Big bang explaining beginning of nothing?

[Nameless1995]

So there is this 2nd law of thermodynamics which states how entropy is ever increasing and all that and they also found universe is ever expanding and all that, and so they hypothesized a beginning where everything existed in the state of minimum entropy and all was compressed into some dense matter which was the singularity. And then a big bang happened and the singularity started expanding to what it is now. But if the universe was already there as the singularity how can the big bang be associated with the beginning of universe. Big bang is called as the beginning of time. But physical time is equated with change and motion but is it right to do so? A thought experiment: Imagine everything but the clock is vanished from the universe. The clock is ticking. It shows time is there. Then one day the battery of the clock dies so the clock will stop ticking. Now there is no motion. But will it be right to say there is no time? It is only the battery that is dead. If the battery is replaced the clock will start ticking again. That means time cannot be simply equated with motion or change but better to say it is the potential to change. Now the singularity was some dense stuff and that is why it had no change or motion going on before big bang but if we consider the new definition of time, we have to accept that time as the potential for change must precede big bang. But even if we take for granted that time is just change and motion, then think about it. How did change or big bang started in the first place if there was no time or no motion or anything? Without existence of change or time, how did time even came into being? The very act of beginning is time based concept making the phrase 'beginning of time' absurd. SO how does big bang explains the beginning of anything?

[AlmsFor-An-Ex-Lepper]

May I suggest you read Stephen Hawking's, "A Brief History of Time". I'm no physicist, but he explains in layman's terms why the Big Bang is the popular theory currently. You still need to wrap your head around a few concepts, but I believe you'll understand his explanations...I kinda did, but not enough to summarize for you. And btw, time is a measure of change, which includes motion, but is not exclusively motion. "Change" is the operative descriptor.

[Mechsmith]

You might also try "The Big Bang Never Happened". There is a decent website there. Also if you are interested you could look up "Red Shift" "Hubble Constant" "Ulbers Paradox" and "The Harvard Tower Experiments" to look at some of the science behind the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation probes. Another interesting site is the "Hubble Deep Field" observations. I think that you will find another batch of anomalies there.

Basically if you assume that the BB never happened you could find that the "Red Shift" as an indicater of relative motion may just be an optical illusion caused by the actions of gravity acting on light, and that the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is simply light from stars past our abilities to observe that has been "Red Shifted" to the microwave frequencies.

Ulbers Paradox when carried to its logical conclusion predicts the CMBR in a Universe much larger than the observable one, although Ulber predates Hubble by some time and probably had no idea of the Red Shift.

Happy Searching

[Obvious Leo]

The notion of the big bang emerging from a singularity is no longer regarded as a viable hypothesis ( and with good reason ), thus it is meaningless to think of time as having a beginning.

Regards Leo

[A_Seagull]

The Big bang is not supposed to be an explanation of anything other than the empirical observations. Those observations include the Cosmic Microwave background, the correlation between redshift and distance for distant galaxies, the relative concentrations of hydrogen and helium within the universe and other observations.

There is no better theory that will 'explain' those observations.

[Obvious Leo]

There is no better theory that will 'explain' those observations.

Indeed. The Big Bang theory is a robust model which has stood the test of time and continues to validate itself constantly as the science of physics progresses. However to assume that it was the beginning of the universe is to advance a proposition which is beyond the reach of science. A "beginning" implies the existence of an external causal agent and an agent external to the universe is disqualified in physics by definition. Many people believe in such an external causal agent but in science an explanation which explains everything is an explanation which explains nothing, thus this can never be anything more than a belief.

In the absence of an implied causal agent there remains only a single explanation for the existence of the universe, which is that it is eternal and therefore has always existed. Therefore the Big Bang was self-causal, which is a great relief for those of us who regard the first law of thermodynamics as a fundamental and self-evident truth.

Regards Leo

[Steve3007]

Leo: Why do you regard the first law of thermodynamics as self-evident rather than "merely" externally-evident?

This seems to me to imply that you believe it to be, in some sense, axiomatic. Surely, as with all other physical principles and laws, its truth is derived from it being consistent with observed evidence, isn't it? It may be a particularly well established example of this, but I don't think that makes it self-evident.

Is this fundamental distinction you appear to be drawing an example of the distinction that you draw between the epistemology and the ontology of science? Do you regard the 1st law as an example of something that has passed from the former to the latter? Or was it always part of the latter?

[Obvious Leo]

A penetrating question, Steve, and indeed a perceptive criticism.

