10 Flaws with the Big Bang

[Locrian]

I wasn't quoting from the chief's "list", but the elaboration for #1 on the list, as I recall, though I haven't even bothered to doublecheck if I misread it.

Well you should read it - your posts make it clear you haven't read what he wrote, or you wouldnt have made the heinous mistake of mixing up the static universe hypothesis with static electric fields.

You do this man a disservice by misquoting him. You should have him post here, instead of butchering his ideas due to your lack of knowledge.

 

[Illuminatus]

Seeing is believing, but Hubble is being shut down before the answer is clear.

Hubble is not being shut down. Anyone who has read a newspaper in the past 6 months knows this.

 

[michabo]

I wasn't quoting from the chief's "list", but the elaboration for #1 on the list, as I recall, though I haven't even bothered to doublecheck if I misread it.

You did. And while it's to your credit that you admit this, it is to your considerable discredit that you launch into attacks without bothering to check your sources.

jmccanneyscience.com is where I actually learned of the discovery of a static electrical field to the universe incorporating and assisting stars in their process.

One thing at a time.

Judging by how quickly you run from defending your ex-chief, does this mean that you don't agree with his points after all?

 

[John16:2]

You did. And while it's to your credit that you admit this, it is to your considerable discredit that you launch into attacks without bothering to check your sources.

One thing at a time.

Judging by how quickly you run from defending your ex-chief, does this mean that you don't agree with his points after all?

Let me know if I get anything wrong in your fairytale version of creation. Once upon a lack of time/space/matter there was a big bang that uniformly spewed galaxies across infinity from a single point without a center, from nothing (why?), and when did this happen again? Will it end? I need to know the mainstream "party line" so I don't sound crazy as the big bang hypothesis to the "wise ones" anymore. Ha! Back to believing fairytales only to get along maybe! What if another big bang happens now? Or is that against your rules somehow?

 

[Deamiter]

Hmm... The 'big bang' WAS indeed an "explosion" without a centre. Unlike a conventional explosion (which is only related as an illustration that lay-people can easily understand) it wasn't actually an explosion in the usual sense of the word. It was a sudden expansion of all of space.

Try to look at it with an open mind for a second. I'm not entirely sure I'm that great at explaining this sort of thing. Try thinking about it with an open mind and try to envision what it WOULD look like to have an infinite space suddenly expand from a point to the early universe.

Scientists weren't in agreement on whether the universe is infinite or not last time I checked (I'm specializing in lasers and acoustics and astronomy is only a hobby, not something I read all the journals on) but the big bang theory is consistant with both. If the universe were infinite, imagine all that infinite area compressed into a point, and then 'allowed' to expand suddenly. There is no centre as nothing exploded within the universe (even a finite universe would have no observable centre created by the event). I just find it easier to comprehend when I assume an infinite universe as such a space, by definition, can have no centre, and yet an infinite universe has ALWAYS been consistent with the big bang theory.

Of course, nobody knows what caused the big bang, but as the universe is still expanding (and, as this last year has shown, it's actually accelerating) it's difficult to claim that this big bang model has no merit.

Note: this has never claimed to have anything to do with what caused the big bang. Science deals with observations and predictions. When variations in the cosmic background radiation were predicted (according to the big bang theory) many scientists thought it would be the end of the big bang ideas as they hadn't yet found variations. A few years later, they sent a telescope into space sensitive enought to see the variations and it's since been confirmed many times over. Many people (generally Christians) here think God did it, others (*cough* atheists *cough*) don't have a problem with the idea that it happened spontaniously. Neither invalidates the big bang theory which models our universe's timeline, not the creation of our universe.

 

[John16:2]

Hmm... The 'big bang' WAS indeed an "explosion" without a centre. Unlike a conventional explosion (which is only related as an illustration that lay-people can easily understand) it wasn't actually an explosion in the usual sense of the word. It was a sudden expansion of all of space.

Try to look at it with an open mind for a second. I'm not entirely sure I'm that great at explaining this sort of thing. Try thinking about it with an open mind and try to envision what it WOULD look like to have an infinite space suddenly expand from a point to the early universe.

