• Question: hi damien, how did scientists discover time? and how did the world start? i dont know wiether to believe in the big bang theory or God? please answer my question. thankyou much love meg x

    Asked by mkershaw to Damien on 18 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Hi Meg –

      Wow, a lot of big questions for a Saturday afternoon! I’ll try and answer some of them.

      I think the most basic one here is about the Big Bang or God. Maybe it’s not really even a question for scientists, when you think about it – it could be a question for philosophers! Also, I’m not the kind of scientist that specialises in stuff about how the world came to be … But, as far as I’m concerned, I think it’s possible to believe in the Big Bang and believe in God too. People who don’t think that’s possible are called Creationists – they believe that God created the world just as it is now, and that Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong. So they would say that it is not possible to believe in the Big Bang and their version of God at the same time, because believing in the Big Bang means that you believe that the world started at a more basic state than it is at the moment. I think, though, that you can go right back to the Big Bang, and there is still space for a God if that’s what you choose to believe, because you still have to explain how that Big Bang came to happen.

      So I think that’s how the world started – I believe in the Big Bang, and that means that the Earth (and everything else that exists) was gradually formed from what they call ‘elemental soup’ – billions and billions of particles that were left, but not clumped together into anything, after the Big Bang. There’s a whole branch of physics that studies this, called particle physics (or quantum physics). If you Google this:

      microseconds after the big bang

      you’ll find a whole load of articles about it!

      As for time, that’s a different question entirely. I’d better not answer it really, as I don’t really know about that stuff! But I think a good place to start would be with a quantum physicist. I’ll ask for their help with this!

Comments

  • Photo: Cesar

    Cesar commented on :

    Hi! I found this one very interesting, I am surprised there aren’t any comments yet!

    There are a few questions here. I will try to build up a story and see what you guys think.

    For the first, how did scientist discover time, I reckon time was not discovered. We all experience time, we feel it “flowing” towards the future, dragging us along with no possible scape. But, why is that? You can try answering this by noticing that you remember the past, but you don’t seem to know what the future is. That can hardly be consider as a scientific answer, so lets make a better attempt. Suppose someone plays a video for you. From the sequence of events you can tell if the movie is played forward or backwards. They can give another video and do the same. In most cases you would be able to tell which direction time is going…or, not? What if what you see is a still image? What if all you see is “noise”? What if the video shows a pendulum and nothing else? In all those cases you would fail to tell the direction of time.

    Most physical theories have the property of being “time-symmetric”. That means that if we change the direction of time (just multiplying by -1 the variable we use for time) in all the equations we have, then we obtain something which is also allowed by our physical theory. Then what is it that allows us to decide which direction time is going when we were shown the films? A quick answer to that has to do with thermodynamics, in particular the second law. Roughly it says that things “evolve” (nothing to do with the theory of evolution) in the direction of time which increases “disorder”, that is the direction of the future. This is a universal law and applies to everything, even the universe itself….but…this answer is also cheating a bit…I change why time flows towards the future to why disorder increases with time…or even worse…if disorder increases with time, why was the universe “so ordered” in the past? …The true answer to your first question is: we don’t know yet. We cannot explain it properly, from its very roots. We have ways of understanding it and using it. But the true origin of time remains a mystery we need to solve.

    This is connected to the second question, how did the world start. At the moment, our best understanding of the universe comes from two theories: the General theory of relativity (see this answer http://ias.im/47.305) and quantum theory. With the first one we have been able to know that, if correct, there must have been a big bang. There is plenty of evidence that indicates that this was indeed the case. The most dramatic one comes from the observation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (some echo from the big bang) filling up the entire space. With our present knowledge, we can go on and explain what happen from tiny fraction of a second after the big-bang to the present day. But if we really want to know how the world began, what happened at exactly 0 seconds, we would need a combination of the two theories: relativity and quantum. Right now we don’t know what such a combination could be. People work in different ways of combining them, and they have tried really hard for more than 30 years. So far there have been progress in many fronts, but not enough to understand this question…yet.

    As for God and the big-bang, I reckon you can believe in both. Science is an endeavour which tries to explain things with a minimal set of “assumptions”. From my own perspective, we can do very well without assuming anything was created, or that there was some divine intervention. However, I think scientist will never be able to prove, nor disprove, the existence of God. Ultimately, this is a very personal topic and the choice will remain within yourself.

    I hope this helps…at least to increase confusion 🙂