Bang/Crunch Revisited

[Michael Mooney]

Just for openers, here is a piece on "The Oscillating Universe" from the PBS link at "Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology
Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology
under "What about the oscillating Universe?"
(First that intro):

If the Universe recollapses, then there is another singularity at the time of the Big Crunch. A singularity means that the laws of physics break down, so we have no way to predict whether the Big Crunch will connect to another cycle of expansion. Even if the density were high enough to cause a recollapse, there would be no guarantee that the Universe would oscillate. But the current evidence is strongly against any recollapse, which would rule out the oscillating Universe. See PBS or Ask an Astronomer about this.

Note: I will be debating the latter assertion.

The PBS blurb on Oscillating Universe:

One of the implications of the big-bang theory is that the universe will one day end, or at least any life in the universe will come to an end. If the universe is either open or flat, meaning that it expands forever, it will survive for an infinite period of time. But eventually all the material in all the generations of stars will be exhausted, and the universe will grow cold and dark. In a closed universe, in which the expansion eventually stops and a contraction follows, the end is far from cold and dark—as the Big Crunch approaches, the universe grows hotter and brighter until it implodes into a singularity and gets crushed out of existence.

But is that what would really happen? Some scientists speculate that the Big Crunch would not signal the end. Perhaps another Big Bang would follow the Big Crunch, giving rise to a new universe of possibilities. The idea that Bangs follow Crunches in a never-ending cycle is known as an oscillating universe. Though no theory has been developed to explain how this could ever happen, it has a certain philosophical appeal to people who like the idea of a universe without end.

I know this topic has been addressed in other threads, but I'd like a fresh start here if I may.
Michael
BTW, I have critiqued Lynde's model on a site I forgot, but "time reversal" is not an option for me, as per my repetitive critique of time in my "spacetime thread."
But I have have a similar model that doesn't require a sci-fi rendering of time.

Our cosmic event horizon is just a small bubble of visibility *within* the thickness of the "rubber" of the good old cosmic expanding balloon. This mini-cosmos within the maxi-cosmos, the Whole Balloon, is cycling through bangs and crunches even as the whole balloon keeps expanding.... *Yes*... out into the infinity of space.

Anyway, we can't even "see out of the rubber" (the visible cosmos) let alone see the *yes* empty space within or beyond the bubble.

Well, this should stir up some more trouble.
BTW, I ask all respondents to refrain from starting with "expanding space" as an established fact. I know "stuff expanding out into empty space" is usually called a "misconception"... but I see it as a viable contender as a cosmology.

Nuff for now.
Michael

[lemit]

Since this isn't science in the observable/quantifiable/knowable sense, I'll take a shot at it, although any discussion like this suggests a similarity to the question, "If parallel lines meet in infinity, where do they go after that?"

An oscillating universe gives those lines somewhere to go and is therefore appealing to me. Of course I'm more of an arts type than a science type, so I like symmetry.

I would love to see any math that could support or refute the oscillating universe theory. Once I'd seen the math, I'd need to have it explained to me (several times), but I would try to be as patient as the explainer would have to be.

--lemit

[maddog]

Originally Posted by lemit

Since this isn't science in the observable/quantifiable/knowable sense, I'll take a shot at it, although any discussion like this suggests a similarity to the question, "If parallel lines meet in infinity, where do they go after that?"

For someone who does not consider himself very knowledgeable in ways of science, I find
you quite perceptable at picking up the nuances enough to make a good argument.
I would quite agree with you the similarity between Michael's "arguments" for/against
BBT are very much like trying to qualify the "straightness" of lines past infinity.

Originally Posted by lemit

An oscillating universe gives those lines somewhere to go and is therefore appealing to me. Of course I'm more of an arts type than a science type, so I like symmetry.

So do a lot of other Theoretical Physicists.

maddog

[maddog]

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

BTW, I have critiqued Lynde's model on a site I forgot, but "time reversal" is not an option for me, as per my repetitive critique of time in my "spacetime thread."
But I have have a similar model that doesn't require a sci-fi rendering of time.

No, it requires Greek Mythology instead...

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

Our cosmic event horizon is just a small bubble of visibility *within* the thickness of the "rubber" of the good old cosmic expanding balloon. This mini-cosmos within the maxi-cosmos, the Whole Balloon, is cycling through bangs and crunches even as the whole balloon keeps expanding.... *Yes*... out into the infinity of space.

