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No cosmological concept is as widely known as the big bang: from a state without physical order, lacking even space and time, matter appeared. How could so flippant a term denote so profound an idea?
A friend of ours at M.I.T., a skeptical experimenter, often finds himself at work amid that dreamier and indulgent society on our Pacific Coast. Last summer he was in a Caltech audience, his peers in celebratory mode. The stage was held by a performance artist who entertained with original songs. She describes herself as "Bette Midler meets Carl Sagan, with a touch of Tom Lehrer and Mae West." A spotlight lit the tall performer, her gleaming gown ornamented with patches that, though colorless, dispersed the white beam into rich spectral hues. Another performer might regard such visual effects as arcane stagecraft, but not this artist, whose day job is based on years of graduate studies in physics. For Lynda Williams, instructor in physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University, "physics is such a lyrical subject."
This article was originally published with the title The Big Bang: Wit or Wisdom?.
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4 Comments
Add CommentThere was never a Big Bang. Existance is Cyclic, not Reciprical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is the difference between cyclic and reciprocal? "Cyclic" means perpetual? If yes "cyclicity" is not understandable because requires something infinite (e.g. time) and 'infinite" is "apeiron" i.e. without "peira" (experience) and beyond human understanding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf not, cyclicity is a finite repeating of reciprocality.
Big Bang, along ALL other scientific theories, is exactly a theory, i.e. A WAY TO SEEING SOMETHING, having not necessarily any connection to "truth".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe human mind, being "finite" ,cannot envision either "infinity", nor "forever"
but time is forever and space is infinite. There was no "big bang". Because of the mind's limitation this must be taken on faith. And the universe is NOT expanding since it is endless.
Fritz Zwicky was right, light gets"tired". If "scientists" would accept this, maybe the wild "pipe dream" theories would stop
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The universe is expanding, just not in a way that would bring about a big bang going back in time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean, come on(!): "from a state without physical order, lacking even space and time, matter appeared."
There is no such thing as such a state, and anyway such a state wouldn't have it's own ruler to decide that something within it is tiny or large. If space and matter were to appear there suddenly and get bigger, then what is it getting bigger than?There is nothing external for the universe to be getting bigger in relation to. This means the universe can get bigger eternally, as well as the reverse.
The expansion of the universe involves everything expanding, not just empty space between certain things.
Being in an accelerating rocket ship is the same as being on the surface of the Earth, therefore the surface of the Earth is accelerating just like a rocket ship.
All the air and everything bunches up against the surface of the planet just like it would if the surface were accelerating upward.
The planet is expanding outward in all directions just like everything else in the universe.
Gravity is no magical pulling at a distance, it's a pushing from the other direction, a swallowing up of space. Space also expands, so there's plenty of it to be swallowed.