Law of conservation of energy=first law of thermodynamics:

"Energy can't be created nor destroyed"

Big Bang: Creation of matter, space and time from nothing
According to Einstein, matter is energy
Therefore Big Bang violates the law of conservation of energy
It's so simple?

As has been pointed out in other threads here numerous times, the "Big Bang" theory doesn't actually say what occurred at the beginning. The question is in many ways not legitimate to ask.

There are theories that indicate that the energy needed to create the Big Bang (neither big nor a bang) was 'borrowed' from the vacuum. I'm probably not stating it correctly and there are others here that know better than I.

Scientists don't know and can't say what happened at the beginning. They can have theories that seem to fit available evidence, but none really do so a whole lot better than the rest of the pack, YET.

My understanding is that "the beginning" is simply the period of highest density, lowest volume, and the universe expanded out from that. Thus, there was no "creation" needed.

Perhaps the laws of physics could have been different during the first 10 to the -43 seconds (Planck time), thus no violation occurred.

Dunno.

So no, it's not simple. Try again.

If the matter was not created in the Big Bang is very strange.
Then the matter have existed always(during and infinite period of time)
If the matter existed during an infinite period of time, what in the hell prompted it to suddenly "explode"
This is what Kant would call a paradox

I haven't heard of HonestMonkey's borrowed energy theory, but it could explain it, however it requires that the universe end in a big crunch (or as I brefer to call it, "Gnab Gib" which is "Big Bang" backwards) in order to "return" the matter and energy to the vacuum.

One other theory is that a negative matter and energy universe was created out of the big bang as well. Or, that there are large quantities of negative matter and energy somewhere on the "other side" of the universe.

Another theory is that the first law of thermodynamics either doesn't hold at really, really, REALLY high temperatures, such as those at times very close to the big bang, or was established after all the matter and energy was created.

Well, it's widely theorized that time itselt was created in the big bang and thus talking about what happened "before" the big bang has no meaning. Like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

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Perhaps the Big Bang was the result of a ultra-hypermassive black star that exploded?

I skipped ahead a few chapters in my asto textbook, and read the chapter on black holes (I like black stars, more accurate). It's truly fascinating, and I actually understood what was going on.

at the event horizon of a black hole, time sort of breaks down, and inside a black hole, it ceases to have meaning. So, even if there was time "before" (Oh no!!! I said it!!! I must be turning into a typical science-ignorant American!!! Help!!! I must have a copy of A Brief History Of Time!!!) the Big Bang, it could not be thought of as being part of the same "time line" as the current one (Just think for a while. You'll understand in a minute if your head doesn't explode.) So, whether or not it origionated at the Big Bang, the term "before the Big Bang" still has no meaning.

If matter existed before Big Bang , time must have existed before Big Bang too. I can't imagine matter without time.
The concept of negative energy is nonsense for me. What is negative energy?

An alternative possibility is that the law of conservation of mass/energy is wrong on the scale of the universe. Some alternative scenarios involve continuous matter creation.

In normal chemical/nuclear reactions the law of conservation of mass/energy seems to work just fine.

You also can't imagine the concept of infinty, but that doesn't stop you from using it as examples.

Note, I'm not trying to insulting, but the human mind is just not capable of dealing with concepts like infinity.

Imagine it this way, the rate at which time flows is affected by large bodies of mass. So around black holes and neutron stars you start noticing large distortions in spacetime.

Well, the big bang was a lot more massive and so the passage of time was much slower to start with and sped up as the universe expanded. Most of this happened very quickly after the big bang happened, quickly as in seconds or minutes later.

Well, as you trace the big bang backward you get an exponential growth in density, which means the rate of time grows exponentially slower. So techincally the big bang happened an infinitly long time ago, and if there's a big crunch in our future, it's also infinfitly far away.

