this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
-14 points (37.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
29645 readers
1065 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics (NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out)
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The universe in the Big Bang theory does have an age (approximately 13.7 billion years), so in a way, the Big Bang theory does not explain the origin of the universe, but rather the state of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. With that said, it is the limit of the universe, not the particles. The age of a particle could be infinity.
Your argument is not defending your position.
If we say the Big bang is true, and it's the creation of all matter. That would include the constituent elements of matter. Even if some elements have a longer lifespan than others, that doesn't speak to when they were created.
It's perfectly possible there's a different model, the better represents reality, that would allow for something to exist before the Big bang, but that would not be the Big bang theory. That would be a different theory, if we're working with the Big bang theory then nothing existed before it.
Except the big bang is the start of both space and time, so nothing in the universe could be older than the universe because there's no time to speak of (not to mention the space for it to exist).
The moment after the big bang is called the Planck epoch. I just learned this from Wikipedia "In this stage, the characteristic scale length of the universe was the Planck length, 1.6×10−35 m, and consequently had a temperature of approximately 1032 degrees Celsius. Even the very concept of a particle breaks down in these conditions. A proper understanding of this period awaits the development of a theory of quantum gravity.". I don't really understand this, but it seems the early universe wasn't conducive to particles. Even if it was, they wouldn't be atoms. They'd just be quarks.
All of our physics breaks down at the singularity before the big bang, so assuming quarks that are around today existed then is just that, an assumption.