Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hao!seismo!cmcl2!lanl!wkp From: wkp@lanl.ARPA Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: Re: Big Bang Impossible Message-ID: <17774@lanl.ARPA> Date: Mon, 10-Dec-84 21:10:11 EST Article-I.D.: lanl.17774 Posted: Mon Dec 10 21:10:11 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 14-Dec-84 04:49:22 EST References: <185@decwrl.UUCP> Sender: newsreader@lanl.ARPA Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 29 > If the whole universe was ina speck, said spec would have been a black hole > and the "big bang" could not happen. No one has yet disputed this. Why not? I don't know why not (that's why I read net.religion). The answer to your question is quite simple, though it is a very good question, and quite profound. The answer is that the matter in your speck never crossed the "event horizon" of the universe, i.e., it never escaped from the black hole. First thing you need to do is to estimate the Schwarzschild radius for the universe, R = 2GM/(c**2). In this equation, M is the mass of the universe, G is the gravitational constant, and c is the speed of light. Estimating the mass of the universe in the usual way, one finds that the Schwarzschild radius of the universe is of the order of a GigaPc (10**9 Parsecs). Since this radius is much larger than the aforementioned speck (and the present radius of the universe), one concludes that the big bang can easily happen since the mass of the universe is still within the "black hole" radius of a Giga-Parsec. Of course, this means that we are all living within a black hole, and that nothing in the universe can travel outside our own Schwarzschild radius of 10**9 Parsecs. This question has been dealt with in the literature a number of years ago. If there are a lot of requests, I can scrounge up the references. bill peter los alamos