Origins of the Universe

[yoma]

Science doesn't have the answer to that question, only religion does.

Considering religion stems from science... Unfortunately.

[Fencers]

Where did those things come from?

Big bang most likely.

There is not time before time. For a thing to exist it has to exist for all time.

[Belize]

Big bang most likely.

There is not time before time. For a thing to exist it has to exist for all time.

Then why is there a show called "The Land Before Time" then. HUH?

[Tychus]

Simply put...where did anything come from?

did things "come from" anywhere?

[Mystrome]

Simply put...where did anything come from?

You should have a look at Discovery Channel's show called Strip the Cosmos, season 2, episode 3.

[Ifeanychukwu]

I like the way Lawrence Krauss explains the state of the universe in his recent appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast.

[frogger237]

some people think :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole

[Dys]

Then why is there a show called "The Land Before Time" then. HUH?

Because "The Land Before Humans Knew How To Measure And Track Time As They Understand It" is a mouthful, and definitely not appealing to children.

Yup yup!

[Pterodactylus]

Simply put...where did anything come from? I can wrap my head around existing things changing into something new, but I can't understand where things originated from. I'm talking about the most basic, trace elements (or whatever they are) that initially formed into the universe. Where did those things come from?

It's pretty difficult to explain the nature of the universe prior to the big bang because the state of the universe then was clearly nothing like the state of the universe today. I'd argue there is still plenty to figure out about our current universe, but we do have a pretty good explanation for everything after the very initial bit of the big bang. It's a pretty exhaustive topic considering it's the last 13.7 billion years of history, so I will offer a book recommendation. A short history of nearly everything By Bill Bryson. He writes to the layperson and the book offers a very good easy to access explanation for, well, nearly everything.

- - - Updated - - -

Science doesn't have the answer to that question, only religion does.

I suppose some people have different ideas of what constitutes an answer.

[anakin57]

I thought the big bang has basically been debunked recently? Ill have to find those articles

[Mormolyce]

I thought the big bang has basically been debunked recently? Ill have to find those articles

Sounds like a pop sci article had a silly headline. It's pretty unlikely the big bang will cease to be the central theory any time soon.

[Gaaz]

The earliest state of the universe we can calculate using today's technology and science is the original Big Bang pure energy structure. As the Big Bang expanded and cooled, some of the energy turned to physical matter - stars, galaxies, black holes, people, etc...
No one knows or has even a faintest clue what was before the Big Bang and how it came to be in the first place. We are probably as far away from understanding that, as monkeys are from giving lectures on quantum mechanics and field theory.

[derpkitteh]

Exploding black hole models do not mimic the big bang, and there's no reason to believe the matter would behave as so. Also, equating a black hole to the big bang by sharing similar features, such as a "singularity", is naive. An event horizon can exist without a singularity. Black hole models have long abandoned singularities.

we've never seen a super massive blackhole explode, who's to say one even bigger than that wouldn't behave differently?

whatever it was, i don't believe it was unique. i still believe that the universe itself is much larger than just our gathering of galaxies. it wouldn't surprise me if there are others out there too.

in fact, that might stop heat death, if we're close enough to another one. everything is expanding outwards, so other ones would expand outwards too. eventually, we'll probably get pelted with other galaxies going the opposite direction.

[XangXu]

Well it could be that we as a species will never truly understand that science because of how old the universe is...

or...

It could be that one guy is responsible for everything and he is also really interested in who you are sticking your penis into.

[Puupi]

It could be that one guy is responsible for everything and he is also really interested in who you are sticking your penis into.

.....and he needs money.

[Aoyi]

Wondering where everything came from assumes there was a "before" everything. If you ask where all the matter/energy in the Universe came from, it assumes there was a time before that which is even included in that singularity existed. If there was a before "time" for everything, than how would you describe that state? Perhaps, things simply always existed. I know that seems frustrating, but picture the singularity as a marble. Where is the marble? Sitting on a table? Where is that table? Sitting in your living room? Where is your living room? First floor of your house? Where is your house? These questions could go on forever.

As to what simply came before the big bang, one theory is a previous big crunch. I haven't read all 8 pages here, but if no one else had mentioned this, the big crunch is one theorized end to our universe. Essentially, the expansion of the universe slows, halts, then reverses. Everything compresses back down once again into a singularity. That singularity remains until some event puts it out of balance and a new big bang takes place. This cycle of bang/crunch could repeat indefinitely and if true, perhaps always has. Again, this may frustrate you as we have a concept of time and, as such, the idea of the before might drive you crazy. Perhaps time isn't really necessary and just a construct of the current rules of our universe, but irrelevant to the bigger question. Sorry for this rambling as I'm trying to summarize work by other scientists/philosophers on very little sleep.

[Swalload]

This kind of question is only valid when assuming things come from somewhere. Right now nothing proves that there once was NOTHING. Maybe there always was something, it's just hard to wrap our mind against such concept since every single thing we know has a beginning and an end.

[Magical Mudcrab]

Religion has one theory that is impossible to confirm or deny that it wont bother looking to deeply at and brooks no argument about. It says thats the answer.

To be fair, Religion doesn't offer a theory. Theories are backed by evidence. They make a proposition, with any explanations given being based on a level of ignorance.

[derpkitteh]

It's hard to respond to this, because you're effectively using a different model: your model you just created. Which might be correct. But I can't really make a judgement without knowing what "black hole" means in your model. I know what a black hole is in General Relativity. And in that theory they have nothing to do with the Big Bang. However, we know that the model is 'wrong' and current experimental models don't have a singularity at T=0.

Within GR, there's no known mechanism for why a black hole would explode. Unless you're thinking of a white hole as a matter explosion, which would be even more faulty. You're using objects and structures embedded in the theory of GR, but either aren't using them correctly or you're intentionally redefining them to fit your new model. For example, equating universal expansion to an exploding black hole makes no sense. How would objects accelerate beyond c? How would a white hole do that? White holes aren't repulsive, they are attractive. How does a black hole cause space to expand in "multiple directions" if they are the epicenter of space?

We have current theories that try to explain these observations, like dark energy. But for some reason people always return to the black hole.

it doesn'thave to be a blackhole, it could be whatever really.

but the universe itself, i think it's stupid to think the visible universe is all there is to it. so what, at the edge of what we see there's a wall? no, that's just ridiculous.

the one that makes the most sense is that it's all just an endless void, where "universes"(clusters of matter) happen from whatever causes big bangs.

[Magical Mudcrab]

.....and he needs money.

Look, he just needs money so he can afford to renovate your new place in heaven.
When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.