Is the Big Bang an historical event ... or something else?

Question

Events exist thanks to the temporal component of Einstein's spacetime universe. Without Time, events can't happen.

We know the universe is expanding, so if we extrapolate backwards, we know there must be a time when everything was infinitely small.. and that's when the Big Bang "happened" and Time started... But the Big Bang couldn't have happened without a Time background to happen in, and Time didn't exist "before" the Big Bang... so... maybe the Big Bang isn't an event at all.... and if the Big Bang is not an event, then what is it ?

Answer 1

We disagree on this one when it comes to time. Time, if it exists, can't do so without events. When the first particles condensed out of the cooling singularity of the big bang, gravity, space and motion also came in being, time was not a requirement for motion, events took place spontaneously. When man evolved to the point where he began to explore his surroudings he was forced to create time for the calulation of speed and distance of motion. The big bang was not dependant on time, it consisted of a point of pure enegy, there was no gravity, no motion, and no space. It was the initial event that began a chain of events that lead up to our present stage of evolution.

Answer 2

Science can take this only so far.  The name "big bang" is a joke.  The actual name is the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter Model, and it goes back to about 5 x 10^-44 seconds.  LCDM does *not* say that the universe started infinitely small (in spite of what the popular simplifications say).

"Before" that is not a well defined concept, because it seems that things did not happen in a first this, then that order.  You could have event A, followed by event B, followed by A ... oops, no you couldn't, because there doesn't not seem to be any "events" before 5 x 10^-44 seconds.

So I would say that, no, there doesn't have to be a "time" when everything was infinitely small.  When the universe started, it was already 5 x 10^-44 seconds old, and was about 2 x 10^-35 meters across.

Questions about where the "big bang" came from are really religion questions, not science.  I do not think we will ever have any measurable facts about things before 5 x 10^-44 seconds, just like we will never have any measurable facts about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Answer 3

This was a very interesting question.  The Big Bang IS, in fact an event.  Time (as we know it) started at the big bang.  

The problem with your theory, is the fact that time started before the big bang.  Time is a measurment of entropy, the natural decay of all matter.  Thus time began with the creation of the first particle(s) of matter and it/they started to decay.  

That being said, time existed before the Big Bang.

Answer 4

The Big Bang is the midpoint of the existence of the Universe.  So much simpler to understand it that way, huh?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-...

Answer 5

Hello Alec. Your question is, of course, the billion dollars question. If we could answer it, we would understand much more about the universe.

We estimate the Big Bang to be roughly 13.7 billion years old. What if, in the future, we still measure it to be that? What if what we call the Big Bang is simply the antipode to 'here & now?'

When Columbus left Spain for what he believed was the Spice Islands, he had three choices:

Either the earth was flat and limited. After a while he would sail to the edge of it and fall into obvilon.

Or the earth was unlimited. He would sail, and his son and grand-son and never meet land again.

Or the earth was volumetric: you could circumnavigate it.

Strangely enough, no one has the latter as a vision of the universe. Yet Relativity tells us that nothing is as we see it but only from our frame of observation. There aren't any absolute reference for space or time.

... but then, how to explain Hubble's red-shift, the CMB and the distribution of hydrogen and helium? ... hum, ... back to square one! :-)

Cheers,

Michel

Answer 6

Time started with the Big Bang. Before there, there was nothing - no time, no space, no matter. Speaking of events 'before' the Big Bang is meaningless, it's like asking what's north of the North Pole. So the actual creation event happened at the same millisecond that time and space were also created. Without physical objects to measure against, there's no way to note the presence of time or space, so presuming they exist in an otherwise empty Universe has no meaning.

For example, if we pretend time existed before the Universe began, how long did it exist before the Big Bang? There's literally nothing to mark the passage of time. So a billion trillion years, an hour, a fraction of a second - they're all equal. Space is the same way - how do you measure space without anything in it? You can't, so there's no point trying to define it. A billion trillion light years, an inch - it's all the same with emptiness.

When you consider a situation like this, no time, no space, the Universe seems almost predestined to happen.