The End of the World

[elektrizikekswerk]

I know I shouldn't but I'll bite: Confident about what? Science?

 

[HistoryDude]

Well, technically there was no "before the Big Bang" because time did not exist yet.

There's multiple competing scientific theories about the end of the universe. There's the heat death of the universe, the Big Crunch, and the Big Rip.

The reason why the Big Crunch is no longer popular is that the universe is expanding, and the basis of the Big Crunch is that the universe is contracting or will begin contracting eventually. Astronomy says that the expansion of the universe is actually getting faster, not slower.

Barring some strange dark energy phenomenon, the universe isn't going to start contracting.

Believing in the Big Bang (which most scientists do) does not mean that any of this evidence stops existing, so most proponents of the Big Bang do not believe in the Big Crunch.

The Big Rip is that the universe will continue expanding until it's large enough that the distance between individual particles is infinite. It also relies on dark energy.

The reason why the heat death of the universe is the most popular is that it doesn't rely on dark energy, which we know almost nothing about.

 

[Darth Howard]

Due to the nature of the big bang and the singularity there's no possible way to know. It is physically impossible to "see" beyond that point about 14b years ago.

Is this a satisfactory answer? Most likely not. Does it make the answer less true*? No.
This does however not mean, indicate or proof that the universe - or existance in general - is cyclic.
In fact the current consensus is that the universe won't stop expanding and may lead to an event called Big Freeze.



*Albeit it is actually a bit more complicated but to explain this is beyond my knowledge of astrophysics, quantum mechanics and general relativity.

To be philosophical you can perhaps ask: when you go north, and you keep going north, eventually you will reach the (true) north pole, what is north from there?

 

[Henry IX]

What was before the Big Bang then?
I think most of it's followers acknowledge the cyclic nature of the Universe



Of course you know it is wrong

Any evaluations of the mass of the Universe, dark matter or the amount of dark energy are actually, in our state of scientific knowledge, the same funny fairy tales like the Greek Mythology

Why?

Enlighten me then, please...

I only referred to the OP's thread main theme

The Big Bang theory, in its simplest form, simply proposes that the universe started very small and very hot, then got bigger. The evidence for this proposition is very strong and comes from multiple independent sorces including the cosmisc background radition and the Hubble constant. There is no cyclic nature needed or implied.

The big bang stats with a singularity, where the equations we use to understand the universe break down. We have good reason to belive that such an event reomoves all the information contained and thus there is no possible way to know what happended before. Defining time perfectly has proven to be a very difficult thing to do, as the equations of quantum mechanics have no need for it to flow in any particular direction, but the most popular version of time is known as the thermodynamic arrow and uses the movement towards increasing disorder and a lower energy state as a way to define the flow of time. If you follow this logic then the begining of time is the big bang. Asking "What was there before the big bang?" is a bit like asking what the number 3 tastes like, it has the format of an English sentence but is actually devoid of meaning.

When exploring these sorts of questions the human mind tends to do quite poorly, our sense of narrative and causation leads us to look for cyclic models and the events that happen before. The answer "there is no before" leaves us unsatisfied. However, that is best answer we can give without resorting to making things up.

What I am describing is a sophisticated theory with a huge mass of evidence gathered by literally millions of hours of research over the last 100 years. It is in no way a fairy tale or mythology and to equate them is to show a profound lack of underanding of epistimology and falsafiablity.

 

[EustaceCS]

The big bang stats with a singularity, where the equations we use to understand the universe break down. We have good reason to belive that such an event reomoves all the information contained and thus there is no possible way to know what happended before.

You forgot to add "with current level of development of Science".
We don't know which inventions and discoveries await us even in near future.
Radiation is a very recent discovery. But if you'd tell someone from two enturies ago that invisible death rays exist - you'll be claimed madman.
Electricity is known for ages byt became manageable and exloitable relatively recently too. But the concept of electricity transfer over wires looked blasphemous at the very least some five centuries ago.
Maybe we'll become able to handle Big Bang eventually.

