chongo@nsc.UUCP (Landon C. Noll) (05/25/84)
<exit silly message mode>
with all this noise about the Big Bang, i got to wondering, what PHYSICAL
(confine dogmatic answers to net.{orgions,religion,politics,null,wobigon})
events might have caused the Bang (let us assume there was one) in the first
place?
if the Big Bang followed a Big Smash, how might the state of the universe
just before the Smash alter the events after the Bang? how much time might
have occured between the Smash and Bang? (if the question can be asked at all)
what other PHYSICAL reason might have cause the Bang?
chongo <exit even more silly mode> /\%%/\allan@noao.UUCP (05/29/84)
There have been a few ideas about how the big gang might have been caused by the vacuum being unstable. The hypothesis goes: In the beginning there was nothing (i.e. a vacuum), and the vacuum was unstable. The vacuum 'decayed' to a state of lower energy with the production of all the particles and energy that we see in the universe now. This hypothesis is obviously tied closely to current quantum field theory ideas about what the vacuum is. It is however, just an idea. Even its proponents would not claim too much for it (I trust). Peter (theories to go) Allan Kitt Peak National Observatory Tucson, Az