Has the Big Bang Theory Been Debunked?

[Bob8102]

The following appeared on MSN just this morning:

The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?

To note, I already just posted something related recently ("How Christians Should Respond to New Space Images"). I got into a somewhat prolonged argument with one Christian who believes in the Big Bang. I don't want to restart that argument, and am therefore just posting this and signing off, once again. I post this FYI.

 

[Sabertooth]

Debunked...?
(Wouldn't it be "defused?" )

 

[Job 33:6]

The following appeared on MSN just this morning:

The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?

To note, I already just posted something related recently ("How Christians Should Respond to New Space Images"). I got into a somewhat prolonged argument with one Christian who believes in the Big Bang. I don't want to restart that argument, and am therefore just posting this and signing off, once again. I post this FYI.

It's probably too early to know what ways James Webb observations may impact the theory. It'll probably be a few years before people develop means of testing ideas, write up articles, go through peer review etc. I would guess. Personally, I don't think I would be too surprised if we saw some major developments to the theory within our lifetime, just with the way astronomy has been accelerating the past couple decades. Though I imagine it's more likely that it would be updated than it is likely that it would be debunked. Information added into it, producing something more informed and detailed than the prior iteration. As opposed to it getting scrapped and replaced by something entirely different.

 

[rockytopva]

The big bang theory explained in one sentence...

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. - Genesis 1:3

 

[renniks]

It's probably too early to know what ways James Webb observations may impact the theory. It'll probably be a few years before people develop means of testing ideas, write up articles, go through peer review etc. I would guess. Personally, I don't think I would be too surprised if we saw some major developments to the theory within our lifetime, just with the way astronomy has been accelerating the past couple decades. Though I imagine it's more likely that it would be updated than it is likely that it would be debunked. Information added into it, producing something more informed and detailed than the prior iteration. As opposed to it getting scrapped and replaced by something entirely different.

So as usual, we don't actually know anything.

 

[Job 33:6]

The big bang theory explained in one sentence...

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. - Genesis 1:3

Genesis does not describe the big bang, no more does Genesis describe climatology when speaking of the solid dome raqia.

 

[rockytopva]

If E = mc2 then we can divide and conclude that...

Mass (m) = Energy (E/c2) mass can turn to plasma

Energy (E/c2) = Mass (m) plasma can reform to mass

However to God's liking... No man being his counsellor. Even so... How would we advise on how to make creation?

 

[expos4ever]

So as usual, we don't actually know anything.

This is, of course, profoundly misleading. We know a ton of stuff about the natural world. And thank God we do, as such knowledge has generally dramatically improved the human condition.

 

[DamianWarS]

The following appeared on MSN just this morning:

The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?

To note, I already just posted something related recently ("How Christians Should Respond to New Space Images"). I got into a somewhat prolonged argument with one Christian who believes in the Big Bang. I don't want to restart that argument, and am therefore just posting this and signing off, once again. I post this FYI.

The big bang should create an equal amount of matter and anti-matter but what is actually the case is there is a lot more matter. So there is a asymmetry of matter and anti-matter that is in conflict with the big bang theory. In order for this to happen outside intervention is required and scientist agree on this. Their conclusions are not "God did it" which is a counter science conclusion (since it can't be proven) but it more that an unknown entity would have influence over the particles to create the imbalance we see today. It's the big bang flung out an inumerable about of coins spinning in the air where heads is matter and tails is anti-matter, when they landed there should be a 50/50 split with heads and tails but for some reason most of the time the coin favoured heads so something influenced that imbalance. We need the imbalance too, if matter and anti-matter were 50/50 we would all be annihilated, instead matter over powers anti-matter and keeps us and our world (made of matter) existing. (Sounds like a light vs darkness metaphor) I'm afriad this doesn't help young earthers, this or the findings of the Webb telescope, but it does point to a force outside and preexisting to the big bang that science admits to but can't explain.

 

[Halbhh]

The following appeared on MSN just this morning:

The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?

To note, I already just posted something related recently ("How Christians Should Respond to New Space Images"). I got into a somewhat prolonged argument with one Christian who believes in the Big Bang. I don't want to restart that argument, and am therefore just posting this and signing off, once again. I post this FYI.

How the article is mistaken:
The linked article suggests (mistakenly) that since we are now seeing galaxies already formed earlier than we previously expected (by our previous modeling before these recent new observations), that this also means additionally that the sudden appearance of the Universe -- which we call the 'Big Bang' -- didn't happen (!?....).

