lol, i wasnt saying it is a mean/angry tone. And I agreed with him about what he said, it doesnt fully fit together.  

But I think theres enough info to start making a current model with the knowledge and work back with what we discover and theories. As we discover things we can exchange out theories with real facts. It would be an ever evolving task just like the protein folding@home.  

Actually, I thought the issue behind the difficulty in coming up with a unified theory was the fact that the rules that govern the main forces do not hold up when applied to another force. For example, the laws of gravity completely fall apart when applied to quantum mechanics; likewise, there are things in quantum mechanics that throw our conventional knowledge about gravity right out the window. Therefore, it's really hard, if not downright impossible, to come up with a unified theory that at least holds water at this point.

(Caveat: Last time I studied any theoretical physics was about a decade ago, so there may have been new findings - if that's the case, please disregard my post, but do share the new advances - this is fascinating stuff!)

Except we can't work back.  Scientists have been trying forever, and they get so far... and then... they have no clue. 

It's pretty much. 

Universe as it is now

???

Big Bang.

To work out the middle, we'd need to have a much better understand of our current universe, and a much better understanding of the big bang.  At the very least to work out the middle we'd need to know either everything that encompasses the universe so we know the totality of universe. (Let alone have proper equation numbers on things like black holes so we'd know what went in... what went out, where that stuff went etc.).

OR we'd need to know the totality of the big bang so that we could know the results of the universe.  Even then it gurantees nothing.

Sure someone could just make up a model that "works" with a super computer... but you can also do that with a graphics program and random guessing.  It'd be just as right.

That's not even considering the other problems.  Such things are still far beyond us.  We just don't have a firm enough understand of the math of the universe to put it into code in my opinion.

In my opinion, doing what you would want to do would be like asking someone with rudimentry 4th grade math skills to solve one of those almost impossible to solve questions like one of Hilbert's problems that have been solved.

Even if you gave the 4th grader the correct answer, he wouldn't be able to work his way through it because he just doesn't grasp or even understand the concepts needed to "work through" the problem. 

Good job PS3 fans! And great thing to do Sony, kudos to you.

I too have been out of date with this stuff for longer than I'd like to be, but last I knew computer models have already been run on the big bang. The results point to a problem in the earliest moments a sort of "Singularity" as it has been called by some. A point at which it seems laws that are required to carry out the process should be breaking down and working against the whole process. The more recent attempts to explain this come in the form of M-Theory which is essentially the unification of the different superstring theories. If I remember correctly the breakthrough that explains the singularity has to do with the dualities of the various string theories.

Before I get into this I want to say I am NOT an expert, I am piecing this together from my admitedly limited knowledge.

Essentially for a long time their were 5 superstring theories. Basically using practically identical rules one theory would predict one thing to happen and the other theory would predict the exact opposite to happen. They eventually realised that there is a point where things "switch" and that really they were using the same theory but working from opposite sides of the switch over.

Now a quick side point here is to understand that the universe started out as infinitely small space and when they say that "space expanded" they don't mean there was a huge big emptiness that things moved into they literally mean that space expanded. In fact technically things aren't moving apart, in reality the space between everything is expanding into larger space. The space between the matter that makes up the sun is held together by gravity and thus it doesn't fly apart. And the same is true of the earth and its relative distance to the sun and in fact our solar system and its relative distance to the center of our cluster and our clusters distance to the center of our galaxy. The spacial expansion that isn't being counteracted by gravity is the space between galaxies. But the key to get here is that space literally expands, and its not expanding into anything its just expanding.

Ok with that knowledge I will use the best example I have heard to explain this "switch over" point. Imagine if you will space as a cylinder with a small circumference. This represents space in the earliest moments of the big bang. It is important to understand that the strings vibrate and the speed at which they vibrate determines what kind of elementary particle we are dealing with. Now if we imagine the string here as going around the circumference of the cylinder and we understand that it can either turn as a whole around the cylinder or it can wind around the cylinder one or more times by twisting. Now the energy required to wind around the cylinder is proportional to the circumference of the cylinder because the string must stretch to do so. Where as the energy required to move around the cylinder is inversely proportional to the circumference of the cylinder because larger cylinders allow for larger wavelengths and thus smaller frequencies(used to say shorter wavelengths) which requires less energy than short wavelengths. So as space expands and thus the cylinder gets larger the roles of each action swap and the results of a smaller cylinder are now much different and in many ways opposite of those produced by a larger cylinder.

So in effect forces that we previously thought would work against the big bang "process" weren't working against it but working with it. And once we cross the point where things agree with our current understandings we are at a point where we have already reconciled the major flaws with the big bang.

There are still problems with the theory and its far from complete or even gospel but it is progressing.

PS - if that made no sense its probably my fault, this stuff is hard enough to understand for yourself but its insanely difficult to explain properly.

Edit: I bolded the change I made to help people who had already read this spot it.  I typo'd...my bad.

Actually a really easy way to say what I just did is this....

Before July 4th it costs $500 for a hot dog and $1 for a PS3. After July 4th it costs $1 for a hotdog and $500 for a PS3. Now if you don't know that there was a cost switch over you will be completely confused by someone talking about the purchase of those items before July 4th.

This is sort of similar to how scientists couldn't understand what the evidence was telling them when looking at the earliest portions of the big bang models.

In a way the laws of physics are dependent on the properties of the space they are being affected on. And essentially, using the analogy, the costs of the hotdog and PS3 determine the properties of the space....which as I said determine the laws of physics for that space.

So understanding the price of the hotdog and PS3 at the time of the events you are trying to understand is fundamental to understanding how and why things happened.  

PS - If that made even less sense then I think I am just done trying lol, some people aren't meant to be teachers =P

Edit: edited to help clarify some

PS - If this made no sense someone at least say so, and I would really appreciate if you could specify which part ..even if its "all of it".  The reason I ask is because I want to review it to see if 1) I can make it more clear and 2) I didn't get something wrong.