Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ut-ngp.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxb!mhuxn!mhuxm!mhuxj!houxm!whuxlm!akgua!sdcsvax!dcdwest!ittvax!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!lindley From: lindley@ut-ngp.UUCP (John L. Templer) Newsgroups: net.astro Subject: Re: StarDate: January 19: Expanding Spac Message-ID: <1288@ut-ngp.UUCP> Date: Thu, 7-Feb-85 16:41:14 EST Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.1288 Posted: Thu Feb 7 16:41:14 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 10-Feb-85 04:43:43 EST References: <1024@utastro.UUCP> <42100004@uiucdcs.UUCP> Organization: U.Texas Physics Department; Austin, Texas Lines: 25 > Being an uninformed reader of this net (I find it interesting) and also > agreeing with the big bang theory, what is to say that space did not exist > before the bang? What is to say that all matter in our universe was not > once a giant single rock with great gravity and internal pressures and > finally exploded, starting the expansion process. The giant ball would > have been an occupant of the space our universe now exists in, but would > not have been expanding and time as we know it would not have existed, > but space would have been there. According to current opinion, if you extrapolate backwards in time about 10 to 20 billion years, you reach a point where the universe was all contained in a "small" region. The problem is that the density of the universe at that time would have been so great as to crush the universe into a point. So, physicists believe that general and special relativity may not hold for arbitrarily high densities. But they don't have any ideas yet what conditions would be like in that case. -- John L. Templer University of Texas at Austin {allegra,gatech,seismo!ut-sally,vortex}!ut-ngp!lindley "and they called it, yuppy love."