Wow I can't believe I didn't realize this earlier.I feel like I'm learning lots of things.
As a kid I learned of the big bang as an explosion like a supernova. Pretty sure every layman thinks of it like that, yet I kept this understanding even after learning about cosmic background radiation, higher dimensions, expansion, etc. Wasn't till an hour ago that something caused me to think about it and realise what we learn as kids is wrong.
Definitely about the bolded. Just search big bang explosion. Lots of people asking about the big bang explosion, or articles writing about it and then someone or the article "it wasn't actually an explosion."
The universe was always infinite in size and practically infinite in energy at every single area. The big bang was more like a big stretch, where the infinite universe expanded and decreased density. No explosionI'm not quite so sure about the bolded, but the rest of it is quite correct.
Now for my personal line of probably incredibly flawed thought, I wonder if the universe has cycles like stars. The initial state of the big bang sounds a heck of a lot like the eventual heat death of the universe, just with a different density value. It seems reasonable that before the big bang a super high energy low entropy state could have existed that slowly evened out, and a super low energy high entropy state could form after the heat death, with new physics emerging at every transition. All our forces were originally combined during the first moments. IDK, it's always fun thinking about this stuff before bed.This is something that I've heard at least considered. A TV show actually made some idea similar to this. And I've heard about similar ideas in other places too.
Well in Futurama what happened is that after the universe dies, there is another big bang. One of the guys who worked on Futurama actually has a Physics degree from Harvard. So while the show certainly takes unrealistic liberties, someone there actually has some experience to draw from.
There are these ideas about the end of the universe like Big Crunch, Big Rip that might be interesting to you, if you haven't heard of them.
I'm sure Xev will be able to tell us lot's of stuff once he's done.
