The Big Bang - Woo or not?

Zeuzzz said:
Sol dismissed it without even seeing what it was, he just declared it as crackpot without stating a valid reason why it is wrong.
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Because I know what Raman scattering is, and I know quite a bit about how light behaves, and I know that there is no way in hell an effect like that can mimic Hubble redshifts. I also have a fair bit of experience with the quality of the physics you link to.

And I do think that some people put blind faith in mainstream models. They just spend all their time learning about it as if its proven fact, and the possibility that what they learnt could be wrong to some extent never enters their mind. This is when people get defensive of theories and dismiss others with no valid reason. Which some are more guilty of than others.
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A comment like that simply proves you have no experience with science. The truth is exactly the opposite. Science is full to bursting with wannabe iconoclasts. It is the driving ambition of every researcher to discover something new, some hole in the old picture. It's as if there's an army of ants swarming over every inch of the discipline, searching for cracks, probing for weak points, ready to go into overdrive and burrow into any gap.

Very simple. The least complex theory with the fewest free parameters that explains all the relevant data is the more successful theory.
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I'm glad to see you've learned at least something...
 
Z: Care to link to some of your physics? for comparative reasons.

What field are you in?

Questions directed at sol invictus.

Z, and any other reader sufficiently curious, no matter what answer sol invictus gives, in answer to your question, his posts in the JREF Forum are available for you to read ... and several of those posts contain quite a bit of material which you can use to form an independent opinion.

But much more pertinent, in the present context, is that, from the posts he has written here, you can conclude that the depth and breadth of his understanding of, and use of, physics is at least that of a top Honours BSc graduate (British university system), or a very strong MSc (physics) graduate (US university system)*.

And even more pertinent: his understanding of, and facility in, electromagnetism, relativity (both special and general, but especially general), and quantum mechanics is far, far, far superior to yours, and more than adequate for him to follow most papers presented at most astrophysics and cosmology conferences (and, no doubt, to critique many of them on the spot).

* though I'll grant you that it may be difficult to judge wrt condensed matter physics (I don't recall reading anything by him in this field).
 
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Z: But [Disney's document is] cetainly an interesting perspective.

I guess it could be characterised like that ... in a sad, sick kind of way.

Disney is (or was?) a very smart cookie, but that document clearly does not reflect his intellect or his training (have you read any of his papers, from when he was just starting out?) ... so many clangers in so few pages!
 
I heard at a other forum that a black hole was likely the key factor when our universe was created.

His theory said that it was probably a black hole that has collapsed (a singularity) and then exploded, which lead to the universe we see today.

Now is this a theory that is somewhat accepted/established in the astronomy buisness? As a layman...I've never heard of it.
 
Zeuzzz said:
Yes. Well, not really mocked, but just dismissed without consideration. Like raman scattering (or CREIL) I posted on the first page. Sol dismissed it without even seeing what it was, he just declared it as crackpot without stating a valid reason why it is wrong.
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That was his initial thought. But as you know he and other posters have pointed out the fatal flaw with CREIL as a source of redshift. This is that the redshift of QSOs agrees with the redshift of their host galaxies.

Zeuzzz said:
The least complex theory with the fewest free parameters that explains all the relevant data is the more successful theory.
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That is true is you consider free parameters to be the entities in Occam's razor.

Perhaps you can point out the non-BBT theory that explains all of the relevant data that is explained by BBT. A (probably partial) list is:
  • Olbers' paradox is resolved.
  • Hubble's law (cosmological redshift).
  • The temperature of the cosmic microwave background.
  • The perfect black body thermal spectrum of the CMB.
  • The shape of the CMB power spectrum.
  • The structure of the universe (see the Lambda-CDM model and its 6 free parameters).
  • A changing composition of the universe with more neutral hydrogen appearing as the universe gets younger.
  • Nucleosynthesis of metals up to lithium.
And BBT does have problems, e.g. the very large scale structure of the universe, the abundance of lithium (given our current model of stellar physics) and possibly others. I would say that BBT is in the position that Newton's theory of gravitation was after the discrepency with the perihelion precession of Mercury was found. It is waiting for refinement or a new theory.
 