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People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Without time, there is no "before" when matter did or did not exist. The classic example is to imagine going back in time as walking south along the Earth. Eventually, you get to the south pole, the beginning of time. Now try to walk another mile south; it can't be done.* It's not that there was nothing before the Big Bang and it's not that there was something before the Big Bang. There was no "before the Big Bang".

It is hard to imagine. Heck, I have problems visualizing it, too. But nobody said the universe was obliged to behave in a way that's easy for us to understand. The questions a cosmologist asks of a theory are "does this model fit within the known laws of physics" and "does this model match the observations we make". For the Big Bang, the answers seem to be yes. There are, of course, those who disagree and think that other models work better. But the validation or repudiation of any of these models takes more than suggesting that they don't seem to follow "common sense".


*Perhaps you'll suggest flying straight away from the Earth here. In that case, you've just left the bounds of the universe, so even if there's some way that this could be done, all bets as to what physical laws might apply are off.

Well, my question is : Was matter created in the big bang?
A law is something that must hold always. If only fails ONE time is not a law. We should call it a semi-law or a little law

None of the laws of physics would have been in existence before the Big Bang. Here are the conservation laws from the astronomical glossary


Conservation of Energy (a) The principle that the total energy of a closed system never changes, that energy is only converted from one form to another. This principle must be enlarged under special relativity to include mass-energy. [HH98]
(b) The total energy of a system (including kinetic energy and gravitational energy) is conserved and does not vary. Thus, kinetic energy can only increase at the expense of gravitational potential energy. Modern physics has modified the law of conservation of energy, since matter can be created or annihilated; a more general law is the conservation of mass and energy. [Silk90]

Conservation of Mass and Energy Important physical principle and one of the basic laws of physics stating that matter is neither created nor destroyed (although mass may become energy, the energy quantitatively represents the mass). One exception to this principle is a singularity; another follows from the theory of virtual particles. [A84]

Conservation of Matter The principle that matter is neither created nor destroyed. This principle is only approximately true, since special relativity shows that matter and energy are equivalent and interconvertible. [HH98]

You'll note that even the conservation laws have certain exceptions. The conservation laws are important in chemistry. They can't be applied to conditions preceding the origin of the universe.

The Big Bang is the biggest rabbit ever pulled out of any hat. Yes it violates the first law of thermodynamics. That's why it is such a curiosity and attracts such interest. As has been mentioned Re big bang and black holes, "the laws of the universe break down." The question of what happened before the big bang is meaningless as long as we can't figure out how the rabbit came out of the hat. Or more accurately, how the rabbit appeares to have come out of the hat.

cyreks reply:

To iron4:
Good reasoning!
The big bangers are in a quandery regarding the beginning.
It is about time they quit pushing a false ideology on us all.

honest monkey:
Your solutions are nothing but virtual concepts.

Pi Man:
Forget the 'big crunch. Current data refutes that idea.

To wedgebert:
The big bangers conveniently evade the beginning because they have no answer. No answer qualifies for a
zero

dgruss23
Evading empirical experimental data is not the way to go.

Firstly they are not "Pushing" an ideology, I do mot remember a physists showing up at my door with panflits like certian people we all know and love. :wink:
Secondly nobody has any clue how it all started so yes I figure there avoiding that part until there is some kind of data or way of testing a solid theory.

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And the answer is "we don't know". We know that no matter was created after 10^-43 seconds, but before that the laws of physics break down, so we simply cannot understand what's happening there. In the same way, our current understanding of physics breaks down at the singularity of a black hole, and so we simply cannot model what might be happening there. Perhaps a quantum theory of gravity will help answer some of these questions, but it's also possible that there are things that we can never know.

There are all kinds of things that we call laws that don't hold in every case. Ohm's law breaks down if the temperature gets too high. Hooke's law fails if you stretch the spring too much. Newton's laws of motion are not valid if things are moving at relativistic speeds. "Law" is just what we call an empirical relation between certain quantities, and there's no expectation that we should rename them all just because they don't hold in every case. A physicist understands that they are to be used in the correct context.

