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GuitarClef t1_j79jujr wrote

The big bang doesn't say anything about the origin of everything. It says at one point in the past (14ish billion years ago) the universe was gathered together in one ultra dense singularity. Then--for some reason--there was an expansion, which continues on today.

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nyg8 t1_j79mzfy wrote

It doesn't even postulate that the expansion started at that point. Only what we would describe as "time" started. It's entirely plausible that the universe is unbound in space, thus expanding for all eternity.

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mech_man_86 t1_j79n95e wrote

I don't find the question about what happened "before" (not a great word but I'll use it) space-time existed to be very interesting. We live in a universe where space time appears to be a thing so what's it matter what happens outside of it? The religious definitely think everything came from nothing, they just add the extra step of "god" in the middle.

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DaddyCatALSO t1_j79tubo wrote

One explanation i read long ago is thta an empty universe is perfectly predictable so the Big Bang resulted from the Uncertainty Principle.

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Jarlentium t1_j79tt93 wrote

This is the same mindset agnostics have about the supernatural

"eh, by definition can't be understood, no point in worrying about it"

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YesWeHaveNoTomatoes t1_j79vo77 wrote

At least as far as physics, cosmology, other space sciences, etc, are concerned, if the answer to "can we do science about it?" is No, then ... yeah. By definition the question cannot be answered by science so science isn't going to worry about it.

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HiEnd88 t1_j79pyqq wrote

I was waiting for the ) but it just kept going.

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St33lbutcher t1_j79wg4m wrote

>We live in a universe where space time appears to be a thing so what's it matter what happens outside of it?

Why do we do science at all?

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mech_man_86 t1_j7asng1 wrote

We do science on this universe. Science doesn't really work for things "before" spacetime existed because its whole method requires cause and effect which is a product of spacetime. Just get it man...

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St33lbutcher t1_j7b9qtv wrote

Trust me, we will do science on other universes as soon as we are able. We're just missing the tech right now.

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[deleted] t1_j79quyf wrote

[deleted]

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mech_man_86 t1_j79rjpp wrote

"What time was before time?" Is a nonsensical question. What happened before the big bang is the same question said in another way. It's equally nonsensical.

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hardcore_hero t1_j79txzg wrote

Yep, it’s an interesting paradox, it’s like putting the line of code that starts a program, inside the program itself. The line will never be read because the program has to run in order to execute the line that starts the program. You would think it would be a completely useless program, but here we are.

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mech_man_86 t1_j79rcfq wrote

You are applying the rules of space time to something that by definition does not follow the rules of spacetime.

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pithecium t1_j79trxx wrote

The theory doesn't say that the universe was gathered together and then started to expand at some point. The theory only goes back to a time when the universe was very dense and hot and already expanding rapidly. Before that, we simply don't know, because we don't have a theory of quantum gravity.

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InstructionOk274 t1_j79msms wrote

FYI the Big Bang theory first appeared in a paper by Georges LeMaitre. A catholic priest AND theoretical physicist.

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MsGorteck t1_j79rdb0 wrote

Interesting. When did he put forth this theory and what was the Pope's reaction?

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InstructionOk274 t1_j79ucj7 wrote

Sometime in the late 1920’s, and I’m not sure if the pope at that time even knew about the theory. Frontier science by necessity moves slowly, most of the time.

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Butsu t1_j79vkbw wrote

It was, in fact, hugely popular with catholics when it came to public light. The popular theory before expansion was steady state, which posited an eternal essentially unchanging universe. Many religious institutions were early advocates for the big bang because it looks much more like an act of creation than any theory that came before.

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Waksss t1_j79y7h8 wrote

Pius XII who was pope from 1939-58 was pretty positive about it.

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Sitheref0874 t1_j79kkow wrote

I’ll politely point out that “science” keeps searching and testing for answers. We know the story is incomplete, and a lot of smart people are trying to find out more of the story.

