Wendy Freedman - Did Our Universe have a Beginning?
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Everything in the universe has a beginning, but how can the universe as a whole have a beginning? Does the cosmos come with a start date? Does a universal commencement make sense? What would it possibly mean? And what if there are multiple universes? Does the entire multiverse have a beginning?
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Wendy Laurel Freedman is a Canadian-American astronomer, best known for her measurement of the Hubble Constant, and as John and Marion Sullivan University Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Dr. Freedman is extraordinarily and admirably clear in her explanations. Great guest.
People need to differentiate between our observable universe and everything that does/might exist
Point noted!!
The current universe may have had a beginning, but Existence itself may be eternal.
Gods existence is the only eternal one that makes sense. It’s the best possible explanation.
*"The current universe may have had a beginning, but Existence itself may be eternal."* ... Existence has a beginning, as well. Everything has a beginning.
@@toma3447no
@@toma3447 True. But first you have to ASSUME that God exists, then everything works out.
"the current universe" or "our universe" as there may be more universes, at this time, currently... but yes, existence or conciousness may be eternal indeed.
Well stated! She's convicted in her responses. Great job
Could the current universe be 2.0 or 3 or 4🤔❓...who knows🥺
Is the past infinite? We conceive of the future as infinite. But the future is actually unbounded, as opposed to infinite. The future is not a completed thing but is ongoing without limit. The past on the other hand is a completed thing, and if infinite, is without a beginning. The phrase “from here to eternity” is used about the future. For the infinite past, it becomes “from eternity to here”.
i think infinite regression is not logical and just an excuse to avoid questions. I think around the universe we need a "no time" environment from where everything was born
could there be something everywhere outside universe that pulls the universe out, maybe a source of gravity, leading to accelerated expansion, cooler microwave background, and other observations?
Yes, our Universe had a beginning. The challenge is understanding and believing the process.
and finding the First Cause.
Exactly 💯. Let's just figure out our universe. This one universe. And, then, we can move beyond ..
I do not understand how people that dedicate to science do not distinguish between being finite vs being limited. That is: the existence of a finite amount of time to the past does not imply the existence of a beginning. That is: given any instant T, there could always exist instants before T (so that T is not the beginning of time), even if there exist a finite amount of time to the past. (think of the real numbers that are "strictly" positive: there is no first real strictly positive). I do not understand how people that dedicate to science still think that there can be an "absolute" answer to questions like that. They should understand that there is no possible "final" model of reality, all models are approximations, any model will be substituted in the future (if there is a future for us). We cannot know the "absolute", we can just have approximations that make more or less accurate and reliable predictions within a certain limited "realm" of reality, and if we continue expanding our reach (do not auto destruct our technological civilization) , we will always go beyond the limits of any given model (to where the model ceases to be a good/useful approximation).
What about new discovery of James webb telescope? This is not up to date
We are told that our galaxy has a black hole at its centre. If that's happening in this galaxy it's happening in other galaxies. If then we're told that black holes might burst outwards creating a new universe it suggests that universes have cropped up everywhere, across infinite time.
Somehow I doubt there is a real zero and infinity. The universe is most likely something that behaves as a sinusoid. Infinite when it crosses the vertical axis and zero at its peak, slope-wise.
The universe had a beginning, indeed, but its component (energy) and place (space) always existed.
This must be an older then 2021 interview because it doesn't consider or talk about the James Webb telescope. It doesn't talk about the big galaxys found just before 1.000 milion years that poses questions: how is it possible? Was the rate of grow of the universe faster? If it was how come? Could that come from another universe? If the rate of groing was variable we cant calculate the age if the universe using the present day model
what if the universe is an infinite cycle of collapsing and expanding this makes way more sense to me, the universe having a true beginning is kind of a paradox.
But the universe existing forever in the past and future is also paradoxical. A cyclic universe was proposed as early as the 1930's, but every time it was proposed, it was immediately trashed because it was considered to be unprovable. The reasoning was that the Big Bang would completely obliterate any information about some previous universe, so it was an untestable, hence unprovable, concept. But it still keeps coming back with various changes. Just a couple of years ago, some very well know astrophysicists from the Perimeter Institute came up with a new version. And all the articles/books you see that claim to show how everything came from nothing rely on there being something -- an infinite space with quantum properties that has energy (vacuum energy). All of these ideas require something before the Big Bang and it would seem to be just as untestable and unprovable as it has for the last nearly 100 years.