No they aren't. Rather, they know that it's meaningless to try to develop a theory of things that cannot be observed. Best to leave it to the philosophers unless and until we can gather some empirical data.

Giving no answer when there is no empirical data available is precisely what we should expect of a scientific theory. It's fine to speculate, but if the data aren't there, it can't be any more than speculation. What happened "before" the Big Bang is simply outside the realm of the theory, and may turn out to be a question that doesn't have any meaning. If I have a good model that explains bird migration patterns, I shouldn't be faulted if I can't explain how they develop in the egg if I haven't had a chance to look at any bird eggs.

What empirical data? According to the Big Bang model, the laws of physics of this universe were set at the time of the Big Bang. You could've just as easily had some different laws. There was not a law of conservation of energy before the Big Bang (at least not that we know of since we don't know what was there before the Big bang).

Look, if you want to raise issues about the Big Bang I'll be interested, but the Law of Conservation of Energy is about as relevant an attack on the Big Bang as a mosquito assault on an oak tree.

If we can't figure out how the rabbit came out of the hat, then how can we say it violates the first law? If we can't say where the matter/energy came from, then how can we say that it wasn't there all along?

The first law is meaningless regarding the big bang. The energy could have always been there. The energy could have come from somewhere else. Energy may even have appeared out of nowhere. But we will probably never know. It's an incomplete equation.

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Nobody is pushing false ideology. They are only providing their best interpretation of the facts. You are free to disagree with it and come up with alternate theories. But be prepared to defend them!

Which regarding the period before the planck time is all that anybody can provide. It's speculation and clearly labelled as such.

No, the data seems to indicate that this universe will not end in a big crunch, but there's nothing to refute the idea that it didn't begin that way.

Nobody is "evading" the question. If there really is no answer to give, it's just being honest to say so. It is disrespectful, at the least, to imply that they/we are purposefully being deceptive.

As asked before, what data? I'm pretty sure that there isn't any regarding the planck time. Of course, you're probably referring to data against the big bang itself, but that's not the topic of this thread.

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Would you mind telling us your stance? Are you a creationist, steady-state'ist, whatever-you-call-the-theory-that-all-matter-was-not-at-one-point-in-what-big-bangists-would-call-the-beginning-but-only-very-close'ist, or something-else-altogether'ist?

Could you be more specific?

I don't personally believe that the universe will end in a Gnab Gib, but it's possible. The universe is accelerating in its expansion, but that could be just because a force is splitting into two forces very slowly(as all the forces split soon after the big bang: Strong, Weak, Electric, Magnetic, etc...) and only in the coldest parts of space. Once the force splits completely, the universe may slow, stop, and reverse to end in a Gnab Gib, or, it may accelerate in it's expansion forever and doom the universe to a cold death.

Again, I ask, "Do you have a better idea?"
Please do us a favor and tell us what you believe!

Gnab Gib, I like that.

__________________
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

What was the size of the universe at time 0:00 ie before the Big Bang.

I read somewhere
1-The size of an atom
2-The size of baseball ball.

Is it right?

Did the filamentary structure who is still there as a role to play in the cohesion of the universe today?Because if the filamentary structure is still there that must be for some utility?

At the Planck time (on the order of 10^-43 seconds), the size of the observable universe would be just the Planck length (around 10^-35 meters), which is the just distance light can cross in the Planck time. That's much, much smaller than an atom. Anything further away would be undetectable. Depending on the geometry of space, the entire universe (including those parts that cannot be seen or have any effect on our part) could have been infinite in size. Usually, though, when we talk about the size of the universe, we refer to the size of the observable universe, since there's no way to know what's beyond that distance, and it can't have had any effect on us anyway.

