One o' them Jesus lovers being smart...Bose-Einstein cond

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Jono
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05 Jan 2013, 7:29 pm

Fnord wrote:
What did you expect: Science or Speculation?

This is the "Computers, Math, Science, and Technology" forum, after all.


All science starts with a hypothesis.



Jono
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05 Jan 2013, 7:30 pm

shrox wrote:
Fnord wrote:
What did you expect: Science or Speculation?

This is the "Computers, Math, Science, and Technology" forum, after all.


You dog piled on me, that is bullying. Now you are continuing it, I am going to ask that you be banned. Many people are tired of your attitude and arrogance. I asked a legitimate query, and you just had to distract from the point of it. I am tired of it.


Just ignore him.



Fnord
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05 Jan 2013, 7:34 pm

Jono wrote:
Fnord wrote:
What did you expect: Science or Speculation? This is the "Computers, Math, Science, and Technology" forum, after all.
All science starts with a hypothesis.

No, all science starts with a question.

Many of the greatest scientific achievements were conceived with the words "Why did that happen?" or "What happens when I do this?" or even "What the *&^%$ is going on here?"



Jono
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05 Jan 2013, 7:40 pm

Fnord wrote:
Jono wrote:
Fnord wrote:
What did you expect: Science or Speculation? This is the "Computers, Math, Science, and Technology" forum, after all.
All science starts with a hypothesis.

No, all science starts with a question.

Many of the greatest scientific achievements were conceived with the words "Why did that happen?" or "What happens when I do this?" or even "What the *&^%$ is going on here?"


Yes, but in order to answer that question, you still need a hypothesis to make predictions that you can test. That involves speculation. And in any case, how is asking that question any different from asking the sort of question in this thread?



Apple_in_my_Eye
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05 Jan 2013, 7:47 pm

I think that Bose-Einstein condesates always require very low temperatures, and when the universe was smaller the energy in it was less spread out, and so the temperature gets higher and higher the closer you get to the big bang. I don't know enough physics to truly understand the mechanism behind the phenomenon, though (I think it requires quantum field theory).

I'm too busy ATM to double-check my memory (since my memory kind of sucks these days), but I've seen some interesting speculative ideas about the birth of the universe and what might've existed before it. One is related to string theory, and is something about our universe being a sub-space of a higher dimensional membrane -- that is, that our universe was created when two of these higher dimensional membranes collided with each other. But, string theory is still a completely speculative field (not supported by experiments, though not ruled out by any, either).

I recall another idea being that out universe has been banging and and collapsing and banging again over and over for... well, eternity? So, whatever was before our universe was another universe that got crushed and was reborn as this one. But our understanding of physics is still incomplete -- especially in regards to the connection between gravity and quantum physics, and the big bang/crunch forces those two things to be important at the same time, so no one really knows what happens. I.e. one possibility is that the universe doesn't get crushed down to a true point -- that at some small scale quantum effects would prevent that.



Fnord
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05 Jan 2013, 7:53 pm

Jono wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Jono wrote:
Fnord wrote:
What did you expect: Science or Speculation? This is the "Computers, Math, Science, and Technology" forum, after all.
All science starts with a hypothesis.
No, all science starts with a question. Many of the greatest scientific achievements were conceived with the words "Why did that happen?" or "What happens when I do this?" or even "What the *&^%$ is going on here?"
Yes, but in order to answer that question, you still need a hypothesis to make predictions that you can test. That involves speculation. And in any case, how is asking that question any different from asking the sort of question in this thread?

The OP's original question was speculative, in that it regarded conditions before the universe was formed. There is no evidence to prove that there even were any conditions before the Big Bang (making the phrase "before the Big Bang" meaningless). Without evidence, there can be only speculation, which is the province of philosophers and fantasy writers.

First the question ... no, wait ... first, there has to be something to question. This requires observation. Then come the questions, then the testable hypotheses, then the tests, then the theories, then the confirmations, then the principles, and then the applications.

There was no observation of conditions before the Big Bang, and even the Big Bang itself is largely speculative, even though high-level maths and high-energy experiments have borne out current theories regarding the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.

Show me the maths that define God, or an experiment that measures an angel, and then we can talk about how Science applies to immaterial concepts.



Jono
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05 Jan 2013, 8:11 pm

Fnord wrote:
First the question ... no, wait ... first, there has to be something to question. This requires observation. Then come the questions, then the testable hypotheses, then the tests, then the theories, then the confirmations, then the principles, and then the applications.


We know that the universe is expanding, suggesting that there was a Big Bang, that's already an observation. We also know that inflation theory is correct, also based on observation. So, we already know enough to ask those questions, including the one asked by the OP, we just don't yet know the answers.



Fnord
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05 Jan 2013, 8:21 pm

Asking questions for which there are no answers is the domain of philosophers, not scientists.



Cornflake
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05 Jan 2013, 8:31 pm

Fnord, do you intend squatting on this thread barking out accusations until what little life it has left is squeezed from it - or are you going to have the good grace to just drop out and let it be?
I mean, I don't see any bodies piling up as a result of letting speculation run riot on umm, one thread on one web forum...


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Fnord
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05 Jan 2013, 8:35 pm

Have I broken any rules?



Cornflake
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05 Jan 2013, 8:38 pm

Just go away and leave this thread in peace, please. Your continual objections about its validity are becoming tedious in the extreme.


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05 Jan 2013, 8:41 pm

"The mainspring of scientific thought is not an external goal toward which one must strive, but the pleasure of thinking" - Einstein 1918.


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05 Jan 2013, 10:53 pm

I predict that in 400 years humanity will look back on the big bang theory of cosmology as something akin to the geocentric model of the universe. Our conclusions may be overreaching our observational data.



MXH
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05 Jan 2013, 11:41 pm

Ive always considered the big bang as 3 possible theories, the bose-einstein state with a singular infinite mass, A singular massive particle that went instantaneous rapid decay of such magnitude and energy it push started hydrogen to start fusing and so on, or my the e=mc^2 basis of mass and energy being interchangeable that there was no mass and simply infinite ammounts of energy waiting for a catalyst to break into mass.



naturalplastic
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06 Jan 2013, 2:21 am

Well... he IS being bullied.

But back to the topic.

"Was the universe made of hydrogen before the big bang?"

Well-before the big bang it was just a mass of energy that had yet to organize itsself into even sub atomic particles- much less into subatomic particles organized into atoms. Without organized atoms you could not have recognizable elements. So there would have been no chemical elements present at all. So -no- it was not made of hydrogen-nor of any other element nor compound we see now.

But soon after the big bang-yes- then universe was mostly hydrogen.



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06 Jan 2013, 2:39 am

shrox wrote:
Would you say the moment before the Cosmological Big Bang that laid out the tangible universe was probably a Bose-Einstein condensate of near infinite mass? Most likely composed of hydrogen?

Yes, I believe the universe as we observe it.


I meant to say "after" rather than "before".