Quote:
Originally Posted by neutralino 
Whilst I know that some people here like talking about a "void," cosmologists do not mention such a thing (at least not in this context). Your definition of the void appears to be "non existence"-- since you admit that spacetime does not exist in the void, then there can't even be nothing there, but there is no "there." (Sorry, that sounds really philosophical, but I can't think of a way to explain it more succintly).
What does "prior to the big bang" mean? How do you measure time "before the big bang" (if such a statement is even well defined!)
Indeed; could you also provide some links, since I've not heard much about that?
I would like to think that Prof. Kirshner would agree with me! (It looks like he's been promoted since you heard him talk!  ) |
Neutralino,
I was not using any on-line sources but just the first book on cosmology that I grabbed last night when I was working on my reply:
The" Big Bang," 3rd Ed., Joseph Silk, Cambridge Univ. Head of Astrophysics
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Third...8587082&sr=1-3
On page 113, Silk postulations how particles may have come into being from the quantum vacuum: Prior to 1 second after the big bang, the immense gravitational forces disrupted the particle-antiparticle production/annihilation process, thereby releasing particles into the "real world."
As for quantum tunneling starting the big bang, here are some arXiv links, following a link to a lecture by Hawking in which he briefly mentions quantum tunneling at t=0. The arXiv links I'll leave off the author's names here for conciseness:
www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/quantum.html
Hawking and Hartle first proposed their tunneling theories here:
Hartle J.B. and Hawking S.W., Phys. Rev. D28, 2960 (1983).
yet, Atkatz and Pagels had a similar theory in 1982:
Atkatz, D., and Pagels, H. (1982), "Origin of the Universe as a Quantum Tunneling Event", Physical Review D 25: 2065-2073
Here are some arXiv links on the subject:
arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0204061 -Quantum Cosmology and Eternal Inflation
arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0210034 - Particle Creation in a Tunneling Universe
arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0206028 - Tunneling in quantum cosmology: numerical study of particle creation
http://arxiv.org/find/gr-qc/1/au:+Vi...c658ac9f0ab7bc - The Quantum Cosmology Debate
So now I've put my books aside and am researching this digression of quantum tunneling cosmogeny from my "edge of the universe" concept.
thanks
Stevemc2