the big bang theory only goes as far back as a point that began to expand, where did the point come from?
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A singularity. The Big Bang theory is based on the observed Hubble's law redshift of distant galaxies that when taken together with the cosmological principle indicate that space is expanding according to the Friedmann-Lemaître model of general relativity. Extrapolated into the past, these observations show that the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this, although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity.
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The big bang theory explains why ALL matter in the universe is expanding outwards from a central point in space (just like it would if there were, let’s say, an explosion) and that is all it explains. No, it doesn’t collapse and expand again.\n\nWe do not fully understand evolution. It is a theory…….The theory which all the evidence suggest, hence the reason it is the accepted theory. It doesn’t attempt to explain the origin of life, there is no evidence to formulate a theory on the origin yet but we are working on it.
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Is the Big Bang Theory still as widely accepted in the scientific world? Or is it losing ground to other theories?\n\nThe Big Bang Theory indicates that we live in an ever-expanding universe, moving away from every other universe on the fabric of space-time.  Although some scientists are careful to point out that “Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbor, is actually moving toward us, not away. Such exceptions arise because Hubble's law describes only the average behavior of galaxies (Scientific American March 2005).”\n\nBelief in One Theory\n\nSo many take the position that “my idea is all correct and your idea is all wrong.”  These ideas can be labeled as theories, doctrines, or whatever; they challenge us to examine our ideas and the views of others.  If we are insecure, we prefer to dismiss the viewpoints of others rather than examine our own.  However, if we are emotionally mature, we tend to be willing to review our own position and seek the merit in the perspective of others.  Such emotional maturity was once defined as “I am what I am, nothing better, nothing worse, and I find it good.”  This non-competitive stance is essential for open-minded pursuit of truth and knowledge.\n\nAny one who knows about blueprints, mechanical drafting, or architecture understands that it takes at least 3 different viewpoints to be able to accurately understand and recreate anything.  The most commonly used are the top, side, and front views.  For example, a table from the top view is a long and wide rectangle.  From the front view it is narrow and long.   From the side view it is narrow and short.  It is fruitless to argue that any one of these perspectives is false.\n\nIn layman’s terms, we might say that the sky is blue.  Someone else that it is orange.  In comprehensive reality, we can admit that it is sometimes blue and sometimes orange; indeed, sometimes it can be both at the same time.\n\nScientists may argue that light consists of waves, not particles.  Other scientists might insist that light is made of particles, not waves.  However, many modern scientists are beginning to embrace the necessity of models that include both these concepts.  Moreover, the characteristics of something do not have to be restricted to only 2 or 3 substantiated theories or viewpoints; a deep understanding of things may involve a panoramic examination of multiple views, like a spinning and swerving car in a television commercial.\n\nWith that foundation, let us examine the Big Bang Theory, in relation to other current theories of cosmology.  Let me point out the relative merits of each position briefly and how they could possibly harmonize.\n\nBig Bang\n\nThe Big Bang Theory remains the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe.  The red shift of light from distant nebulas proves that everything is moving away from a starting point, an expanding universe.  The fact that there is a relationship between these celestial objects speed and their distance reinforces their common origin.  If true, there should be cosmic background radiation, and there is.  Physics tends to support the details of the theory including the cooling that may have lead to the sequential creation of matter and antimatter particles, including quarks, protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos and photons.  Similarly, the relative properties of the basic elements tend to support their sequential development, including deuterium (heavy hydrogen), tritium and helium.  The ratio of one helium atom for every ten or eleven atoms of hydrogen is a constant in the universe today.\n\nUnresolved problems with this theory are the age of the universe and the basis on a “singularity” (an event which defies current rules of physics).   Also, while the Big Bang Theory defines an event of creation, it does not define what caused it to happen.\n\nThe Big Crunch\n\nIf the total gravitational force of all matter is high enough, it would slow the expansion of the
196438