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Blutrumpeter t1_j79kwpa wrote

I'm religious and a scientist and believe in big bang, I don't get the need to separate them

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pessimus_even t1_j79l27h wrote

God made nothing and it exploded

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Blutrumpeter t1_j79l7le wrote

Exactly lol why would I pretend to understand how God created things, except I thought big bang didn't say stuff came from nothing, just that it expanded from a smaller clump and if you extrapolate you get a singularity

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jeffroddit t1_j79oliq wrote

I personally don't "believe" in the big bang, or any science. So far as I can tell the point of science isn't to tell a story to believed. It's to tell a story that best fits the observed facts in repeatable ways. I don't "believe" in Newtonian physics as some fundamental truth about reality. I just use the model to understand reality. I use the model to make predictions. And I abandon the model when it doesn't stand up in face of high speed or gravity and use the story (Einstein's relativity) that best fits the observations. If I need to graph a tennis ball, Newtonian phsyics works 100%, whether you believe in it or not, whether we know it's wrong, incomplete or outdated. Doesn't matter, it still graphs the tennis ball just fine.

So saying things like "truly believe in the Big Bang" seems silly to me. We have a process where all the smart people in the world refine the best stories possible to fit all the observations we collectively make. That's not something you believe in, it's a fact, people do it, you can participate. And whether you believe their story or not does not change the fact that it is the best story we've got that can explain the facts we can observe. Belief is irrelevant, unless you are trying to use science the way people use religion, but that always seemed like a silly thing to me.

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bigjeff5 t1_j79r83h wrote

I like to say that any given Religion is a belief system, but the Scienctific Method is a disbelief system. (Literally just came up with that today, and I like it a lot.)

When scientists do science properly, they try to disprove their beliefs (i.e. hypothesis) systematically and rigorously until they simply can't find a way to disprove it. This then becomes provisionally accepted as true. However, the possibility is always there that someone will find a way to prove it false in the future, and the process continues, with each new discovery building on the foundation of knowledge that came before it.

It's the literal inverse of faith and religion.

Of course, this only applies to people doing actual science. Most people believe science the same way people believe religion - as a belief system. But IMO if you understand that the scientific method is a disbelief system, it makes believing the accepted conclusion of the Science Community much more reasonable and rational than believing the accepted conclusions of any given religion.

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squinchyscooter t1_j79ti0x wrote

I wanted to give your comment the lightbulb award but I don't have enough karma 😔

Great thought and very well articulated.

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Anonymous-USA t1_j79zai2 wrote

I’ll just add that there’s more to reality than simply a model that fits observations. String Theory and Holographic Theory (both of which treat our Space-Time as reflections of higher dimensions) may perfectly describe our physics with mathematical preciseness, but that doesn’t make it real. Existence. It’s just a math model. Brian Cox addresses this with several promising theories. They may describe something (and therefore predict it) well, but it isn’t necessarily observably real.

Otherwise I wrote something similar as you — it’s not a question of “believing” or “faith” in facts.

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akaBigWurm t1_j79qkvj wrote

It's great that you're curious and looking to learn more about the science behind the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory is one of the most widely accepted explanations for the origin of the universe, based on observations and evidence such as the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, redshift of light from distant galaxies, and the abundance of light elements.

However, it's important to understand that the Big Bang does not conflict with or dismiss the beliefs of those who hold religious or spiritual views. In fact, many religious and spiritual beliefs can coexist with the scientific explanation of the universe's origin. The Big Bang theory only explains the physical process and evolution of the universe, while spirituality and religion can offer a deeper understanding of the meaning and purpose of life.

So, whether you hold a scientific or spiritual view, the Big Bang and theology can both be seen as complementary perspectives that enrich our understanding of the world.

🤖

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skaote t1_j79ryzt wrote

That was a well rounded answer. Respect. 🍺

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Melodicmarc t1_j79sric wrote

I’ll take a different approach for you. No matter how the universe came to exist, it’s pretty unbelievable. It’s almost impossible to fathom that the universe just came from nothing (which I believe is what you’re suggesting). But to me it’s equally unfathomable that there was just always a universe. And if you objectively think about it, it’s just as unfathomable that there is a higher power that created it all. Whatever the origin of the universe is, it’s too crazy to even comprehend. So just because it seems really wild that the Big Bang happened, any other explanation is equally as wild and bizarre. However if you’re talking about the actual big bang and not necessarily the origin of the universe, there’s mountains of scientific evidence to suggest it’s what happened, as I’m sure you can see in the other comments.

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Anonymous-USA t1_j79yg35 wrote

It wasn’t “nothing”… it just wasn’t normal matter (that came about later). But it was a unified state of forces and energy and time under extreme conditions that our current laws of quantum physics cannot describe.

