What is the Universe expanding into..

Do you think there was anything before the big bang?

  • I don't think there was anything before the Big Bang

    Votes: 56 12.5%

  • I think something existed before the Big Bang

    Votes: 200 44.7%

  • I don't think the big bang happened

    Votes: 54 12.1%

  • I think the universe is part of a mutiverse

    Votes: 201 45.0%
  • Total voters
    447
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#2,061
rayma said:
We have no accepted theory for that, although there is speculation. Such a mass could be extremely small,
or even just a random quantum fluctuation. The only well accepted theory begins after inflation is over,
and can't accurately model the universe before that point.

One interesting approach is to consider deep time, and the identity of the far future and the far past, both being
a universal vacuum. There may be a very smooth (and very slow) transition from the future to the past, which
would then form a new universe, without any special initial conditions, or big bang, needed.
Click to expand...
We all know what the transition from future to past is; we're living in it...the everlasting present, as Somerset Maugham has mentioned. I guess it's already happened.😉
 
#2,065
As far as this Universe is concerned before the expansion there was no Universe, so no place to expand "into" just the singularity. At the first moment of expansion the expanding Universe was all there was, when the expansion accelerated dramatically during inflation that expanding Universe was all there was, today as the expansion chugs along this Universe is all there is, no outside...just here inside. These statements apply to an observer inside this Universe, which includes all of us here. The perspective of an outsider not in this Universe is meaningless just as we have no perspective from which to observe other universes expanding if they exist.
 
#2,078
rayma said:
It is so. Remember the spotted balloon analogy, the surface of the balloon is analogous
to our three dimensional space. Space itself is expanding, not material within space.
Click to expand...

What if all matter is instead shrinking, as its mass and the energy it represents goes back to the void it came from?
Wouldn't that give the appearance to a local observer that space is expanding in the larger scale, but relatively stable in a local scale?
😐😁🙃😋🤔🤔🙁😑😊
 
#2,079
MITsound said:
What if all matter is instead shrinking, as its mass and the energy it represents goes back to the void it came from?
Wouldn't that give the appearance to a local observer that space is expanding in the larger scale, but relatively stable in a local scale?
Click to expand...

The net energy of the universe is virtually zero. Matter is thought to have formed in equal amounts of regular matter and antimatter, and then self annihilated down to a very small residue of regular matter, due to a slight asymmetry known to exist in particle reactions. The absolute physical size of elementary particles and atoms is constant and cannot change, since the size results from the properties of their constituents. Excited states are larger, but decay extremely fast. Objects such as neutron stars are indeed small compared to a normal star, but they are extremely dense, being essentially a huge nucleus, and are the closest thing to a black hole that we can see.
 
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