 

[Director]

So and nothing can be ruled out...

If you want an analogy, here's one:

We are inside a room with no windows and no doors. We can try to measure if the room is expanding or shrinking, and argue about whether that means our method of measurement is also expanding or shrinking. The room is enormous, so large that traveling about in it is currently infeasible.

We cannot look or sense outside the room in any way. We can observe objects inside the room and speculate on what their existence and behavior implies.

But: anything and everything outside the room is unknowable. Anything before the creation (or after the destruction) of the room is unknowable.

It is possible that we may be able to construct theories of the room which account for all observable phenomena and which satisfy all of our questions. We may be able to theorize about the exterior. But we will never know because we cannot get outside to observe what came before, what is, and what comes after.

 

[Henry IX]

You forgot to add "with current level of development of Science".
We don't know which inventions and discoveries await us even in near future.
Radiation is a very recent discovery. But if you'd tell someone from two enturies ago that invisible death rays exist - you'll be claimed madman.
Electricity is known for ages byt became manageable and exloitable relatively recently too. But the concept of electricity transfer over wires looked blasphemous at the very least some five centuries ago.
Maybe we'll become able to handle Big Bang eventually.

No, I didn't.

When I say "we hve good reason to believe" I meant we have good reason to believe. Whilst it is possible that we could make some scientific breakthough that completely overturns our entire understanding of the nture of everything, that is highly unlikely. We have a fairly good idea of the general shape of a grand unified theory and the kind of questions it should be able to answer, and we have no reason to think it will suddenly make the information lost in a singularity disappear. Science is a iterative process and very, very rarely completely throws out previous knowledge.

Given that UV rays were discovered over 200 years ago, the idea that there are higher energy waves that can damage human tissue would be interesting but not shocking to a scientist of the early 19th century. If you called them "invisible death rays" you would be laughed at, but that is to do with the unscientfic phrasing rather than the shocking nature of the discovery. The point here is that new information modifies the framework of understanding rather than completely destroys it. Hence we can say with a high degree of confidence that singnularites destroy information about the past state of the material contained within them and that furutre science is unlikely to contradict that finding.

I hope I am wrong and we do find a way to probe before the Big Bang, but I don't think it is actually posible.

 

[IsadorBG]

The Big Bang being a singularity or even the start of the universe are no longer mainstream concepts in physics. Since observations contradicts the possibly that the Big Bang could be one. Inflation Big Bang is what is commonly accepted these days. As for what happened before, we simply have no concrete ideas, which doesn't mean there was nothing btw. Just that we don't know; because we cannot observe it.
But they are a few theories for those interested.

There Was No Big Bang Singularity

It's one of the biggest assumptions we've ever made about the Universe. Here's why it's wrong.

www.forbes.com

The Big Bang Wasn't The Beginning, After All

In the beginning, there was light, and matter, and antimatter, in an expanding and cooling Universe. But something else happened before.

www.forbes.com

 

[Avernite]

The Big Bang being a singularity or even the start of the universe are no longer mainstream concepts in physics. Since observations contradicts the possibly that the Big Bang could be one. Inflation Big Bang is what is commonly accepted these days. As for what happened before, we simply have no concrete ideas, which doesn't mean there was nothing btw. Just that we don't know; because we cannot observe it.
But they are a few theories for those interested.

There Was No Big Bang Singularity

It's one of the biggest assumptions we've ever made about the Universe. Here's why it's wrong.

www.forbes.com

The Big Bang Wasn't The Beginning, After All

In the beginning, there was light, and matter, and antimatter, in an expanding and cooling Universe. But something else happened before.

www.forbes.com

I think here technical terminology and scientific terminology disagree. The big bang, when is that? Is it everything before the CMB (cosmic microwave background) shines out, or is it only after inflation but before the CMB? Is it the time before inflation starts?
That matters rather a lot for it being the start of the universe.