@@triplec8375 it seems like either way you look at it, its a paradox.
@@filmfactsxpress Yeah, unfortunately. Cosmologists claim to understand the evolution of the universe all the way back to a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang. But when you get to the point of trying to explain either and infinite Existence or a Beginning, that really becomes a matter of philosophy. Isaac Asimov distinguished between COSMOLOGY as the study of the evolution of the universe and COSMOGANY which is a belief system about how or whether it all began.
I don't understand the paradox. I see it quite differently. I don't know of anything that did not have a beginning and an end. It would be a paradox for the universe to be the exception. Unless I am wrong, and there are other things out there that just are...
@@jamesmiller7457 I think the problem, paradox if you will, is both at the beginning and at the end, if the universe has both. If it has a beginning it must come from nothing or some previous state that must also have a beginning. While many writers will tell you that they can explain the universe coming from nothing, their idea of nothing is a 3 or 4 dimensional space that has quantum properties and that isn't really nothing. Emerging from nothing would violate all kinds of physical laws that we currently accept like the law of conservation of matter and energy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics, not to mention that it would violate causality. If the universe has an end, then all the matter and energy in it would have to disappear for it to go back to nothing. That also violates the physics that we currently understand. Of course, the universe could wind down to a cold death where all the leftovers are spread completely evenly and continue to expand forever. But that's not really and end, just a really uninteresting state.
Ends and beginnings are dreams.there has never been a creation.
So, if there has never been a creation, then the universe that we see around us has been here forever and will continue forever? Or are you saying nothing exists and it's all a dream?
What was before the Universe?
There is no such thing as before the universe, our brain is not equipped to understand those questions
*"What was before the Universe?"* ... If you reverse the reverse pattern of the universe (i.e., higher complexity down to lower complexity) then logic states that what's on the other side of Big Bang's singularity is *dimensionless, nonphysical information.* That is the lowest possible state of "Existence."
Two universes had sex and created ours.
Your question is nonsensical. I take it you can't remember anything before you were born, right?
@@redeyewarrior *"Your question is nonsensical. I take it you can't remember anything before you were born, right?"* ... No, but I was definitely "something" before I was born.
She provides a good explanation for our universe beginning within a stage or bracket of time but not as an absolute beginning Of course the extremely infinitely small infinitely dense energy and matter was not by itself a beginning. It has rather been converted from a different form. So within the scope of our science, it seems impossible to reach a true beginning. And if we imagine a true beginning could be explained, this will defy existence of God. So let us reverse the approach and we then can imagine that God created the universe and the science governing it in such way so we can logically reach to the conclusion of his existence.
So did the Big Bang happen independently, without any cause or stimulus? And if there was a cause, wouldn't that force or cause be closer to the true beginning?
Take away Universe and go for Nature. In Nature we have a lot of beginnings and a lot of endings.
No! Sorry, just thought I have to answer the heading which is a question. Look, it cant be denied that the Universe has had many big bangs. The Universe will disappear into oblivion again and then another big bang will bring the Universe into existence again. All matter what you see or what is currently in the Universe was just in other Forms before a big bang. ie everything is still here and was still here in their respective Forms. Everything requires a symbiotic relations, hence Matter requires Dark Matter. ie one is Elements fused and the other is Biology just like what your human molecule is made up of.
Universe? Maybe. Multiverse…eternal.
As the answer is unknowable to Humanity, it doesn't matter what pundit makes a YT video about it. Its up to you to make up your own mind, if you think its worth wasting your mental energy. Oh yes . . . energy. You know, that stuff that can neither be created or destroyed? Well there's some stuff that didn't have a begining or an end.
It must be very comforting for Hindus to know that they are right.
Wendy Freedman's assertion that "we know the universe is expanding..." seems like an assumption. I would say it is more accurate to say we know that we see a red shift in the light from distant galaxies. The assumption is that this red shift is due mostly to recessional velocities. I think it is more likely due mostly to gravitational effects. I see similar assumptions in the reason given for the CMB. Without regard for all the other possible reasons for the CMB, it is assumed that it is due to the big bang.
What other possibilities are there for the CMBR? Do they match the predictions of the current Big bang model ?
