Have you ever wondered about the big bang theory?
549020
Einstein believed in God.  He was working on a way to prove the existence of God at the time of his death (at least that was what the crappy reenactment on SBS showed last month).\n\nIf there is a God I think he would have started the Universe with a Bang and certainly not a whimper.\n\nRegardless of the big bang there are a lot of things that I still don;t understand e.g. string theory and I think that we will never be able to understand these things because it is like trying to know the mind of God and probably impossible.
73345
The last response made a good point.  Science only seeks to answer certain questions.  What exists "outside" the universe? What existed before the Big Bang?  These are questions that scientists currently are not seeking.  That question is left up to the philosophers for now.  \n\nThe questions really point to a better understand of the universe and whether that question is important, relevant or even consistent with our present knowledge of the universe.  \n\nAstronomers and physicists find the surface of an expanding balloon a good analogy for the nature of our universe.  The surface, just surface mind you, of that balloon has no center or edge to it.  Just like how we understand the universe.  The surface material of the balloon would be what we call space-time.  \n\nWhat is outside the surface of the balloon?  Well there is no balloon material outside so it is not space as we know it but one perspective says it is a future balloon surface.  Just like inside the balloon was once a past balloon surface.  \n\nThe universe could have a similar analogy.
313486
your answer is in \nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
1006083
Hi bornsmartgal\n\nOther possible explanations for the observations which support big bang theory are numerous.  They tend to focus on trying to explain the redshift observations, and they include tired light, strange compton scattering, large hydrogen clouds, etc.  The thing is that no single explanation (other than big bang theory) explains *all* the observations.  For example very few of them explain the time dilation of distant supernovas.  There's also the Tolman surface brightness test which distinguishes between big bang models and other models by a factor of z^4 (this is a nice test because it gives a very large discrepancy).  Only an expanding universe passes the test.\n\n\nHope this helps!\nThe Chicken
590990
I believe in the Big Bang theory and evolution.  No "one" caused the BB.  Scientists are still theorizing on what may have caused the BB.  \n\nI like the theory of BB's being commonplace and "new universes" being created.  Multiverses.  :-)
888371
Interestingly, the closer science comes to the big bang, or asks the question you did, the more philosophical and theological the discussion becomes.\n\nThings like inflation theory, and Hawking's conversion of the singularity of creation to a mathematical construct that is not singular, or other thoughts like this are highly hypothetical and not proven.
18930
There have been alternative theories throughout history.  I believe most astronomers now accept the Big Bang theory as best fitting the known facts. Your question about a multiplicity of Big Bangfs is a good one: perhaps the biggest cosmological debate about the nature of the universe is whether the universe will expand forever, or whether it will ultimately contract again into a state similar to just prior to the Big Bang.  Of those who think it will contract, many believe that it then will repeat a Big Bang process, so that the universe will proceed on a Bang, expansion, contraction, Bang  . . . pattern forever.\n\nI've included a link to one website that provides answers to basic astronomical questions, in a range from beginning to more advanced.
585995
No, since I'm a Muslim, I found the Big Bang theory acceptable, as it fits with the Koran's verses.\n\n"Have not the disbelievers seen that the Heavens and the Earth were one piece and we parted them? And We made every living thing from water. Will they not then believe?" (Koran,21:30).\n\nThe universally accepted theory of the origin of the universe is now the Big Bang theory. It maintains that at one time all of the universe were one piece, the monoblock as it is called. At a particular point in time, this "monoblock" burst and it continues to expand. This gives us the universe we have today. This was a recent discovery, a recent comfirmation. \n\n"And it is We Who have constructed the heaven with might, and verily, it is We Who are steadily expanding it." (Koran,51:47)\n\nAt the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann and the Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaitre theoretically calculated that the universe is in constant motion and that it is expanding.\nThis notion was confirmed by the use of observational data in 1929. While observing the sky with a telescope, Edwin Hubble, the American astronomer, discovered that the stars and galaxies were constantly moving away from each other. This discovery is regarded as one of the greatest in the history of astronomy. During these observations, Hubble established that the stars emit a light that turns redder according to their distance. That is because according to the known laws of physics, light heading towards a point of observation turns violet, and light moving away from that point assumes a more reddish hue. During his observations, Hubble noted a tendency towards the colour red in the light emitted by stars. In short, the stars were moving further and further away, all the time. The stars and galaxies were not only moving away from us, but also from each other. A universe where everything constantly moves away from everything else implied a constantly expanding universe. The observations carried out in the following years verified that the universe is constantly expanding.
664286
the universe is expanding i do believe that cuz all the evidence our scientists have gathered over the yrs points in this direction. \n\n    as to where it is expanding, i guess u mean into what. well no one knows. we haven't been able to see what is at the end of the universe so we can't know what is beyond it. the notion of an endless universe is not right because then the big bang theory would have to be wrong. see, if the universe were endless then it would immediately imply that it had no beginning which has been proved wrong.\n  \n   so your question is pretty hard to answer directly. but if u look at it in another way then u can say that the universe is filling up some empty space just like water fills up a bucket slowly as u increase the level of water in it.
696569
The Big Bang  is by far and away the most accepted theory as to the origins of the Universe. I would say that 90% of all cosmologists and astronomers subscribe to it.\n  This much we know as FACT: in 1964 two guys working for Bell Labs, named Penzias and Wilson, accidently detected white noise in outer space. This static was later found to be background residue leftover from the Big Bang. FACT: All galaxies are moving away from us; this is known by the color of "shift" they emit, due to the Doppler effect. a red shift indicates something is receding. The further out they are, the faster they move. This is known as the Hubble Constant.\n  So: we know there was a huge explosion that has caused everything to scatter, and we can determine age from gas spectography from stars, using burned out ones as a guidline. Therefore: Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. There is no other theory out there that meets with even a fraction of the approval this does.
