Cosmic Background Radiation: Still Unassailable (a response)

[shernren]

Busterdog posted in Creationism:

Cosmic Background radiation seems to come from a certain direction in our narrow slice of sky. Allegedly, this allows the identification of a center of the universe and the "From whence we came" portion of the sky, from which everything exploded in a a big bang.

Please provide references for this. Scientists have never identified a point source for the Big Bang - in fact, even the concept of a "portion ... from which everything exploded" betrays a lack of understanding of the Big Bang.

In fact, CMB (cosmic microwave background) radiation has absolutely nothing to do with pinpointing a point of origin. Rather, it is a confirmation of the Big Bang because it was predicted by the Big Bang theory long before it was actually discovered. Wikipedia, as almost always, has good information about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation .

Setterfield's site is wrong in even more ways. For example:

These discoveries are fully in line with what is expected from the formation of galaxies by plasma filaments. This sort of structure can only be formed on the standard model by invoking the action of dark matter. Dark matter is needed in the standard model, but there is no real evidence for its existence aside from that need.
​

"That need" in the last sentence most plausibly refers to the large-scale structure alignment along the "axis of evil" mentioned in one of the news sources. In that case, Setterfield is utterly - and surprisingly! - wrong. Dark matter does not just explain the "axis of evil". Long before anything like that was observed, dark matter was postulated as an explanation for the distribution of radial velocities in several galaxies. That alone would justify its theoretical significance, unless of course any better explanations came along. However, direct observations of the CMB have shown that dark matter is indeed a significant portion of the universe's gravitational mass - and dark matter has been pretty much directly observed by gravitational lensing, particularly with the Bullet Cluster recently.

The Setterfield site is hardly a trustworthy source for any astronomical information ...

 

[theFijian]

No defence of Setterfield at all?

 

[shernren]

Facts tend to scare ill-formed theories and their theorists that way.

 

[philadiddle]

It seems to be a complete paradox to say there is a point in the universe that the universe came from. If all of existence expanded, it didn't expand into space, because there is no space outside of it. Therefore, there would be no point "in" the universe that the big bang originated, because the entire universe was involved in the beginning stages of the big bang.

Maybe an astrophysics pro will tell me I'm slightly wrong and correct me, and that's fine. Or maybe someone can explain it even better then me, that's cool too. I just wanted to throw that out there and see what is said.

 

[shernren]

Sure! It's a good question, and I hope I can provide a good answer. Ok, imagine this. Take a balloon, and draw a grid on it. You'll get a set of, say, 50 points. Mark any one of those points red. Is there any way to say that that point is the "center" of all the other points? Nopes - whatever you said about that point you could say about any other point. Now blow the balloon up. Imagine that as you do so, there is an intelligent ant (or Flatlander, to use the classic idea) on that red spot. What will that ant see? It will see all the other spots zooming away from it. Is that a function of where it's sitting? No - if it went to any other spot on the balloon, it would see all the other spots zooming away from that spot as well. It's not sitting at any "center" of anything. Well, now try to imagine that in three dimensions. If that makes your head hurt, take my word for it: it works just the same in three dimensions.

 

[BethelArsonist]

Uhm...
...I hate to interupt, but are you sure you are on the right website?

 

[shernren]

Why not?

 

[BethelArsonist]

Well, it's just that I get the impression you've been over here thinking, and I don't think they allow that here.

I mean, like, everybody here just says things they hear from other people (religious people) and they think they are things they think for themselves. But they don't know they are not the originators of their own thoughts.

I don't think that is allowed.

But it's okay. I won't tell anybody.

 

[theFijian]

Uh, ok.

 

[juvenissun]

Sure! It's a good question, and I hope I can provide a good answer. Ok, imagine this. Take a balloon, and draw a grid on it. You'll get a set of, say, 50 points. Mark any one of those points red. Is there any way to say that that point is the "center" of all the other points? Nopes - whatever you said about that point you could say about any other point. Now blow the balloon up. Imagine that as you do so, there is an intelligent ant (or Flatlander, to use the classic idea) on that red spot. What will that ant see? It will see all the other spots zooming away from it. Is that a function of where it's sitting? No - if it went to any other spot on the balloon, it would see all the other spots zooming away from that spot as well. It's not sitting at any "center" of anything. Well, now try to imagine that in three dimensions. If that makes your head hurt, take my word for it: it works just the same in three dimensions.

A balloon has a geometrical center before it expanded. At any moment of time, a center will exist no matter how much it expands and even there may be nothing sit at such a center. I still do not see what is wrong with the concept of a center in the expanding unverse. Or rather should we say that there has to be such a center.

