Now, you have to admit that this is a question that will twist the bawain just a bit. Why? because if you subscribe to either Newtonian or Eisensteinian physics - your going to look at the question differently and therefore your answer is going to vary accordingly. The question at hand is one that was posited on Slashdot
The question at hand was "How Big Was the Universe When it Was First Born?" You would think "simple enough" at first blush, that was until it was time to actually answer. My very first inclination was to answer like a good quantum particle man and answer "at the time of the big bang, the
structure that would come to be the universe was an infinitely small potential but still, calling it potential is really unfair. Much as calling a Nuclear reaction, "potential" after the first control rod has been raised. Nothing has happened yet, but the release of a great amount of power is all but a given.
So considering how everything tends to be relative, we know how far or the distance covered by a contemporary light year, but what of pre-big bang?
Why? Well according to the article - traveling back from the big bang to the very end of inflation and the start of the hot, dense state that scientists identify with as pre-Big Bang, and ask how big would it be? (I really have to ask here if relativity can be brought into play. If we are asked about a definitive state, isn't that state relative?) Depending on the particulars of when inflation came to an end, the answer is somewhere between the size of a soccer ball and the size of a city block, no smaller and no larger.
But that would almost have to be relative to where you are making the observations and could you even make an observation outside?
my bwain hurtz :(
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