The only thing that makes sense?

Question

How reasonable is it to belive that just out of the blue an atom blew up in space and randomly started the universe? Something would have had to trigger it right. Isnt the ONLY reasonable answer to this is the collapse of another universe,trigging an explosion big enough to start a new universe. Like if this universe is expanding then there was only so much energy for it to continue and someday maybe soon it will start to collapse and soon contrsct to a single point casuing all of the matter in this universe to collade casuing a BIG BANG and restarting the process. ?

Answer 1

Well, basically, we're not sure how it started.  There are a couple of hypotheses, but they can only be shown mathematically.

However, there are currently ongoing experiements that may be able to help explain how the universe started.   Look in the May 2008 edition of Popular Science magazine for an article called "The Tabletop Universe."

It really helps explain one of the on-going research projects that sheds a lot of light on the origin of our universe.  What they're doing is trying to mimic the big bang with a two-phase helium system.

A snippit from the article, "Right after the Big Bang, the universe expanded at an enormous rate, but no one knows how or why.  One explanation suggests that our universe is actually a brane - a three-dimensional world suspended in a four-dimensional superstructure.  Inflation happened when our brane collided with another brane.  The collision also created defects that eventually coalesced into galaxies.

To test this theory, scientists set up an analogous system. They took cold helium and seperated it into two phases. The boundary between phases stood in for a brane.  When they collided, the miniature universe was born."  (Popular Science, May 2008, pg 74).

Answer 2

There are any number of concepts, but none of them can be scientifically verified, although some who post answers to this type of question present the concepts as though they're etched-in-stone facts.

When talking about either 'what' came before the Big Bang that created our universe, or 'what' lies beyond our universe there's no way that any of the myriad concepts can be invoked without either infinity, an absolute void, or some kind of metaphysical First Cause necessarily entering the picture.

One idea is that our universe has dimensions other than those we're familiar with. How many other dimensions? Six? Eleven? A billion? Assume that there are a hundred additional dimensions. That would leave us right back where we started -- what's beyond those hundred dimensions? The only answer is there must be an infinite number of dimensions.

Another notion is that our universe started when it collided with another universe. Okay, again the original question isn't answered because we're left still hung up on the original question -- what's beyond our universe and the one we collided with?

Then there's the idea that there's some 'mother' universe that spawns other universes. Back to the same question -- what's beyond this 'mother' universe? If there's nothing then it must be infinite.

By calling up Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle concepts have been developed stipulating that every time a decision is made, like you turn left instead of right at some crossroads, or an atom "decides" to decay, another universe branches off in which the opposite decision is made. Here again the question is 'where' or 'when' did such critical decisions begin? After the Big Bang? That puts us right back at square one -- what was before that?

FYI....There were *no* atoms at the instant of the Big Bang. There was nothing except energy and spacetime.

Answer 3

<How reasonable is it to belive that just out of the blue an atom blew up in space and randomly started the universe?>

That's not at  all reasonable. It's also not what the big bang theory says happened.

Answer 4

I suggest a PhD in physics .. then you might realise that you have no idea what you are talking about :-)

Answer 5

Nothing makes sense, there's always a new question when it comes to the big picture of the universe.

Answer 6

That's pretty much the prevailing theory....

Answer 7

the only thing that makes sense ....is for each of us 'plain folks' without the PhD's to do a little research, see what the theories ARE that are out there for inspection and then to pick one that we like and stick with it..... ONE of us will end up right if they ever figger it out!!.... me, I'm with the recycling universe thing................

Answer 8

You don't believe magical large-scale cosmological space can separate giant galaxies and superclusters by expansion???

I bet it's because the distance from the Earth to the Moon forgets to "expand" here in our special little local region of space free from all those terrible consequences of magical ever-expanding large-scale cosmological space. In fact, none of our planets' distances in regards to each other are really changing much at all here in our solar system. It doesn't even mess up my hair!  Could you imagine the price for rocket fuel every time you wanted to make a probe go to Mars but Mars just kept moving away... further and further... THE UTTER CHAOS!  Could you imagine the havoc on Michael Strahan's front teeth?!?! Our atomic orbitals that make us up seem safe... at least for now. We are SO LUCKY to live in this 'special region' we do. Especially since 'they' say the expansion is actually accelerating every where else!

Obviously, either something else is causing the red shifts (Gravitational redshift perhaps... maybe) or there is a new force involved at these scales and/or distances... almost similar to normal familiar gravity but in reverse... a sort of ever-increasing "push from a distance" if you will. Like adding more and more "antigravity springs" between these large-scale objects as their respective distance increases... weird to say the least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation...

BTW, the 'trigger' for a particular Big Bang event would have to come in the form of a 'Prime Observer' at its fuzzy nanoscopic beginning IF the quantum mechanical concept of Shrodinger's Cat is correct...

Answer 9

No, the total energy content of the Universe may be zero.  The positive energy of the particles is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy.  Therefore, there is no need to supply any "stuff" to make the Big Bang.  In particular, there is no need to collapse any precursor Universes or make something out of a lot of black holes.