Cosmologic philosophy: a cause for the Big Bang (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 13, 2023, 15:20 (411 days ago) @ David Turell

An astrophysicist comments no cause known:

https://bigthink.com/13-8/big-bang-does-not-explain-cosmic-creation/

"We are often told that the Big Bang is a theory of cosmic creation — that it tells us how the Universe was created out of nothing and went on to evolve into all the galaxies, stars, and planets. The problem with that characterization is that only the second part of it is true. Yes, what we call the Big Bang is a theory of cosmic evolution. But the Inflationary Universe standard model that guides cosmology says nothing about cosmic origins. The birth of space, time, matter, and energy is simply not there. A little history will help us understand why.

"The Big Bang’s first theoretical incarnation originated with Georges Lemaître, a shy Catholic priest and physicist. Lemaître had made a name for himself by showing that Einstein’s general relativity could easily account for Edwin Hubble’s famous finding that the Universe was expanding.

***

"But the basic point about evolution vs creation is the same. Big Bang cosmology does not describe the Universe’s creation. It describes what happens after creation. It does so with spectacular success, giving a detailed roadmap for how a super-high-temperature, super-high-density Universe expanded and cooled, leaving us with everything we see today.

"By itself, the Big Bang never tells us where it all comes from. If you want to know how the Universe was actually created, you need something else, something more. Maybe you want to say the cosmos always existed and we are just one turn of a cyclic Universe. Maybe you want to come up with some exotic new mechanism that can create something from nothing. (Beware of this one, people have stumbled hard on it.) But whatever mechanism you envision, it will be an addition to the Big Bang we have now, because that theory is silent on the question of creation."

Comment: just a reminder the cause of the Big Bang is unknown. All of space and time start with it.