The Universe is a continuum. The beginning isn’t really a beginning. It is a state in the expansion of the Universe that is very small that presently is called a beginning or ow the universe formed’. The singularity before the big bang at best guess is either a Higgs field or a membrane with one or no dimensions. Dimensions being a characteristic of expanded space time it is difficult to say exactly what a zero dimension state of mass or energy is such as in a very tiny singularity or Higgs field.
Something existed before the singularity. It did not just appear from nowhere. String theories including membrane theory have given us a pre-big bang cosmological scenario in recent years to consider that would have occurred in time before the inflationary period of this universe1.
http://www.ba.infn.it/~gasperini/
Before the inflationary periord and the subsequent ‘big bang’ continuum of expansion there is hypothesized to have existed a perturbative vacuum with virtual particles appearing occasionally in a nexus of ‘quantum foam. That gave rise to occasional accumulations of mass sufficient nto form black holes that in collapsing inward also formed and expansion outward as a white hole or inflationary period for a Universe1 (ours) amidst countless others over the history of eternity. If I have provided the gist of the theory, do not be satisfied with that but instead regard Gasperini’s home page above for a much better briefing on the topic. Dr. Gasperini is a physicist who has worked with a co-inventor of the theory-Veneziano.
http://www.cirs-tm.org/researchers/researchers.php?id=976
Where did everything come from is not exhaustively answered by pre-big bang cosmology interestingly. Obviously the curious would wonder where the perturbative vacuum came from, as well as where the virtual particles originated. Though we like these theories plainly they too would be subject to the traditional Cantorian and Godelian sort of limits to set comprehensiveness and information. As physical ontologies represented with mathematical criteria obviously there are an infinity of modifications of the theories inclusive of outright contradiction. Logical sets of data comprising any physical ontology is axiomatically accepted. When the unknown is virtually absolute the acceptance of unchallenged axioms for the explanation of everything is prima facia unreliable. Physical cosmology fortunately is an enterprise dedicated to pragmatic and practical discovery of what actually is functional as an explanation, and has the ability to regard as unverifiable or as tentative with limited verifiability with gradations of confirmable potential its own theories as they present in the work. Construction of physical ontologies of abstract cosmology may be an analytic reasoning effort drifting in and out of synthetic judgments on the basis of physical tests as might a rain-shower arise on a sunny spring day before passing across the valley of shadows before falling upon another’s parade even as we are free to apply more sunscreen and resume our own outdoor activities in complete dryness.
Once can say that matter and energy have always existed for eternity and they periodically recycle and crunch themselves down into singularity’s concentrated under gravitational forces-yet of course gravitational forces are a characteristic of matter and a particular scale its believed, although gravity may be an effect of space-time itself that alters its power in relation to its size and distance in inflationary conditions of space-time. If space-time itself is a power unmeasured or unquantified by physics because it is not mass-energy, but something of a higher or lower order than the forces of mass-energy in the universe, it will make cosmological accuracy difficult in fielding theories of everything.
Everything has probably always existed in some abstract Aristotelian categorical form as substance with potential and efficient and final cause. Everything changes and in a temporal circumstance seem to have a singular beginning perhaps bump out of a stable scalar field state like a croquet mallet striking a croquet ball into motion (and expansion of space-time and decompacted contents. God’s word to begin could have been the proximal impetus. It is likely a very effective word. Alternatively eternity could exist without dimensions for God such that dimensions and size are irrelevant../ The actual size or quantifiable power we think of in terms of mass and energy may be irrelevant for the non-dimensional eternal realm of power. It is very difficult to speculate about how or what a divine eternal before the Universe or all universes is like. We shall return to consideration of the simpler order of this universe therefor. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-natphil/ http://www.spaceandmotion.com/metaphysics-aristotle.htm http://www.bookrags.com/research/aristotelian-physics-scit-01123/
No one knows how the Universe formed. There are theories about the it of course and wonderfully they change all the time. Even if God ‘formed’ the Universe (it may be more than one Universe, it may be finite or infinite and no one is certain of what a Universe is) no one except God witnessed it. Even so Some speculation is in order.
Logically the reduction of explanatory criteria for the start of everything should be reducible to a simplest state. Either one force field exists universally of which all things are made or there is some kind of a discrete system united by some field making everything act today.
