Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 11/20/2005

Question
i have been wondering about the big bang theory, it is supose to have come from a singularity, is this the same as a black hole because every thing is at an infinate desnsity.

what would then happen if we didnt just have one singularity but insted had many more. if the big bang occured then the fact that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light stops the univers from becoming differently shaped in different areas. ( which i have heared is not not true )

then what would happen if we had a singularity that wasnt like a black hole but was similar to a white hole, what would happen if two of these collided, could that trigger the big bang

thank you for any help you can give me, but could u please bare in mind that i am only 15, but am keen on the subject

james


Answer
Hi james,
Nice of you to tell me your age at the ouset.
The universe appears to have started as one singularity.
However, people now think it rather was not actually a bang as one would like to picturise it, but a quick inflation followed by explosive expansion.
It is due to this inflation part where the universe was doubling its size every 10 raised to -64th second or so (from what i remember), that we have a universe which is greater in size than the 18 billion years of its existence.
(light could not have travelled more than 18 billion years since the bang, but we see the universe is extending more than this limit).

The cosmic background radiation (cosmic microwave background or CMB which was first theoretically predicted by the guy who came up with the hydrogen emission spectrum at 3 deg kelvin), was actually detected by erno panzias and he got the nobel prize for that.
This radiation is highly isotropic (same in all directions) implying the bang was more or less uniform (one pointed).

But at very minute differential levels, it shows anisotropy or lumpiness. Scientists believe it is this lumpiness that in the end was amplified by gravity and which led to the present spongiform LARGE SCALE STRUCTURE of the universe.

Where large voids are spanned by thin bridges of streaming galaxies.

Our own galaxy and its local group, the small and large magellanic clouds, as well as m31 (andromeda) with its satellite galaxies are scurrying towards the virgo super cluster of galaxies at close to 300 km/sec.

Do not complicate things with black and white holes. White holes are but quasars or exploding new galaxies (seyfert?) and black holes are mundane things for most galaxies.

These are too far small to matter in any discussion covering the scale of the bang.
Hope that suffices.
jayen