In physical cosmology, the Big Bang is the scientific theory that the universe emerged from an enormously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago. The Big Bang theory is based on the observed Hubble's law redshift of distant galaxies that when taken together with the cosmological principle indicate that space is expanding according to the Friedmann-Lemaître model of general relativity. Extrapolated into the past, these observations show that the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this, although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity (for reporting on some of the more notable speculation on this issue, see cosmogony).\n\nThe term Big Bang is used both in a narrow sense to refer to a point in time when the observed expansion of the universe (Hubble's law) began — calculated to be 13.7 billion (1.37 × 1010) years ago (±2%) — and in a more general sense to refer to the prevailing cosmological paradigm explaining the origin and expansion of the universe, as well as the composition of primordial matter through nucleosynthesis as predicted by the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow theory [1].\n\nOne consequence of the Big Bang is that the conditions of today's universe are different from the conditions in the past or in the future. From this model, George Gamow in 1948 was able to predict, at least qualitatively, the existence of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) [2]. The CMB was discovered in the 1960s and further validated the Big Bang theory over its chief rival, the steady state theory.\n\nThe Big Bang theory developed from observations and theoretical considerations. Observationally, it was determined that most spiral nebulae were receding from Earth, but those who made the observation weren't aware of the cosmological implications, nor that the supposed nebulae were actually galaxies outside our own Milky Way[3]. In 1927, the Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître independently derived the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker equations from Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity and proposed, on the basis of the recession of spiral nebulae, that the universe began with the "explosion" of a "primeval atom"—what was later called the Big Bang[4].\n\nIn 1929, Edwin Hubble provided an observational basis for Lemaître's theory. He discovered that, relative to the Earth, the galaxies are receding in every direction at speeds directly proportional to their distance from the Earth. This fact is now known as Hubble's law [5]. Given the cosmological principle whereby the universe, when viewed on sufficiently large distance scales, has no preferred directions or preferred places, Hubble's law suggested that the universe was expanding contradicting the infinite and unchanging static universe scenario developed by Einstein.\n\nThis idea allowed for two opposing possibilities. One was Lemaître's Big Bang theory, advocated and developed by George Gamow. The other possibility was Fred Hoyle's steady state model in which new matter would be created as the galaxies moved away from each other. In this model, the universe is roughly the same at any point in time[6]. It was actually Hoyle who coined the name of Lemaître's theory, referring to it sarcastically as "this big bang idea" during a program broadcast on March 28, 1949 by the BBC Third Programme. Hoyle repeated the term in further broadcasts in early 1950, as part of a series of five lectures entitled The Nature of Things. The text of each lecture was published in The Listener a week after the broadcast, the first time that the term "big bang" appeared in print. [7]
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The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions. \n\nIn 1927, the  "Belgian priest Georges Lemaître"  was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lemaître's theory. He found that distant galaxies in every direction are going away from us with speeds proportional to their distance. \n\nThe big bang was initially suggested because it explains why distant galaxies are traveling away from us at great speeds. The theory also predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation (the glow left over from the explosion itself). The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery. \n\nAlthough the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions.
307523
You have to think back and ask the correct questions to answer this one. The theory of the "Big Bang" is incorrect. First Question: "Where did the matter come from for the "Big Bang"? Answer: "From somewhere else". Keep asking the question of "Where did something come from"? and you have to arrive at the fact that at some point, there was absolutely nothing.\n\nThis is a very hard concept to understand and think about because you always want to think in terms of a "void" if you try to think of nothing, but you have to realize that "a void" is "something" so you have to think of "nothing", "nada", "zip".\n\nThen you can arrive to the conclusion that...\n\n"It is the propensity for NOTHING to create SOMETHING".\n\nThe very first thing nothing would create is energy, something that would keep manifesting itself and propegate. That is what you would call "Life". Some refer it to "God" but it still all the same thing and exists everywhere in the universe.\n\nThis "Energy" would eventually become so extreme that it would create the "void", then the energy would transform into matter and gravity and begin to fill the void.\n\nThese three forces are the basis for all the laws of our current "Universe" and have dictated it's behavior ever since.\n\nThe universe if far older then the 13 billion years old we now can detect, it is constantly changing, expanding, and filling the ever greater void it creates as the energy, matter and gravity continues to be created.\n\nTo answer your question, you are sitting on it, it does not sit on anything.\n\nWhen your coporal body can no longer contain the energy that created you, as in all "living" things, your energy will again become part of this universe, no matter how trivial that energy may be, it is still a part of the entire energy that was and is still being created at this time.