It is a kind of paradox that unified field of substance should change in size from small to large or vice versa. An infinitely small singularity to some maximum expansion of space time does have the concept of intervals or differences required for pluralism in all four dimensions spatially for maximum apparent effect, yet a one-substance field might just has easily been formed fully actualized in any given state, though without the conditions thought of as temporal. The Einsteinian principles of special relativity with frames of reference and intervals that with general relativity perhaps might be construed as those of substance in mass and energy under gravitational effects as well are well suited for the logical deliberation of a temporally actualized rather than an eternal Universe. One wonders why a singularity should have ever been stable even a a very small point; why it should have existed initially at any particular size or experienced what is considered the start of time coincident with the expansion of space.
Logically the hypothesized quantum instability of a HIggs field singularity brings the issue of a miniaturized Universe but in no way an irreducible fundamental principle of what makes up the Universe. The Higgs field ‘singularity would have been a stage in the temp[oral order of expansion but not any sort of answer to the fundamental question of why anything exists at all at any point in a scalar field expansion with local anisotropy, of the Universe. The most interesting present conjecture to me is the concept of zero dimensional membranes that are primary components.
Zero dimensional building blocks could apparently have no lower, more fundamental component. Dimensions however seem to be aspects of relationships between mass and energy functions rather than things themselves. Dimensions seem to be primordial boundary conditions in the Universe based upon the distribution of initial power-force, mass or energy associated in space-time. Space-time itself is too closely affiliated with quantum mechanical effects such as super-positioning and waveforms with Heisenberg uncertainty characteristics to be considered separately from mass energy itself. Each seems to cohere in a general wave function field that gives appearances of virtual particles in the void as indeterminate appearances from the field to the concentrated and bizarre gravitational consolidations of most of the general features existing in the Universe such as mas-energy, space time and probably dimensional change or collapse.
One in considering zero dimensional criteria may wonder if Leibniz’ spiritual mends aren’t an illustration of a spiritual kernal in protocols of idea and logic supporting a Unified field that is a generalized waveform that collapses into local singularities with maximum concentration of non-interval when sampled, or given the word to expand from nearly nothing as the Bible relates. One finds a wealth of ideas to contemplate upon regarding how the Universe formed.
Some writers say that there are as many cosmology theories as math theories. While it seems probable that raven didn’t snatch the pearl of a Universe from the mouth of the demi-urges of the dark lord but some more plausible set of circumstances occurred instead to get the ball rolling (like at Times Square?) or inflate it faster than light from a bit of left-over scrap of dimensions named membranes that could repel themselves faster than light until time started to exist along with space and a conventional big bang could flow (check that flow) with thermodynamics, coalescence of relational ‘forces’ between apparent quantum packets or string-wave particles that could become stars and galaxies and Earth.
Mass and energy in various formations exist in space-time. People wonder about what the mass energy really is’ and where did it come from (and where is it going). People are made of mass-energy too and exist also in space-time so these questions are meaningful. The unexamined life and the unexamined Universe aren’t worth a federal bailout to upgrade the saying of Socrates.
What gravity is, is the essential question about black holes, where they came from, what they are and what their relation is to the rest of space time. There are at least two approaches to space-time theory generally; one regards space-time as a continuum of unified actual field while the other considers it a pointillist’ composition of discrete parts. The two approaches are radically different with far different consequences including those for what black holes actually are.
In standard cosmological models the math is incomplete and models are used with dead reckoning’ corrections that are use-truths’ to help in understanding what is. In some of the other theories the universe may have many extra dimensions, and gravity too may exist in an extra dimensions with increased strength at possible measurable yet small distances equal to the size of the smaller dimension it exist in outside of the standard three. The relationship of strings, (mem) branes or monads that support the apparent existence of larger packets of mass units such as quarks may determine in part what a black hole is and how it grounds it’s mass to the underlying known and unknown dimensions of space-time. It is possible that the dark energy or missing mass of the Universe may have some sort of a relationship to the interior configuration of black holes in that mass could be acting upon the standard three dimensions as a sort of attachment upon them pulling the universe inside out’ in a way that it seems to be accelerating outward at an increasing pace towards a big rip’. Some speculate that the Universe may rip apart its space time through increasing expansion speed in a relatively brief time universally speaking.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principal brought to light the non-locality of quantum particles ultimately. Non-locality resides implicitly in every quantum particle or super-strings that comprise it. More so than the takeover of the United States by adverse Mexican illegal aliens the pervasive substructure of the Universe has a mysterious and vast nature that wells up in to the phenomena of black holes too.