Of course the pre-inflation state is still essentially unknown and, so far as I know, unknowable (having learned about it before 2008) - but it certainly has many other characteristics of a singularity (it was tiny, and the normal laws of daily physics don't apply). It was not a singularity in the sense of having infinite temperature.

 

[IsadorBG]

The Big Bang is point of origin of the observable universe. Before the inflation started. What it is and when it was is not really known. Roughly 13.8 billions years ago is the best answer you're going to get.

The point was it not being a singularity means physics doesn't break down and so it cannot be the start of the universe or of space time either. There was an universe before the Big Bang. We have no idea what the universe looked before the Big Bang tough as we cannot see that far yet. Who knows? Perhaps one day we could extract quantum informations from particles and get a better picture of the early stages of the modern universe and perhaps of times even beyond.

 

[Avernite]

The Big Bang is point of origin of the observable universe. Before the inflation started. What it is and when it was is not really known. Roughly 13.8 billions years ago is the best answer you're going to get.

The point was it not being a singularity means physics doesn't break down and so it cannot be the start of the universe or of space time either. There was an universe before the Big Bang. We have no idea what the universe looked before the Big Bang tough as we cannot see that far yet. Who knows? Perhaps one day we could extract quantum informations from particles and get a better picture of the early stages of the modern universe and perhaps of times even beyond.

Well we don't seem to have physics for an uninflated universe, so I don't know how to know that it didn't break the arrow of time. Or any other laws of physics.

 

[IsadorBG]

Well under our current understanding of physics it should not break anything.

Singularity are an exception the same way dividing by 0 is very different from dividing by a very tiny number that is not 0.
And modern astro-physician are pretty confident that the Big Bang was not a singularity.

That doesn't mean that you are wrong tough and that the Big Bang was not ruled by different physical law that now exist in our modern universe. Since we cannot observe pre-inflation, there's no way to know for certain. We can only go with what we know already and theorize from that base, which admittedly has its limitations.

 

[Yakman]

So I was poking around in some early mythologies and some other early writings, and wondered to what extent did old civilizations embrace the idea of "destruction".

Most (not all) civs - Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians, Hebrews, Norse, Hindu - have some sort of the story of "Creation", the beginning of the world.

Creation stories are not always dependent on a Creator. In some mythologies, Creation is an intelligent act by some creator god yes. But in many cases the World just appears without explanation.

Curiously, most mythologies I've come across do envisage a remarkably similar pre-creation universe being a vast, dark, watery mess ("chaos"). Then either a god (or gods) bring order to it, and "create" the world. Alternatively, a bit of land just spontaneously emerges somehow from the water, then gods come into being, and the rest of creation follows.

The pre-creation "watery chaos" rests on what seems like a general presumption of many ancient people that the sky is made of water. I mean the sky is big and blue, looks a bit look a heavenly ocean. And we all know water comes down as rain. So it seems obvious there is "water up there" that leaks occasionally. Many posit that the world we are living in is some kind of land & air pocket between two oceans - one below us, one above us. So Creation often explains how that land pocket in the watery chaos came about, and "inserting" ourselves in it.

But that aside, what I'm more curious about is just as there is "Creation", is there "Destruction"? If the World has a beginning, does it also have an end?

This is a little harder to tell. I mean there are a lots of mythologies that talk about mass death of humans or even life on Earth - in some Great Flood or cataclysm by some angry Deity and the like. But I don't seem to come across myths of a clearly predicted end to the Earth itself. That is the destruction of this little earth mound & air pocket.

The ancients were clearly aware land is not constant. Mountains are eroded by wind and rain, landfalls from cliffs into the sea. Volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis are real and change the landscape. But following that observation, land of God's good earth is constantly being gradually lost. Does it get to a point where all land is eventually swept into the sea and disappears? Is there an "end of the world"? Just as it came from watery chaos, will it return to watery chaos?

