Theories about how & why the Universe exists

Johnsonontheleft said:
Do you think that someone has already unwittingly come up with the correct theory, or is the truth so outlandish and mind-blowing that no human who has ever lived has thought of the real reason for the Universe & where all this matter came from?

Sometimes I wonder whether, like Horton Hears a Who, the Universe is a minuscule part of something much bigger - though that just leads to more questions.

The frustrating thing is that the answer is out there, it's just tantalisingly out of reach. I am an atheist but I can not get my head around all of this matter, time and space popping up out of nothingness. The Big Bang theory does not sit well with me for this reason.

Even if you believe that the Universe is infinite and has always been there, it's incomprehensible - why these elements, why this structure, why these laws of physics?

In my opinion, NOTHING is too far-fetched in terms of an explanation of the Universe, because the whole notion of the Universe even existing is ridiculously far-fetched in itself.
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To say
The Big Bang theory does not sit well with me for this reason.


then

NOTHING is too far-fetched in terms of an explanation of the Universe

in the same post seems rather contradictory, don't you think?
 
I actually don't think 'why' is a very interesting question. The 'how' is a much more interesting question, and one we can attempt to slowly unravel. That's just a matter of personal taste though.
 
Our universe is the result of an event in a parent universe, perhaps the splitting of an atom there. Our universe has lasted just a fraction of milliseconds and will only last a matter of milliseconds before it finishes - this is why we see our universe expanding, but we get to view it in slow motion. Each universe is a result of the same event in a parent universe.

Also, the unique set of events that created Earth are unlikely to have created another planet capable of complex life at the same time as ours, but possibly has done previously and will do again.


Crikey, what's in this Irn Bru?
 
I can't wrack my brain around it no matter how many shows I've watched on it. How did all the gasses get there in the first place? Did they appear out of nowhere? A lot of these astrophysicists say the universe will run out of fuel and eventually come to an end, but there is always the question of dark matter. I don't believe in god at all but it's an easy way out to answer a question.

What happened if the universe didn't exist? People say there would be nothing but what is nothing? It can't have any colour or space as that would be something. It boggles the mind.

The only amusing thing of it all is that our small galaxy is a 100 million light years across amongst billions of other galaxies but people think we are the only lifeform in the universe!
 
Crouchinho said:
I can't wrack my brain around it no matter how many shows I've watched on it. How did all the gasses get there in the first place? Did they appear out of nowhere? A lot of these astrophysicists say the universe will run out of fuel and eventually come to an end, but there is always the question of dark matter. I don't believe in god at all but it's an easy way out to answer a question.

What happened if the universe didn't exist? People say there would be nothing but what is nothing? It can't have any colour or space as that would be something. It boggles the mind.

The only amusing thing of it all is that our small galaxy is a 100 million light years across amongst billions of other galaxies but people think we are the only lifeform in the universe!
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agreed the size of the universe is mind boggling

this is a good example of the beginning of the size

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.iflscience.com/space/solar-system-speed-light" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.iflscience.com/space/solar-s ... peed-light</a>

Travel Through The Solar System At The Speed Of Light

February 10, 2015 | by Stephen Luntz

photo credit: Alphonse Swinehart. Out past Mars, the sun looks rather small.
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If you're struggling to come to grips with the vastness of space, maybe this video will help. In the video, we see how the sun would shrink if we were traveling away from it at the speed of light. Occasionally, at appropriate intervals, a planet shoots past.




Riding Light from Alphonse Swinehart on Vimeo.



The video lasts 45 minutes, at which point we are less than two minutes past Jupiter. Saturn is still half an hour ahead. The author, Alphonse Swinehart, didn't continue the project out to Pluto, not just because it's not a planet anymore, but because it really would take most of the day. Extend the project to the stars and we would be here for years, and through most of that time, the sun would be a barely detectable dot in the middle of the screen, with nothing else to see.

"I've taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, but overall I've kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible," Swinehart says.

The idea of seeing the universe as one would when riding a light beam isn't new. This isn't a realistic interpretation of something that could really be experienced given the right equipment, however. At the speed of light, time stops, and if one was traveling away from the sun at even close to light-speed, time would slow down and the sun would be drastically red-shifted so that we could barely see it.

However, if you want to get your head around how “really, really BIG” space is, watching the video in full could be a great way to get started
 
Just to be a fussy sod it is 100k light years across bud, but yeah it is rather large which is your point.

The universe had to cool down crouchie for anything to settle. It was to hot for anything to form at all.
There was just a big hot fog as inflation occurred. This was in planck time, not seconds or minutes.
When inflation slowed, the universe cooled and matter as we know it started to form.

One day the last hydrogen atom will be used and then helium and so on until there is non left.
The stars will fade and an age of darkness will come, all that will be left is the cinders of white dwarfs etc.
 
Compulsive Rambler said:
Yea, I've shared many thoughts/feelings on this subject only to be ridiculed, but I understand why many people have this simplistic view of the world.

This is down to Fear of the unknown. My father is exactly like this. any time I will start talking about my real experiences of non verbal communication with higher energies, he will announce it as being "cuckoo" and how we should not have these thoughts/feelings.