Scientists weren't in agreement on whether the universe is infinite or not last time I checked (I'm specializing in lasers and acoustics and astronomy is only a hobby, not something I read all the journals on) but the big bang theory is consistant with both. If the universe were infinite, imagine all that infinite area compressed into a point, and then 'allowed' to expand suddenly. There is no centre as nothing exploded within the universe (even a finite universe would have no observable centre created by the event). I just find it easier to comprehend when I assume an infinite universe as such a space, by definition, can have no centre, and yet an infinite universe has ALWAYS been consistent with the big bang theory.

Of course, nobody knows what caused the big bang, but as the universe is still expanding (and, as this last year has shown, it's actually accelerating) it's difficult to claim that this big bang model has no merit.

Note: this has never claimed to have anything to do with what caused the big bang. Science deals with observations and predictions. When variations in the cosmic background radiation were predicted (according to the big bang theory) many scientists thought it would be the end of the big bang ideas as they hadn't yet found variations. A few years later, they sent a telescope into space sensitive enought to see the variations and it's since been confirmed many times over. Many people (generally Christians) here think God did it, others (*cough* atheists *cough*) don't have a problem with the idea that it happened spontaniously. Neither invalidates the big bang theory which models our universe's timeline, not the creation of our universe.

This all leads me to a basic question; How did all that matter come from nothing into nothing and become something? WHY? What happened before the bang in nothingness?

 

[Illuminatus]

Let me know if I get anything wrong in your fairytale version of creation. Once upon a lack of time/space/matter there was a big bang that uniformly spewed galaxies across infinity from a single point without a center, from nothing (why?), and when did this happen again? Will it end? I need to know the mainstream "party line" so I don't sound crazy as the big bang hypothesis to the "wise ones" anymore. Ha! Back to believing fairytales only to get along maybe! What if another big bang happens now? Or is that against your rules somehow?

As I've said before, go to Google or Space.com and look up Ekyprotic theory. It's a perfectly reasonable explanation for the Big Bang, and gathering a lot of momentum in the scientific community.

 

[Locrian]

I need to know the mainstream "party line" so I don't sound crazy as the big bang hypothesis to the "wise ones" anymore.

Well you should at least be familiar with an argument you are deriding. At least in the most basic ways. The big bang theory certainly has important problems that need to be solved. However, you don't seem aware of them, or at least unable to present them. And how could you, if you don't know even the most basic tennants of the theory?

Are you sure you should be making this case when you are clearly misrepresenting Flandern? Flandern would never confuse the static universe and static electric fields. Aren't you doing him a disservice by coming here and getting his views wrong in front of many people?

 

[NumberTenOx]

I just have to post this because I think it's so cool. It's a little complicated so bear with me.

The theory of the Big Bang predicts that about 300,000 years after the BB, matter cooled to the point that it condensed into atoms of hydrogen, and became transparent to light. Before that time, the free electrons and protons would absorb the light and reemit it, after that time the light just sailed through the hydrogen atoms. (This time is the origin of the microwave background radiation.)

Except that - at a particular wavelength - hydrogen atoms absorb light (that wavelength causes the electron to jump to a higher energy level, later dropping back and reemitting a photon of light).

About a billion years later - so the theory goes - there was enough new light generated by stars and quasars to "re-ionize" the hydrogen atoms. So that paticular wavelength of light was no longer absorbed. (The universe stayed "transparent", however, because the density of hydrogen was now so low, largely having clumped into stars and also because the universe was so much larger).

So for 35 years, astronomers looked for a quasar that had part of it's spectrum missing (red shifted), absorbed by whole hydrogen atoms before the "re-ionization". Guess what, in 2001 they found one, thanks to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Prediction, discovery, that's the way science works. I don't know how someone would explain this result with a static-universe model.

