"Doug Pensinger" wrote
> OK, you want discussion topics, I got discussion topics. 8^)
>
> Seriously.
>
> In this months Scientific American, James E. Peebles, described as "one of
the
> world's most distinguished cosmologists", stated that "the universe is
> expanding and cooling is the essence of the big bang theory. You will
notice I
> have said nothing about an "explosion"--the big bang theory describes how
our
> universe is evolving, not how it began."
> (http://www.sciam.com/2001/0101issue/0101peebles.html)
>
> Come again? Just about everything I've read about the BB includes
something
> like this quote from a New Scientist article _Up Up and Away to the
Beginning
> of Time_ "
> (http://clone.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/big3/bigbang/uua1.html) "the
big
> bang explosion in which the Universe was born" After all, if its only
about
> expansion and cooling, where does the "bang" fit in?
>
> Can anyone straighten me out?
No known physics applies at time zero.
To know what happened before 10^-43 seconds we need to understand
quantum gravity. Without it we can't describe the initial bang, only the
cooling and expansion that happened after the Planck time.
