Creation of the Universe

[Slartibartfast]

Did the universe begin with the Big Bang (and the Big Bang Burger Bar),
and does it end with the Big Crunch (and the Resturaunt at the End of the Universe), or is that just science fiction?

Did God create the universe five minutes ago, 6000 years ago, or not at all?

Could the universe not exist, and an evil genius is feeding all this sensory information directly into your brain?

Is the universe steady state, infinite forever to the past, and forever to the future?

[lumberjim]

this universe exists in this dimension. we percieve it from within our plane of reality. I believe that there are other universes to infinity that are percieved by those within them. The total infinite amount of universes combine to form GOD, or the force, or whatever...the totality of existence. the afterlife exists in yet another metaphysical plane where we are one with god or the force or whatever. when we come back to the physical realm, we exist in each plane with our choices before us.




i just made all of that up, but i think it sounds good

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by Slartibartfast
Could the universe not exist, and an evil genius is feeding all this sensory information directly into your brain?

No, because then my brain and the evil genius would exist, and hence be in the universe.

But the universe I sense could be an illusion. {/pedant}

[Slartibartfast]

Originally posted by Happy Monkey
No, because then my brain and the evil genius would exist, and hence be in the universe.

But the universe I sense could be an illusion. {/pedant}

Universe implies matter energy and a whole slew of physical laws,
but what could exist is just be your thoughts and the thoughts of the evil genius that exist, with no brain no material world, nothing... just thought. But if you consider that a universe, then I guess by that definition, yes you are right, a type of universe would have to exist for thought to exist.

[Happy Monkey]

Hence: "cogito, ergo sum".

[xoxoxoBruce]

I think you guys should stop bogartin' the joint.

[Torrere]

Ultimately, I think it's completely unprovable.

My reasoning: We can't know what made the universe, because our only records exist inside the universe and whatever made the universe happened before the universe existed.

This excludes local level miracles, like God appearing to Hawking at a grand scientific conference, but even if there was a God, I fear that the creature would only be able to tell us how our universe was made, not it's universe.

The salient question is "Where did all of this matter ultimately come from?"

[juju]

Why did it have to come from something?

Perhaps it has always existed.

[Slartibartfast]

Originally posted by juju
Why did it have to come from something?

Perhaps it has always existed.

Scientists these days had to find a reason for the universe's expansion. All the galaxies are spreading further and further apart as shown by the fact that they are red-shifted. This means that if you rewind, all those galaxies converge to one spot.



And why are the galaxies running away from each other? One could speculate that they have really bad body odor.

[Slartibartfast]

Originally posted by juju
Why did it have to come from something?

Perhaps it has always existed.

Astronomers can actually look out 12-14 billion light years into the outer reaches of the universe, and they are in effect looking back into time and seeing a period very shortly after when the Big Bang is believed to exist.

What they see there is a uniform source of microwave radiation from every single point in the sky. This background radiation is one major piece of evidence for the big bang.

This radiation was first predicted to exist by hypothesis, and then the evidence was found showing that it does indeed exist. When a scientist's equations predict something, and this prediction is shown to match facts that are gathered later, that is usually a good sign that this scientist is on the right track.


one article on the web discussing this is

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest3.html

[Happy Monkey]

The big bang doesn't preclude matter/energy always existing. It could have existed before the big bang, in a different form. Or there could be a big bang/big crunch repeating cycle.

[juju]

Yep, that's what I was going to say. Perhaps there is an infinitely repeating cycle of big crunch/big bang. In that situation, time would never have begun and would never end.

[juju]

Although, I think I remember reading that there would not be a big crunch -- that everything would just drift apart and we would die a cold death.

[Slartibartfast]

Originally posted by Happy Monkey
The big bang doesn't preclude matter/energy always existing. It could have existed before the big bang, in a different form. Or there could be a big bang/big crunch repeating cycle.

Yes, that's true. The universe could be a cyclical bang/crunch, but for the moment that is unprovable. Science has only gotten as far back as the Big Bang. Before that is fun speculation (and faith )

Then the question of the Big Crunch, (or the giB gnaB), I think that is still an unknown. The question there is if there is enough matter to halt the expanding universe and bring it all together again. If there is, then we can have the cyclical universe, if not, then this current universe will grow to be very very old as juju says.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by juju
Although, I think I remember reading that there would not be a big crunch -- that everything would just drift apart and we would die a cold death.

I think that is the current conclusion. But it has flip-flopped several times in recent memory, so I'm not ruling either option out at this point.