Do we observe all stars/galaxies flying away from the earth at approximately the same speed, consider earth itself might also be a part in the expansion? If we do, the earth could be the center of the expanding universe at present time. Why not?

 

[busterdog]

A balloon has a geometrical center before it expanded. At any moment of time, a center will exist no matter how much it expands and even there may be nothing sit at such a center. I still do not see what is wrong with the concept of a center in the expanding unverse. Or rather should we say that there has to be such a center.

Do we observe all stars/galaxies flying away from the earth at approximately the same speed, consider earth itself might also be a part in the expansion? If we do, the earth could be the center of the expanding universe at present time. Why not?

It seems to be a red herring issue to try to make the case that other people are ignorant. Whether or not your can find an actual center, there are reams and reams of papers about a theoretical center for the big bang. Does anybody care about an actual "location" for the purposes of this discussion? I would like to think that there is more at stake here than quibbling about terms for the purpose of attack. But, so far I have been unsuccessful in finding anything to justify more than that suspicion.

 

[juvenissun]

It seems to be a red herring issue to try to make the case that other people are ignorant. Whether or not your can find an actual center, there are reams and reams of papers about a theoretical center for the big bang. Does anybody care about an actual "location" for the purposes of this discussion? I would like to think that there is more at stake here than quibbling about terms for the purpose of attack. But, so far I have been unsuccessful in finding anything to justify more than that suspicion.

If no body should care, then why are those papers there for?

 

[shernren]

A balloon has a geometrical center before it expanded. At any moment of time, a center will exist no matter how much it expands and even there may be nothing sit at such a center. I still do not see what is wrong with the concept of a center in the expanding unverse. Or rather should we say that there has to be such a center.

The surface of a balloon has no geometrical center. The balloon itself as a 3-D structure has a center, but on its surface in 2-D there is no privileged point.

Think of it this way. Suppose I have a rectangular sheet of rubber. I can easily find a "center" with the special property of being equidistant from all four corners. Now suppose I roll the sheet of rubber into a cylinder. Suddenly there are no "corners" to be equidistant from - I can still, however, draw a ring around the center of the cylinder and say that this ring is equidistant, now, to the edges of the cylinder. Now suppose I join the two edges of the cylinder - then I have a torus (nerd) or donut (Simpsons), and again we have another example of a surface that is finite but unbounded and edgeless. And again, this surface has no center.

Now, abstract from 2 dimensions to 3. If you can't do it in your head, trust me when I say that it's mathematically doable and that it's been mathematically done.

Do we observe all stars/galaxies flying away from the earth at approximately the same speed, consider earth itself might also be a part in the expansion? If we do, the earth could be the center of the expanding universe at present time. Why not?

So either:

1. There is a center to the expansion, or
2. There is no center to the expansion.

Now suppose there is a center to the expansion. Either Earth is at that center, or it isn't. If Earth is at the center of the expansion, then we should see the Milky Way galaxy being stretched out - the parts farther away from us should be receding faster than the parts closer to us. But we don't. On the other hand, if there is some center of expansion that is not near us, we should again see some kind of unevenness.

But we don't.

Therefore, it's logical to conclude that there is no center to the expansion, in the sense that you can't find a center for the surface of a balloon or a rubber donut.

 

[shernren]

It seems to be a red herring issue to try to make the case that other people are ignorant. Whether or not your can find an actual center, there are reams and reams of papers about a theoretical center for the big bang. Does anybody care about an actual "location" for the purposes of this discussion? I would like to think that there is more at stake here than quibbling about terms for the purpose of attack. But, so far I have been unsuccessful in finding anything to justify more than that suspicion.

How about:

These discoveries are fully in line with what is expected from the formation of galaxies by plasma filaments. This sort of structure can only be formed on the standard model by invoking the action of dark matter. Dark matter is needed in the standard model, but there is no real evidence for its existence aside from that need.
​

(emphasis added) combined with the simple fact that dark matter was postulated long before the "axis of evil" was even detected?

You seem to be unusually quiet against criticisms of Setterfield these days.

 

[OdwinOddball]

A balloon has a geometrical center before it expanded. At any moment of time, a center will exist no matter how much it expands and even there may be nothing sit at such a center. I still do not see what is wrong with the concept of a center in the expanding unverse. Or rather should we say that there has to be such a center.

Do we observe all stars/galaxies flying away from the earth at approximately the same speed, consider earth itself might also be a part in the expansion? If we do, the earth could be the center of the expanding universe at present time. Why not?

