Musings of a Madman

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. But which beginning? Most Christians agree the universe had a beginning but God has always been. I wonder then what God did before the universe? We can tell how old the universe is. We can measure vibrations left from the big bang. What if it wasn't the first?
Matter and antimatter have an opposing relationship. As one expands the other contracts. As our universe expands another contracts. When one end of the cycle is reached, the roles reverse. Constantly shifting in and out of space and time. Let's talk about these shifts.
Expansion. The big bang. We know what happened, more or less, in the beginning. All the matter and energy of the universe packed so densely that boom. The world was born. Space and time was born with the speed of light. What we don't know is how this setup came to be. I think our answer belongs to the devourers of the universe, eating up space, time and energy with no limit. I'm speaking about black holes.
Black holes have a gravitational field, so immense, that not even light escapes. These powers are impossible to measure and yet so incredibly dense. One day the black holes will swallow the universe and each other. What do we have then? All of the matter and energy of the universe packed in one dense location. Sound familiar?
So what happens then to all that matter and energy when there are no more opposing forces? When there is nothing outside of itself? No time, no space, nothing. Well I believe we already know. What we know of this reality is that it works in cycles. Everything cycles. Life then death then rebirth. Stars explode and leave behind the elements to start again. Planets form, die and crumble leaving behind the materials to start again. We see it in the grand scale of the cosmos and we see it at the quantum level. Why wouldn't it be beyond that? Why would God wait to create a temporary universe? Maybe we have always been and always will be in the cycle of life.

What are you asking us to comment on? Or is this more of a journal post...

I'm just looking for some discussion on people's theories of the universe, it origins, etc. I find myself thinking on this more and more and I'd like to hear from my brothers and sisters.

I look at the universe as the breath of God. As he inhales, the universe collapses. As the exhales, so is the Big Bang. In and out, in cycles, as you said, like everything else within the universe.

Streen wrote: I look at the universe as the breath of God. As he inhales, the universe collapses. As the exhales, so is the Big Bang. In and out, in cycles, as you said, like everything else within the universe.

What about reincarnation?

Do you then yourself have a theory of cosmogeny? What you presented certainly doesn't seem to be one...

JLSpinner wrote: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. But which beginning? Most Christians agree the universe had a beginning but God has always been. I wonder then what God did before the universe?

Interestingly, these questions hardly come up without presupposing the god in the first place. I find an "explanation" rather lacking if it raises more questions than it actually answers, but that's just me. Anyway, as far as we know, time is one of the dimensions of the universe we inhabit and we recognize it by the change of things. In a static system we couldn't tell if time actually passed. For this reason there is no telling whether time exists outside or absent our universe and thus a question about conditions before its inception may not even be a coherent one to ask, since for all we know there might not have been any time before the universe.

Matter and antimatter have an opposing relationship. As one expands the other contracts.

I could go all math nerd on you now and say that "opposite" is an ill-defined relation, but I shan't. Instead I'll go all physics nerd on you and inform you that while the forces have the power to change the distance between any two collections of matter, matter itself isn't something that expands or contracts and nor is antimatter. More crucially, the relationship between matter and antimatter is not a complementary one. One does not grow from the other shrinking, rather the opposite is the case. As they cancel each other out, so can they be created only in pairs. As one increases in amount, so does the other, and as one decreases, so the other does, too.

As our universe expands another contracts. When one end of the cycle is reached, the roles reverse. Constantly shifting in and out of space and time. Let's talk about these shifts.

Yes, let's. This sounds like a demonstration of another universe, if it were so. Would you kindly cite a source for that? Cheers!

Black holes have a gravitational field, so immense, that not even light escapes. These powers are impossible to measure and yet so incredibly dense.

You do understand that these two statements are in direct contradiction, do you? If we could not measure the power of black holes, how could we possibly tell what they are capable of? In fact, how would we even know they exist?

One day the black holes will swallow the universe and each other. What do we have then? All of the matter and energy of the universe packed in one dense location. Sound familiar?

In order for the expansion of the universe to reverse, one of two things has to be the case. Either the geometry of space time has to be closed or the rate of expansion has to be slowing down such that eventually it would stop and gravity would take the universe back into one spot. From all we know neither appears to be the case and indeed the opposite is the case with the latter.

So what happens then to all that matter and energy when there are no more opposing forces? When there is nothing outside of itself? No time, no space, nothing.

I don't know what that itself is you are talking about, but I agree with the rest. Since a force is the time derivative of momentum, a system without forces might as well be a system without time, for everything would be static in it. A system without forces would also be one without any interactions we can measure and thus it would be indistinguishable from a system where nothing exists.

Well I believe we already know. What we know of this reality is that it works in cycles. Everything cycles.

