2012 Conspiracies..

Laplace first postulated about gravitational fields strong enough to cause light not to escape from them in the 18th century. So the idea of black holes has been around for some time, well before the Big Bang theory.

In one respect you are correct Imperfect, our current knowledge of physics, especially gravity, at the very small scale prevents us from understanding what preceeded the Big Bang. In laymans terms : the Big Bang theory came to be when Hubble was able to observe and prove (through red shifting) that the Universe is still expanding. Reversing this observation leads us to recognise that if everything is exapanding, it must have expanded from somewhere....

A great debate.

z3r010 said:

Harold Camping has said the world will end on Friday October 21st, so all you folks that believe the world will end in 2012 will be sorely disappointed

I'm going to miss my German chocolate Birthday cake.

Imperfect1 said:

And, just for the record, no I don't believe in the Big Bang theory at all. A universe full of cosmic material didn't just "magically appear" out of the blue, at the exact point in time that the supposed Big Bang happened. All that cosmic material had to have come from somewhere, and it had to have been created beforehand for the Big Bang explosion to have happened --- so, to me, logically speaking, the Big Bang could not possibly have been the absolute start of the universe.

Aside from the Religious explanation, do you have any other theory since you are not a Big Bang believer?

I forget where it was that I read it, but it claimed the Big Bang being only partially correct.
That it didnt just happen and form all we know today, but rather happens often and regularly.

According to the source (I forget what it was now) Was that the Big bang did occur, but that it isnt the first time.
Essentially, the Universe expands to a certain point, then collapses in on itself.
Then, the big bang happens and it starts expanding again.
Like a hearbeat that billions and billions of years between beats.

The cycle repeats over and over.


They know the universe is expanding, but not sure how this idea was brought about.
they say theres evedince to prove it, but not sure what.
Intersting theory though.

Wishmaster said:

They know the universe is expanding, but not sure how this idea was brought about.
they say theres evedince to prove it, but not sure what.
Intersting theory though.

The evidence for an expanding or inflationary universe are Hubble's observations I mentioned earlier. He examined several galaxies and was able to observe that the light theu emit is red-shifted - the wavelength of the light is stretched out. This happens when objects are accelerating away from one one another. Hubble deduced that these galaxies are accelerating away from us very rapidly leading to the inflationary view of the universe or multiverse. Subsequent to Hubble's original observations, thousands of galaxies have been studied, and in almost every case, the light they emit is red-shifted. This is clear, unequivocal, observable evidence that the universe is inflating/expanding.

You may not realise this, but you experience a form of red-shifting everyday, but with the sound. Imagine yourself standing by the side of the road and a car is approaching you. The sound waves from the car are compressed as the car races towards you, and the frequency of the sound increases. Once the car passes you, and continues down the road, the sound waves become stretched out relative to your posoition at the side of the road, and the frequency decreases. We call this the Doppler effect. Red-shifting of light waves is the equivalent of the Doppler effect in sound waves.

Ironically, the first proponent of the inflationary view of the universe was Lemaitre, a Catholic priest in the 1920's. He proposed that the red-shifting observed in nebulae were due to the expansion of the universe. The British physicist Hoyle first coined the term "Big Bang" which is also ironic since he was its greatest detractor. The Roman Catholic church declared in 1952 that the Big Bang is their accepted view of the creation of the universe.