"Norman Samish" wrote:
>Thanks for the comments, which I hear as saying that Tegmark's ideas do not
>contradict my notion of an infinite void with random big bangs occurring at
>random times.
>
>But is that correct? Tegmark says, ". . . processes early in the big bang
>spread matter around with a degree of randomness, generating all possible
>arrangements with nonzero probability."
>
>If the big bang generated ALL possible arrangements, then that big bang
>would have had to distribute an infinite amount of matter/energy. Did that
>single big bang then generate the entire multiverse that Tegmark describes?
>
>In other words, does Tegmark say that multiple big bangs are occurring, or
>was one single big bang responsible for the multiverse?
>
>Norm Samish
In an open universe, a single Big Bang would indeed be the origin of an
infinite amount of matter/energy distributed throughout an infinite space. I
think you're imagining the "Big Bang" to be an explosion which happens in a
preexisting space, but that's not how it's conceived of in General
Relativity, in which the "Big Bang" is the origin of spacetime itself.
That's why the Big Bang has no center in space, for example, whereas if it
was just an explosion in a preexisting space it would. There is actually a
variant on the standard Big Bang theory in which the Big Bang *is* an
enormous white hole (the time-reverse of a black hole) spewing out matter in
a preexisting space--see this page, for example:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/universe.html
But as they say there, this is a different theory from the standard
Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) model, which is what physicists usually
mean when they talk about the "Big Bang".
--Jesse Mazer
_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Received on Sat Apr 19 2003 - 12:23:49 PDT