[RascalPuff]

Originally Posted by neutralino

I've been rethinking this, and I think that, in the context that the quotation (in red in the first post) was taken, I was well within reason to make such a comment. In that thread, you were talking about Lemaitre cosmology, which, whilst similar, is not the same as the current big bang theory. You said

to which I have to answer yes, there is no trace of the original explosion as presented by Lemaitre. Lemaitre talks about a primeval atom which explodes and causes the bang, whereas the current big bang theory does not say that there is an explosion at any particular point in space; i.e. there cannot be an explosion of a super atom. Like I said above one could think of the big bang as an explosion that created the universe, but the problem with this is that it causes many misconceptions (mainly because "explosion" does not have the same definition that we are used to). The best thing to say is that the big bang model says that there was once a time when the universe and things in it were more dense than they are today.

Note the reasons why the big bang model has changed from that of Lemaitre's: firstly, the "super atom" big bang cannot explain the abundances of heavier atoms, since it requires the decay of a single massive atom at the time of the big bang. Secondly Lemaitre's big bang cannot explain the CMB.

Anyway, that's where I stand on the matter.

Standing on the Matter, continued:



"Our sun at the center of our solar system is just one star among billions in the Milky Way galaxy. Around us are billions and billions of galaxies. Where could this entire universe come from? Was it always this way or did the universe have a beginning? The church has always believed that the universe came from a moment of creation - a time when the universe began. Meanwhile, scientists developed two theories: the Big Bang and the Steady State theories. In this century, science has come to understand how the universe began from a tiny point, fifteen billion years ago. No matter how incredible it sounds, it seems that the church's ideas of a moment of creation were right from the beginning."

- STEPHEN HAWKING'S UNIVERSE,
Volume I, Program II: The Big Bang
Copyright 1997

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