Hints of ‘time before Big Bang’

[MorningLightMountain]

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7440217.stm

A team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang.

The discovery comes from studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB), light emitted when the Universe was just 400,000 years old.

Interesting stuff.

[dalehileman]

"Before" the Big Bang is meaingless because when there is nothing there is no time. However, "nothingness" itself is an ambiguous concept. Universes must necessarily be serial, having proceeded forever. Just before the Next Show when everything in the present megillah has coalesced into a tiny dot which then pops out of existence, the state of nothingness persists for zero time

[Dirge]

Why would microwave "leakage" from a prior cosmos, if it existed, only be found on one side, and not the other? Couldn't it just mean the expansion after the BB was asymmetrical?

[figuer]

"Before" the Big Bang is meaingless because when there is nothing there is no time.Why do you claim that there is nothing before the Bib Bang? There is no justification for such a claim.

[dalehileman]

There is hardly conclusive justification for any claim whatever

[figuer]

There is hardly conclusive justification for any claim whateverIf so, then don't make claims.

[Dhaeron]

Why do you claim that there is nothing before the Bib Bang? There is no justification for such a claim.
Do you claim there was something before the Big Bang? There is no justification for such a claim.

[Janus]

Sometimes I really hate this forum. Read the article before posting, will you? As it says, there is no reason to claim that time before the Big Bang is meaningful or meaningless. We don't know. This team of scientists has discovered hints that there might have been a time before the Big Bang, they're not claiming any more than that. No need to get your collective panties in a bunch.

[Tim Thompson]

Couldn't it just mean the expansion after the BB was asymmetrical?
According to Erickcek, Kamionkowski & Carroll, 2008 (http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0377) the answer is no.
"Before" the Big Bang is meaingless because when there is nothing there is no time. ...
But the argument that there was "nothing" before the Big Bang is purely arbitrary. After all, nobody really knows what the "Bang" was or even what it means.
There is hardly conclusive justification for any claim whatever
Now that's better. There certainly is no conclusive justification for any claim as to the origin of the universe. Cosmologists are shopping around for theories. Maybe the "Bang" is the true origin of the universe. Maybe the "Bang" was just a transition from one state of the universe to another. If it is the latter, then it might be possible to find clues in the observational evidence of the universe that we can see, which give information about the universe prior to the "Bang". This is what the new research claims can be done with CMB observations. And they are not the first to explore the possibility that clues may survive the "Bang" transition from one state of the universe to another (i.e., Novello & Perez-Bergliaffa, 2008 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008arXiv0802.1634N); Cardoso & Wands, 2008 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008arXiv0801.1667C); Alexander, Biswas & Brandenberger, 2007 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007arXiv0707.4679A); Salim, et al., 2007 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007JCAP...04..011S) & etc.)

[GenesisNemesis]

If so, then don't make claims.

"Shut up and calculate". :D

[figuer]

Do you claim there was something before the Big Bang? There is no justification for such a claim.I did not make such a claim...although there would be justification for the suspicion that there was...or do you think that the explosion came from nothing? God did it?

[figuer]

Sometimes I really hate this forum. This is nothing compared to the E/C section... those guys are medieval.

[Plutopowered]

Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7440217.stm)

Just thought this was interesting. Maybe our Universe just kinda "bubbled off" from another Universe?

[Tim Thompson]

Why post an exact duplicate of the other thread (http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=245389)?

[LeoM]

Yeah why?

[GenesisNemesis]

Threads merged.

-GN-