AboutCourtney Seligman Expertise I can answer almost any question about astronomy and related sciences (such as physics and geology). I will not answer questions about astrology and similar pseudo-scientific rubbish.
Experience I have been a professor of astronomy for nearly 40 years, and am working on an online text/encyclopedia of astronomy.
Publications (too long ago to be relevant)
Education/Credentials I received a BA in astronomy and physics, and MA in astronomy, both from UCLA. I was working on my doctoral dissertation when I started teaching, and discovered that I preferred teaching to research.
Question Hello,
Was there at least one inward secondary shock-wave during the initial expansion from the big bang, a reflected implosion off of the outward moving wavefront?
If so, wouldn't this wavefront meet at the point of origin with quite a bang of it's own?
Would this first (of many?) reflection then be considered significant in it's time relationship (in fractions of a Femtosecond?) to the initial wave?
How many of these reflections might there be possible in the initial expansion (and did it last only a couple of Femtoseconds to reach near it's present size?)
Perhaps a series of secondary/tertiary, etc., waves could account for the dominant forms of matter we see in our universe as well as account for the incredibly dense amount of information created by the interactions of more than 'only' a single wavefront moving ever outward?
Thanks for your consideration!
best,
Rob H (Norther California)
Answer There wouldn't be any reflected wave, because that requires a surface to reflect off of, and no such surface would have existed at any time during or after the Big Bang. As the Universe grew there would be waves of a sort, but in the form of gravitational waves created by quantum fluctuations in the density of the various parts of the expanding Universe. Theories of variations in the small-scale structure of the microwave background are in fact based on such fluctuations.
