How do physicists explain the origin of dimensional space?

Question

As I understand it, the Big Bang marked the creation of the universe and resulted because of an aggregation of matter under extreme temperatures and pressure. I'm also vaguely familiar with the existence of the elementary particles like quarks and leptons.
There seems to me to be a contradiction in the laws of physics when used to explain the origins of the universe because they state that 1) Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred, and 2) Something can't be created from nothing.
When speaking about the origins of the universe, physicists tend to speak about smaller and smaller subatomic particles without ever seeming to reach the starting spark that led to everything. That aside, what about the origins of the physical space in which that first spark existed? Do physicists have an explanation for the origins of dimensional space?

Answer 1

Physicists have only satisfactorily explained events from after the big bang occurred and all matter in the universe already came into existence. The basic concept is that with so much mass condensed into a single point, the laws of physics are thrown completely out. Only after the universe began to expand did the laws of physics come into existence. They are a consequence of matter itself.

Answer 2

The problem is that you probably don't understand enough to not be confused (and confused you are).



The big bang comes first, matter comes later. To be only "vaguely" familiar with quarks and leptons does not help. You need to know the details of WHEN things came to be. And HOW they came to be at that time and not another. And it is damn complicated! No question about that.



But these are technical details... let's go back to the basics.



Physics describes what we see. The world is here. This means that at some point the energy we see today was here.



If YOU want to believe religiously in energy conservation (which physicists don't, they keep testing it experimentally all the time, which the undereducated public simply does not know about), the logically correct conclusion is that something must have been there before the big bang (well, actually ... since there might have been no time before the big bang, that expression does not cover the most likely scenarios).



Now, as long as you don't demand a discrete event that started it all, there is no contradiction with physics which does not claim that the big bang is "the beginning". It only says that the big bang is probably an event horizon before which we can not probe much of anything of what happened. That does not mean that nothing happened. We might just never get to know about it. Tough luck.



Neither is it there much of a contradiction with proper philosophy which can't say ANYTHING logical about this because it does not have a non-arbitrary and non-religious starting point.



Now, of course, if you don't believe religiously in energy conservation, which is the proper thing to do BEFORE one has made sure with observations and experiments (e.g. at LHC) that it holds even during the early and even "before" the big bang, a whole new set of scientific opportunities open up. But at this point we don't need any of them. We can live fine without such speculation until we find an EXPERIMENTAL fact which requires us to think otherwise. At which point WE will. Energy non-conservation would allow to construct a discrete beginning and a finite universe and everything else, by the way. And if it turns out that we can EXPERIMENTALLY show that energy/matter appears out of the nowhere at some very high energy threshold in elementary particle interactions, we might just be done. Science can not rule this out without building accelerators or other experiments which get us all the way to the scale of quantum gravity.



The smaller and smaller subatomic particles we speak of are simple the ones we see in our experiments. We did not order the dish, we are just trying to find out how the cook, nature prepared it. You need to work on your understanding of what science is. And what it isn't. The starting spark is, at best, your Christian-Judeo upbringing speaking (or just medieval Western philosophy). It for sure ain't science terminology.



Physics does not search for the origin of the world. It searches for a complete understanding of it. Therefor it cares nothing about "creation" questions. Which might very well imply that we have to forgo getting an answer to "why" it happened. Science does not answer why questions. Only religion does. But if I may remark, it does so poorly and it usually requires you to throw out all the "how" answers. I think religion needs to work a bit harder on that one...



:-)



As for dimensionality: you need to learn to distinguish between fact, theory and hypothesis. ALL dimensionality questions in cosmology, particle physics, general relativity etc. are purely hypothetical. We do not have a single experimental fact about them. Which also means that we do not have a single theory about them. Here is how it goes:



Fact -> hypothesis -> experiments/observation -> theory.



All we have right now are hundreds of hypothesis and not a single fact to prove them. That's why we are building LHC, the new gravitational lensing facilities, next generation Microwave Background Experiments, precision torsion balances to probe gravity at short distances etc..



The decades to come will probably be the most amazing in all of science. I am looking forward to them!