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lurq_king t1_j79js4g wrote

Good luck with finding an answer here that makes you feel happy about religion.

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SnooStories1286 t1_j79onqp wrote

I'm scientific and swear by the scientific method. I don't think the Big Bang Theory is the only conclusion to be made from the evidence, though.

There is a lot of terrific evidence behind it. The one point I question is why we conclude that metric space has expanded, yet the matter in it hasn't.

In 2021, there was the first mainstream physics journal article that argued that Cosmic Coupling is a thing. The researchers showed that there's a good chance a certain black hole could only have gotten so large if it's mass increased proportionately to the expansion of space.

So then if mass expands to, you don't necessarily iterate back to a single incredibly dense Big Bang precursor. The universe has simply always had its current proportions, but on an increasingly larger absolute scale throughout time. The only hint that this would have happened would be in the redshift of light that left objects when then were smaller and with less energy.

It's one possibility.

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Gentleman-Tech t1_j79qkgm wrote

I like the "tired light" theory too, which postulates that light loses energy as it travels, so old light from faraway objects appear to be red-shifted to us.

It's not a mainstream theory and is unsupported by experimental data, but as an alternative explanation of the observed reality it has an elegance that I like.

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SnooStories1286 t1_j7aa822 wrote

Tired Light, Variable Speed of Light, and Steady State are all theories that I personally believe got thrown out too quickly. Some because YEC hijacked them to try to justify a 6 thousand year old Earth, making it career suicide to investigate as a serious researcher.

James Webb is hopefully going to make big changes. I find it notable that very few of its observations are being published soon after they are made. They are finding fully formed galaxies way too early, and having a hard time explaining it (dark matter is always there to rescue the BBT though).

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gen_meade t1_j79l2u1 wrote

The science is that we have no idea what happened before (or even some fractions of a second into) the Big Bang. After that we've got some plausible theories that hold up when compared against the data and math available.

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JapaneseFerret t1_j79qkzn wrote

For an excellent, accessible explanation of the whole thing - how scientists know the universe started and where it will end - I highly recommend The End of Everything by Dr. Katie Mack.

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jaseph18 t1_j79paq0 wrote

First you need to be clear about is that no one "believes" in the Big Bang. Is a scientific theory, and as such, is backed up with one thing you need to learn and is EVIDENCE. However, science always evolves and always looking for answers to questions. Questions that you don't ask, and just "believe" someone just popped-up the world into existence, because that's veracious, right?

Again, if new evidence comes to light thanks to technology improvements, and proves it's not the Big bang, then it will PROVE something else did. And science will change it based on the current evidence. Evidence that's challenged by other scientists and only 2 results can happen: or they replicate the result and cement that the new evidence is strong, or else new investigations will ensue to reach the truth. That's how science works. No beliefs. Just results and evidence.

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redfelton t1_j79rmzc wrote

It'll always be a conundrum. Enjoy the in between!

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Joisthanger5 t1_j79s8sw wrote

I am 41. I just hope so much they figure it out before I die. Hell I’ll settle for just figuring out the dark matter thing.

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bradnelsontx t1_j79sgrh wrote

I’m not sure why you can’t be religious and also agree that the Big Bang happened. They don’t seem to be mutually exclusive in any way, other than that people say they are.

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bitemy t1_j79yl1q wrote

In general, the more religious people are, the more their beliefs are in opposition to science.

The most fundamental Christians, believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and that God put dinosaur bones underground to fuck with us.

They also believe that the cosmic background radiation was placed there by God to mess with atheists and scientists.

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hangryhyax t1_j79tks3 wrote

I don’t think our minds are capable of knowing and/or understanding how the universe came to be… But I have to ask, why do religious people (I’m not calling you out, OP) think science needs to have an answer, but when asked where an omnipresent/omnipotent creator came from, they think it’s okay to say “He just has always been.”

Who knows how it all happened. I wish we could know, and maybe it was some inexplicable god, but we need to leave religions beind.