The 'Big Bang' is merely the idea supported by observation (such as by the high level of uniformity the cosmic background radiation) that the Universe came into being suddenly, and appears to have almost instantaneously became significantly large. Faster than any explosion we know of here on Earth actually.

Basically that the Universe appeared suddenly. (which is also interestingly like a believer in God would believe -- the sudden creation of the Universe)

That galaxies appeared sooner than many astronomers thought a few years ago is just fun and exciting, but it's not a refuting of the 'big bang' concept itself... (more in another post).

 

[Halbhh]

The following appeared on MSN just this morning:

The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?

To note, I already just posted something related recently ("How Christians Should Respond to New Space Images"). I got into a somewhat prolonged argument with one Christian who believes in the Big Bang. I don't want to restart that argument, and am therefore just posting this and signing off, once again. I post this FYI.

Just an fyi, this is a false sentence in the linked article:

False sentence in the article --> "But the new galaxies found are said to be older than when the Big Bang was said to have initially occurred. " (that's false)

No, the galaxies found were surprisingly earlier in the Universe than expected, but not before the big bang is thought to have occurred. Instead, about 200-300 million years after, by red shift. (which very oddly the article put as 'red shirt'!??)

Having pointed out the article is just wrong...

We are seeing (wonderfully) unexpected early galaxies which already have disproven the previous idea of when such large (large enough to see at this distance) galaxies first formed!
:=)

So, it's not the 'big bang' which is thrown in the trash, but our previous models about when galaxies first formed that are trashed.

 

[Halbhh]

The following appeared on MSN just this morning:

The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?

To note, I already just posted something related recently ("How Christians Should Respond to New Space Images"). I got into a somewhat prolonged argument with one Christian who believes in the Big Bang. I don't want to restart that argument, and am therefore just posting this and signing off, once again. I post this FYI.

So, if you can ignore the headline (which is misleading, just wrong), but read the section reporting quotes of astronomers in the source article linked in this news summary you have (it also has that same misleading headline some editor decided to tack onto the article....), then you get real information.

So, just toss that headline title into the trash, but read this part (below) of source article:

"As Webb looks out into the universe, it is looking back in time. When you’re looking at the most distant galaxies, you’re seeing light that has spent billions of years traveling to us. Scientists believe that some of the galaxies Webb has photographed are from 300 to 400 million years after the beginning of the universe. This is very early; scientists believe the first stars formed 250 million years into the universe’s existence. Webb is already giving us our best-ever look at the universe’s ancient history.

Alexandra Witze wrote in Nature, “The telescope’s astonishingly sharp pictures have shattered astronomers’ preconceptions about the early universe.”

The first problem is that it’s much easier to find these ancient galaxies than experts thought it would be. Pre-print papers all express surprise at how easy it was to find bright, ancient galaxies. “What is most remarkable of this first search is that we have found two bright … sources, one at … well beyond the expectations” based on previous models, wrote a team led by Marco Castellano, of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome.

The discovery of an ancient “unexpectedly luminous galaxy may challenge our current understanding of early galaxy build-up,” wrote a team led by P. A. Oesch in The Astrophysical Journal.

Rohan Naidu, from the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and colleagues found one bright galaxy easily. Current theories say they should have to search 10 to 100 times more of the sky before finding it.

Steven Finkelstein et al said their discovery of a particularly distant galaxy hinted at “significant differences between the physical assumptions in these models and the real early universe.”

“Should follow-up spectroscopy validate this redshift, we will learn that our universe was already aglow with fairly massive galaxies less than 300 [million years] after the big bang,” they wrote.

(That's about the only useful part of the article imo)
Has the James Webb Telescope Already Exploded the Big-Bang Theory?

Ergo, this doesn't mean a 'big bang' like sudden appearance of the Universe didn't happen, but instead a very different thing: astrophysicists don't yet have a good grasp of how the first galaxies formed...

And that's quite significant, and exciting, and what I was expecting actually from recent clues in recent years -- that galaxies might have formed much earlier than most astronomers thought....

It's been an exciting last few weeks/months for this very reason. I've been delighted frankly, and it's a fun time to be seeing this revolutionary moment happen right now.

 

[renniks]

This is, of course, profoundly misleading. We know a ton of stuff about the natural world. And thank God we do, as such knowledge has generally dramatically improved the human condition.

But we don't know what we thought we knew so everything else is questionable too.

 

[Halbhh]

But we don't know what we thought we knew so everything else is questionable too.

Yes.