746151
The big bang theory makes several very specific predictions about what astronomers should find in the universe if the theory is correct.  One of these is the "microwave background radiation," the remnants of the period in the early universe when it first cooled enough for light to be visible.  The theory also predicts what that radiation should look like in terms of temperature, density, and fluctuations.\nA couple of Bell Labs engineers, working with a microwave antenna, had this persistent noise they couldn't figure out the source of.  After isolating it, and measuring it in various parts of the sky, they discovered it was this very background radiation that was predicted by the big bang theory -- and they weren't even looking for it.  Since then we've launced satellites that have measured the CMB (cosmic microwave background) across the entire sky at high resolution, and it matches the theory's predictions to a very high degree of accuracy.\n\nThat's just one prediction the theory makes that has been found to be correct -- there are dozens of others.  Go to your library and get some books on the big bang and cosmology in general -- too much to answer here :)
990294
The scientific theory is that the Universe started as a fluctuation of the vacuum. Such vacuum fluctuations make appear a small amount of energy, for a small time. This phenomenon is responsible for the existence of forces, that hold the Universe and matter together.\n\nNormally the bigger the energy fluctuation, the smaller the time it is in existence.\n\nNot so the Big Bang. That was a HUGE fluctuation. So big that a lot of energy came to appearance in the form of mass, elementary particles. These particles started expanding, before the vacuum could reclaim the energy.\n\nAnd it is still expanding today. 14 billion years later.\n\nThe 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\nNow for some speculation. Is our Universe the only one? Maybe not. The Big Bang was one big fluctuation, maybe other smaller or bigger, take place all the time.\nBut most of these fluctuations will produce Universes in which conditions are just not suitable for life.\nThe Universe we observe is by necessity one in which the conditions are just right for us to have evolved into Homo Sapiens capable of asking philosophical questions.
524567
First of all, the Big Bang theory does not address how the universe actually got started. It describes how the universe has been since that point. And it is remarkably well established for times after about 1 millisecond after things got started. The universe is expanding and went through a period of very fast expansion early on. The temperature has been decreasing since the start which was about 13.7 billion years ago.\n\nHow things actually got started is *much* more specualtive. There are two main ways that people approach this, but I want to emphasize that neither is actually part of the Big Bang theory and that both are *very* specualtive. We simply don't have the data to figure out what happened before that first millisecond or so.\n\nThe first approach is to point out that time itself is part of the fabric of the universe. It is not something idependent. Part of the nature of the Big Bang in general relativity is that it is a 'singularity'. An analagous thing would be to look at the north pole. This is a singularity in the coordinate system of latitude and longitude. You can't go 'north of the north pole'. In a very similar way, the time coordinate cannot be extended (in this approach) past the Big Bang. This means there is no 'before the Big Bang'. Time simply doesn't make sense at that point.\n\nThe other main approach is to say that the singularity predicted by general relativity doesn't happen because of smoothing out by quantum effects. This *could* allow the time coordinate to extend past the Big Bang (but it doesn't have to). In this scenario, the Big Bang was a quantum fluctuation that 'got out of hand' and underwent exponential growth becoming the universe. The beginning was random since such quantum events are random (this is known and established). However, there would be physical laws describing the probabilities of such things happening. In this approach, there can be multiple universes that don't interact and that have various physical properties different than our own.\n\nI hope this helps!
949424
The big bang is the creation of the universe. Scientists have recorded an echo in space, it is the echo of the big bang.
178557
The Big Bang didn't happen in a place.  Space and time were created in the big bang. The Big Bang is a theory to explain universal/spatial expansion. \n\nI think it's easiest to look at the idea this way. Scientists have observed that everything past our local galactic cluster seems to be retreating from us. All observations point to the universe being infinite and roughly uniform in all directions. \n\nIf it's expanding at given rate now, chances are it's slowed down. Go back in time, the universe was denser and expanding faster. Rewind the timeline far enough and you'll come to a period when everything was all bunched together in a massive, undiscernable clump. Then, suddenly, Bang!!! Space! And everything in it... which has been spreading out and slowing down (pretty much) ever since. \n\nTry thinking about it like the air expaning in bread as it rises, or in a balloon as it fills. Everything is moving apart from everything. Only the universe has been infinitely large from the get go. It's almost like someone just keeps adding empty space in between everything.\n\nIf it helps at all, the center of the big bang for the visible universe was the same place the center of the visible universe always is. Wherever you are. From that point, everything you can see was at some moment in the past gethered together in a lump with infinite density.
188695
If I were you, I'd search it myself instead of asking people, but that's just me.\n\nThere are so many theories to how the universe started, in which the Big Bang theory is the most popular. In this theory, it all started with a single point with the same amount of matter in the universe and it was really really hot. Then it just explodes, continuing to expand at an alarming speed. It was so hot that not even the particles that made up atoms could not even form until the universe was expanded enough to cool down, and then the first atoms were made. Then it just continues to expand to where we are now.\n\nThat's one theory. I like the never-started theory. There was no beginning to our universe. The reason why the Big Bang theory is the most accepted theory is because we (us humans) like to think that there is a start to everything. It just makes sense that there is a beginning. And it's easier to build theories and ideas upon it.\n\nPS Penguins!!!
121479
There is a theory that the big bang was a result of a collison of two other universes. Say there is this sphere and inside this sphere there are other gelatinous spheres, these are the other universes, and two collided in a way that they created a big exlosion, which is the Big Bang.