Friday, October 15, 2010

BBC Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang?


Play all videos (6)
Aired October 11, 2010 on BBC Two
They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago.

But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.

Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang.

13 comments:

  1. The question "What happened BEFORE the big bang" is meaningless. Big Bag is the BEGINNING of time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know it's poisoning the well, but I've heard Michio Kaku often enough to correlate him with pseudo science BS masquerading as physics.

    ReplyDelete
  3. No, Mr. Narrator... Zebras didn't come from nothing. I know you mean the energy that makes up zebras and everything else, but wording it like that, is just willful exploitation of some people's creationist views. Sensationalism.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I find it conspicuous that western physicists come up with a something-from-nothing universe, and indian physicists come up with a reincarnating alternative.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I admire them all for having the courage, the determination and the brain capacity to tackle questions that make my brain ache.  Ultimately there must be an answer, whether it is found today or in a million years or maybe never at all.  But the answer most certainly is not, god did it!  And for those who believe so, ummm, where did god come from???

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lots of great theories there, such is the beauty of science, but there's one thing I do wish and that's that these physicists would stop using biblically/religiously inspired terms to describe the scientific events / theories that they're on about.  Doing this allows the uneducated or those deluded by faith to deliberately / unconsciously / unwittingly misconstrue what are non-religious scientific theories as evidence for their faith / god when in fact it's evidence against it.

    IMHO they do the non-scientific public a great disservice misleading them like that and I notice in these documentaries (especially ones produced by the terrified-to-offend-the-faithful-viewers BBC) they never specifically clear up that point.  For example most of the scientists in that video are atheists but the way it is put together could lead you to believe that the question of the Christian/Muslim/Jewish god is still open when any of those scientists would happily tell you it isn't.

    Just a minor point on an otherwise good watch =-)

    ReplyDelete
  7. <span><span>The Creation Hymn of Rig Veda of the Hindus [They did not talk of Adam and Eve]

    There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
    There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
    What stirred?
    Where?
    In whose protection?
    Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?

    There was neither death nor immortality then.
    There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
    That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
    Other than that there was nothing beyond.

    Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
    with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
    The life force that was covered with emptiness,
    that One arose through the power of heat.

    Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
    that was the first seed of mind.
    Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
    found the bond of existence and non-existence.

    Their cord was extended across.
    Was there below?
    Was there above?
    There were seed-placers, there were powers.
    There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.

    Who really knows?
    Who will here proclaim it?
    Whence was it produced?
    Whence is this creation?
    The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
    Who then knows whence it has arisen?

    Whence this creation has arisen
    - perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
    the One who looks down on it,
    in the highest heaven, only He knows
    or perhaps He does not know.
    </span></span>

    ReplyDelete
  8. Buddha and J.Krishnamurti talk of Nothingness. Both were atheists. Along with Vedic Hindus who were Atheists too. Vedic religion , before it became inclusive by adopting animistic faiths , was  believing in nothingness. The concept of infinity, numbers and zero comes from Hindus. They also knew Earth went round the Sun much before Gelileo .
    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  9. Looks like the "Asian Pride" is coming out in buckets now.  News flash people, no matter what contributions were made by your society / people, all the ancient religions (including your people's) are bs, get over it.  This excludes the Pirahã people who have a tribal skeptical culture and also (as a consequence) no creation myth.

    ReplyDelete
  10. <span>Looks like the "Asian Pride" is coming out in buckets now.  News flash people, no matter what contributions were made by your society / people, all the ancient religions (including your people's) are bs, get over it.
    </span>

    ReplyDelete
  11. Did they produce any testable predictions to back any of that up by any chance? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. The universe does not owe us a 'why'. nor does it owe us a 'when' either. It may well have been around forever.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Well the question "What before Big Bang?" now is right time to ask in my view.
    Actually science & Scientist never ever said that, "There was nothing before BigBang."


    Science Says, "If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no observational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined. so the question what happened before the Big Bang can be Ignored"

    ReplyDelete