Human experience teaches causality and temporal relations with the temporal ekstasis of past present and future. Naturally enough human reasoning about how the universe formed follows that way of thought often. Philosophical and some scientific reasoning provide alternate views of the relations of being and time, order of causality and non-temporally juxtaposed to the contingent space-time dimensional continuum and way of cosmological way being and changing. The Universe1 may be compared to a hamster running in a treadmill in a spaceship in zero-gravity…the order or direction of time the hamster runs down hasn’t any relationship to the atemporal, non-directional dimensions beyond the wheel or Universe`
There are several pre big bang theories and even pre-singularity theories that avoid existence of a singularity through positing that space-time continua called membranes collide and like cymbals clashing fall away with new energy from one another in new expansion to deplete energy and attract toward one another to collide again and start a new cycle. Perpetual motion universe expansions and contractions are interesting conjectures, yet so are others. God is the absolute parameter setter for any potential dimensional membranes or space time relations, and the book of Genesis is an educational primer for the primitives that isn’t so simple to interpret, however science can work on physical cosmology and philosophers upon epistemology and each on metaphysics while awaiting inspiration and insight about how the Universe formed and how that relates to Biblical paradigmata.
Within Universe1 criteria extrapolating backward from the big bang theory without resorting to membrane theory the Universe is thought to have weighed less than 20 pounds and been a singularly small and stable Higgs field infinitely small that became unstable because of quantum uncertainty to explode or repel itself outward in a hyper inflation faster than light speed (no speed of light or other standard laws of physics existed yet) for ten to the minus 43rd second then transitioned into the big bang with the forces of physics and particles forming along with star formation about a million years later. An interesting consideration using M-Theory parameters is that extra small dimensions were created at the time of the inflaton-maybe another 7 dimensions or more that are quite small. If so then it is also possible that extra time dimensions were created then as well that are hidden from the standard four dimensions of space time because of their small size. If that is so however it is possible than quantum uncertainty did not exist in the singularly small Higgs field near the beginning; for quantum uncertainty may be just the effect of small time dimensions acting on small extra space dimensions intruding into the standard four dimensions…the temporal order of the macro time dimensions is arbitrary and uncertain itself…how far can that dimension extend and where did it begin, and why should the mass-energy that remains within if flowing according to a given pattern, composition and order in any way determine what it’s course is? Can the dimension of time act upon the dimensions of space as an energy field itself drawing it along and energizing it?
Various cosmological theories exist advanced in recent years to refine the big bang theory yet the ‘let there be light’ criterion of Genesis is still the original accurate context for cosmology. At the Planck time the Universe was smaller than a quark, incredibly small and it is believed to have hyper-light speed inflated in a fraction of a second beyond the size of a grapefruit then resumed a more normal big bang parameter. From a unified field quantum uncertainty imprinted irregularities on the homogeneous patch of puny verse that would remain as anisotropic irregularities as it expanded to become points of collection like potholes for matter to form ion and become galaxies eventually. A slight surplus of matter over anti-matter let matter exist…great.
There are other theories about how the universe originated such as banging branes out theory from M-Theory that is like two multi-dimensional cymbal universe clapping together forever and every making a universe expand and then retract toward each other to bang out again…a very subtle and clever idea. It is hard to be sure exactly what happened but the inquiry will go on forever probably with better and better theories.
Does the Universe have 27 dimensions or 11, is an heterotic M-Theory a valid criterion for the origin of this particular Universe or not-these are the questions of being and nothing that are of interest in the quest for understanding of the origin of this Universe. Brian Greene and John Gribbin are popular physics writers that have explained some of the contemporary contexts of astrophysics, quantum mechanics, the general theory of relativity and the search for a unified field theory that might be useful in tracing back the history of the universe.
The formation of the Universe has many theoretical courses. A popular selection is the big bang paradigm that is too well known to consider here although following I shall touch upon it briefly. A multiverse theory is also an option with a variety of possible course involving that; some including a natural selection of intelligently designed universes made by an intelligence at some point such that every created universe is suitable for intelligent life at some point or in some form; there are many other hypothetical origins regarding the formation of the Universe.
The theory of relativity permits a consideration of the contextual history of space-time back to an early time in its past when it was much less than a second old. Gribben wrote that instead of a singularity at the beginning physics break down at distances smaller than the Planck time at 10 to the 43rd second when the Universe was assumed to be at Planck length in size. Gribben writes that the Universe then expanded comparatively from size of a proton to the size of the present observable Universe by 10 to the minus 35th second. The Universe then was the size of a grapefruit.
After reaching grapefruit size the universe slowed to light speed. Borrowing ideas from Gribben’s 2006 book “The Origins of the Future- Ten Questions for the Next Ten Years”- I can write that quantum uncertainty presently is believed to be the basis of the origin of what may have been a Higgs Field’s phase shift into an inflation followed by a ‘big bang’.
