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Originally Posted by Farror
A man creates a time machine ... As soon as the clock hits one second until big bang, his ship crahses and explodes, causing a massive explosion because of the nuclear energy used to power the ship.
So, what do you guys think?
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Well, firstly, I think you menat it would be exactly zero seconds, rather than one second to go...?
Other than that... yeah - good idea. I suspect it's a subject that's been done before, but don't let that stop you (we'd never write anything if we worried about that sort of thing!)
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Originally Posted by The Admiral
Oh yeah, and just so you know, time began with the big bang, so technically it would've been impossible for anyone to go back before it.
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Hehe. There's one for philosophers and scientists to argue over.
(techie science bit coming up......
this will either bore you solid or give you fresh ideas for stories - I'm hoping it'll be the latter
.... but either way, it's a good chance for me to show off all the reading I've done from New Scientist magazine
)
The theories currently in favour (String theory or 'M' theory) give that the universe we see is just a three-dimensional membrane within multi-dimensional space (11 dimensions, to be exact). How that relates to the big bang depends on who you listen to, but in general the theories state that something in upper-dimensional space happened that released energy into our membrane-universe, which was what we see as the big bang. The most interesting possibilities are that the event that caused it was two membranes colliding, meaning that two universes experienced big bangs simultaneously, and possibly many others floating around in a much larger 11-dimensional space, with the physical properties of each universe (ie the strength of the various forces), being determined by the shapes that the higher dimensions form within each.
After that it all gets very technical, and I'm not a physicist, so I just get lost when I try to get deeper than that (I have tried). But it is a fascinating subject. To me, it gives me a sense of looking into the realm of God.
Of course, it doesn't come close to answering any of the fundamental questions that physicists and philosophers like to ask. Okay, so it gives a reasonably good idea of one possiblility of how the big bang happened, but at the same time it answers that questions, it puts you straight back into the same problem again, because you're still left with a multi-dimensional super-universe that can't be explained - if our universe really is a three-dimensional bubble floating in an 11-dimensional space, then both scientists and philosphers are left to ask where did that 11-dimensional space come from? The trouble is that it is physically impossible for us to find out: since we're stuck in our three dimensions, and we cannot look beyond them, the properties of the 11-dimensional space will remain a mystery. All we can say is (if the theories are correct) that it exists. Proving it one way or the other is impossible, at least with our current abilities... which also reminds me of God.