:-)

Answer 3

a million - the classic Greeks (a minimum of a few) knew the Earth is around. That the authors of the Quran knew it too isn't something particular. 2 - Many historical cultures paid a brilliant number of interest to the celebrities, the equinoxes, and so forth. extremely many witnessed lunar eclipses (which take place a minimum of two times a twelve months) and got here to the top that the gentle of the moon is pondered. This additionally isn't so progressed that the certainty is in the previous its time. 3 - And right here the Quran is inaccurate. residing issues are created from plenty extra desirable than water. organic water itself won't be able to create a residing ingredient, it is each little thing however the water that's had to existence. in line with hazard if the Quran had defined progressed genetics, and the form of the DNA you're able to have a factor. yet in basic terms pointing out water is in basic terms too incorrect and too simplistic to point the assumption had a supernatural beginning. I nevertheless have not got self belief in god. you probably did not prepare your final factor, that none of this "know-how" substitute into unknown in humankind in the previous the Quran substitute into written. The absence interior the Quran of any modern information of the international (quantum mechanics, the familiar kind of particle physics, Schrodinger's equation, even E=mc^2) shows without plenty doubt that the Quran did not demonstrate something to humankind that substitute into not already commonly used in the previous. you have not posting something that ought to not have been written totally through someone.

Answer 4

Good questions!

I start from the last question! Actually quantum gravity theory or precisely, (at least) loop quantum gravity states that space is "made up of degrees of freedom of gravitational field" or in a more plain english, space is made up of gravitaional (GR hereafter) field, or wherever we have GR field, we have space. So you know that gravitational field canbe seen az enery or can be seen as curvature of space (local differences in gravitational field is responsible for curvature actually). But still space and time are may be two of the most subtle concepts that physics is trying to understand.



About the begining: Quantum mechanics can be used to predict that nothing is actually not nothing but because of uncertainty principle, nothing+- somethging! I mean there are always some quantum fluctuations of energy where classically energy is zero. Generally these fluctuations cancel each other and in coarse scale (classically), energy is zero. But it can be that by chance, in some region, these fluctuations add up and make a region with nonzero energy and this region become the starting point of the universe. These concepts need gravity+quantum mechanics which they call it quantum gravity theory which do not have it yet completely but when we reach it, we can talk about these things more precisely. But even now we have some clues as I told you.



The concept of conservation of energy also is subject to uncertainty principle so it can let a universe appear from these fluctuations, yet this concepts not violated.



And two sidenotes:

1- There is no exceptional difference between 1 dim. space or N dim. space.

2-In big bang, not only matter and energy "came to existence" but also space and time themeselves did. This alerts us not to take these two continuus concepts as fundamental ones. They may be approximations in coarse grained observation to some other more fundamental discrete objects (just as a foam is continuus if you look it from far but when you look very closely, you see foam-like structure; the same about tissue of your T-shirt or many continuous-seeming things). So think big bang as the begining of space-time itself! Hard no? YES! It is for everyone! and last, a quote from Feynman: "I can surely say that no one understands quantum mechanics!"



Good luck!

Answer 5

I am only 13 but i have my own theory about this. Some scientists say that there may be parallel universes out there my thoughts are that one of those universes either became really compressed or expanded so far that it broke at its seams, thus letting is matter flow into our universe which was basically the smallest, emptiest balloon that ever existed. With all the matter flowing in from the other universe it must have created ALOT of friction; enabling the atoms and molecules to heat up and move around faster making it more likely that they will slam together and fuse into more complex molecules and such.

Answer 6

At the time of the big bang, there was a ball of matter/energy condensate. This 'exploded' into the universe as we know it today. There was no creation of energy, the energy was there all along. There was no something created from nothing, just a state of massive amounts of energy.

Space is a dimension, your question here does not make sense. You as may as well ask about the origin of energy.

