Science Forums 2

[Michael Mooney]

While I'm waiting for Qfwfq to reopen the spacetime thread and allow my last two posts there (or for hell to freeze over), I would very much appreciate some feedback on what seems to me the most central and fundamental issue in cosmology:
If the cosmos is not cyclical (oscillating... Bang/Crunch wise) then how did all cosmic material/energy/plasma come into existence? If it is cyclical, then the answer is obvious. It all has always existed and will always exist (nothing created or destroyed but only changing form.) It goes "bang" and expands until gravity reverses it and brings it back to "crunch" and immediately go "bang" again... over and over perpetually.
Whether or not there exists enough mass for such gravitational reversal is still an open question.
Also See the "entropy..." takeoff from the "spacetime" thread for arguments pro and con on entropy as a spoiler for perpetual cycling.

Anyway a co-related question concerns the "linear thinking" alternative to a perpetually cyclic cosmology. Does anyone here believe that there was a "beginning of time" at the moment of the Bang (regardless of whether or not it eventually reverses and crunches again?)

And finally, how do advocates of an "everything out of nothing" cosmos and a "beginning of time" distinguish such a belief from Creationism as a miraculous creation of cosmos out of nothing?

Any takers?
Michael