@@tonyatkinson2210 Very good question. Without testing all other possible reasons and making this information public, we may never know. It would seem to me that using a heat detector(microwave) and taking a heat map of the sky would return something a little over 0 Kelvin. Especially since we can see many hot stars. I think it is grossly negligent to leap to one conclusion and disregard all other possibilities.
@@dennistucker1153 are you suggesting science is “keeping information from the public” about the origin of the universe ? Secondly , there’d are multiple predictions made by the current model - for instance the relative quantities of elements . Is There any competing model that does this ?
1:00 ... if there had been a big bang an explosion sometime early in the universe you ought to see uh the remnants of the radiation from that big bang and we do see that uh you can predict in fact that it would be cooler now because the universe has been expanding in the intervening time and we see the uniform background radiation now it's 3 degree above absolute zero very cold temperature we see it everywhere over the sky which is a uh evidence for an earlier uh fiery uh beginning to the universe. 1:33 so we really now have two totally independent sources of data one is this expansion of the universe (1920's discovery) you run that movie in reverse the other is the remnant radiation that since it's from everywhere had to be from everywhere and so that's the proof of the that there was at beginning you have two totally separate (in fact there are more you would predict when the temperature was really hot in the early universe you would form the elements light elements like hydrogen and helium and you can predict very accurately what the relative abundances of those elements would be it's exact when we go out and measure those abundances the fit uh precisely with what you wuld expect if there had been an early beginning in a big bang 【it's a joking story from the beginning of so called big bang. Actually the very early inflation is now fixed, being discribed as briefly, all cosmoses are simply running over back of indeterminate form, 0×P∞, and driven by a perpetual machine, God The Triune, from whom every quantum fluctuation pops up, Parity: {1, 1/P∞} || {0, P∞} . 】)
What caused the Big Bang?
Why has there to be a cause in the first place?
@@obiwanduglobi6359If there wasn't a cause then why did it happen?
@@ianwaltham1854 That's the same question just in other words. What I can say: Every thing we can observe in our universe has a physical cause. Ockham's Razor tells me that the most compelling theory is to expect a physical cause for the universe, too. No need for God, sorry.
My mom
That’s unknown but if you want to see some of the most promising ideas look up the Hartle-Hawking No Boundary Proposal, and the Hawking-Turok model. Even if those are correct though, it still won’t tell you why those theories are correct as against any others.
Day n+1 of trying to correct the modern interpretation of Penrose diagrams, black holes and relativity 😂
Was she in Lavern and Shirley ?
Just because OUR space-time began with our Big Bang, does not suggest there was no time or space before that. We have to stop looking at everything from our perspective at this current time. There may have not only have been other universes before ours, linearly... but many other space-times in other universes may exist right now, at the same time. We always speak like we are the fish in a fish-bowl. When we start expanding our thought, science will advance. Beginings and endings are concepts we use to describe what appears linear to us. Existence or conciousness may infact be timeless or what we call eternal, as in not limited or bound to time in the same way we think, it may not need a begining but always have existed as it may be the foundations of what everything else is built upon.
She answered in less than four minutes a question that has been around as long as conscious Man. That is Our Universe's age, it exists inside something else. I can't believe the big bang created Space as well as Time. That bang occurred somewhere and at a Time.
Then the JWST comes and ruin the party. 😁
You mean by showing us early galaxies, which had never been observed before, so we could update our models of their formation? That’s exactly what we were hoping for.
What you can predict is the local dynamic emergent entropy, not the "age" of the Universe. The Universe is infinite in its dynamic, and highly causal at any entropic realm, micro and macro. There's no begining and no end of the so-called "Universe".
The universe is like a ballon expanding. That's as far as the materialists got.
Yes, it began with God.
LOL good one.
Yeah but which one? I've always liked Thor who gets a lot more coverage in the media than Freyja!
OK then, how'd God begin??
@@leoborganelli When the first con man met the first fool.
@@tomjackson7755 Pure Gold! 😂
What if the universe contracts? 🥸🖖
At present, all of the evidence indicates that there doesn't seem to be any way for gravity to draw everything back together. Many scientists over the last 90 or so years have suggested a collapsing universe, usually with a Big Bounce that starts everything all over again. None of those theories has gained much attraction, but they still pop up occasionally. There might be a topological way for the universe to contract, but no scientist has actually proposed it.