Black holes..

[sooey]

so if we can get to a billionth of a second after the big bang.... what's stopping us going a tenth of a second earlier?

The earlier you go the higher the energies that existed.
CERN is the most powerful collider ever built and even that can't get anywhere near to the energies that existed in the really early universe.
To do that you'd probably have to make one as big as the galaxy and powered by a black hole.
Also as you get close to the singularity the known laws of physics break down and become nonsense, so theorists are fcked as well.

 

[Sombrero]

Apologies.... answered (to a degree!!)..

 

[sooey]

If you want a better answer study it yourself.

 

[Sombrero]

If you want a better answer study it yourself.

No way, you guys know loads of stuff... and it's great 'tweaking' info out of you... and appreciated too..

 

[joinerjohn]

I'm just glad no one's mentioned God yet.

But I do think Joe and Sooey, should apply for the Nobel prize for Physics this year. Undoubtedly, they know more than the scientists at Cern.

 

[sooey]

He's right though, according to the theory.

Energy and matter are interchangeable.

Wow... !!

so if they're interchangeable, how does gravity differentiate?

I don't think it does, light can't escape from a black hole because of the extreme gravity, it also gets bent around massive objects. Einstien predicted that it would and it was shown to be true during a total eclipse of the sun a few years later.
As to your original question....I'm buggered if I know why gravity didn't come into play at the time of the big bang.
Maybe someone really clever (space cat) can do the honours.

 

[sooey]

I'm just glad no one's mentioned God yet.

But I do think Joe and Sooey, should apply for the Nobel prize for Physics this year. Undoubtedly, they know more than the scientists at Cern.

All we've been talking about here is laymans stuff which anyone with an interest in the subject would know, understanding it is a different story, that's what marks out the really clever fukkas.

 

[joinerjohn]

All we've been talking about here is laymans stuff which anyone with an interest in the subject would know, understanding it is a different story, that's what marks out the really clever fukkas.

Ahh so what happened in a billionth of a second after the "Big Bang" is laymans stuff? Wow, you don't half know how to BS people.

 

[sooey]

Knowing the stuff that physicists and theoretical physicists tell us is one thing, understanding how they reached their conclusions is another.
You can't unless you're a mathematical genius, that's the language they work in, and while I'm not stupid at maths I sure ain't no mathematical genius, I wish I was.

 

[joe-90]

The bottom line is that a finite being (human) will never understand an infinite universe, just as a dog doesn't understand its own mortality. We are only dumb animals.

 

[chapeau]

so if we can get to a billionth of a second after the big bang.... what's stopping us going a tenth of a second earlier?

That would be before the big bang.......

If the big bang started with a singularity then that's where the laws of physics break down and become weirder than weird. That means that no information can possibly be sent from before the singularity, through the singularity, and come out our side of the singularity the same as it went in.

The singularity stops us knowing what happened before, nothing can go through it and survive the experience. The information gets completely destroyed by the lack of any meaningful physics inside it.

Now this doesn't mean to say that one day we will know what it's all about, but currently that's not possible.

The earliest time where theoretical physics can go is the Planck epoch, which is something like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a second after the big bang. So close, but they want to get closer, but even then all the theories are still open to discussion.

 

[chapeau]

so if we can get to a billionth of a second after the big bang.... what's stopping us going a tenth of a second earlier?

The earlier you go the higher the energies that existed.
CERN is the most powerful collider ever built and even that can't get anywhere near to the energies that existed in the really early universe.
To do that you'd probably have to make one as big as the galaxy and powered by a black hole.

Well I had a google around to try to find out how close LHC came to the big bang and found this.

http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page91.pdf

It has the maths behind how much energy you need to have in the collider to get to a certain temperature, and how soon after the big bang those energy levels were reached. And the maths is remarkably simple, for this sort of thing.

So at the current planned LHC max energy levels of 15TeV that takes them back to 3.3 x 10-15 seconds after the big bang. Close, but not really.

So a huge time (energy wise) from where the theoretical types are at. So the energy equations do show that getting experimental proof is going to be rather difficult any time soon.

 

[sooey]

I think I've just realised why gravity didn't stop the big bang. According to theories the four fundamental forces are all aspects of one force which only combines at incredible temperatures. So at the point of the big bang the temperatures were high enough that the forces were combined, i.e. no gravity. It was only as things cooled down a bit that the forces seperated and gravity came into being.
Is that right Space cat? Here's your chance, don't let me down.

 

[chapeau]

why would gravity stop the big bang? It doesn't stop spacecraft reaching earth orbit, or beyond.

This was mentioned earlier, gravity is -ve energy which cancels out the +ve energy from mass. So total energy = 0.

If you look at it that way, gravity was essential for the conservation maths to work out. No gravity, no particles, no us.

Anyway, at times close to the big bang it all gets very weird indeed and they talk about quantum gravity. Things were very close together at the big bang so the laws of physics which dictate our macro view of the world don't take precedence. It's all quantum and that's just strange.

 

[ladylola]

so if we can get to a billionth of a second after the big bang.... what's stopping us going a tenth of a second earlier?

That would be before the big bang.......

If the big bang started with a singularity then that's where the laws of physics break down and become weirder than weird. That means that no information can possibly be sent from before the singularity, through the singularity, and come out our side of the singularity the same as it went in.

The singularity stops us knowing what happened before, nothing can go through it and survive the experience. The information gets completely destroyed by the lack of any meaningful physics inside it.

Now this doesn't mean to say that one day we will know what it's all about, but currently that's not possible.

The earliest time where theoretical physics can go is the Planck epoch, which is something like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a second after the big bang. So close, but they want to get closer, but even then all the theories are still open to discussion.

Yes there are some that are now talking of "before"
http://scienceline.org/2008/07/physics-heger-bigbang/