Quantum uncertain is credited with creating ‘holes’ or irregularities in the early universe when it inflated that later allowed mass to concentrate and form galaxies in the location relationship existing before to much gravitational reconfiguration of galaxies developed. Quantum uncertain that allow virtual particles to appear in existence is a rather interesting essential fact…perhaps they are extra-dimensional strings or membranes extruding for some energy reason, or gravitational balances interacting from other dimensions. One wonders what happened to all of the invisible virtual particles when the universe hyper inflated such that they did not leave holes because they weren’t presently existing. What happens to accelerated reference frames with particles containing mass or in bound pairs when they become left behind outside the sojourning new universe?
If space-time itself produces quantum uncertain developed particle-wave string-branes briefly how could it have done that a priori before space-time existed, and if it did in some way allow virtual particles or quantum uncertainty to exist or occur in a Higgs field below the Planck length in size is the quantity of potential virtual particles then finite and pre-determined to go along with the expansion of space-time as some sort of extra-dimensional field?
Quantum physics researches seem to have advanced to super-string theory and M-Theory with mathematical models that describe how various particles such as bosons and fermions exist and are composed of strings. Fermions may have ten or eleven dimensions and bosons 16 dimensions. Concepts to describe how extra dimensions can be folded are used such as a sheet of paper rolled like a tube that from a distance appears as a string. The tube can be made into a loop and still seem like a string or line from a distance. Extra dimensional objects can be folded and packed, and the Universe itself can have extra-dimensions perhaps some of which may be shared with other universes like this one.
The essential starting point of the Universe is limited in explanations presently to mathematical theories that conform to a continuum necessarily with more an more elegant shapes and component structures…its quite excellent as a way to understand how things relate rather than to describe what they actually are, or how they may relate to God as a Spirit at the core of the phenomenal wrapped dimensions that like Leibnitzian monads comprise reality.
A useful point to consider about science and scientific researches is that it is a rational examination of the criterion of being in space and time. From where humanity is presently scientists may consider what exists as a continuum in space-time from which they may theorize. Every hypothesis about the Universe is limited to theories about the material that exists or that is manifest; that criterion means that though the Universe may be a unified field like a drop of water, if that drop of water exists in a bucket of oil it would be unlikely that any hypothesis would be able to relate any meaningful information to it. In every direction of space and time there is infinity and other-existence beyond the knowledge or range of theory.
Even in the present age of rapidly advancing physical science the largest and smallest dimensions are unknown while time from before’ the beginning and after’ the end of the universe (that hasn’t happened yet) are also unknown and unknowable. These facts being made I will proceed to go over some interesting information known about this present universe as well as make some speculation about it and hypothetical underpinnings of it based not only upon science but with philosophical inference in order to illustrate some alternative meta-physical contexts that exist even if they cannot be measure by scientists in the continuum observations of this universe and neither fit into extrapolations or physical theories about the physical composition of this universe
The Milky Way Galaxy may have 80 to 100 billion dollars and is a composite of many other smaller galaxies that gravity has drawn toward it. Smaller galaxies are believed to have formed first at the beginning of the era of stars.
Hydrogen nuclei captured electrons 300,000 years after the big bang’ and the first galaxies formed after 600 million years. The main question many have is what happened before the big bang?
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/sg_structure.html
Some believe zero-dimensional branes colliding yielded vast hyper-inflationary super-luminal expansion/energy within a lowest order of entropy possible situation-the reset from zero posited as a recurrent parameter with the Universe being an in-between existential form is a history of increasing entropy and formation of galaxies within the stelliferous era in time moving unto the 5th age of the Universe with zero-energy.
Why or what caused inexplicable yet necessarily modal parameters of a physical or phenomenal wave’s content to move and form stirring upon ‘the waters’ isn’t understood or investigated by standard physics perhaps.
The particular observed area of local universe expansion is nominally 13.7 billion years of age coinciding with the observable universe and inferences about increases of entropy and prior positions and age if the constants of the universe are really constant. What is beyond the horizon of the local universe cannot presently be determined of course. There could be ten trillion universes or more in an infinity of all possible universes context reasonable within current speculations.
Everyone knows the standard model’s cosmological criteria and many more know of the super-string/multi-verse explanations subsequently developed. The Universal origin cannot be known of course through direct observation. It is posited within a number of zero-dimension brain paradigms in order to create a self-consistent tautological explanation in order to unnaturally rule out anything unknown. Cosmological paradigms that are simply phenomenal along a linear set cannot be considered more than operative process cosmologies with a Sartrian phenomenal ontology. One wonders why the Universe came into being or alternatively why God created it and encounters metaphysical questions.