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LukeDankwalker t1_j79v44c wrote

The idea of the big bang comes from Hubble Time, where we extrapolate the age of the universe using Hubble’s constant(the rate of expansion of the universe). We assume Hubble’s constant to be constant(spoilers it isn’t) and work backwards to see how long ago the universe would be contained within a singularity. That’s the basic idea of the big bang, however the physics behind it all gets very hazy as we get closer and closer to it. I’m talking 10^-20 seconds after the big bang close

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Zivlar t1_j79vpwp wrote

Anything on that level of science I just accept as “based off what we’ve learned so far and our astronomically low understanding of space this is our best guess 🤷🏻‍♂️”

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Anonymous-USA t1_j79wbyw wrote

I dont think you can compare the Big Bang to “faith” and “belief”. It’s pretty well proven, at least down to 10^-42 seconds of it. It’s only that first Planck Time where the conditions were so extreme and all forces and energy and time were unified that we cannot extrapolate, and thus we call it the “singularity” where our understood laws of physics break down.

There is a lot of proof for the Big Bang. From the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation to the red shift of distant galaxies. We can measure the expansion and (since space and time are intricately woven) we can see the intense energy signature cooled down to mere radio frequencies.

It’s natural to wonder and question, and I’m sure as we (humanity) have a greater understanding of the quantum nature of gravity we’ll understand even more of the Big Bang. But just because we don’t know that initial fraction of a fraction of a fraction…. of a fraction of a second, that doesn’t invalidate all we do know.

In summary, it’s not belief. It’s observable and measurable and consistent with the laws of physics we know all the way to the singularity.

As an example (by analogy) we don’t know what goes in at the singularity of a black hole (where conditions also are so extreme that our current laws of physics cannot describe it) but we know they exist. We’ve even (recently) imaged our own. Not to mention observing their lensing. They are unquestionably real. And even though we don’t know what goes on at the infinitesimal point (or 1D line of a rotating black hole) called the “singularity”, they still exist and are provable and observable.

It’s not a question of “believing” in black holes while admitting there’s still more to learn.

It’s not a question of “believing” in the Big Bang while admitting there’s still more to learn.

P.S. yes, our universe as we know it began at the Big Bang 13.8B years ago. Time and 3D space, space-time, were unified (along with all the forces) so that is why there is no concept of a “before” that moment. However you wish to philosophize about it — some speculate multiverses and others turtles upon turtles 🐢 — it doesn’t matter because that was beyond our 4 dimensional space-time reality.

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AssumptionSome4201 t1_j79wt5a wrote

Makes more sense than god doing it. (Who started god?)

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SigmaGamahucheur t1_j79ydig wrote

Michio Kaku would be a good place to start. He gives amazingly concise lectures. Look for other astrophysicists takes as well. It’s an incredibly interesting topic.

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iRazor8 t1_j79yt0s wrote

I don't think anybody "believes" in the Big Bang. It's just tons upon tons of evidence that lead to the conclusion. And besides even if we do discover one day that the Big Bang is indeed absolute fact, the next big question would be "what made it?"

For all we know we could literally be in a rabbit hole of nesting universes, each with their own completely independent laws of physics.

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plemur t1_j79mfb3 wrote

You'll want to start with Red Shift, then that should point you down the right path to understanding the expanding universe theories. Although the absolutely prevailing theory is the Big Bang, there could be other ways of looking at a finite, infinite universe and expansion. It could be that spacetime doesn't exist for the totality of the universe, only within it, so it's as if it's timeless to our understanding and perception. The gravitational waves pulsing through it could be what even allows spacetime to exist, for all we know. All of what I wrote is, of course, complete bullshit that I just threw out there, but the point being is that there's SO much we don't know that it allows you to find your own understanding and beliefs, whatever they might be -- it's not wrong if we don't know what's right. (It still might be stupid, just not 'wrong' ;P)

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pithecium t1_j79q3ba wrote

The "big bang" theory is just this: we observe the universe expanding, so we extrapolate backwards and believe at one point the universe was very dense. We don't know what happened before that.

There is other evidence that the universe was very dense in the past, like the cosmic microwave background radiation. It's a well established theory.

As you might notice, it does not explain where the universe came from. And it also isn't incompatible with belief in God.

(I don't believe in God, but that's not because I have an evidence-based answer for where the universe came from, but because I don't see evidence that the answer is necessarily God.)

https://youtu.be/CAVUvq6BE1E

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simcoder t1_j79qnfl wrote

Science is about falsifying erroneous beliefs more so than enshrining "true beliefs". The Big Bang is almost certainly wrong we just haven't found out in which particular ways. Yet.

Science is a progression more than a destination.