 

[michabo]

Once upon a lack of time/space/matter
We have no knowledge about what might have existed before the big bang, so we would be foolish to make any statements about this, one way or the other.

there was a big bang that uniformly
The BB wasn't wholy uniform. There were small-scale differences which were magnified during the early inflationary phase.

spewed galaxies
Galaxies happened much, much latter. The BB resulted in many particle-antiparticle pairs which annihilated in a bath of radiation. In some cases, only a particle was formed, balanced out by negative energy in the expanding universe's gravitational field (see CPT Symmetry).

across infinity
What is infinity in the context where the universe is expanding? We may travel without reaching an end, but the universe itself has a finite (if large and expanding) volume.

from a single point
No single point.

without a center
Does the surface of a balloon have a centre? No. Why should the universe?

from nothing (why?)
We don't know what it came from, so don't know if it was nothing or not. As for "why", possibly for the same reason VPs appear out of "nothing".

and when did this happen again?
Last time I checked, about 14 billion years ago. There are some error bars around any figure, but these are shrinking.

Will it end?
Too early to say.

I need to know the mainstream "party line" so I don't sound crazy as the big bang hypothesis to the "wise ones" anymore.
Many people have posted excellent reasons to think the BB exists. Another big one is the simple observation that, if everything is moving apart from each other, then at one point they must have been much closer. When we turn the clock backwards, it turns out it is impossible to avoid a BB. There is no description of the universe which is consistent with GR which does not start with a BB.

What if another big bang happens now? Or is that against your rules somehow?
What do you mean by "now"? Time is based on our own universe.

How would we know if another BB has happened or not?

 

[Andy Broadley]

Sorry guys, gonna have to leave you all to argue this one. It's all got a bit complex and deep for me.

 

[John16:2]

Once upon a lack of time/space/matter
We have no knowledge about what might have existed before the big bang, so we would be foolish to make any statements about this, one way or the other.

there was a big bang that uniformly
The BB wasn't wholy uniform. There were small-scale differences which were magnified during the early inflationary phase.

spewed galaxies
Galaxies happened much, much latter. The BB resulted in many particle-antiparticle pairs which annihilated in a bath of radiation. In some cases, only a particle was formed, balanced out by negative energy in the expanding universe's gravitational field (see CPT Symmetry).

across infinity
What is infinity in the context where the universe is expanding? We may travel without reaching an end, but the universe itself has a finite (if large and expanding) volume.

from a single point
No single point.

without a center
Does the surface of a balloon have a centre? No. Why should the universe?

from nothing (why?)
We don't know what it came from, so don't know if it was nothing or not. As for "why", possibly for the same reason VPs appear out of "nothing".

and when did this happen again?
Last time I checked, about 14 billion years ago. There are some error bars around any figure, but these are shrinking.

Will it end?
Too early to say.

I need to know the mainstream "party line" so I don't sound crazy as the big bang hypothesis to the "wise ones" anymore.
Many people have posted excellent reasons to think the BB exists. Another big one is the simple observation that, if everything is moving apart from each other, then at one point they must have been much closer. When we turn the clock backwards, it turns out it is impossible to avoid a BB. There is no description of the universe which is consistent with GR which does not start with a BB.

What if another big bang happens now? Or is that against your rules somehow?
What do you mean by "now"? Time is based on our own universe.

How would we know if another BB has happened or not?

In order for all the matter to blow out across infinity, there had to already be matter, in which case the big bang was not the beginning of matter, but the next step of matter. Science expects us to believe in miracles also. it seems.

 

[michabo]

In order for all the matter to blow out across infinity, there had to already be matter, in which case the big bang was not the beginning of matter, but the next step of matter. Science expects us to believe in miracles also. it seems.

No, you just don't understand the BB. Maybe you should learn before talking about what it 'expects'.

 

[NumberTenOx]

In order for all the matter to blow out across infinity, there had to already be matter.

Actually, the theory of "inflation" suggests a mechanism where matter/energy and gravitational energy are essentially the opposite of each other, so that they were created together - the ultimate free lunch. One way to think about this is that moving an object from the surface of the earth into space takes energy, so that you can think of it's gravitational potential energy as being negative. Positive matter/energy + negative gravitational energy = 0.