I tend to apply an Occam’s razor’ of monism when considering the universal question. With the unified field theory, the Higg’s field pre-inflaton stable state (in theory) which raises the question about how anything as certain as stability could have emerged from uncertainty, and other pre-linguistic criteria that in a way brings a unification to and removes the necessity for even necessity in deliberating on words about words about why ‘The One’ issued a pluralistic state of anything. The pluralism that is evident in the universal is one of the brilliant aspects of the creation. Why are three persons of One God? Why is there differentiation and objects in a unified field of physics? The many are ultimately aspects of the one. The physical search in cosmology for a unifying principle or basic energy phenomena uses this principle too. Language may have etymologies that are circumstantial and relational that isn’t fitting for the ‘higher’ level protocol of metaphysics, perhaps, in some instances.
The One is posited to have all time and all that could be created always in existence. Like the conservation of energy principle none is created or destroyed.
The free will and determinism questions are surpassed; all that could be already is somewhere, and where it is to be and ‘when’ is already known. I think philosophers and theologians such as Plotinus and others that can find inspiration in the word God may have a good source of concepts to consider theoretical physics parameters for placement of new cosmological paradigms. Cantor’s theorem about the impossibility of a set of all sets including itself has been extrapolated by some to include ultimate math based explanations of the universe, yet that doesn’t mean that the Universe cannot be understood at some point and time through non-mathematical means (of course math can do a phenomenal amount of good with matter so far as it goes).
The many good questions are over-the-transom so far as my providing answers adequately, so I wanted to point out O’Brien’s book on the enneads ‘the Essential Plotinus’.
Some have said that the universe is a necessity rather than an option for the ‘Creator’. In the Plotinian Universe ‘The One’ exists unreflectively-thought being a sort of defect of imperfection. The Universe has all temporal ekstasis, forms, universes whatever in completion, yet is so perfect that nothing can really be said about The One. Jesus Christ said that no one has seen ‘The Father’ except Himself.
The One sort of emanates a realm of ideas called ‘The Intellect’ that is akin to a perfect singularity allowing an expansion or alliteration of ideas to occur. The Intellect has all forms that could be, and everything else besides include events, relations and time, multiverses and so forth, yet its all idea. Plotinus accounted even for virtue and such. It’s really a very interesting paradigm for post-big bang era cosmology people to consider.
One might associate Jesus as having access to or even being The Intellect, and The Soul to be the spirit of God that creates material things such as the Universe. Plotinus has three major divisions or ‘persons’ that sort of roughly may correspond to the triune God description found in New Testament theology.
Plotinus ca 205-270 a.d. studied in Alexandria Egypt from the same ‘master’ that had instructed one of the patriarchs of the Christian Church, it is very likely that he read the Bible in addition to Plato and the Vedas perhaps etc. so the coincidence probably is more of a synthesis.
The material universe along with its imperfections is most removed from The One. The material universe or multiverse gets farther away from it’s ideal and perfect existence and is always in the process of change and ‘running out’ of power or order. Those souls that desire to know only of the material and not search for the spirit are losing track of the entire spiritual plank on which everything exists.
I have enjoyed pursuing the modal logic of necessity consistency of the ideas of Plotinus after having learned symbolic logic a few years ago, and reading the New Testament more fully finding Christian statements in the Bible that fit within the idea of The One or God as the source of ‘the water of life’.
Plotinus was familiar to philosopher and theologians from his era right to that of the scholastics I believe. It is modern philosophers that in pursuit of analytic philosophy and material engagement in computers and so forth have perhaps lost track of the ‘ancient’ metaphysical’ system that actually is consistent with ideas about virtual particles, and expanding space-time, a cold-dead universe after the stelliferous era ends and so forth.
Modern philosophers so far as I know have stayed with rationalism nearly exclusively, although Pierre Telhard Desjardin and similar philosopher-theologians have mirrored some aspects of Hegelian like dialectical metaphysics that have difficulty being more than inflated aspects of rational observations about the material universe.
Sartre was a rationalist, Quine was a rationalist, Wittgenstein was a rationalist, cultural anthropologists are rationalists too-Parmenides and Heraclites, Plato and Plotinus are perhaps idealists of a more pure time when one was free to consider some deeper philosophical questions without the distraction of too much worldliness and materiality. If one de facto sets a criterion of philosophical questions such that all questions are about matter and science, causal relations or physics it might be difficult to get answers other than those to the perhaps atemporal or deeper questions about why or what actually is.
