Is this scientific theory plausible, it predicts there was no origin for the universe and that the universe is eternal?

I think it is good and it builds on Roger Penrose’s Cycles of Time. I do prefer these builds than the crazy multiverse and string theory shit that was flung around 10 years ago.

I have always believed this to be true.

There are 3 views of time that I know of, all equally incomprehensible:

1. It had a beginning and will have an end

2. Similar to (1). The Universe is a static 4 dimensional space. Time is just one of the dimensions in addition to the 3 space dimensions. Everything that is going to happen in a sense has already happened.

3. Time is infinitely old and will continue infinitely longer. There may be a single Universe or lots of multiverses that pop into and out of existence. In any one section of this Universe there are only a finite, though extraordinarily large, number of possibilities. Therefore everything that is happening has already happened infinitely many times.

Our human perception of time very limited. nuff said.

Science has to follow the evidence and the evidence points to the Universe being created in a ‘Big Bang’ about 14 billion years ago.

The rotating, rather than expanding, steady state universe doggedly adhered to by Fred Hoyle (1915–2001). The direction of rotation and the point in time mankind has existed explaining the red shift.

There was a massive expansion 14 billion years ago. That we know.

It’s not a research paper. It’s a 4 page concept paper that was picked up by bad science writers who are looking for clickbait for their websites.

I like the word “Expansion.” As I understand it, the masses of the universe were condensed into one tiny, tiny speck. Enough that, because of the gravity associated with that much mass condensed into such a small… (well, i don’t want to use space, because it was made up of space and matter, so we’ll just say “pinprick”)... such a small pinprick, when the Expansion (called “big bang” sometimes) happened, space matter and time and all of these things unfurled, creating the universe as we know it, 14 billion years ago. I don’t claim to know what the universe was before it was, or what triggered the Expansion; I’m a Linguist, not a Scientist, but these are my findings.

In addition to being a Linguist, I am also religious. Being a topic of great controversy, I would like you all to consider this;

My God is divinely intelligent enough to use all of science- ALL OF IT- to his desires. Science and religion go hand in hand. Maybe they seem opposites at first, but when you look deeper into either of the subjects this question arises: How could God have created this universe without the use of science?

Darn it. Every single time we get a handle on this, Tesla jumps in his time machine and changes everything.

If you want to read a REAL paper regarding an alternate to the Big Bang, wrap your head around the Ekpyrotic Universe model by Paul Steinhardt.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0103239v3.pdf

It’s not a theory, it’s a wild idea a couple of guys had that, thus far, doesn’t really have much backing it.

As an aside: whoever wrote that Salon article should be barred from ever writing about science again. (Through, frankly, so should most most current “science” writers.)

I weep often when I read “science” articles.

^^Medical reportage is the worst—“Studies have shown…”

People don’t know what an ‘in-vitro’ test result is and thinks it proves essential oils cure cancer. Don’t get me started!

But this idea is just an idea. Problem with some of these quantum physics ideas is that we can’t really test them until we learn more. That’s why I’m always reading what the LHC is doing. I’m hopeful. Doubtful in my lifetime, there are some very clever people on the planet and when you think about where we were just 100 years ago, it really is quite amazing.

@Darth_Algar , science IS a wild idea that a couple of guys had. Any mind too small to appreciate the fact that some of the universe is beyond our mental understanding right now is also too small to rightly make criticisms against theories.
In addition to that, any new idea lacks backing until it has been around for a while.

@ivykiana97

Except this isn’t a theory, it’s concept. Learn what terms mean before presuming upon what someone else can or cannot criticize*.

(*Which, you’ll note, I wasn’t criticizing the idea, I was criticizing sloppy journalism.)

Science is a process. Not a religion. We don’t believe ideas are true until they are tested and found to be true. This level of quantum physics is untestable currently . There are two different ideas right now regard what was before the expansion. Those who think string theory/muliverse with its very complex math models or those who like the idea of cycling expansion/contraction of everything that is. We can’t test any of this. String theory had a lot of work done with it this past decade. It took a lot of math and creation of the idea of many dimensions to make it all work. It is interesting stuff. Both ideas are in their infancy when it comes a working theory and it is amazingly divisive among theoretical physicists. Despite ourselves, we like to get behind an idea when we like the sound of it, passionately and it begs for more reason and less fervor. After all, the process is science. The other stuff reeks of faith without proof.

Without fervor for a notion, would experiments be design to prove or disprove it? The Quark hypothesis was proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964. Many physicists doubted its existence until it was demonstrated by experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1968. The last of the current “flavors” was not identified until 1995. Many hypotheses have been dismissed by the scientific community. Decades and sometime centuries passed before the “faith” of a few scientists in such beliefs was sufficiently accepted before experiments were performed proving their existence.

Of course we need interest in ideas by scientists. What I’m saying is that people like journalists don’t have a clue how to report these things making the ideas sound like proven theories. Like when they report how something in a petri dish kills cancer cells. Suddenly they report it as “New hopefull cancer cure”. And people believe it really is and build a faith unworthy.

I’m glad the masters grad student didn’t give up her idea of the double helix. Don’t Bullshit syntax it.

I agree with Darth. Not even a theory and it’s just one of many such unsupportable ‘concepts’.

They are starting to sound like anti-theist screeds.

Made me laugh when Steven Hawking formally came out as an atheist and shortly after came out with his latest concept. He said: “The Universe is perfectly able to create itself from nothing”. Oh yeah, that explains it.

Anti-theist screeds? So, as scientists, they should just say… ‘We don’t know for sure so we are just going to say God did it. ’ ??

@Darth_Algar
Granted, that was poorly worded on my part, but rest assured I know what the term means.
Don’t try to play me for a fool. You weren’t criticizing the sloppy journalism as the main point of the comment, and so that’s not what I was touching on. You actually said, “As an aside,” before making mention of the journalism.

@cazzie
No, they should just stop at ‘We don’t have a clue right now’ instead of fabricating all these unfounded concepts like this and the one Hawking came up with. What he said (especially in the context of his atheist declaration) was effectively ‘There is no God required to explain the Big Bang even if I don’t know what caused it’ which prompted my anti-theist comment.

It’s okay in science to say “I don’t know”. That’s why there is science.

@Rarebear Of course it’s a truth seeking process. Like any process, it has a certain amount of time necessary to complete it.

But they DO have clues and this is part of the process of figuring things out. The whole, ‘What if’ and hypothesis making portion. You should thank that process very much because, well, Aeroplanes, Medicine, Solar Power, Electricity…... you know…. we didn’t have a clue and then someone said, ‘What if….’ and they solved the damn thing. People thought electricity was from the devil and that we’d lose our souls if we travelled fast in cars and planes. We need less of THAT sort of thinking.

Important and better written: http://phys.org/news/2010-11-scientists-glimpse-universe-big.html

@ivykiana97

I was not criticizing the concept, I was pointing out that it is simply a concept, not a theory. I was also criticizing sloppy journalism that reports concepts as “theories”, which likewise further increases public misunderstand of what the term means. Many people think that “theory” in science means the same as the way they use the word “theory” (so they come up with shit like “evolution is just a theory”, thinking that puts it on the same level with their own uneducated “theories”). Piss-poor science journalism like this doesn’t help that misunderstanding.

@Leadfoot

I don’t think you at all understood my stance that you think you agree with.

I think it’s likely that the universe is eternal and has various states. The Big Bang was the beginning of its present state. There is a theory of an Oscillating Universe with alternating Big Bangs and Big Crunches. There are variations of that idea, e.g. The Damped Oscillating Universe that says each Big bang is weaker than the previous one until eventually, it won’t be able to happen.