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PARTICULAR DIFFICULTIES FOR COSMOLOGY AS A SCIENCE
1. Only one Universe.
2. Universe opaque for 56/60 decades since Planck era.
3. Need to extrapolate physics over huge distances.
4. Need to work with what we can currently detect. [But . . . ]
5. Local background very bright.
6. Distances very hard to determine (standard candles).
7. Observational Selection insidious.
8. Distant galaxies hard to measure and interpret unambiguously.
9. Luminosity Functions unreliable.
10. Geometry, astrophysics and evolution often entangled.
11. Physics of early Universe unknown (and unknowable?)
12. Human time-frame so short compared to cosmic.
13. Origin of inertia.
14. The singularity.
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They are difficulties. Other areas at the forefront of physics have difficulties too. That's what makes them at the forefront. If it was easy it'd be done already. Take particle physics, research is based on trying to pick out particles that have a production cross-section that is just a tiny fraction of the total cross-section and that last for a tiny fraction of a second.
Other particle physicists are looking for the decay of the free proton. A decay with a half-life that is at least 23 orders of magnitude greater than the age of the Universe!
You think these are easy?
 
the only problem I have with the big bang event is the part where the universe began from nothing, absolute nothing, which would violate the first law of thermodynamics. If science is currently saying that the universe is in a perpetual expansion/constraction phenomena, and that all energy remains constant,,,,that energy was never created, and can't be destroyed,,,,that seems more pleasing for my simple mind.
 
reverebison said:
the only problem I have with the big bang event is the part where the universe began from nothing, absolute nothing, which would violate the first law of thermodynamics.
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Even that isn't necessarily true. In general relativity the total energy is often exactly zero - the positive energy of all the matter and radiation in the universe at any given time is precisely canceled by its negative gravitational potential energy. Hence there are mathematical solutions where the universe appears from nothing which do not violate conservation of energy (they have other problems, and I don't think they correctly describe the big bang, but not because of energy conservation).
 
sol invictus said:
Even that isn't necessarily true. In general relativity the total energy is often exactly zero - the positive energy of all the matter and radiation in the universe at any given time is precisely canceled by its negative gravitational potential energy. Hence there are mathematical solutions where the universe appears from nothing which do not violate conservation of energy (they have other problems, and I don't think they correctly describe the big bang, but not because of energy conservation).
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So in the big bang theory there never was something about a collapsed black hole that exploded and created our universe?
 
In any case, the BBT does NOT (in any legitimate formulation I;ve ever read) say the universe started form nothing. Current theories all begin a fraction of a second after everything kicks off.

There are some theories that go back further than this, but so far we are not able to get any kind of experimental or observational data that can test them or choose one from the many. Most of these are variations on string theories, whihc seem to be on relatively shaky ground right now. The two problems are tied together; the predicitons that would support most of the string theories are unavaiable for testing due to extreme technological problems (although the creation of black holes at the LHC would offer support for extra dimensions, a basic factor of all the string theories).

When you look into inflationary cosmology, there are even theories that require nothing more than a random, jumbled, high entropy quantum foam to enable the universe to be created. Again, though, these cannot be verified and are purely theoretical.

And, just to seocnd sol's point (yeah, I know it's like Biff the lounge singer writing a music review for Beethoven), some theories do balance energies out between gravitational and other energy forms.

Basically, current cosmological theories (with the exception of a few that are untestable for the foreseeable future) generally don't speak to what ultimately started it all. The "everything from nothing" is something of an oversimplification.
 
Lennart Hyland said:
So in the big bang theory there never was something about a collapsed black hole that exploded and created our universe?
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No. Well, not exactly.