Always the case. 10 years ago, 20, 50, etc...

Science is only the effort to understand Nature. It's always partly wrong and incomplete.

 

[samiam]

The issue may be something as simple as a calibration error because NASA has not been able to fully calibrate the telescope yet: Distant Galaxies Spotted by James Webb May Not Be So Distant Due to Errors

Personally, I have no issue with Big Bang cosmology being falsified or drastically revised in light of the James Webb observations. We humans know only a little, and there are significant limits to human knowledge.

 

[Halbhh]

The heavens -- the Universe -- is so vast and wonderous. So vast it breaks us out of our trivial everyday thoughts...helps us see how small our preoccupations are that we waste our time on -- that real wonder at the vastness of creation helps people remember to seek God.

If we tried to represent that the cosmos was smaller, like only some modest distance just past Pluto a ways, or only even if only 10,000 light years wide... -- to me that would be like trying to cancel part of the wonder of creation God has made.

Instead of those small creations, God has wrought something truly mind opening -- to help us. To help us seek Him.

When we hear anyone (a preacher, etc.) trying to make creation more limited, we should all remember that God isn't limited by mere time or mere space or mere distance. Those are only Nature.

He can go through a billions years like you or I could walk from one room into another in our house. Or even less effort than that. Time doesn't control Him. It's only something He made.

 

[The Barbarian]

This is, of course, profoundly misleading. We know a ton of stuff about the natural world. And thank God we do, as such knowledge has generally dramatically improved the human condition.

Yes, we know a great deal about the universe. The thing is, the more we know, the more we know we don't know. Think of knowledge as an expanding bubble. The surface of the bubble is the border between knowledge and ignorance. The known is inside the bubble and the unknown is just outside that border. As the bubble gets bigger, the more stuff we know we don't know.

 

[FaithT]

Yes, we know a great deal about the universe. The thing is, the more we know, the more we know we don't know. Think of knowledge as an expanding bubble. The surface of the bubble is the border between knowledge and ignorance. The known is inside the bubble and the unknown is just outside that border. As the bubble gets bigger, the more stuff we know we don't know.

True.

 

[sfs]

The big bang should create an equal amount of matter and anti-matter but what is actually the case is there is a lot more matter. So there is a asymmetry of matter and anti-matter that is in conflict with the big bang theory. In order for this to happen outside intervention is required and scientist agree on this.

That's a bit of an overstatement. Particle physics does include a mechanism that should have produced an asymmetry between matter and antimatter: violation of CP symmetry. What's mysterious is the amount of CP violation, since known sources aren't adequate to explain the degree of asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

 

[LightLoveHope]

The following appeared on MSN just this morning:

The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?

To note, I already just posted something related recently ("How Christians Should Respond to New Space Images"). I got into a somewhat prolonged argument with one Christian who believes in the Big Bang. I don't want to restart that argument, and am therefore just posting this and signing off, once again. I post this FYI.

Cosmology is largely a religion. What I mean by this is the theories have no way of either being proven or disproven. One principle of science is a theory needs to make predictions about physical things that either happen or do not happen in alignment with the theory. Because we are literally reduced to telescopes looking at the universe, we have to rely on the information held in the light coming to us.

Because of relativity, and the suggestion that space is created or comes into existence between us and other objects faster than it takes light to travel between us, some light which started shinning 13 billion years ago and was quite close to us, now has travelled 13 billion light years so we can now see it. The theory assumes expansion is still on going so the object we can see will never be seen by us at a later time. The assumption is the red shift in the light corresponds to its age so we place things in terms of distance by the red shift. If there are other factors involved, it will be wrong.

Take another problem. Galaxies rotate. In a spiral galaxy, you can approximate the mass of the galaxy based on its brightness etc. and build a model of how it will look in a billion or so years time. Now if the look you see does not match any galaxy we can see today, something else is going on. So they adjusted the mass calculation and ran the simulations. The result was 95% of the mass is not visible or the equations are wrong. So science and our knowledge of gravity etc. shows us we are missing most of physical reality. Oppps. So the faith statement is gravity operates as we see in our solar system at universal scale, but we do not know how.

My take is so what. The more we see of life, the more complicated it actually is. In star trek they transport people into a beam and remake them. Someone calculated how much information would be needed to do this, and it is more information than we could handle. In AI replicating a brains processing the biggest super computers cannot yet model our brains, even though a brain fits inside our heads. Faith is part of life, and has always been. How we work this through is where our future lies.

God bless you