Before the Big Bang? (Origins)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 16, 2014, 00:34 (3782 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: but I find it hard to grasp how a virtual quantum vacuum can produce transient potential particles which constitute the real world. I don't know why there has to be a vacuum of any kind. Since all these theories are based on unproven suppositions, how about this: We know that energy exists, and we know that matter exists, and whether or not the big bang theory is true (something we don't know), maybe energy and matter have always existed, and maybe there have been countless big bangs in the past, reaching back for all eternity. And if you want to shove in the word “quantum” somewhere, feel free to do so. -This has been your problem all along. Quantum theory and the actual studies done bring results that are counterintuative. Quantum activity in another plane of reality underlies all of the events we see and live with. This was Kastner's point about which you questioned her, and you both went off in different directions. Only energy existed before the BB. The guess, by the usual suspects like Krauss is that it was at the quantum level. The universe is expanding into an absolute void. Before the bb was there only a void? Not likely. Was the pure energy of just plasma? Or did it have some particles? But logically only energy existed. All matter in the universe comes from energy. The only spacetime we know is a virtual vacuum with potential particles. Please accept that. It is the standard theory of what space is like. The folks like Krauss extrapolate what we see within our univrese to what came 'before'. They try to avoid a creation as the religious would like to have, so I view the fuzzy logic as a way of avoiding a divine foot in the door. 
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> dhw: Am I right in thinking that what you call the secondary layer is the reality we know, and the primary layer is the reality which you believe consciously created the secondary layer? If so, why do we need all this quantum stuff?-Again, underlying our reality is a quantum reality. You cannot escape it. You really need to read some books about it, as I have, or just accept it. We simply do not see all of reality. And yes plenty of quantum particles are running around in our layer but they are connected to the other layer, and relate to each other there, which is whythey can be so weird here.-> 
> dhw: I simply cannot understand how you can have a before, and a sequence of cause and effect, without time. But you and I have a different concept of time. Mine is the flow from past to present to future. I accept that the only past, present and future we know - just like the only universe we know - is ours, and our time and universe are presumed to have begun with the big bang. But if we believe in cause and effect, we simply do not know what happened earlier, and so we cannot assume that there has not been an eternal flow of time, causes and effects, perhaps in the form of energy transmuting itself into matter, innumerable big bangs, or no big bangs at all. Quantum this and quantum that don't make the slightest difference, other than adding a scientifically potent word to whatever theory you believe in.-We can only know our experience in this reality of ours. But logic tells me there was a timeless 'before' before the bb. Beyond our experience, but I still believe in cause and effect. And you must accept the quantum wildness. It won't go away.