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Question: What's your opinion on the big bang theory?
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Kristian Harder answered on 8 Nov 2013:
Ok, first of all I should say that the Big Bang is not something I deal with in my particular job, and some of the other scientists probably know the details much better than I do. But here’s what I picked up from random reading and chatting.
It is quite certain that something like the Big Bang existed. No question. No doubt. Not a matter of opinion anymore. We can see very clearly with our telescopes that the universe is still flying apart, basically still in the process of exploding. We have found radiation all over the universe that is the actual afterglow of the Big Bang.
The part that’s still under discussion is science is thus not whether or not there was a Big Bang, but only the details of how it exactly happened. Did it all start with the explosion, or was there something beforehand that imploded (collapsed) and then exploded again? Is there just our universe, or do Big Bangs happen all the time all over the place, each one creating yet another universe? Was the Big Bang the beginning of time, or was there a “before” at all? There are ways of answering some of these questions with new experiments (such as looking very precisely for leftover patterns in the afterglow of the Big Bang – is there any sign that it started from something more complicated than just a dot), but as usual with science, you never how how far you’ll get with trying to answer those questions.
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Venus Keus answered on 10 Nov 2013:
Obviously we don’t have any direct access to the beginning of universe and it’s not an experiment that you can re-run to see what happens. So, we just look at the sky and see some patterns and lights of different frequency coming from different regions, and we come up with theories that explain these observations. Big Bang Theory is one of those theories, and so far no observation has contradicted it so a lot of people agree with it. But there are more interesting theories out there, that I find very interesting too.
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Zachary Williamson answered on 10 Nov 2013:
The television show or the physics theory? The tv show is great!, but also uncomfortably similar to real life in my line of work! I suspect you wanted to know about the theory though.
The big bang theory is…weird. Really weird. Beautifully weird in fact. 12 or so billion years ago the entire universe was the size of a pinhead and then expanded into what we have today. It sounds ridiculous if it weren’t for the fact that we have so much evidence for it. When you tune a radio to a frequency with no channel on it, then some of that hiss you hear is a direct result of this fantastic explosion that happened *billions* years ago. It’s amazing stuff.
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Joel Goldstein answered on 11 Nov 2013:
The TV show or the beginning of the universe?
I don’t watch the show that often, but I do find it quite enjoyable and it’s nice to see something on TV that gets the science right. I would like to say that I am very happy that I have not had to work with anyone quite like Sheldon!
As for the big bang, there is overwhelming evidence that the entire observable universe was once (about 13 billion years ago) incredibly hot and dense. It then expanded and cooled resulting in the planets, stars and galaxies we see today. We understand a lot of the science of how this happened, but some crucial bits (including where the hot, dense primordial universe came from) are still just speculation.
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Tim Hollowood answered on 11 Nov 2013:
The big bang theory: the most profound, fundamental insight into the way the universe works. And the theory of how the universe started is good as well.
Comments
Kristian commented on :
Good point, the TV show! It never even occurred to me that this question might be about that. 🙂
infintaneousdeath commented on :
Where did the original particle that exploded come from?
deadlox commented on :
first there was a dust cloud that slowly built together and then it gets banged by asteroids and slowly make the small earth that was then on a collision cause with another planet luckily for earth it hit at the perfect angle and then made the big bang all the debris makes earth bigger and earths gravity makes two moons.
Kristian commented on :
There was no original particle, just some energy. One of the great things of how nature works is that matter is pretty much just a form of energy. Mass is energy. You can convert energy into particles, and you can turn particles into energy (for example when matter and antimatter hit each other). I guess the big bang started as a big bunch of energy, and then some of that energy turned into particles.
Kristian commented on :
And deadlox, what you describe is how our solar system formed. The Big Bang was much much much bigger. The Big Bang is about how the entire universe was formed, with an incredibly large number of solar systems in it. I read once that there are about 30,000 billion billion suns in the part of the universe that we can see alone!
deadlox commented on :
oooooooohhhhhhhhhh thanks
infintaneousdeath commented on :
Mass is energy? o_0 <— My face of bewilderment
Kristian commented on :
yes, mass is a form of energy. E=mc^2 says it: every mass corresponds to a specific (and quite huge) amount of energy. And not only that, you can convert mass into other forms of energy, and back. Normally, this works by having matter and antimatter particles meet, making them annihilate each other into pure energy, from which for example *other* particles can be created. Turning energy into particles usually creates matter and antimatter particles in pairs.