big bang

[Idrach]

In relation to the epicentre of this big bang, where are we situated.

At the epicentre. As is everywhere else.

In theory, if the big bang was equal in all directions at the same instance, how come some solar systems are millions of light years away whilst we still seem to be crawling through space. One finds it odd that ALL the stars and planets in our solar system can have exploded from the big bang with such equal and steady velocity..... oooh this is hurting my brain cell !!

It is space that is expanding not galaxies that are travelling. There are, however, also "proper velocities" - for example the "Local Group" of Galaxies is heading towards the Shapely Supercluster faster than the space between us, a mere 650 million light years, is expanding.

[Mattb]

E=Mc2.... basicly energy and matter are interchangeable.

Doesn't explain where the energy came from though!

I think that there's a wilful ignoring of the role that some sort of giant monster made out of spaghetti might have had.

And God, obviously.

Praise Be To His Noodly Appendage!

[Higgs_bosun]

Doesn't explain where the energy came from though!

Praise Be To His Noodly Appendage!

You missed the point....energy and potential are eternal entities and they exist everywhere. "Who made it?" is a childish question. Like the eternal laws of physics they are also mindless therefore pointless. No need to invoke gods or the FSM...

[Idrach]

Doesn't explain where the energy came from though!

Indeed. Nobody knows. There are a bunch of scientific hypotheses around - energy from the collision between branes moving in some sort of meta-verse (which just leads to the meta-question, where did the branes and the meta-verse come from), the "long tail" of quantum "virtual particle" fluctuations (i.e. random shit happens and eventually some random shit appeared that had enough energy to expand), various things to do with "vacuum energy" or "false vacuum" (the "biggest error in physics" is the difference between the measured vacuum energy - 10^-9 Joules per m^3 - versus the calculated vacuum energy - 10^113 Joules per m^3. That's the sort of error that would even allow the MOD budget to balance!) & and the Hawking "in 4-space dimensions, there doesn't need to be an initial singularity" one. That has the same "so where did it come from in the first place" issue as the branes argument and also relies on a "big crunch" type situation - which we now know (supernova measurements mean accelerating expansion - this year's Nobel for physics) is more than somewhat unlikely.

Of course, there is also the "God did it" school of belief. Having said that, there is no less evidence for this than there is for the various scientific hypothesis.

If you subscribe to a Popperian view of science, none of these hypotheses are ever likely to be significantly testable at core to be considered theories, so we will just have to extend them and see if they make additional predictions of effects that we can then try and measure (or measurements that we have already that they explain.) This is where the "God did it" ones, with all of their additional claims about Young-Earth Creation, the Great Flood, angels and divine intervention do currently come a cropper.

[Idrach]

You missed the point....energy and potential are eternal entities and they exist everywhere. "Who made it?" is a childish question. Like the eternal laws of physics they are also mindless therefore pointless. No need to invoke gods or the FSM...

Gibberish. Childish gibberish as well.

Energy and potential energy are not eternal - they are interchangeable, for a start. "_Who_ made it" may indeed be a "childish question" - but it is your childishness (not that this should surprise anybody). The actual question asked was "where did it all come from?" This is perfectly rational, meaningful and the subject of serious study by a lot of people.

And, yes, there is no need to invoke gods. However, there is no evidence that invoking God(s), in this limited context, is inappropriate.

And your rabid anti-religiousness seems to have blinded you to the whole point of the Church of the FSM - and, I'd suspect, to the Invisible Pink Unicorn (blessed be her holy hooves).

[Mattb]

The God theories always seem to forget to answer the question of "Where did God come from?" though.

[Idrach]

The God theories always seem to forget to answer the question of "Where did God come from?" though.

I wasn't claiming they were right, and all bar the "quantum fluctuation" scientific hypothesis have this issue too (the vacuum energy explanations require an initiating quantum fluctuation too - they just explain why it could be so energetic) - I was just pointing out that in this one small bit of the "we don't yet know" science space, there isn't any evidence to bar the "a big boy dun it and ran away" explanation.

Of course, the real problem with religious explanations of science is where they flat out contradict things that we actually know, to a pretty reasonable degree of accuracy, to be both true and testable as so.

[bad_pixel]

what the big bang people seem to say is that as nobody has ever seen an edge to the universe then we can just ignore it.
the 3d space that we are occupying appears to be expanding but as we are a part of that expanding thing then everything is more or less as it is now as it was then but a lot smaller.
[edit] I mean it's bigger now than it was to start with.

[Higgs_bosun]

Gibberish. Childish gibberish as well.

Energy and potential energy are not eternal - they are interchangeable, for a start. "_Who_ made it" may indeed be a "childish question" - but it is your childishness (not that this should surprise anybody). The actual question asked was "where did it all come from?" This is perfectly rational, meaningful and the subject of serious study by a lot of people.

And, yes, there is no need to invoke gods. However, there is no evidence that invoking God(s), in this limited context, is inappropriate.

And your rabid anti-religiousness seems to have blinded you to the whole point of the Church of the FSM - and, I'd suspect, to the Invisible Pink Unicorn (blessed be her holy hooves).

I said that "energy and potential are eternal"...I don't know what 'potential energy' is but that energy and mass are interchangable is fine....except that there will probably be some loss in the system (Hawking radiation is cheating). The decay of everything in this universe is observable... the dissipation of energy and mass, being forced apart by 'dark energy'. My thoughts are that 'heat death' must include the return of space/time to it's former condition...possibly via wormholes/black holes/white holes or similar... The potential to emerge in another big bang from another dimension is a reasonable theory, for a blinded Bishop from the FSM Church and carer of the IPU flock...innit?

[BONNACON]

So much of the universe and life is pointless therefore their must be paperwork to back it up somewhere.