Making this conjecture doesn't make it so. There have been other theories about the
"universe" being bigger (larger) than the "observable universe". No as yet "observable"
evidence either for/against.

maddog

[Michael Mooney]

Maddog:

Making this conjecture doesn't make it so. There have been other theories about the
"universe" being bigger (larger) than the "observable universe". No as yet "observable"
evidence either for/against.

True, but then cosmology is mostly theoretical, and evidence to back up each theory the more rare commodity.
As you know, I keep hammering on String/M-theory with its 11 to 26 "dimensions" and clashing membranes/imaginary "universes for this very reason.

And I'd rather not even go into "time reversal" again. I don't see time as an entity.
Space either. So "expanding space," (if it really is the empty volume in which all things move, expand, etc. will be a cosmology dependent on the reification of space, which topic we all beat to death in the spacetime thread.

Agreed, no one knows what lies beyond the cosmic event horizon. Could be the Whole Balloon tho, the rubber of which our little bubble of expanding cosmos lies within. This would account for the homogeneity of the isotropic cosmos we observe with galaxies moving apart from each other as the membrane expands. But that could still leave empty space (get over it!) within the balloon and beyond the whole thing.

There simply can be no "boundary" to space. What... a wall... of...?... and beyond that... hey, more space... no matter what may be out there floating around in it. (More Big Balloons with zillions of little expanding bubble/cosmi like ours as the "rubber molecules?")
Michael

[Moontanman]

The big bang/big crunch is soooo last century dude! Colliding branes is where it's at!

[Michael Mooney]

Moontanman:

The big bang/big crunch is soooo last century dude! Colliding branes is where it's at!

Please explain and document (this is a formal request) how seven of the eleven "dimensions" in String/M-theory (after 3-D space and "elapsed time for all movement"... 4-d) are derived and what there referents in the observable cosmos are.

Or are you just here to heckle?... in which case... hey modertors... this is a formal complaint.

Michael

[Michael Mooney]

Moontanman:

The big bang/big crunch is soooo last century dude! Colliding branes is where it's at!

Please explain and document (this is a formal request) how seven of the eleven "dimensions" in String/M-theory (after 3-D space and "elapsed time for all movement"... 4-d) are derived and what there referents in the observable cosmos are.

Or are you just here to heckle?... in which case... hey moderators... this is a formal complaint.

Michael

[Moontanman]

Complain all you want Mooney, I'm alwasy ready to back up my BB.

We propose a cosmological scenario in which the hot big bang universe is produced by the collision of a brane in the bulk space with a bounding orbifold plane, beginning from an otherwise cold, vacuous, static universe. The model addresses the cosmological horizon, flatness and monopole problems and generates a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of density perturbations without invoking superluminal expansion (inflation). The scenario relies, instead, on physical phenomena that arise naturally in theories based on extra dimensions and branes. As an example, we present our scenario predominantly within the context of heterotic M-theory. A prediction that distinguishes this scenario from standard inflationary cosmology is a strongly blue gravitational wave spectrum, which has consequences for microwave background polarization experiments and gravitational wave detectors.

[hep-th/0103239] The Ekpyrotic Universe: Colliding Branes and the Origin of the Hot Big Bang

COLLIDING BRANES AND ITS APPLICATION TO STRING COSMOLOGY

Ekpyrotic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

many links in this one

Science - Physics - Cosmology - Branes - Brane-Storm Challenges Big Bang Theory, A Recycled Universe, Cosmology in a Brane Universe ...

The ID Report - Darwinian Universes And Colliding Branes: Eschewing A Cosmic Singularity

The list is long and often argumentative but colliding branes is indeed as much a theory as your musings are.

[Michael Mooney]

OK man,
Them there's a lot 'o links, so you escape the fierce sword of failing to comply with request for documentation. I'll study the ones I have not yet seen, but I've been on string theory since there were five or six contending and the once debunked 11th dimension was brought back (and its author turned from whacko to hero) to save it as a unified "M-theory," finally endorsed by Hawking after he gave up on his primordial Singularity... several months after i debunked him on Myspace.

So... meanwhile... a new request: In your own words explain even one of those 11 dimensions after the familiar four I mentioned above...
and if you can explain all seven extras you will win the prize as the only one through several forums of my asking, to explain them.
Thanks ahead. Or maybe you will just cite more links and a bunch of math without world-reference meaning behind it. That however will not win you any prizes.

Michael