Quote:
Originally Posted by lucifer_sam
non-sequitur, literally meaning "it does not follow", from:
(1) When the Big Bang is described as the event during which the cosmos went through a superfast "inflation," expanding from the size of an atom to the size of a grapefruit in a tiny fraction of a second (as shown in Jackhammer's original post: http://ssscott.tripod.com/bang.jpg), I imagine the universe as having consisted of an infinite space full of those tiny atom-sized areas expanding.
(2) The universe would then be an infinite space where expansion occurs at every point within that space.
(3) If the universe at the time of the Big Bang was an infinite space of dense matter and expanded at every point within that space, then we would have something without limits that expands yet isn't actually getting "larger" because the space was infinite to begin with.
I've boldfaced the parts that I can't follow. It wasn't just matter expanding during the Big Bang, it was space itself (which she later remarked about). |
Yes, I meant that space itself was expanding during the Big Bang (and continues to expand). That is the meaning of the quote about the universe expanding from the size of an atom to the size of a grapefruit in a tiny fraction of a section. I assumed we were all in agreement about space itself expanding, so I didn't emphasize it.
I am saying that perhaps the universe, at the time when people describe it as the size of an atom, a tiny pinpoint, was then composed of an infinite number of such tiny pinpoints. This would thus be infinite space. (The idea was suggested to me by a Scientific American Magazine article that I love, called "The End of Cosmology? An accelerating universe wipes out traces of its own origin," by Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer, March 2008:
http://genesis1.asu.edu/0308046.pdf.)
Then, during the Big Bang, all those tiny pinpoints of space expanded, leading to an infinity of space that is expanding yet is no bigger than the space before, since it was infinite to begin with.
(Sounds paradoxical and weird, but so is the idea of space expanding, so I can roll with it.
)
One of those atom-sized pinpoints expanded to give rise to what we know as the observable universe.
My point was that I don't imagine the universe as a single, atom-sized space that expanded during the Big Bang, but as
an infinite volume in which the space at all pinpoints within that volume expanded rapidly during the Big Bang.