Big Bang - Big Dud

Hi Pro TerraFrom one newbie to another... How many times have you been explaining God's plan of redemption for mankind through Jesus, when some nitwit has piped up with"huh, huh, but who made God then????"or"oh, this will get him... can God dig a ditch so wide that he can't jump across it???"you've rolled your eyes, thought "why me, God?", remembered that patience is one of the nine fruit, etc, etc...Well, that's exactly how anyone versed in cosmology reacts to the questions you've posed. These types of questions naively appear as philosophical, theological or scientific bombshells. But anyone who has a grasp of the subject matter realises that the questioner doesn't really understand what they're asking.I was once so arrogant that, as a graduate student, I thought that I had found a major flaw in black hole physics... This was after years of maths and physics study. I took this flaw to THE black hole expert, who calmly picked up a piece of chalk and drew a picture on his blackboard. Instantly I was filled with understanding and embaressment: how dare I, with only a few years of study, think that some of the greatest minds around had got it completely wrong. What a prat I was :-)Unfortunately, Christians with little scientific background are very good at doing this. If it was so easy to poke holes in cosomology, geology and evolution, then groups like RATE wouldn't exist - a group of creationist Christians with a lot of scientific know-how, trying to make waves in the scientific community. If you want to demonstrate scientifically that God created everything in 6 days 6000 years ago and that all the non-creation scientists have got it wrong, you have to start studying... good luck! On the otherhand, it takes no time at all to just believe it in faith and be happy with that :-)

Randman, I've been reading your posts over a number of fora, and I've noticed that you're very open to the far-from-obvious ideas in quantum theory, and you have expressed doubts about the everyday linear nature of time.I would encourage you to delve into General Relativity, which will reveal time to be far more bizarre than you could ever imagine. Furthermore, you will realise why statements such as "it all came from nothing" have absolutely no meaning, and even much less contentious ideas such as "in the beginning" don't always mean what you think they mean.To me, the Universe shouts God's glory, but it certainly doesn't prove His existence (by His choice I would contend).

It's the usual supsects with Arp at the top... yawn. Check out Sylas' list of crank ideas somewhere in Big Bang and Cosmology.I've just glanced through the abstracts of the first few contributors...to quote:

quote:

---

There are several especially spectacular puzzles of the standard cosmological model (SCM) related to the expanding space: 1) recession velocities of galaxies can be much more than velocity of light

---

and

quote:

---

General Relativity: Gravitational stress-energy is excluded as a source of curvature

---

Hmmm... well I guess that means there are no non-trivial vacuum solutions. Funny, could have sworn I'd seen a few...I've got a feeling that some poor guys went there with some interesting cosmological models, only to find the place full of nutters

It all depends what you mean by mass and matter. Mass is essentially a measure of the total energy within a volume of space. If you apply e=mc^2 you have the gravitational charge (or mass) of the energy within that volume. If any energy leaves that volume, then the mass will obviously decrease. A "1kg" test mass has more mass at 100C than at 0C.In fusion and fission, binding energy is being released from the nucleus, and so necessarily there is an asscoiated decrease in mass as that energy escapes the local volume in the form of radiation (EM, neutrinos, heavier particles). Thus the end-products (within the volume) MUST be less massive. But this is equally true for exothermic chemical reactions...The inter-nucleon binding energy is nothing compared to the intra-nucleon binding energy. Take a proton. It is made of 2 up quarks and a down quark. The rest mass of the ups is ~4MeV and the down is ~8Mev. That gives 16MeV. But the proton rest mass is 938MeV!!! That's a lot of binding energy. Unfortunately, owing to the annoying nature of Qunatum Chromodynamics, that energy is not up for grabs any time soon.This message has been edited by cavediver, 08-15-2005 04:28 AM

Hi Pianoprincess! I must be brief, but for now... despite what you have read and been told (even by Scientific American), the universe did not "begin" at the Big Bang. The universe is four dimensional (in our most simple models) and what we call past and future are all just different parts of the universe. Matter does not "come" from the past and travel into the "future". It just is. As is the universe. Matter (or the energy that would condense into matter) at the big bang is just there. There is no "past" at the big bang anyway, so the question makes even less sense The big bang is just one point in the universe, though quite an interesting point given the conditions there.If God created the universe (and as a Christian, I think He did!) then creation was not the big bang but the bringing into existence of the whole universe (past and future). It is only us restricted humans who think that the "beginnings" must lie in the past. The act of creation is all around us. For the non-theist, the correct question is "why is there something rather than nothing?" not "what casued the big bang?"

Hi Dinocandy Welcome to EvC, and in particular the Big Bang and Cosmology Forum.Please, please, please do not be afraid of asking questions. There are no stupid questions, more-so in this field than any other of science. Cosmology and Fundemental Physics are some of the most talked about areas of science, yet are most definitely the least understood. There are a couple of cosmologists here (including myself) and numerous other hangers-on () always willing to help.Enjoy your stay...