Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum Is infinity an illusion?

Have you overlooked the possibility that the early Universe may have been sufficiently dense for sound waves to propagate?

Mark Whittle says: “The Universe began not with a bang but with a low moan, building into a roar that gave way to a deafening hiss.”

Whittle, it seems, has reconstructed the pattern of the sound waves that would have accompanied the birth of the Universe. He has done this by studying the high resolution mapping of the CMBR, translating the observed frequency spectrum directly to sound which yields tones far too low for ears to hear – some 50 octaves below middle A – but transpose the score up all those octaves and you can listen to it.

The intensity of the variations corresponds to about 110 decibels. Whittle has also used "the best available cosmological models" to map the way the vibrations evolved over time, showing how the chords of the big bang changed over the Universe’s first million years or so.

If "nothing" is infinite, it cannot be contained, it has no boundaries.

Actually, I agree that "Nothingness is a ridiculous concept". I don't believe there has ever been nothing, and I think that the claim that the Universe came from nothing is misleading because it requires nothing to be redefined as something.

It is like the old child-like question: Who made God? A god that can be made--physically, or mentally--is an idol, a thing.

This is why I feel that the god hypothesis of which I write--GÕD who Generates, Organizes & Delivers that which is Good, Opportune & Desirable--cannot be encapsulated in any word, even if it be a proper noun.

The who, as you state it to be, insinuates a personality or quality of character. You substantiate the quality with subjective descriptions of values, that relate to a division of opposites. This renders the universe as you see it into opposites like light and dark. Good and bad, opportune and inopportune, desireable and undesirable.

These definitions by their very nature encapsulate the separation of qualities that are subjective and personally derived. This is not infinite quality, but rather finite revelations that make god a creation of human imagination. The very definition of religion, is historically linked to this waking state fabrication of god.

You need to be careful with this sort of stuff Bill S. There is no one version agreed on as the "big bang" so Mark Whittle assumes a sort of composite version and then extracts it out thru various models.

You have the cold big bang and sure you can have sound:

http://phys.org/news/2013-08-ultracold-big-successfully-simulates-evolution.html

The hot big bang is a little more difficult:
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/cosmology/hotbb.html

No agreed value but something like 300 000 - 700 000 years before you have atoms no sound until at least then.

It's one of the interesting revelations of last few years if you incorporate QM into the start of the universe as we now must there are many possible versions of the big bang and the trick is to sort which is correct.

Correct and thus to do this trick on a universe scale you only have a few viable options

Hartle-Hawking State:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%80%93Hawking_state

Good old multiverse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse


I will leave out the few from string theory since most of those are now on life support from the LHC.




This leaves open the problem of where did everything come from then Bill S ... are you going to invoke GOD?

Me personally I am much more a zero man as Anthony Zee so eligantantly put it



So no I don't think the universe is infinite in any sense.

Thanks Orac, at last a scientific response that I can question.

I have to admit that I can muster very little enthusiasm for any sound that may have been associated with the BB.

Moving to your last post, I would like to test my understanding of the Hartle-Hawking State with a few questions.

Planck epoch = 0 to 10^-43 s. This is a period of time; therefore time must have started at t=0. Therefore time exists during the Planck epoch. Do I have the right impression?

They suggest that “….if we could travel backward in time toward the beginning of the universe, we would note that quite near what might have otherwise been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time.”

Does this statement imply that we would see that the condition of “space and no time” exists after t=0, or that we would be able to see beyond the BB?

“….that at first there is only space and no time”.

Is this before or after the BB?

If there was a "time" when there was space but no time, how could this condition change? Surely time is needed in order to allow change. If there were a condition in which there were space and no time, there would be only space now, unless some outside influence “created” time.

They propose that “the universe is infinitely finite”!

Wow! I’m told I am the one with odd ideas about infinity. Is this another term for unbounded, or is it just semantics?