72086
Very intersting question which I or no-one else can answer with 100% certainty. I'm no expert in physics but i figure that to create the source of the 'big bang' would  require an infinite amount of matter to be squeezed into a small ball by an even more infinite amount of pressure - which would have to be equal on all sides... so where did all this matter & pressure come from???
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Cheerleader101,\n    Let us go on a bit on the scientific track.  Have you heard about the famous 'Big Bang Theory'?  It says that the Universe was in the beginning a condensed mass which shrank and shrank inwards.  When it could now shrink any more becoming a condensed mass of great pressure, it burst and thus ever expanding Universe was created. This explosion of immeasurable magnitude is called by the scietists who formulated this theory as Big Bang.  \n    Let us now go on the track of Ancient Vedic Wisdom propagated by the Rishis(Indian Saints) of india.  About 4000BC, in the Upanishads, Rishis wrote:  "Asade Vedamagra. Thad Aseeth. Thadandam Niravarthathaya. Thad Visphotayatha. Rajatham cha Suvarnam Abhavath." This is Sanskrit which means :In the Beginning there was mothing.  From nothing existence was born.  And it became a round mass and it began to shrink.  Then when it could not shrink anymore, it exploded" .  This is the simple and plain meaning.  Great amount of explanations and details lie behind these utterances of Rishis.\n    I will write about this in detail later!\n         Mukundan Pallipravan
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Current theory places the Big Bang at 13.7 billion years in the past, with a possible error of 100 million years.  This is based on the Hubble Constant, studies of formation of galaxies, distribution of quasars, all sorts of arcane things in astronomy.   Telescopes can pick up things dating from 300,000 years after the Big Bang, but theory suggests space would be opaque to visible light earlier than that.
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The Big Bang theory itself, doesn't say anything about the *cause* of the explosion. It describes only how the Universe evolved after the explosion took place.\n\nThe reason is twofold.\nFirst of all, the models physicists use to describe the Universe, like General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics break down in the extreme conditions immediately after the initial explosion. However, they do a very good job in describing the existing data afterwards. And with the recent high precision measurements by satellite of the cosmic background that is very impressive.\n\nThe second reason is that GR and QM are only approximations of the correct theory. In fact they give different answers in the region were they overlap. Fortunately this happens only in extreme conditions, close to black holes for instance. And, you guessed it, in the microseconds after the Big Bang.\n\nConclusion: there is therefore a lot of room left to speculate. Not for the scientists though, because there are no data available for these initial moments of the Universe. No data means, nothing to test theories on.
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Big Bang is a theory that tries to explain the formation of the universe, its galaxies, its stars and planets etc.\n\nIt says that the Universe was created by an explosion of a Primeval Atom thus causing it to expand and move away from each other. This was actually based on the Hubble Law which says that Galaxies around us are expanding at speeds directly proportional to their distance from Earth, based on the observation of Edwin Hubble, 1929.\n\nIts a huge topic with lots of technical arguments and counter arguments. Here is the link that will satisfy your quest on Big Bang, atleast for starters...\n\n.:Fishie:.
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The universe expanded from an extremely hot and dense state approximately 13.7 billion years ago.  Scientists base this theory on the universe's background radiation and redshift of distant galaxies.  In 1929, Edwin Hubble (yes, the guy they named Hubble Telescope after) discovered that galaxies were moving in every direction at speeds directly proportional to their distance from Earth.  Two theories actually grew out of this.  One was the Big Bang theory, from a term for this theory used by Fred Hoyle during a BBC broadcast.  According the other theory, new matter was being created as the galaxies moved apart.  However, observational data came to favor the Big Bang theory, and it won out.