Answer 7

The fundamental particles of the universe that physicists have identified—electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and so on—are the "letters" of all matter. Just like their linguistic counterparts, they appear to have no further internal substructure. String theory proclaims otherwise. According to string theory, if we could examine these particles with even greater precision—a precision many orders of magnitude beyond our present technological capacity—we would find that each is not pointlike but instead consists of a tiny, one-dimensional loop. Like an infinitely thin rubber band, each particle contains a vibrating, oscillating, dancing filament that physicists have named a string.In the figure at right, we illustrate this essential idea of string theory by starting with an ordinary piece of matter, an apple, and repeatedly magnifying its structure to reveal its ingredients on ever smaller scales. String theory adds the new microscopic layer of a vibrating loop to the previously known progression from atoms through protons, neutrons, electrons, and quarks.Although it is by no means obvious, this simple replacement of point-particle material constituents with strings resolves the incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity (which, as currently formulated, cannot both be right). String theory thereby unravels the central Gordian knot of contemporary theoretical physics. This is a tremendous achievement, but it is only part of the reason string theory has generated such excitement.String theory proclaims, for instance, that the observed particle properties—that is, the different masses and other properties of both the fundamental particles and the force particles associated with the four forces of nature (the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity)—are a reflection of the various ways in which a string can vibrate. Just as the strings on a violin or on a piano have resonant frequencies at which they prefer to vibrate—patterns that our ears sense as various musical notes and their higher harmonics—the same holds true for the loops of string theory. But rather than producing musical notes, each of the preferred mass and force charges are determined by the string's oscillatory pattern. The electron is a string vibrating one way, the up-quark is a string vibrating another way, and so on.Far from being a collection of chaotic experimental facts, particle properties in string theory are the manifestation of one and the same physical feature: the resonant patterns of vibration—the music, so to speak—of fundamental loops of string. The same idea applies to the forces of nature as well. Force particles are also associated with particular patterns of string vibration and hence everything, all matter and all forces, is unified under the same rubric of microscopic string oscillations—the "notes" that strings can play.For the first time in the history of physics we therefore have a framework with the capacity to explain every fundamental feature upon which the universe is constructed. For this reason string theory is sometimes described as possibly being the "theory of everything" (T.O.E.) or the "ultimate" or "final" theory. These grandiose descriptive terms are meant to signify the deepest possible theory of physics—a theory that underlies all others, one that does not require or even allow for a deeper explanatory base.In practice, many string theorists take a more down-to-earth approach and think of a T.O.E. in the more limited sense of a theory that can explain the properties of the fundamental particles and the properties of the forces by which they interact and influence one another. A staunch reductionist would claim that this is no limitation at all, and that in principle absolutely everything, from the big bang to daydreams, can be described in terms of underlying microscopic physical processes involving the fundamental constituents of matter. If you understand everything about the ingredients, the reductionist argues, you understand everything.The reductionist philosophy easily ignites heated debate. Many find it fatuous and downright repugnant to claim that the wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics. For decades, physicists have puzzled over the weakness of gravity in comparison with the other fundamental forces of nature. "A tiny magnet can lift a paper clip, even though all the mass of the earth is pulling it in the opposite direction," Randall noted in her book on the search for extra dimensions, titled "Warped Passages."Einstein tried to come up with an overarching theory that could apply equally well to gravity and the other forces, but just couldn't do it. In fact, the theories that govern gravity and quantum mechanics are totally separate, and totally incompatible in the four-dimensional world we know.Over the past couple of decades, Einstein's successors have focused their quest for a "theory of everything" on string theory — the idea that the fundamental constituents of matter are tiny stringlike objects vibrating at different frequencies. String theorists could come up with equations to cover gravity as well as quantum effects, as long as they were given 10 or 11 dimensions to work with.The theories work even better if you can think of our four-dimensional space-time continuum as a type of membrane, or "brane," embedded in a "bulk" that takes in even more dimensions. Randall and Sundrum found that gravity's comparative weakness was perfectly understandable if particles called gravitons could leak off a brane into a five-dimensional bulk. In fact, they said, it could well be that gravitons are leaking across the bulk into our own brane (the "Weakbrane") from an extradimensional brane nearby "Gravitybrane").Admittedly, this sounds like a made-up world straight from "Alice in Wonderland" — and indeed, Alice has been invoked more than once by theorists themselves. The only thing that could save extradimensional physics from the fiction shelf is the prospect of finding real-world evidence to support the braneworld concept.Although there are no guarantees, Randall and Sundrum are holding out hope that ambitious experiments will soon produce precisely that kind of evidence....

Answer 8

I don't know how physicists explain it, but here's how I explain it:



God did it this way, because it was the most efficient method He could come up with!

Answer 9

its like talking which came first, chicken or egg?