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Index of Subjects Don, The popular notion that 'everything came from a singularity' is not part of the Big Bang Theory. It is repeated in popular descriptions, causing misconceptions of what the Big Bang Theory is about. Furthermore, the Big Bang Theory does not work with Special Relativity, it requires General Relativity. Hence, your statement that we need to scrap Special Relativity is quite right, It is not up to the task, and replaced by General Relativity. The important change when working with General Relativity is that space can expand (which is where your arguments lose validity). When space between two points (objects) A and B expands, it does not mean that objects A and B suddenly speed up. It means that after some time, there is more space between A and B than there was previously. As a result, the distance between A and B has increased. And while this process might look superficially as if A and B are moving apart, the underlying reality (according to General Relativity) is different. Under these new circumstances, your suggestion that the size of the 'primordial atom does not matter' is no longer true. Due to the expansion of space, the size does matter. An initial distance of e.g., one light year between two point in space (A,B) might have expanded to more than the currently visible size of the universe, and light from point A would still not have reached point B. It all depends on the rate of expansion of space between A and B (any two points, for that matter). If space expands at a high enough rate, while there is no region on the line A-to-B where a speed between two nearby point is exceeding the speed of light, but light emitted at one point might not yet have made it through. Such points A and B actually exist: When looking from Earth into opposite directions (e.g, to north past the polar star is one direction, and to south from Antarctica is the second direction) into the past of the universe, galaxies in the far, far distance, at an age shortly after the beginning of the known universe, could be at such points A and B. And light from one such point has not yet reached the other point. It just made it to Earth (took 14 Billion years), and has a long way to go to the other end of the universe. Hopefully this clears up some things, willing to answer more questions, Burkhard Keith, saw your email: Dark energy is not needed for this discussion. All arguments relevant to the general expansion are valid with 'regular' General Relativity. On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 9:07 PM Lois Codling <loiscodling@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote: > > > I've been following this discussion with considerable interest. From > everything I have ever read or heard, the Big Bang theory assumes > everything came from a singularity, a primordial atom that in a sense > was the densest possible black hole. Assuming that is the case, and > assuming that the theory of relativity is correct, it seems to me that > there can be no particle whose light has not had time to reach us. Every > particle should in principle be visible (if we have sensitive enough > "telescopes") though the farther they are away from us, the more distant > in the past would be the image we could detect. That is, we see Alpha > Centauri where and as it was about 4 years ago, the Greater Magellan > Cloud where it was and as it was about 150,000 years ago, etc. > > The suggestion that some things have not had time for radiation from > them to reach us seems to require either severe modification or > scrapping of the big bang theory or the theory of special relativity or > both. > > Note that it does not really matter if the "primordial atom" were larger > than the commonly assumed point. Unless it was larger in light years > than the age of the universe, radiation from every particle should > implicitly have reached us long since; but that completely tosses the > big bang theory. Of course if you postulate items that neither emit or > reflect radiation, they would be invisible even if they were very close. > That's really outside the scope of this discussion, I think. > > Don Codling
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