronze age hebrews were writing their holy books or boly hooks I have no doubt that they might have entertained such an idea. Makes more sense than that stuff about a spare rib.

Right after god popped the paper bag he let out a lound "whoop" which the aggies picked up and use til this very day.
 
It seems a little odd to present his work in the context of the Big Bang theory when in fact his work appears to disagree with that organization of the evidence.
 
Are the Big Bangs recurring infinitely? That doesn't seem very plausible.

CCC still doesn't explain away inflation; it still holds that 'the Universe was shaped by an unthinkably large and fast expansion from a single point'...so, to the point. Higgs boson.

In bigger news, there have been some rumors floating around since July 2010 that a faint Higgs boson signal was detected. A 'three sigma' event was reported, but no official claims have been made. The probability is high, 99.7%, but not 100%. A "five sigma" event is needed to truly claim discovery.

If a discovery is made, it can't be called 'the God particle' anymore.
 
Are the Big Bangs recurring infinitely? That doesn't seem very plausible.

Why not? Certainly as plausible, if that is even the right standard to use, as anything else.

Science is not always ruled by what is plausible.
 
Even a single big bang is not plausible for a multitude of reasons. Multiple big bangs is total sci-fi fantasy land stuff.
 
Perhaps the Big Bang is repeated infinitely as described in Hinduism's creation story, or perhaps it occurs continuously and someday we can go watch it like at the "Big Bang Burger Bar".
 
Even a single big bang is not plausible for a multitude of reasons. Multiple big bangs is total sci-fi fantasy land stuff.

Why is that? Please don't say because it's not in the bible.
 
Do you those reasons you list make the big bang not plausible?

Or are they merely competing scientific theories/explanations for alternative creation events?

I mean, the big bang theory has been around a while, and seemingly widely accepted. To then say that the big bang is not plausible doesn't make sense.

It is very plausible. Plausible does not mean definitive.
 
RayDog,

I appreciate your direct approach, and also I appreciate your command of the topic. I’m not well-versed enough on theoretical physics to challenge the validity of any of the ideas you present, and so I won’t try.

But I do have a question: Is it your position that the expansion of the universe has always been accelerating? If that’s the case, then I’m not sure how we avoid the same sort of concentrated cosmogenesis that the Big Bang describes—though it would certainly be true that the initial stages of that expansion wouldn’t be a bang so much as a slow spreading out from one concentrated point into the vacuum of space. The reverse of expansion is contraction, and if the future points toward ever faster expansion, then the past must point toward an ever slowing contraction.

Or, if this is not your position, then it would seem logical to infer that you must envision a universe in which the rate of expansion can speed up and slow down—if not chaotically, then at least not linearly. And if that’s the case, then I don’t see why the expansion might not be able to reverse itself into contraction, or negative acceleration.

And so if (1) the rate of expansion is constant, then we must necessarily have come from a point of concentration. Or, if (2) the rate of acceleration is variable, then it is plausible to return to a point of concentration. I guess maybe this "point of concentration" isn't necessarily a textbook Big Bang, but to my way of thinking it's fundamentally similar.

But then you’ve been thinking about this all your life. I’ve thought about it for 20 minutes, and I’m certain there’s lots that I’m missing. Please advise.
 
I’m not ashamed to admit that I don’t really understand how your response relates to what I wrote. I’m not saying your response is inadequate; I’m confident that it has more to do with me not being far enough along in my understanding of physics.

Still, I wonder about the word “expansion” as you’re using it in this discussion. You spoke earlier about “the accelerating expansion of the universe”. But the word expansion, as I understand it, implies that the thing in question is spreading out from some central point of origin. A thing cannot expand inward; it can only expand outward. And if that’s the case, then even if your idea about matter being continuously produced is correct, we are still left with the fact that the platform for material production—whatever form it might take—must be bound by the concept of expansion and the notion of a concentrated point of origin that is implied by expansion.

It is in the very nature of an expanding thing that it has, as an ancestor, a concentrated point of origin from which it emanates. I don’t see how your model of material production escapes the orbit of the definition of expansion. If you are making the claim that this material production happens virtually everywhere there is a vacuum, then that wouldn’t seem to lead to expansion in any particular “outward” direction. Or, if you invoke dark matter in that case to account for the universe’s seemingly outward direction, then we’re still left with the same problem of ancestral concentration that is implied by the notion of “outward”. The Jews, for instance, could not have experienced a diaspora, unless in some sense they had an ancestral home from which they were being dispersed.

So what do we mean when we say that the universe is expanding, if it’s not meant to invoke the idea of a concentrated point of origin?

I’m not sure if that even makes sense to anyone but me, but in any case, you’ve chosen to engage with a bunch of amateurs here on this board, and I’m glad that you have. But you’ll have to help us sort through it.
 
It seems you cannot grasp how infinity works. What you have said is true of a closed universe, not an infinite one.
 
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