USA Politics

[milk]

Depends on how you define "the Universe". The Universe as we know it is certainly expanding in such a way that you can extrapolate back and say that at one time it MIGHT have been very small, with all the matter and energy currently in existence concentrated in a "primeval atom" (selon Fr. Lemaitre). That theory makes a prediction: the Cosmic Microwave Background, which has been detected and studied very closely.

We can't say anything about what happened before the Big Bang. But we are confident that it happened, and if you define the Universe as everything that the Big Bang evolved into, then the Universe had a beginning.

It's not as circular as it sounds.

I don't believe any physicist claims everything, all possibility, began with the Big Bang. It depends on the definition of universe. Is it what we are measuring, or any possibility? There are hypotheses like the multiverse. We know something about the universe in which we are only.

[drogulus]

     Oh no, I took a "linguistic turn"! Here come the cops.

Put that poker down!

[SimonNZ]

     I agree. Just because things that are part of the whole can be said to have beginnings doesn't mean the whole has one. Or, is the North Pole on the edge of something because there is nothing north of it?  Maybe we need a context, like "In the beginning there was the Bird, and the Bird is the Word", or something like that.

nice

[JBS]

     I don't see how nothing can be before time, but then I don't think nothing can be, period. The problem is we are trying to use language designed for at least possible imaginable experience and stretching beyond its useful range. One possibility is to consider a no boundary Universe.

"Asking what came before the Big Bang is meaningless, according to the no-boundary proposal, because there is no notion of time available to refer to," Hawking said in another lecture at the Pontifical Academy in 2016, a year and a half before his death. "It would be like asking what lies south of the South Pole."

I agree with Hawking's point, but I don't think his analogy really catches it.

[drogulus]

     Federal officials stockpiled munitions, sought 'heat ray' device before clearing Lafayette Square, whistleblower says

     

[arpeggio]

     There is no inking phase. We won't run out of science or the discovery of error until the last discoverer is dead.

     I once read a novel about an interplanetary civilization after science died. They had knowledge of space travel and atomic weapons kept by a priesthood. Oddly, it's said the plot was derived from I, Claudius by Robert Graves.

     

If my recollection is correct I think the civilization of the Dune Saga banned computers or AI.

[drogulus]

If my recollection is correct I think the civilization of the Dune Saga banned computers or AI.

     Yes, instead they had a drug that increased life spans, turned people into super calculators and spawned mutations that had the power to warp space and, incidentally, would be right at home with GMG Big Brains.

[arpeggio]

At least this "GMG Big Brain" believes the Coronavirus and evolution is real.

[71 dB]

     I don't see how nothing can be before time, but then I don't think nothing can be, period. The problem is we are trying to use language designed for at least possible imaginable experience and stretching beyond its useful range. One possibility is to consider a no boundary Universe.

"Asking what came before the Big Bang is meaningless, according to the no-boundary proposal, because there is no notion of time available to refer to," Hawking said in another lecture at the Pontifical Academy in 2016, a year and a half before his death. "It would be like asking what lies south of the South Pole."

The question can be interpreted as "What is outside our universe?", at least that's how I interpret it.

If you keep walking "past" the South pole you start to walk back to North, but what if you took a rocket at the pole? You would change the direction of your movement 90° and the rocket would take you to space "south" of South pole! So, maybe you need to take a "90° turn" at the big bang to get what was "before = outside" our spacetime? What is this 90° turn? I believe it's interchanging time and space and you know what? Black holes do that by bending spacetime so much space becomes time and vice versa! So our time could be the space inside a black hole in our mother universe and our space could be the time of our mother universe inside the black hole. I can be totally wrong, but this makes sense to my puny brain and if I am wrong I want to be wrong in a cool way and for me this is so cool!  0:)

[BasilValentine]

It's  better to say the Big Bang is the point beyond which our knowledge will never go.  There are theories that a universe collapsed into the "primeval atom" and that the expansion we call the Big Bang was merely the point where the prior collapse reached maximum density and then exploded outward. Those theories often predict that the current universe will reach a point of maximum expansion and then collapse back into itself until we reach the point where a new Big Bang occurs and we start the whole thing all over again.

There is another point to make: what we call time itself is a property of the universe and started with the Big Bang like the rest of the universe. So technically there was nothing before the Big Bang.

So the Big Bang is settled? I thought a big bounce was still in play — compression to something short of a singularity. And I've heard theories that not all information would necessarily die with a new bang or bounce.

[krummholz]

So the Big Bang is settled? I thought a big bounce was still in play — compression to something short of a singularity. And I've heard theories that not all information would necessarily die with a new bang or bounce.

I don't think it's "in play" except as idle speculation... "what if" the expansion undergoes another inflection point. The last one was something like 6 or 7 billion years ago, before the Sun was born. For now, all the evidence suggests that the expansion is accelerating and will continue to accelerate indefinitely. That fact is attributed to "dark energy", something which is understood about as poorly as it is possible to understand something and still have a vague idea about it. (i.e., we don't know what "it" is, but we can see what "it" does and project that effect into the future.)

[Karl Henning]

) George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, setting off nationwide protests. But Trump's response seems to have backfired. Biden leads by 11 points in the state (30 points among women) on the question of which candidate voters trust to handle crime and safety. His margin rises to 14 points (32 points among women) when it comes to discouraging violence, and 24 points (43 points among women) on equal treatment of different groups. Fifty-five percent of respondents say they support the Black Lives Matter protests — with 36 percent supporting them strongly. Biden's lead among White women with college degrees is even higher than it is for women generally. (

[MN Dave]

I plan on voting for anyone who's not Trump tomorrow. 

[Karl Henning]

I plan on voting for anyone who's not Trump tomorrow. 

POW!

[Karl Henning]

) Swing voters tend to be younger, hold more moderate views, polling finds
New polling in three battleground states in the Sun Belt finds that swing voters there tend to be younger than average, have more moderate views and give higher approval ratings to Biden than Trump.

Interviews were conducted in Arizona, Florida and North Carolina as part of a joint project by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Cook Political Report.

In all three states, the polling finds nearly one-fourth of voters are swing voters.

That includes about the same number who say they are truly "undecided" and who say they are "probably" going to vote for one candidate but haven't made up their minds. (

[Karl Henning]

Democrat Jaime Harrison, vying to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham, raises $1 million in one day

[Herman]

Obviously it's none of my business, but it would be great if Lindsey Graham was sent packing.

Such a revolting slimeball.

[drogulus]

     

     

[drogulus]

     South Dakota governor uses coronavirus relief funds for $5 million tourism ad despite COVID surge

     Together we can build the best herd immunity money can buy!

     This may not have been exactly what the Governor had in mind. It was probably just a way to prevent the money being wasted on coronavirus relief.

[Karl Henning]

Trumpkins sure do lap up fake news:

Trump's most popular YouTube ad is a stew of manipulated video