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1 and 3 cant be answered other than by speculation\n\n2-According to current theory, the first physically distinct period in the Universe lasted from "time zero" (the Big Bang itself) to 10-43 second later, when the universe was about 100 million trillion times smaller than a proton and had a temperature of 1034 K. During this so-called Planck era, quantum gravitational effects dominated and there was no distinction between (what would later be) the four fundamental forces of nature – gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. Gravity was the first to split away, at the end of the Planck era, which marks the earliest point at which present science has any real understanding. Physicists have successfully developed a theory that unifies the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, called the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). The GUT era lasted until about 10-38 second after the Big Bang, at which point the strong force broke away from the others, releasing, in the process, a vast amount of energy that, it is believed, caused the Universe to expand at an extraordinary rate. In the brief ensuing interval of so-called inflation, the Universe grew by a factor of 1035 (100 billion trillion trillion) in 10-32 seconds, from being unimaginably smaller than a subatomic particle to about the size of a grapefruit.\n\nPostulating this burst of exponential growth helps remove two major problems in cosmology: the horizon problem and the flatness problem. The horizon problem is to explain how the cosmic microwave background – a kind of residual glow of the Big Bang from all parts of the sky – is very nearly isotropic despite the fact that the observable universe isn't yet old enough for light, or any other kind of signal, to have traveled from one side of it to the other. The flatness problem is to explain why space, on a cosmic scale, seems to be almost exactly flat, leaving the universe effectively teetering on a knife-edge between eternal expansion and eventual collapse. Both near-isotropy and near-flatness follow directly from the inflationary scenario.\n\n\nElectroweak Era (10-38 to 10-10 second)\n\nAt the end of inflationary epoch, the so-called vacuum energy of space underwent a phase transition (similar to when water vapor in the atmosphere condenses as water droplets in a cloud) suddenly giving rise to a seething soup of elementary particles, including photons, gluons, and quarks. At the same time, the expansion of the universe dramatically slowed to the "normal" rate governed by the Hubble law. At about 10-10 seconds, the electroweak force separated into the electromagnetic and weak forces, establishing a universe in which the physical laws and the four distinct forces of nature were as we now experience them.\n\n\nParticle Era (10-10 to 1 second)\n\nThe biggest chunks of matter, as the Universe ended its first trillionth of a second or so, were individual quarks and their antiparticles, antiquarks – the underlying particles out of which future atoms, asteroids, and astronomers would be made. As time went on, quarks and anti-quarks annihilated each other. However, either because of a slight asymmetry in the behavior of the particles or a slight initial excess of particles over antiparticles, the mutual destruction ended with a surplus of quarks. Only because of this (relatively minor) discrepancy do stars, planets, and human beings exist today.\n\nBetween 10-6 and 10-5 second after the beginning of the Universe, when the ambient cosmic temperature had fallen to a balmy 1015 K, quarks began to combine to form a variety of hadrons. All of the short-lived hadrons quickly decayed leaving only the familiar protons and neutrons of which the nuclei of atoms-to-come would be made. This hadron era was followed by the lepton era, during which most of the matter in the Universe consisted of leptons and their antiparticles. The lepton era drew to a close when the majority of leptons and antilepton
360105
at the present time, the only widely accepted, scientifically valid theory of the origin of the universe is the "big bang" theory.  british astronomer fred hoyle gave the theory this name to ridicule it.  the big bang is substantially supported by evidence.  for the first 380 000 years, the universe was opaque.  light could not travel far without interacting with a charged particle (electron or atomic nucleus, mostly hydrogen and helium nuclei).  the universe became transparent when the electrons and nuclei combined to form atoms.  light could travel unhindered because the atoms have no electric charge.  because of the expansion of the universe, we see this light at much longer microwave wavelengths.  this is called the cosmic microwave background, and we can see nothing of the universe before this.  within the first fraction of a second, however, the universe became much larger during an extremely short fraction of a second.  this super-fast expansion is called inflation.\n\ni can't really say much about the many myths of the origin of the universe, what the universe is, or even if the universe had an origin.
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God created it. It is endless and boundless....this is proven by the fact that our universe is continuously expanding.\nThe Big Bang is man's attempt to explain something he doesn't understand. It is false.\nWhy? well the answer is simple.....You can't have an explosion from absolute nothing.\nGod created the universe....a simple explanation with no holes in it.