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peter303_ t1_j79t5sh wrote

Actually, when the Big Bang became the predominant cosmological theory in the 1960s, some criticized it as being too much like Biblical Creation. Scientists follow the evidence and dont care if the evidence supports a religious idea or not.

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JesusChrist-Jr t1_j79thez wrote

We don't know what came before the Big Bang, or if there was anything before it. It's also possible that there was no "before" because space-time as we know it may not have existed prior to the Big Bang.

To me, it's just a difference in mindset. Science recognizes the limits of what we know, tries to quantify what we know we don't know, and seeks to learn and understand the things we don't yet know. Religion often uses "God" as a catch-all to explain everything we don't know. To paraphrase NDT, this makes God an ever-receding pocket of ignorance. I'm ok with that.

What I'm not ok with is dismissing scientific findings in favor of accepting a storybook explanation on faith alone. One of the key tenets of the scientific process is that your hypothesis must be disprovable. The requirement to accept things on faith is antithetical to that idea, you can never disprove the existence of God. That alone makes the case for God's existence extremely weak to me. We can however disprove the creation story in Genesis if we're examining it literally. It's easily provable that the universe existed for more than a handful of days prior to humans. It's provable that life on earth existed for millions of years prior to humans. It's provable that light existed in the universe for billions of years prior to the existence of earth, life, and humans.

I don't take much issue with people holding their own personal religious beliefs, but I don't think it should override what we can observe about the world by hard evidence. I think religious texts that reference creation or history better serve as metaphors or parables than literal truth. It does also make me uncomfortable that children raised in religion are often taught to accept these stories as literal fact on faith alone- I think it hinders critical thinking and curiosity, and leads to a populace that is gullible and prone to accepting false narratives in ways that are more directly damaging to society.

I may have digressed a bit there, but to directly answer your question, I "believe" in the Big Bang to the extent that it is the best explanation of the earliest point in the existence of our universe based on our current knowledge. I am open to, and even expect within my lifetime, that the theory of the Big Bang may be modified as we gain further knowledge, or even thrown out completely if we are presented with contrary information. That's how we examine the world scientifically, my "belief" in the Big Bang is not unshakeable and I don't see changing my views based on new information as some kind of assault on my beliefs or admission of defeat. Rather, any new information that refines or changes our understanding is a victory. If God descends from the heavens tomorrow and publicly states that he created the universe exactly as is detailed in Genesis, and that all of the contrary evidence was falsely put in place as some kind of test of faith, I will readily accept it. I just feel the need to clarify "belief" in things I can observe, measure, touch, etc from "belief" in the context of taking something entirely on faith with no testable evidence. Have you ever heard of the idea of "Last Thursdayism?" It's sort of a thought experiment, that the entire universe and everything within it came into existence last Thursday, and everything you know of the time before that is just false memory you were created with. It seems silly on its face, but there's no way for you to disprove it. How is that any less valid an origin story than Genesis? Because it wasn't written on some old scrolls in the desert? How do you even know the scrolls or the desert existed before last Thursday? You could test the age of the scrolls with radiocarbon dating, but that method can also be used to disprove the Genesis story. You could present geological evidence that the desert is more than a week old, but I can present geological evidence that the earth is older than 6,000 or 12,000 or however many years old the Bible says the earth is this week. I'm not trying to mock your beliefs, just attempting to demonstrate that fairly comparing the theory of the Big Bang to a religious creation story is impossible, it's apples and oranges. You can compare the creation story of one religion to another, or even to any made up idea like Last Thursdayism, but even then you'll find it difficult to make realistic conclusions about which is more valid. Are we basing it on who wrote it? How long ago it was written? How many people believe it? None of these measures really indicate that one is more or less valid than the next.

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PandaEven3982 t1_j79tmn3 wrote

Sorry kid. We have lots of theories. But we do not know. If, in your travels, you meet some entity that does, we'd like to know. Worship costs extra.

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Raspberries-Are-Evil t1_j79vh7v wrote

Read the book, “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking.

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SillyPhillyDilly t1_j79vx1g wrote

I'm non-denominational Christian and accept the Big Bang theory. I accept that God exists. I will accept that God doesn't exist, as well. My religious viewpoint is loosely based around string theory's 10th dimension, which scientifically (and mathematically) says all things are possible. And if all things are, then even the opposite is true; everything exists, and nothing exists.