But I have seen "the other side" I have been there and through well known practises such as Meditation (transcendental being one) I have connected with higher energies.

Put it this way - I have no fear of death.
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King-Willie-predator-22942740-300-300.jpg
 
Johnsonontheleft said:
I also find it funny how people just get on with their mundane lives while just accepting that 'yeah, we're a moving collection of elements on a speck floating around a ball of flames in a vast nothingness' - it never crosses most people's minds, but for me it makes the things humans see as important utterly ridiculous. For instance if you met a head of state you'd probably be nervous - at the end of the day they are a similar collection of star dust floating around on the same floating speck. The whole idea of society is a sham, a distraction from reality. I guess it's our reality but we deliberately ignore the bigger picture.

Before anyone asks, I'm completely sober & don't take drugs - this stuff just blows my mind.
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Well said this man

Seems a good lad to have a pint or two with, talking intellectual stuff.
 
The Big Bang may never have happened
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<a class="postlink" href="http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113332150/the-big-bang-may-never-have-happened-021115/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113 ... ed-021115/</a>
 
Why is a religious question thus not really interesting nor in my domain. Why does F=ma and not F=ma2? I don't know and am not sure if I care, I just know it does.

On the how front, people are making a common mistake here. The Big Bang is the explanation of where the matter and time in the observable Universe came from. The Universe is a different thing.

And there was no before the Big Bang. This is the one thing people can never ever understand because to most the concept is unimaginable. Before is a word we use to denote an order of events in time. Time began at the Big Bang. There is no time before that moment. The very idea that something must happen in an order, that an event needs a cause or a thing need a creator, is a consequence of us being a species that travels through time. If you delete time from the Universe then that whole idea disappears with it.

Think of time as change. There was no change before the Big Bang for any forces to exist. Nothing moved nor had energy nor had electrons or anything else because these things are a measure of change. The first instant of change was the moment of the Big Bang as that is when time started.

The Universe doesn't have to conform to the ideas of what makes sense to some apes on one of the trillions of rocks within it.
 
Bigga said:
Johnsonontheleft said:
I also find it funny how people just get on with their mundane lives while just accepting that 'yeah, we're a moving collection of elements on a speck floating around a ball of flames in a vast nothingness' - it never crosses most people's minds, but for me it makes the things humans see as important utterly ridiculous. For instance if you met a head of state you'd probably be nervous - at the end of the day they are a similar collection of star dust floating around on the same floating speck. The whole idea of society is a sham, a distraction from reality. I guess it's our reality but we deliberately ignore the bigger picture.

Before anyone asks, I'm completely sober & don't take drugs - this stuff just blows my mind.
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Easy answer is; you'll find out when you pop your clogs.


I DO have a serious question; spiritual followers believe we're all connected via energy (as to why we 'sense' things in each other, have 'gut feelings' and whatever), so does an atheist think this is bullsh*t as well...??
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Honest answer is some will call it bullshit. Some will believe in it.

My gran was a card carrying atheist but was always a bit weird from that point of view. When City won the cup in 76 she called my Pop on the morning of the game and begged him no to go. My dad totalled his car on the motorway just outside London (and a copper drove him and his mate the last twenty odd miles). Weird I know.

There is no atheist world view. Atheist just don't believe in a god.
 
TCIB said:
Just to be a fussy sod it is 100k light years across bud, but yeah it is rather large which is your point.

The universe had to cool down crouchie for anything to settle. It was to hot for anything to form at all.
There was just a big hot fog as inflation occurred. This was in planck time, not seconds or minutes.
When inflation slowed, the universe cooled and matter as we know it started to form.

One day the last hydrogen atom will be used and then helium and so on until there is non left.
The stars will fade and an age of darkness will come, all that will be left is the cinders of white dwarfs etc.
Click to expand...

This.


Plus Crouchino you're not far away from experiencing an infinity of nothingness.

@Bigga without ridiculing these people... The human brain is extremely powerful and often sometimes cannot be trusted to see/sense/obtain the truth. Just because someone feels uneasy at a similar time a relative dies, for example, doesn't make the two connected.
 
Damocles said:
Why is a religious question thus not really interesting nor in my domain. Why does F=ma and not F=ma2? I don't know and am not sure if I care, I just know it does.

On the how front, people are making a common mistake here. The Big Bang is the explanation of where the matter and time in the observable Universe came from. The Universe is a different thing.

And there was no before the Big Bang. This is the one thing people can never ever understand because to most the concept is unimaginable. Before is a word we use to denote an order of events in time. Time began at the Big Bang. There is no time before that moment. The very idea that something must happen in an order, that an event needs a cause or a thing need a creator, is a consequence of us being a species that travels through time. If you delete time from the Universe then that whole idea disappears with it.

Think of time as change. There was no change before the Big Bang for any forces to exist. Nothing moved nor had energy nor had electrons or anything else because these things are a measure of change. The first instant of change was the moment of the Big Bang as that is when time started.

The Universe doesn't have to conform to the ideas of what makes sense to some apes on one of the trillions of rocks within it.
Click to expand...

there must have been something before the BB, otherwise the ingredients for it wouldnt exist, (if there was nothing then no ingredients to cause it) therefore the BB couldnt have happened.
 
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