Aristotle is bit tricky. For him, everything is biological - earth, planets, everything is to be compared to a living organism. Yet living organisms decay and die. Does the Earth die? In his Meteorology he is clearly aware that there are "signs of decay" - erosion and the like. But he posits optimistically that unlike animals or plants, decay on Earth is not a sign of impending doom of the whole. The decay in certain parts is counter-balanced by rejuvenation in other parts. Old mountains may disappear in one place, but new mountains "appear" in another place (doesn't explain how). So on the whole Earth persists - and will persist eternally.

But I've come across allegations that this optimism was uniquely Aristotleian. That other Greek schools (apparently Stoics & Epicureans) were convinced the Earth will "die". That these "signs of decay" are irreversible signs of the looming eventual death of the Earth. It is not that they think time or world ends altogether, but rather that it periodically destroys itself entirely, and re-creates itself entirely. But I can't find sources with details about that.

Cycles of death & re-creation seems to me to be a theme that is touched upon by many world religions. Clearly with humans - upon death, humans travel to an afterlife, or are resurrected or re-born. If they think about the world by analogy to a living organism, they would naturally also believe that Earth goes through a similar death & re-creation cycle. But I don't really find examples of that clearly articulated anywhere.

I was wondering if anybody had come across this kind of stuff, whether in mythologies or ancient writings. Creation myths are all over the place, but doom myths are a little scantier. I was just curious as to if and how they envisaged the End of the World.

The Aboriginals of Australia, the hundreds or thousands of nations of them might have a unique perspective on this. I have no idea what it might be.

From my very limited understanding of the cosmology of the American Indian, they didn't think about the end of the world. Which to me is pretty refreshing.

 

[Avernite]

Well under our current understanding of physics it should not break anything.

Singularity are an exception the same way dividing by 0 is very different from dividing by a very tiny number that is not 0.
And modern astro-physician are pretty confident that the Big Bang was not a singularity.

That doesn't mean that you are wrong tough and that the Big Bang was not ruled by different physical law that now exist in our modern universe. Since we cannot observe pre-inflation, there's no way to know for certain. We can only go with what we know already and theorize from that base, which admittedly has its limitations.

Well there's at least one law that would be different - the one that makes inflation happen isn't currently (very) active. Might be it's the same phenomenon as dark energy, but then it's at an entirely different scale of operation.

Admittedly the electroweak force also was operating very differently then, but... we have a decent idea of how.

 

[Henry IX]

The Aboriginals of Australia, the hundreds or thousands of nations of them might have a unique perspective on this. I have no idea what it might be.

From my limited understanding of the particular Aboriginal cultures I have some familiarity with (given that much of their spiritual teachings are only taught to initiated men, which I am not), they don't have a single creation myth. The various landmarks, animals and plants all have their own stories which are said to take place during the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is both the distant past and the spiritual present and does not have a specific time. As such they have no 'destruction myth' simply a perpetual present (always was, always will be). At least that's my outsider's understanding of it.

 

[Frank_Costello]

But that aside, what I'm more curious about is just as there is "Creation", is there "Destruction"? If the World has a beginning, does it also have an end?

Do not think of it as 'Destruction', think of it as 'Transformation'. The Evil of this world will be wiped away and all that is good shall be saved and take the place of that which has fallen.

Earth, certainly, will be destroyed in time. The Sun and the Earth will be packed up and put away just as both the Bible and scientists tell us, this earthly matter will be turned into something else. But Mankind, genetically engineered by Angels and blessed by God with the Divine Spark of Reason, shall endure forever.

Mankind and the Earth will be transformed. But to understand the endgame you need to understand the beginning. I don't mean the incomprehensible 'Creation' story that takes 10,000 years of god-magic to acheive. But the long term, full evolution, of a four billion year old planet in a fourteen billion year old universe inhabited by beings we have not yet begun to understand. From this angle, the logic and rationale of the Cataclysm/Ragnarok/Armageddon is far easier to comprehend, and the Hope of Mankind more easily grasped.

Is it not wonderful that we possess the hope of wandering the entire universe at will for eternity in the years to come? To settle brave new worlds, to boldly go where no creature has gone before? I find it marvelous beyond compare.