The universe, at the instant of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, was an 'infinitely small dot' containing its total (and constant) energy. At that point — just before space-time came into existence — some of the energy within our energy-only 'dot universe', for some unknown reason, began to convert into matter, creating at the same time the energy-matter-space-time framework we perceive as our universe...

The Magnificent Dot.

After a lot of conjecture and speculation and theorizing, pretty much all working astronomers believe in this so-called Big Bang picture, in which the universe started out really small at some time roughly 15 billion years ago. It exploded. All of this stuff came out of it. But the thing that's so hard for us to picture is, the explosion of something that started the size of a dot, all the matter and all the energy, but in addition, all the space was in there. And when the thing exploded, not only did all this matter and energy come out of this explosion, but all the space came out of it too. So we were in there. And the concept of what was outside the dot before the dot exploded, it turns out is a non-concept because all the space was inside there too. Imponderable stuff. And so the subject of cosmology, the origin of the universe, and all that kind of stuff is a kind of mixture of science and philosphy, a very interesting subject and very hard to come to grips with.

-- Frank Bash - Director, McDonald Observatory

The Astonishing Origin of the Universe

The age of the universe is estimated to be anywhere from thirteen to fifteen billion years. That kind of time is incomprehensible. More staggering yet is the almost universally accepted scenario among cosmologists that in the blink of an eye, our current cosmos burst forth from a pinpoint of extremely dense and hot "quark-gluon plasma" — a primordial state of matter best described as a remarkably tiny dot of free-wheeling quark particles and the gluons binding them. This pinpoint of plasma expanded so rapidly the "event" has become widely known as the "big bang."

That term was first coined by the late British astronomer Fred Hoyle, who tackled some of the biggest questions in twentieth-century science. Later, in an international competition for a better name, the term survived over thirteen thousand proposed alternatives judged by a panel of my former ABC colleague Hugh Downs, the later astronomer Carl Sagan and the exceptional science writer Timothy Ferris.

Before the "bang," say the experts, there was no space — everything was contained in the pinpoint. Today, the process of space expansion continues as the galaxies in our cosmos are flung farther away from each other. One obvious question is what preceded the big bang, and what existed outside the "boundaries" of space as it was exploding. When I put this to a friend who is a world-renowned cosmologist, he started trying to explain to me the virtual vacuum-concept before stopping with a smile and saying, "You just go back to the beginning — and that's it."

--Finding God in the Questions, Timothy Johnson
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6 comments:

  1. tonyon9/3/15

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  2. tonyon9/3/15

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  3. tonyon9/3/15

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  5. tonyon24/11/15

    theory relativity: impossible to go beyond Solar System...religion: impossible to go beyond Solar System...theory relativity=religion=hoax. Just Time, will demonstrate that relativistic equations are fallacies (fallacy: lie said with to make hurt intention), but...when?, because evidently the religious control the World: business, factories, jobs, governments...control all global media: TV, movies, radio, newspapers...(Internet are totally under religious infection, using the ancient religious malign threatening tactical: "by mouth dies fish", "the same that someone says against us, we say against them"), have the Power, and do not permit that Science develop enough for the facts demonstrate the relativistic lie. ½ century ago NASA does not go again to Moon, why?, what are there in Moon that do not want which Humankind know?...relativity incorporated to religion for avoid Justice, Progress and Equality in distribution of the Goods of the Earth, because that is, always all that is: the poor, poor and the rich, rich... The Evil Empire: religion, armies, monarchies and politicians...when until?. And now they can to continue with the tale of "the Lorentz factor" &Co. that already minus remains...1,000 years?

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  6. tonyon24/11/15

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