Did anything exist before The Big Bang?

The problem science has with a pre big-bang Universe is that according to the equations of the theorists, a Universe could not have existed before such an event as it is the beginning of all things. Thus we find big-bang science getting close to religious creationism in that it proposes an absolute starting point.

This is where a poet and fiction writer has an advantage over scientists. Our minds can wander into the regions beyond time and space and consider that which is unscientific.

The most popular of the beginning of time theories proposes that before the big bang, which was actually more of a shwoooom than a BANG!!!, the whole Universe was compressed into a pellet of matter the size of a mouse turd. More serious science writers do not use the mouse turd analogy of course, they are more inclined to say a pellet of matter the size of a grain of sand or salt. Now that is just silly, the entire universe, consisting of an estimated hundred billion galaxies each with up to a hundred billion solar systems according to Compton’s Online Encyclopaedia, could not possibly be squeezed so small an object. A mouse turd is much more realistic, not that reality has a lot to do with the theory.

Sharper minded realists among you will have already asked the question, "but what was in all the space outside the mouse turd?"

Many scientists try to evade this question. Press them though and they will patiently, as if talking to a dull witted child, try to explain that there was nothing outside. The mouse turd was everything. Space was compressed into it along with all the solid stuff and gas and dust, water, cheese, potatoes, Daniel O’ Donnell records and everything. Time was in there as well, all collapsed and bundled up. There was nothing outside the mouse turd.

There’s more to Space than empty space.

But space is nothing isn’t it. Nothing is space. So where was all that nothing. After all no matter how complex the advanced mathematics of the theoretical physicists, if you take away nothing from nothing you sill have nothing. Space.

Space is fascinating, there is actually more space in stuff that there is stuff. Everything is made of atoms which consist of a very tiny nucleus of solid matter around which a number of electrons, also tiny particles of matter, are orbiting. That is all atoms are, except for a lot of energy; atoms, like those desperate wannabes who turn up on TV talent shows seem to have an inexhaustible supply of energy. Between the nucleus and the electrons is space but not space we can move through. This article is not about the workings of atoms so readers wanting to know more will find links to progressive science websites in the reading list appended. It is only important that readers of this article understand everything in the universe is made of atoms.

Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. It could not have popped into existence when the cosmic mouse turd exploded nor could it ever disappear when the universe comes to an end. This is where the grain of salt / sand theory and with it the big bang starts to collapse. How does all that everything come into being. Maybe The Great Creator said "piff,paff,poof," and pulled it all out of a top hat, or perhaps the great scientist had packed the cosmic mouse turd with magic space dust that when mixed with hydrogen reproduces itself.

The real problem with all the big bang theories is that they are too obviously a device dreamed up by scientists because theoretical physics is based on mathematics and mathematics needs a common starting point; zero. You can go up or down from zero but not sideways and to understand pre big bang, or pre time I should perhaps say we need to go sideways from zero. There is no more evidence for the big bang, big shwooom or whatever than there is for the ancient creation myths.

Why do we need to go sideways?

A trip to Andromeda.

Consider how we measure our universe. The two criteria are distance through space and time, which curiously, rather arrogantly, we measure by the rotating of our insignificant little blue planet as it orbits its insignificant little star in a remote corner of the milky way. The main star of the Andromeda constellation, one of the stars of celestial navigation, is a hundred light years from earth, the distance covered in 100 years by light travelling at 186,000 miles per second. The numbers are too mind boggling to mean anything to us. Time too ceases to mean anything. So does time really exist?

According to the theoreticians the only place in the universe time does not exist in the centre of a black hole. There nothing at all can exist, time disappears. This is called a singularity. In order to understand a singularity we need to experience one. When younger I experienced several, usually on the way home from the pub of a Friday night.

When looking at Andromeda we see light emitted by those stars when Teddy Roosevelt was President of the U.S.A, King Edward VII reigned in Britain and Kaiser Wilhelm II was steering Germany towards World War I. Even a hundred Earth years later there are very few people alive who remember those characters. To have even the vaguest personal memories of any, one would have to be at least a hundred and five years old.

Andromeda is a near neighbour in the cosmos. The most distant stars, the light emitted by whole galaxies so distant they appear to our most powerful telescopes as mere pinpoints, are estimated to be over 10 billion light years away. Our planet did not even exist when that light began its journey, There is no way we can be sure how far away the object we are seeing actually is, nor if what we are seeing is indeed an object. Time and space are artifices created by humans and are meaningless outside our solar system. We are only just beginning to be able to contemplate travelling to planets beyond our immediate neighbours.

How do we know the distant galaxies are over ten billion years old? We don’t, its another guess.

The Redshift Conundrum

The age of stars is estimated by what astrophysicists call redshift. Visible light is a form of electromagnetic energy and governed by the same natural laws. Red shift means that as the light-frequency energy from a star travels through space its wavelength increases, moving the visible light towards the less energised red end of the spectrum.

Redshift is the basis of another cosmic theory, that the galaxies move away from each other at the speed of light. By measuring the redshift, astrophysicists estimate the distance we are from stars and thus estimate the age of stars. If the galaxies are indeed moving apart and the most distant ones detected by the Hubble telescope is indicated by its redshift measurement to be ten billion years old, then they could not have been where they appear to be ten billion years ago unless they are not part of the universe created by Big Bang.

Do those scientific measurements mean anything? Think about the comparatively short journey from Andromeda. We simply do not know what has happened to the light on its way to us. Has it been reflected off dust clouds, distorted as it passed through different gases or even water vapour? We just do not know though we can make some educated guesses over distances of one hundred light years. Ten billion light years is a very different matter. The energy we are seeing could have been emitted

by something completely outside our experience.

This is why we need to move sideways from zero. We cannot look forward or back with any certainty, to understand our universe we need to be able to step outside now and observe it from a distance to see the big picture.

We will do that in Part 2.