I had a thought.

[cjhimaa]

I go along with the 'Big Bang Theory" and based on that, my thought was, how old was the previous universe? I am no scientist or mathmatician. The argument we always hear is, How can you get something from nothing? My argument to that is, you can only get nothing if something is taken away. Nothing from nothing means it never existed in the first place. Hence, my question "How old was the previous universe?
I have a theory, be it an unproven theory, as I am not a scientist or even that smart compared to others of the human race.
We may never know the answer to my question or if a previous universe did exist.
My theory is the opposite of the 'Big Bang' happened to the previous universe, a universe which had reached it copassity and the end of its energy and because of its mass, collapsed in on itself to 0. From this 0 exploded our universe.
It may seem far fetched and it has no evidence, but its better than an invisable being magically made the Earth appear and 4 days latter, made the universe appear around it. Magic!

[Xeno]

Your conjecture has been raised before. The present analysis is that the universe is flat. You may find Krauss' "A Universe from Nothing" interesting. It is not a difficult book but is informative.

[owheelj]

Basically there are two theories about the future of this universe. One is that it expands from the big bang until gravity eventually pulls everything back together and you end up with another singularity. This is the theory you're talking about, and for a while it was the view held as most likely. At this time there were theories, just as you've postulated, that after "the big crunch" the process would just repeat, ad infinitum.

However a number of observations have led to a different theory being most widely accepted. Basically the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up, rather than slowing down. If this continues (and there is no reason to think that it wouldn't) then obviously the big crunch can never happen. Instead, the prevailing theory is that the universe will continue expanding essentially forever, and that eventually all the nuclear reactions of the stars will burn up all the energy that the universe will experience "heat" death, after which (over billions of years) the matter itself will evaporate and we'll end up with nothing (but not as a crunch). If you get the chance to see it, episode 1 of Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe explains this process in a beautiful manner (watch in 1080p if you can).

[Logic please]

Originally Posted by Xeno

Your conjecture has been raised before. The present analysis is that the universe is flat. You may find Krauss' "A Universe from Nothing" interesting. It is not a difficult book but is informative.

One example of this - LINK:

Originally Posted by The Endless Universe: Introduction to the Cyclic Universe extract

In this context, a new paradigm has been recently proposed by Paul Steinhardt (Princeton) and Neil Turok (Cambridge) —the cyclic universe— that turns the conventional picture topsy-turvy.2 (Perhaps the model should be called an old paradigm since it reinvigorates ancient cosmic mythologies and philosophies, albeit using the tools of 21st century physics.) In this picture:

• space and time exist forever
• the big bang is not the beginning of time; rather, it is a bridge to a pre-existing contracting era
• the Universe undergoes an endless sequence of cycles in which it contracts in a big crunch and re-emerges in an expanding big bang, with trillions of years of evolution in between
• the temperature and density of the universe do not become infinite at any point in the cycle; indeed, they never exceed a finite bound (about a trillion trillion degrees)
• no inflation has taken place since the big bang; the current homogeneity and flatness were created by events that occurred before the most recent big bang
• the seeds for galaxy formation were created by instabilities arising as the Universe was collapsing towards a big crunch, prior to our big bang

ADD: in line with owj's post above, I note that the article date is 2002.

[owheelj]

Yeah I believe it was only 1998 that scientists discovered that the expansion of the universe was accelerating, and quite a few years before that observation was accepted by the scientific community. Perlmutter, Schmidt, and Riess only won the Nobel prize last year for the discovery - so this is really recent developments in our understanding of the universe!

[wolty]

Agree with Xeno and Owheelj. Krauss and Cox are the way to go.


Sent telepathically.

[Loki]

"Nothing", as it turns out, is inherently unstable and results in the production of particles. The Casimir effect is a good demonstration of this. The old bullshit about "evolutionsists believe the universe came from nothing through pure chance" is nothing more than mental masturbation to relieve cognitive dissonance. Even if true it wouldn't make "goddidit" a better explanation.

Speculation about the nature of the universe before Planck time and conditions before the Big Bang is currently just that, though there are a number of possible scenarios which are currently being explored.

Or we could just throw our hands up and shout GODDIDIT. Such a satisfying answer to many.

[Goldenmane]

On phone, so can't really go into it at any depth, but I just want to point out that a singularity is a breakdown in the mathematical model, rather than something that reflects anything much about that which is being modelled.

That is to say, go back far enough with the cosmic expansion and you hit, mathematically, some infinities. Says more about the model you're using than the reality.

[owheelj]

Originally Posted by Loki

"Nothing", as it turns out, is inherently unstable and results in the production of particles. The Casimir effect is a good demonstration of this. The old bullshit about "evolutionsists believe the universe came from nothing through pure chance" is nothing more than mental masturbation to relieve cognitive dissonance. Even if true it wouldn't make "goddidit" a better explanation.

Speculation about the nature of the universe before Planck time and conditions before the Big Bang is currently just that, though there are a number of possible scenarios which are currently being explored.

Or we could just throw our hands up and shout GODDIDIT. Such a satisfying answer to many.

I would tend to take the position of keeping the meaning of words the same, and say that "nothing" in the context of asking how the universe could from nothing doesn't exist.

[wearestardust]

Originally Posted by Xeno

You may find Krauss' "A Universe from Nothing" interesting. It is not a difficult book ...

I wouldn't say I've been flying through it ...