Faster Than the Speed of Light: E = mc², Except When It Doesn't

NY Times ^ | 2/09/03 | George Johnson

[edsheppa]

But at some level, which is probably more psychological than cosmological, it fails to satisfy.

It's unsatisfying for a deeper reason. The South Pole isn't a real singularity but the Big Bang is I think. Suppose you've a 1d space plus time with a BB. Draw a cirle in the spacetime around the BB. Time will be pointing "out" all around the circle and space pointing in one direction around (e.g. counterclockwise). You can't extend this to a continuous, non-vanishing coordinate system within the circle.

I don't see an out with higher dimensional spaces but perhaps there would be if the space weren't orientable or were multiply connected or something like that.

[mvpel]

Oh, I quite agree. If I understand things correctly, we are not privy to any evidence about the state of things prior to the BB.

Ancient Jewish theological pondering drew this same conclusion from the shape of the first letter in the Torah, the "bet" in "b'reishit" - it is closed off to the right, and open to the left, the direction of the rest of the text:

The first letter is in the upper-right corner, and is read from right to left.

[mvpel]

The distance from Earth is liner to each of the galaxies in question, but not necessarily are the Earth and each galaxy colinear. could be a triangle formation, which is my point.

Presumably when they made these observations at the antipodes of the celestial equivalent of latitude and longitude, the azimuth and elevation. For example, the vicinity of Polaris vs. the vicinity of the Southern Cross constellation could be considered to form a line with the Earth at its center.

[PatrickHenry]

Ancient Jewish theological pondering drew this same conclusion from the shape of the first letter in the Torah

Another group of theologians have divined the truth of Genesis from the shape of the letter "A", which indicates the influence of Providence originating in Heaven and spreading out in a downward direction over the Earth. (The crossbar in the letter "A" is believed to symbolize a luggage rack.)

[stands2reason]

Creationist whine by post #2! Is that a record?

[stands2reason]

Hey, but everyone knows Science has it all figured out.

Since when? Do you understand what science is?

[ArloWatson]

Multiple Big Bangs

I've got a layman's theory that there may have been other "Big Bangs" in the universe, but that they are farther than 15 Billion Light Years away, so we haven't detected them yet.

[PatrickHenry]

I've got a layman's theory that there may have been other "Big Bangs" in the universe ...

This notion has been around. But as you point out, even if they exist, we can't detect such distant objects. There being no evidence to support their existence, there is no reason for scientists to pay attention to them, or even to apply the term "theory" to the idea of their existence. "Conjecture" seems more appropriate.

[Ichneumon]

Creationist whine by post #2! Is that a record?

No -- several threads *start* with a pre-emptive creationist whine.