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Patches_Pal t1_j79zpll wrote

For me, there is a ton of science behind an expanding universe…and zero science behind divine creation

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Crio121 t1_j79zs8p wrote

The science of the Big Bang is that we don't know much about that.
But it looks like the Universe have been much much smaller and denser at one point back in time.
The best evidence for that so far (as I understand) is the background cosmic radiation.

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bitemy t1_j79zv6z wrote

The concepts you are thinking about is are some of the most interesting ones in all of science.

How could the universe possibly be eternal? And if it is not eternal, Where did everything come from? What happened before it was created?

One of the answers is that it appears time is something that only has meaning inside a four dimensional, space-time universe, such as the one we live in. In other words, where there is no space time there is no time.

This is mind boggling but there are many things about nature that are extremely weird and counterintuitive but proven true.

For example, did you know that Time runs more slowly under certain conditions?

I don’t mean that something physically is wrong with clocks in certain parts of space. I mean that time actually ticks at a different rate if you travel fast - like close to the speed of light.

This short cartoon explains it nicely:

https://youtu.be/h8GqaAp3cGs

Or something you probably do not know yet that has also been proven is that if you have an absolute vacuum that is 100% empty of all molecules and atoms of any type, at the tiniest, quantum level, tiny particles, both positively and negatively charged, are constantly popping into and out of existence.

You may want to read read Simply Einstein: Relativity Demystified, by Richard Wolfson.

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gwardotnet t1_j7a1ej3 wrote

It's a theory. But religions are blind faith. Science has a lot of proof and proven concepts. Religion has proof of nothing.

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Tonderandrew t1_j7a22yq wrote

And it's now more commonly speculated that there are zillions of universes out there ...

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Tonderandrew t1_j7a2ui5 wrote

All I can add today is that science can send a robot to Mars and transmit pictures for you to view. Science can calculate Time, Velocity and Position to get a camera to go past Pluto and transmit pictures for you to view. Let's start from this.

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MsGorteck t1_j7ck22n wrote

Thank you everybody. The reason I asked is because the Catholic church has a history of not liking new ways of thinking, especially if it could encourage the masses to question it. But those harsh responses had pretty much ceased by this time. To bad the man's originall paper, along with the responses it garnered can't be given more publicly, science might be slightly less under attack.

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pessimus_even t1_j79km4z wrote

Personally, I think any explanation is as unlikely as the next. Which makes me feel wonderfully insignificant.

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Masterhearts_XIII t1_j79nce0 wrote

I may be out of the loop, but i'm pretty sure the big bang is no longer the true presiding theory most theoreticla physicists are looking at anymore. something about the amount of time everything needs to be in place after it that doesn't work or something. idk i'm not a theoretical physicist

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bigjeff5 t1_j79uuko wrote

It's not that the Big Bang isn't the presiding theory, it's that the Big Bang theory is an observational theory rather than an explanatory theory. That is, it's a model of WHAT we see when we look into space with our telescopes, not WHY we see it. That observation hasn't changed in 60 years - everything we've seen only confirms that the Big Bang happened.

What you're talking about was noticed pretty much as soon as the Big Bang itself was discovered. Basically the observed behavior of the early universe's expansion doesn't follow the known laws of physics as we understand them. The basic analogy is that the Big Bang should have exploded like a grenade, but instead it inflated like a balloon. This obviously had major consequences for the composition of our current universe, and scientists would certainly like to understand why things played out like this. So either our understanding of physics is flawed in some way (almost certainly true, but how specifically?), or something happened during The Big Bang to constrain expansion that we have yet to identify. It could also be a combination of the two.

It's one of the great mysteries cosmology is trying to solve. No matter what happens we'll eventually get a new theory that encompasses the Big Bang plus explains why it happened. The Big Bang itself will always be a good model for what it actually describes, just like Newton's Laws of Motion are still good models for specific scenarios of Einstein's Relativity.

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pablowallaby t1_j79wfuv wrote

It’s still the accepted theory among the majority of astronomers & physicists. Some of the big questions that remain are dark energy and dark matter

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rogert2 t1_j79th02 wrote

I find it hard to believe that you've "looked it up" but don't know about the science behind it. Do you not have Wikipedia on your internet?