Of course, there still needs to be something which starts the process of inflation, but that could be a very small thing.

See The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins by Alan Guth. Awesome book.

Also, from the Metaresearch website:

Despite the widespread acceptance of the big bang theory as a working model for interpreting new findings, not a single important prediction of the theory has yet been confirmed

Please see my previous post.

 

[John16:2]

Once upon a lack of time/space/matter
We have no knowledge about what might have existed before the big bang, so we would be foolish to make any statements about this, one way or the other.

there was a big bang that uniformly
The BB wasn't wholy uniform. There were small-scale differences which were magnified during the early inflationary phase.

spewed galaxies
Galaxies happened much, much latter. The BB resulted in many particle-antiparticle pairs which annihilated in a bath of radiation. In some cases, only a particle was formed, balanced out by negative energy in the expanding universe's gravitational field (see CPT Symmetry).

across infinity
What is infinity in the context where the universe is expanding? We may travel without reaching an end, but the universe itself has a finite (if large and expanding) volume.

from a single point
No single point.

without a center
Does the surface of a balloon have a centre? No. Why should the universe?

from nothing (why?)
We don't know what it came from, so don't know if it was nothing or not. As for "why", possibly for the same reason VPs appear out of "nothing".

and when did this happen again?
Last time I checked, about 14 billion years ago. There are some error bars around any figure, but these are shrinking.

Will it end?
Too early to say.

I need to know the mainstream "party line" so I don't sound crazy as the big bang hypothesis to the "wise ones" anymore.
Many people have posted excellent reasons to think the BB exists. Another big one is the simple observation that, if everything is moving apart from each other, then at one point they must have been much closer. When we turn the clock backwards, it turns out it is impossible to avoid a BB. There is no description of the universe which is consistent with GR which does not start with a BB.

What if another big bang happens now? Or is that against your rules somehow?
What do you mean by "now"? Time is based on our own universe.

How would we know if another BB has happened or not?

About the "14 billion years age,(give or take)", Expansion of the universe, based on old red shift interpretations, supposedly negates the extra billion years Hubble is now seeing, but how much farther is it possible for Hubble to see into the past without finding your Bang? The math adds up less and less with every billion years into the past Hubble can view without finding the Bang. The Bang is near to being a bust now, if not already. But we can just say it's a math error in your perfect explanation as to how everything came from nothing.

 

[NumberTenOx]

From March of 2004: Newfound Galaxy Shatters Distance Record:

Astronomers say they've peered deeper into the cosmos than ever before, recording light that left a galaxy when the universe was just 3 percent its current age.

The discovery represents an important and challenging leap in time and space beyond the previous record holder and points to more record-setters to come. The galaxy is 13.23 billion light-years away, seen when the universe was 470 million years old.

Sounds OK to me? Did I miss Hubble finding one futher away?

 

[Illuminatus]

Even if Hubble did find one farther away, it wouldn't matter. Let's say you're in a train, and you leave going one way, while another train leaves going the opposite way. If you travel 100km, and the other train travels 100km, you're now 200km apart. Has the other train travelled over 100km? No. Yet you're more than 100km apart. They'll have to discover a galaxy or object that's twice the age of the universe in lightyears away before this argument would hold water.

 

[NumberTenOx]

Hmm, no, I don't think so. Let's say you're right, and we see an object that is further away than twice the age of the universe. This means that the light from that object has been traveling towards us for twice the age of the universe, I'm sure you can spot the problem with that. I think the furthest we should be able to see is the distance that light can travel in the age of the universe, or a bit less than 14 billion light-years.

 

[Illuminatus]

Yeah, you know what? I just noticed that about 10 minutes after writing that. I'll leave the post there as a testament to the fact that one should not write about astronomy right after one wakes up.

 

[funyun]

In order for all the matter to blow out across infinity

The matter didn't blow out. The actual dimensions that contained it expanded.

there had to already be matter

There was no "already".