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Evolution of Universe\n\nThe three main theories put forward to explain the origin and evolution of the universe are:\n\n   1. The Big Bang Theory\n   2. The Steady State Theory\n   3. The Pulsating Theory\n\n1. The Big Bang Theory: Le Maitre and Gammow proposed this theory. According to this theory, at the beginning of the universe, the whole matter of the universe was once concentrated in an extremely dense and hot (~10 12K) fireball. Then about 20 billion years ago a vast explosion (big bang) occurred. The matter was broken into pieces, which were thrown out with high speed in all directions forming stars and galaxies; which are still moving way from one another. According to Hubble's law, the velocity of recession of a galaxy becomes equal to the velocity of light at a distance equal of 20 billing light years. It means, the light rays from stars and galaxies, which are situated at a distance of 20 billion light years or more, can never reach us. Thus this distance becomes the boundary of observable universe. On account of continuous recession, more and more galaxies will go beyond this boundary and the will be lost. As a result of this, the number of galaxies per unit volume will go on decreasing and ultimately a time may come when we may have empty universe.\n\n2. Steady State Theory: Bondi, Gold and Fred Hoyle developed this theory. According to this theory, the number of galaxies in the observable universe is constant and new galaxies are continuously being created out of empty space, which fill up the gaps caused by those galaxies, which have crossed the boundary of the observable universe. As a result of it, the overall size of mass of the observable universe remains constant. Thus a steady state of the universe is not disturbed at all.\n\n3. Pulsating Theory: According to this theory, the universe is supposed to be expanding and contracting alternately i.e. pulsating. At present, the universe is expanding. According to pulsating theory, it is possible that at a certain time, the expansion of the universe may be stopped by the gravitational pull and the may contract again. After it has been contracted to a certain size, explosion again occurs and the universe will start expanding. The alternate expansion and contraction of the universe give rise to pulsating universe.\n\nWe will now see the theories of planetary motion.
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The Big Bang \n\nAbout fifty years ago, American astronomers studying the galactic star clusters, stumbled on evidence that the entire Universe is blowing up before our eyes. According to their observations, all the galaxies in the Universe are moving away from us and from one another at very high speeds, and the most distant are receding at the extraordinary speed of hundreds of millions of miles an hour.\n\nFirst there was nothing and it blew up and then there was everything and scientists have calculated that it all happened in 1043 of a second. [The] echo of that explosion can still be heard bouncing around in space. Scientists claim that in the big bang all of the fundamental particles necessary for life were formed. All of the complexity we see around us is the result of this massive explosion.\n\n"The new finding hit the scientific world like a thunderclap." It meant that the idea of an ultimate beginning was no longer merely religious dogma. Science itself now indicated that the universe burst into existence at a particular time in the remote past.\n\nIn 1992 measurements by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and by the Hubble Space Telescope seemed to confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that the Big Bang cosmology is indeed correct. George Smoot, Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Principle Investigator of the COBE team which made the discovery, said regarding these new observations, "What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe . . . It's like looking at God."\n\nWorking backwards, the evidence implies that there was a time when the universe was infinitesimally small. The evidence from general relativity also indicates that it was not merely a case of the matter in the universe being concentrated at a particular location, but that space itself was this tiny. At a sudden instant in time all of the energy and mass in the universe was located at this infinitesimally small point and exploded. The currently observed outbound motion of the galaxies from each other is a continuing effect of that explosion.\n\n"The scientific community is prepared to consider the idea that God created the universe is a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last 100 years," Frederic B. Burnham, science historian, declared.\n\nHowever, some die-hard secularists propose that the universe goes through endless cycles of expansions and collapses. Hence, eternity becomes nothing more than an eternal succession of big bangs followed by big crunches followed by big bangs followed by big crunches over and over again and again forever.\n\nBut this violates the second law of thermodynamics, the law of decay, that implies that the universe is in a process of gradual disintegration - running down, like a wound-up clock. And if it is running down, then there must have been a time when it was wound up. Once the big bang takes place and the universe begins its expansion, entropy starts to increase. From this point on it will never be able to go back to its original state.\n\nWhat's more, the first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of matter) implies that matter cannot just pop into existence or create itself. And therefore, if the universe had a beginning, then something external to the universe must have caused it to come into existence - something, or Someone, transcendent to the natural world.\n\nThe facts clearly indicate that the universe is not eternal, and it cannot originate itself The implication is that the universe began at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy. Science has begun to sound eerily like Genesis 1: "And God said, 'Let there be light"' (1:3).\n\nThe evidence requires that we believe God formed the universe at His command, pointing to the importance of taking God at His word literally - from the beginning both of time and the Bible. Second, there is such a striking parallel between the Hebrews 1