It is impossible to model physical reality without accepting some principles as axiomatic, or else you have no starting point. In this respect my heretical way of thinking the world is no different from any other, but I try at all times to keep my axiomatic assumptions to a minimum and constrain them within our common sense and intuitions. Thus I use a very austere definition of the universe as everything that exists and adopt this as my primary assumption. This is actually the only axiomatic assumption that I make but a couple of supplementary axioms can automatically be derived from it. The two most important of these are the first law of thermodynamics, because "everything" is a closed system with no outside, thus the total information content of the universe is a constant and only its form can change. As I've pointed out elsewhere this sort of modelling equates information with energy. The second derived assumption is the notion of eternal time as an infinite sequence of quantised moments. Clearly in the absence of an external causal agent reality can have no beginning and no end, because this assumes a timeless void beyond the universe, which my sole axiom disqualifies. The void that is the future is solely a conceptual one and not a physical entity so it is nonsensical to think of time as emerging "into" anything. Likewise it is nonsensical to think of time past as still hanging around in some physical sense.

I need make no apology for this initial assumption because any feasible model of the cosmos has to start somewhere. I choose to start from this single point and follow where it leads me. It leads me directly to a universe that exists only in time and not in space, and it does so via a path of simple logic.

I'll freely grant that I make a number of other assumptions in my modelling which are purely epistemic in nature and simply derive from observation, such as that the evolution towards informational complexity is the fundamental self-organising principle of the cosmos. It is from this derivation that the bang/crunch cosmology can be extrapolated and the cyclical nature of eternal time can be explained. However, being solely epistemic, if someone can come up with a better explanatory paradigm I would obliged to abandon mine. This would break my heart because my philosophy is my life's work but the true empiricist does not stand on sentiment.

Regards Leo

[Steve3007]

Thus I use a very austere definition of the universe as everything that exists and adopt this as my primary assumption.

I wouldn't class "the universe is everything that exists" as an axiomatic assumption. I think it's simply a definition of the word "universe".

This is actually the only axiomatic assumption that I make but a couple of supplementary axioms can automatically be derived from it. The two most important of these are the first law of thermodynamics, because "everything" is a closed system with no outside, thus the total information content of the universe is a constant and only its form can change.

Interesting, but I don't think conversation laws, like the conservation of energy, flow automatically from the definition of the word universe. I think the conservation of energy, like other conversation laws, is discovered empirically. It was discovered that a particular quantity in various equations remained the same when other things changed. This quantity is called energy.

The second derived assumption is the notion of eternal time as an infinite sequence of quantised moments.

As discussed elsewhere, when we were talking about Zeno and the Theory of Limits, I don't think the use of the word "quantised" in this context has anything directly to do with quantum mechanics. I think it just reflects the fact that the measurement of any kind of change requires at least two points separated by a non-zero interval of time, and this is true in the classical world. But, in that world, that interval can approach arbitrarily close to zero.

On the question of axiomatic assumptions: I think the only one you really actually need in order to do science is the one that is inherent in the method of Induction. I know people like Karl Popper have questioned the validity of the use of Induction, but I think I would place myself on the side of the critics of Popper. But I guess that's another topic.

[Obvious Leo]

As discussed elsewhere, when we were talking about Zeno and the Theory of Limits, I don't think the use of the word "quantised" in this context has anything directly to do with quantum mechanics.

Bingo. I couldn't agree more and I knew we were approximately on the same page. Quantum mechanics has got nothing to do with quantum philosophy because quantum mechanics does not concern itself with fundamental entities. It concerns itself with the behaviour of sub-atomic particles and the forces which direct this behaviour. Sub-atomic particles are not fundamental because they come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes and all have different physical properties. Furthermore they did not exist in the earliest instants following the big bang and must therefore be regarded as EMERGENT. Their different physical properties can only be accounted for by reference to a yet more fundamental entity which thus far remains undefined. Preons have been proposed as such underlying quantum entities, as have strings, but I find these notions unappealing because such modelling takes the dynamism of reality out of the picture and makes the story far too complicated. In other words preons and strings ignore time and therefore I prefer the notion of the fundamental unit of reality as a temporal interval, which I simply call the quantum moment Now, for the sake of conceptual convenience. After all, we all a have reasonable intuitive understanding of what we mean by Now, although there doesn't seem to be much consensus about how long Now actually exists for before it becomes Then. For this we need quantum gravity.

Regards Leo