Common Misconceptions about the Big Bang

[Gordon Freynman]

The Big Bang Theory is probably the most misinterpreted scientific theory in the general public, and here I will detail a couple of the most common misconceptions about the BBT and add more later as I think of or encounter them.

1) "The Big Bang was the creation event of the universe"

This is plainly false, although I can easily see someone making this interpretation off a poorly written article. The BBT can only be traced back to a time referred to as "time zero" or TZ for short, where our current best supported physical theories no longer work. Whether or not the universe was created at TZ or it existed before then is completely unknown at this point, but either way the BBT does not give an explanation as to how the universe came to be the way it was at TZ. Supplemented with Inflation theory, the BBT only explains what happened to the universe from TZ onwards.

2) "The Big Bang was an explosion"

Using the term "explosion" to describe the Big Bang isn't really appropriate. Doing so implies that:

A) the universe expanded from central point
B) matter exploded into a preexisting space-time
C) the expansion of the universe and matter was uneven.

All of the above are wrong. The Big Bang (including Inflation) was a metric expansion of space, which means space expanded equally in all directions everywhere. That is the key point to realize when saying that the Big Bang wasn't an explosion.


Further reading on the Big Bang here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=164222

[PacSubCom]

I think it is necessary to add that cosmologists didn't just make up the notion of an expaning universe and a BB, but actually have observations to prove it. The BB is an OBSERVATION, not only a calculation.

[Olvie]

The Large Hadron Collider is supposed to recreate the conditions of the TZ, right?

[Gordon Freynman]

The Large Hadron Collider is supposed to recreate the conditions of the TZ, right?

No, the LHC can only go back to a billionth of a second after TZ IIRC.

I think it is necessary to add that cosmologists didn't just make up the notion of an expaning universe and a BB, but actually have observations to prove it. The BB is an OBSERVATION, not only a calculation.

That's pretty well covered here so I'll link that in the OP.

[Olvie]

No, the LHC can only go back to a billionth of a second after TZ IIRC.

almost...

Do you know what scientists want to achieve with that, since it's after the Big Bang?

[Gordon Freynman]

almost...

Do you know what scientists want to achieve with that, since it's after the Big Bang?

There are a lot of things they're looking for in the LHC, namely evidence of extra dimensions, the Higgs boson (of course), supersymmetry, gravitons and new particles in general, matter-antimatter asymmetries, magnetic monopoles, and some other minor things as well. In relation to the Big Bang though, they're mostly looking to test predictions of current models about the earliest moments of the universe and gain an overall better understanding of the Big Bang.

Also to correct myself, it's a trillionth of a second after TZ. It may not seem like a long time, but the difference between temperatures from TZ to one trillionth of a second later is about 10 orders of magnitude.