No, you don't actually know that and neither does the rest of us. If we did, there would be no need to try and assert this by making things up but rather it could be shown by using what we actually have learned about the world we inhabit.

Life then death then rebirth. Stars explode and leave behind the elements to start again. Planets form, die and crumble leaving behind the materials to start again.

Do you know what entropy is? Do you not know that stars expell enormous amounts of heat and light between birth and death? In your analogy the universe would be more like a superposition of a multitude of spirals, if anything, and even then I'm not sure how helpful it is to view it as such. Nothing follows from that.

We see it in the grand scale of the cosmos and we see it at the quantum level. Why wouldn't it be beyond that?

I don't know. But then you neither demonstrated that it is on either the cosmic or the quantum level (and I'm willing to bet you couldn't tell the difference if you were shown the math of both), and neither did anybody else say that that cyclical pattern you propose doesn't apply outside of those. You being the one to present it, I think the burden is on you to show why it is so and you won't get there by asking why it wouldn't be.

Why would God wait to create a temporary universe? Maybe we have always been and always will be in the cycle of life.

I addressed the circle problem above, so I needn't go into it again. Why would God need to wait for anything if there is no time? And if there is time, why do you suggest that God's experience be bound at all by it? How do you know there is such a thing as waiting from God's perspective? Why would God create anything, eternal or temporary at all, and how would he go about doing either? And what does God need with a starship? Remember what I said about raising more questions than are answered?

Thank you for the reply. I should probably explain that God here is more a symbol than a figure. At this point I'm not sure if I believe in an outside creator. I'm at a tipping point in my beliefs and am trying to learn more so that I fall in the right direction. I notice you asked for citations and proofs but alas I am empty handed. I wasn't presenting this as a science article. I was merely looking for how others explain the origins of the universe. What is your opinion?

There is no such thing as a proof of any synthetic claim.
Seeing how we had talked little until now, rest assured that while I am often being contrarian to some extent or another, seldom do I become antagonistic over a mere difference in opinion.
Now, you did repeatedly, albeit not initially, ask for our opinions and thoughts on the fundamentals of the universe, and some of that I have voiced in commenting on what you said about those things. Much like yourself, I am a rather curious man, and I am specifically interested in the nature of things rather than in the opinions people have of them; hence my skepticism.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I do welcome anyone and everyone to form their own opinion on what ever grounds they step on, and I would defend anybody's and everybody's right to both hold any opinion and to express it in speech or text or the creative arts. The scrutiny I apply to what you say is in a sense testing my own perception, for if yours can stand up to it, perhaps mine needs some adjustment to account for that.
Unfortunately, as are you empty handed when it comes to evidence of the model you held until now, so am I empty handed, too, in a slightly different way. My theoretical physics background, though growing, is still pretty weak and thinly spread. I understand that there is a theory of cosmogeny as it stands, and by that I mean one that accounts for a lot of evidence and is consistent with pretty much all the rest of it and that made a number of independent predictions with a rather high accuracy - the aforementioned big bang model, as it is colloquially refered to. I am however poorly familiarized with that model and wouldn't dare to try and present it on my own, let alone defend it with what little I can claim to know of particle physics.
What I am pretty sure about is that there isn't quite yet one unified theory of physics the way there is in biology, and what ever the fundamental properties or functions we understand of the universe as a whole seldom apply to particular subsets of it. In other words, patterns we find on small scales within our lives or the lives of galaxies can not necessarily be applied to the entire system, for we can only observe it from the inside, regardless of whether there is an outside to it.
That regardless bit is crucial indeed. I don't know whether there is any metaverse beyond what we can in principle observe. I wouldn't dare to speculate either, because if I cannot tell the difference between the truth of one idea and its falsehood, my lack of criteria would have me either believe both (and leave me with cognitive dissonance) or disbelieve both until the two can be distinguished and I can be convinced of one over the other. In other words, while I wouldn't say there is nothing beyond our universe, I cannot believe that there is anything or that our universe looks a particular way from that perspective until either of those propositions manifests in a way I have means to identify.

I have a question, since you do agree upon the big bang model. Do you think the universe expanded at the speed of light? I've wondered if the rate of expansion would be limited by the fact that it cannot expand past where space exists. If the creation of space is slower than light than our math would be flawed greatly.

The universe is just that which we've measured isnt it? We don't know the extent of what we don't know but what we don't know probably doesn't influence us in any tangible way so it might not matter. Or at least we are getting more informed every moment.

So I prefer to use the term 'our universe', which sort of shoots its self in the foot a bit if universe means everything. But if we do know the limits of what we do know (in relation to any amount of unknown), we can better identify where to focus on looking for new trends in revealing the unknown - which is where the most useful stuff is to be found because it recasts everything we do know. Because we tend to have a habit seemingly of using what we do know to hypothesize about what we don't know so that we feel like we do know.
:huh: