|
The possiblity
of the 'Big Crunch' has been stated by many scientists and has a
plausible theory if 'Dark Matter' can be found to be true, which
it most likely is considering the past history of possible particles
and then their later discovery. My question is this, if The 'Big
Bang' is true, would it be a possibility to say, that the point
of expansion originated from a point in space occupied by another
Universe, thereby discounting what I think is a odd occurance in
that the universe began in an infitessimally small space, which
if true, would require somewhere to expand into, consider any explosion
viewable today, a space is required for it to expand into. Am I
just thinking too much into fantasyland or is their an element of
truth in my thinking.
Reply
One of the hardest concepts to grasp about the Big Bang is that
it was the creation of both space and time - there was no "before"
the Big Bang, and there was nothing for it to expand into! So the
way we normally think about an explosion is of material being thrown
outwards from a central point, into the space surrounding it. But
with the Big Bang, the universe was not there at the point of creation,
and so there was nothing for the expansion to move into - space
was created as the Big Bang occurred, so in a sense it simply made
the universe as it expanded (it made the space into which the universe
expanded) - this is a very tricky concept I'm afraid! However, your
point about prior universes is very topical, as several cosmological
theories have an infinite series of universes, each spawning new
universes (some theories argue that the creation of a black hole
"buds" a new universe, so every universe has a host of "child universes"),
so there certainly are ideas that relate our universe to other,
parallel ones. But the concept of our universe's space and time
not existing is still valid, as these other universes occupy different
dimensions, and so our universe is unique in that respect - it is
the only universe occupying this time and space (probably!). I'm
afraid these are very unusual concepts, and I'm not sure my explanation
will make the answer any clearer to you, but hopefully it will shed
a little light on the issue!
Paul Roche
Final Frontier
|