A balloon has a geometric center, yes, but this center is in another dimension than the actual surface. A balloons surface is considered as only 2 dimensional for the purposes of the analogy. A 2 dimensional being living on this surface would have no concept of the 3 dimensional center, and no way of ever detecting it. And on the 2 dimensional surface there is no center.

The mathematics of this situation work the same if we increase the dimensions by one, so that the surface is a 3 dimensional universe expanding in a 4th dimension. Any given point in the 3 dimensional universe is equidistant from the 4 dimensional center, and this 'center' is as equally unknowable to us as it is to the 2 dimensional beings on the balloons surface.

Being as the Earth is in the 3 dimensional surface, it is not, nor is it possible for it to be, at the 4 dimensional 'center' except when the universe is compressed into a singularity.

 

[gluadys]

A balloon has a geometrical center before it expanded. At any moment of time, a center will exist no matter how much it expands and even there may be nothing sit at such a center. I still do not see what is wrong with the concept of a center in the expanding unverse. Or rather should we say that there has to be such a center.

Not really. You have to have a set of boundaries to find a geometric centre. Where is the boundary on a balloon or any 3-dimensional spherical surface?

Take an orange. When you consider the whole sphere, you can define a centre of the orange near the core. But the universe is not like the whole orange. It is like the surface of the orange. (The inside is another dimension and we have no perception of dimensions other than the three spatial and one temporal dimension.) There is no boundary on the surface, and so no centre. If it were expanding like a balloon, any point on the surface would be the "centre" from the perspective of an observer located there.

Do we observe all stars/galaxies flying away from the earth at approximately the same speed, consider earth itself might also be a part in the expansion? If we do, the earth could be the center of the expanding universe at present time. Why not?

No, the farther away they are, the faster they appear to be receding. Again, this would be true no matter what galaxy an observer is in. Every observer would see themselves as the "centre" of the expansion.

 

[juvenissun]

Now suppose I join the two edges of the cylinder - then I have a torus (nerd) or donut (Simpsons), and again we have another example of a surface that is finite but unbounded and edgeless. And again, this surface has no center.

Therefore, it's logical to conclude that there is no center to the expansion, in the sense that you can't find a center for the surface of a balloon or a rubber donut.

OK. Also thanks to Glaudys and OddwinOddball. I see what you are talking about. I did not know our universe is in that shape. It is strange. I need to go back and read more.

A quick one: If everything is flying apart, then why couldn't me measure the expansion of the Milky Way? Is the change (red shift?) too small to be measured accurately? Or the Milky Way is not expanding at this time?

 

[gluadys]

A quick one: If everything is flying apart, then why couldn't me measure the expansion of the Milky Way? Is the change (red shift?) too small to be measured accurately? Or the Milky Way is not expanding at this time?

Within the galaxy, gravity is holding it together, so the galaxy itself is not being stretched out.

It is the universe as a whole that is expanding, not the elements in the universe. It is the galaxies that are moving apart as the universe expands.

Remember, the Milky Way is only one of trillions of galaxies in the universe. The galaxies themselves are not getting bigger, but the space they have to move around in is.

 

[busterdog]

If no body should care, then why are those papers there for?

You have to be in the club to use them, otherwise, one finds a way to suggest that your use of them is inappropriate. As a YEC, I am not in the club, and so it seems fair to assume the worst about what I say. The club is for evolutionists.

 

[busterdog]

OK. Also thanks to Glaudys and OddwinOddball. I see what you are talking about. I did not know our universe is in that shape. It is strange. I need to go back and read more.

A quick one: If everything is flying apart, then why couldn't me measure the expansion of the Milky Way? Is the change (red shift?) too small to be measured accurately? Or the Milky Way is not expanding at this time?

Well, there insufficient gravity demonstrated to keep it together. Thus, the convenient inference of dark matter and other such things. It should fly apart, or rather, an explosion (Big Bang) and accretion/nebulae should never had lead to its creation. With the galaxy, there are groupings that gravity cannot explain.

The first type of star cluster is the open cluster. Open clusters have hundreds or even thousands of stars, and, as evidenced by their main sequence turnoff magnitude, they are all fairly young. This makes sense. When stars are born, they each some have random motion of their own, and, over time, they will wander away from the stellar nursery. Open clusters cannot be more than a couple of billion years old; since the number of stars in the clusters is relatively small, there is insufficient gravity to hold the cluster together.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=galaxy+milky+way+insufficient+gravity&btnG=Google+Search