PiMan wrote:

Would you mind telling us your stance? Are you a creationist, steady-state'ist, whatever-you-call-the-theory-that-all-matter-was-not-at-one-point-in-what-big-bangists-would-call-the-beginning-but-only-very-close'ist, or something-else-altogether'ist?

cyreks reply:

I have posted several articles on this site using my name (michael cyrek). Refer to pages 2, 3 and 4 of the Mainstream segment of the BABB.
I am still a believer in the 'steady state theory' of of the Universe because of the Laws of Conservation which to me is empiracal evidence that cannot be ignored. My post 'Big Bang Refutation' is the originak post. Others followed.
Also, because of Halton Arp's redshift anomoly. Get familiar with it.

The laws of conservation aren't empirical evidence. Like any "laws of nature", they are statements humans have made that seem to be true, which can help us explain and understand the universe. It certainly appears that matter and energy are conserved, and we haven't observed a violation (though virtual particles seem to push the boundary), but of course we haven't observed all possible circumstances. So while energy seems to be conserved, technically the law of conservation of energy is a human creation to explain observations, and so it's really "just a theory".

What is the mechanism who allow that all the energy later converted partially in matter after the Big Bang was contained in a so little volume?

Well, the most favored contender for that is the false-vacuum inflation era.

(One day I'll have this memorized... )

At some instant after the hypothetical Unknown Event, the subatomic-sized universe was in a peculiar physical state called a false vacuum. Now, this oddity had been described in theory for some years before young Alan Guth noticed that the physics of the false vacuum could explain some interesting things if applied to big bang theory:

1. The physics of the false vacuum cause gravity to be strongly repelling, forcing the baby universe to expand exponentially, doubling and redoubling its size in tiny fractions of a second.

2. The false vacuum is unstable, or, rather, metastable--it will decay or collapse into regular, normal vacuum as a matter of course as the universe expands.

3. The physics of the false vacuum drive the "omega" constant of the universe, it's "flatness", very strongly toward a value of 1. It's thought that the actual omega of the universe is indeed very, very close to 1. (In non-inflationary big bang theory this had been pretty much a coincidence.)

4. Although the universe during its false vacuum career was quite possibly very cold and very empty of matter, the physics of the false vacuum again say that the collapse of the state would create in immense energy density, so great that particles and anti-particles would be created from pure energy. The collapse of the false vacuum results in a rapidly expanding universe filled with "hot particle soup"--precisely as the big bang theory seemed to indicate.

If Guth and Vilenkin and others are correct about inflation, the inflationary era in our universe lasted only a few hundredths of a second, and during that time the universe expanded from subatomic size to the size of a golf ball (or an orange, some would have it). The kinetic kick of that early exponential expansion flung everything in the universe away from everything else, kickstarting the expansion we see today, and its collapse resulted in the creation of all the matter and energy quanta.

And, as some have noted, if one takes the energy of the universe's gravitational field--which is a negative quantity--and puts it against the total mass/energy of the universe, it may well sum to exactly zero: there may well have been no net creation of mass/energy in the creation of the big bang universe. Eh, quien sabe? Maybe someday we will know with more certainty what happened at the Unknown Event.

[addendum] At the Astronomical Society of the Pacific there's a brief article by Filippencko and Pasachoff about the view that the universe required no net creation of mass/energy. It also talks about the idea that a gravitational field can be thought of as having negative energy...which I always find quite confusing, myself.

Lol, oops.

cyrek1, this really is a simple issue. Why is it so difficult to accept that whatever happened "before" the Big Bang is not part of the scope of the theory and therefore irrelevant to a conversation about the Big Bang? Its the TRUTH. And as such, conservation is NOT violated by the Big Bang theory. These two issues are NOT debateable. You're arguements are both circular and based on false premises.

Also, would you care to present some EVIDENCE that supports any of your ideas? Or are your ideas based strictly on attacking well established theories?

There are several pieces of evidence that directly contradict the steady state theory. Namely, redshift and background radiation. These are huge pieces of evidence.

Exactly. How many different ways to we have to say it before this sinks in? To charge the Big Bang with violating the Law of Conservation of energy is ex post facto!