It is one thing to have questions or even doubts about the theory. It's another thing to claim to be unaware of what the theory is, or what evidence has been offered to support it, when there are multiple excellent sources of information on the topic that are easily found and presented for a non-specialist audience.

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SpartanJack17 t1_j7a1hyx wrote

Hello u/Unable_Region7300, your submission "Serious question" has been removed from r/space because:

  • Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

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shryke12 t1_j79pqe0 wrote

You don't 'truly believe in the big bang' lmao. You just understand that is the best theory we have today out of all the evidence we have. There are other theories with merit. We need more data and evidence, and either the big bang theory becomes stronger or weaker. Anyone 'believing' something impossible to prove is an idiot, whether that belief is that a god wiggled his nose or a scientific theory. Accept that we don't know everything.

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7sv3n7 t1_j79klw8 wrote

It is a theory, meaning even scientist agent 100% sure it's correct, but it's the best one we currently have. With the new data coming in from the jwst (James Webb Space Telescope) it's looking like we might need to reconsider it though

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KamikazeArchon t1_j79m7f8 wrote

That is not what "theory" means in science. Science does not deal with 100% correctness in any circumstance, so there's no need for a separate word to describe that. "Theory" in this context roughly means "model". For example, the "theory of gravity" doesn't mean "we're not sure that gravity is real", it means "here's our model for how gravity works".

JWST is not producing anything that would dispute the basic premise of the Big Bang model - the idea that everything was hot and dense. It is fine-tuning various details of it.

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7sv3n7 t1_j79mn79 wrote

Well there are some scientist fron what ive read disagreeing with that so...

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jeffroddit t1_j79n271 wrote

I'm a scientist, and I'm saying that you are made of wonder bread so.....

Some scientists can say anything and have zero effect on science.

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MSY2HSV t1_j79oe8y wrote

Source? I’ll genuinely consider any legitimate source you provide, but without a source to consider I’m going to presume, as a scientist, that it’s just nut jobs trying to make noise for attention. From every bit of scientific evidence that I, a scientist, have seen, there’s nothing from the James Webb scope that disputes the Big Bang.

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7sv3n7 t1_j7a2jzd wrote

Ive seen articles from my feed saying that there is more doubt than before, I def am not making it up or claiming that ive come to this decision based on info from it, just regurgitating what ive read.

Also agree with u it more than likely is just click bait so guess I shouldn't have said anything. Hate the downvotes just for saying something I read, not wrote

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subOptimusPrime16 t1_j79kwfr wrote

Can you elaborate on this? What are we learning from the JWST that would be contrary to Big Bang?

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7sv3n7 t1_j79ly4p wrote

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/12/james-webb-space-telescope-shows-big-bang-didnt-happen-wait-2/

Im no scientist, and this is the first article I found doing a quick search but have seen others. What I remember reading elsewhere is its seeing galaxies too old to line up with the big bang timeline. At least in its current model. And of course there is debate over any new idea so we'll see what comes of it

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nyg8 t1_j79n9eu wrote

I think you are reading a very over hyping article. Read the research behind it. It's very interesting things, but they're arguing about minute details in the timeline of the big bang. Not really suggesting the big bang didn't happen.

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pablowallaby t1_j79pu8t wrote

The JWST results so far have not contradicted the Big Bang Theory. That article is contributing to misinformation and fear mongering, tbh. As Dr. Becky’s video (that u/wanderlustcub shared) explains, cosmologists are actually excited to see if JWST proposals will help constrain the “crisis in cosmology” which is basically the Hubble constant, or rate of expansion of the universe.

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bigjeff5 t1_j79s84k wrote

Exactly this.

My understanding was always that the Big Bang itself was the problem. That the specific features observed during the Big Bang don't match up with what they should be given what we know about physics. It's just a "we look in our telescopes and see this happen, we don't really know why".

So any new irregularities that JWST can find would likely be super helpful in figuring out why the Big Bang behaved the way it did, and could potentially lead to new physics as a result.

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pablowallaby t1_j79vr4z wrote

Right! It’s actually not that the Big Bang theory is the problem itself - it’s the best framework we have so far that makes sense of all the observations (e.g. the expanding universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, etc). The features that you’re referring to are dark energy and dark matter. We still don’t understand what those really are, and if we want to understand our entire universe and its expansion we need to get a handle on those two. And that’s where JWST will hopefully come in. I’m excited to see what we find out!

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