D.A. Morgan response to jjw, about 10//11
To answer your "what was there before" is an invalid question. First it assumes that there was SOME THING before: We don't know that that was true. Second it assumes that time existed prior to the event: We don't know that to be true either. We are completely ignorant of anything prior to a very small faction of a second after the event.
Keep in mind that the Big Bang with Inflation is described as an expansion of SPACE-TIME. Both time and space were created. Thus our anthropomorphic need for a before may just be a weakness of human imagination: Not physics.
Now to your question about mass. As we humans have mass and live in an environment in which things seem massive we care about mass a lot. But from a Quantum Mechanical point of view mass may just be, to use a very bad analogy, something like molasses. It causes things to resist acceleration.
Thank you DA. As to Rob, Please assume my feelings defy even intentional hurts.
When I read the above I see the shadow of a concept frequently offered by the religious. We know of nothing before, neither matter nor time and this Big Bag- err this Big Bang, came out of nowhere. Something of which we know not created space and time on the spot and then banged into an inflationary state of its own accord.
DA, this has all the earmarks of accepting some thing on faith because we admit we know nothing of what went before, if any thing and we know not what could have caused the ?event? to occur. When I look at the stars and consider the apparently endless quantity of stuff (forget Mass) that is out there I am personally compelled to wonder where it all came from. Inflation assumes compression existed prior to the inflation or you are compelled to use substitute creation as part of the inflation. If we can assume something in a state of compression then we have a pre-existence of stuff of which the Big Bang is constructed.
I do not intend a play on words. You offer that ?what was there before? is an invalid question? If invalid it is only because the theory is not capable of providing an answer.
From my standpoint a theory that does not provide a beginning should not presume to provide an ending. Why don?t we just believe there was a big bag of stuff there first?
I think I brought up Mass in another discussion so I will let that rest to conserve space.
With your skills you can understand why some of us may find the Big Bang theory hard to swallow. When the issue discusses the ?after? we think in terms of what was before.
When some one talks of inflation we think of compression unto inflation. When one of us thinks of expansion we automatically think that yesterday it was smaller. The Theory provides these descriptors, not the reader.
I always appreciate you insights and explanations and I continue to learn stuff.
jw