There are some thoeries that predict that the interior of a large enough black hole might create conditions much like a universe, and that universes "breed" daughter universe through the creation of black holes. But, again, this is only one idea among many, and one that doesn't have the experimental and/or observational evidence to back it up.

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of cosmology at the early stages of the universe is all theoretical and mathematical. Once you get beyond some of the basic, well-verified things (CMB, expansion, etc), it's not so much "We know it was like this" or even "we think it was like this", but it's more along the lines of "with what we do know, this can't be ruled out" and "the equations would allow this". Current cosmology, as well as some constituents like dark matter and dark energy, aren't so much about finding out what is, as they are about finding out what the limits are on what is. In other words, it's all the different ways things could be (or could have been) without causign the things we have tested to come out different. Think about Newton's laws of motion for a moment to get an example. Pre-entropy, Newton's laws work just the same without reference to a time direction..so why don't we see eggs unscramble or milk unspill? Well, because there are other physical laws and properties at work. I imagine, as we start learning more and are able to perform better, more powerful experiments, that similar things will show up to clarify and refine cosmology into a smaller realm of possibilities.

Hopefully that Ed-awful mess of wrods up there makes some sense :)
 
http://metaresearch.org/media and links/press/CCC2 Media release summary.asp

Port Angeles, Wa – This week, dozens of leading astronomers, researchers and other scientists from around the globe met for a Cosmology conference.[1] The conference provided eight panels composed of experts in every facet of cosmology including the reality of expansion, quasars, dark matter, dark energy, “black holes”, and the true nature of the microwave radiation from space. One astronomer made his presentation live from Germany using video-link technology.

Organizer Tom Van Flandern said “This was a thrilling success. We heard and discussed three new mechanisms explaining redshift and a new equation modifying our understanding of gravity. If any of the redshift proposals passes experimental tests that would mean we do not have an expanding Universe; that the Big Bang theory would be without its strongest foundation.”

Physicist John Hartnett from the University of Western Australia said “It’s amusing that our conference occurred just as they fire up the Hadron Collider in Europe. Most of our presenters showed the deep problems with the Big Bang while a 40 billion dollar project starts up to trying to find an elusive particle to keep the Big Bang story from collapsing.”

Redshift in the light from galaxies led to the belief that the universe is expanding, and this belief has persisted for 80 years. But modern observational evidence, especially from NASA European Space Agency space telescopes and satellites, has clouded the picture and raised many doubts. In 2004, an open letter was published in New Scientist magazine, and has since been signed by over 500 endorsers. It begins: “The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.” (http://cosmologystatement.org)

From the many lines of evidence presented at the conference, It now appears that those concerns were justified. Presenters also outlined the principles that a good cosmology should be based on. Chief among them is that it should not require a series of miracles to remain viable.
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We'll have to wait and see what their conclusions are when its published. Looks interesting.
 
Just a few points of note...

Port Angeles, Wa – This week, dozens of leading astronomers, researchers and other scientists from around the globe met for a Cosmology conference.[1] The conference provided eight panels composed of experts in every facet of cosmology including the reality of expansion, quasars, dark matter, dark energy, “black holes”, and the true nature of the microwave radiation from space. One astronomer made his presentation live from Germany using video-link technology.
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There's experts specifically in the true nature of the microwave background? Are there experts in the false nature of the microwave background too? Who decides which is which? I also note the inverted commas around black holes.

Organizer Tom Van Flandern said “This was a thrilling success. We heard and discussed three new mechanisms explaining redshift and a new equation modifying our understanding of gravity. If any of the redshift proposals passes experimental tests that would mean we do not have an expanding Universe; that the Big Bang theory would be without its strongest foundation.”
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This is probably not the most objective review of the event. What with it being from the organizer's website and everything.

Physicist John Hartnett from the University of Western Australia said “It’s amusing that our conference occurred just as they fire up the Hadron Collider in Europe. Most of our presenters showed the deep problems with the Big Bang while a 40 billion dollar project starts up to trying to find an elusive particle to keep the Big Bang story from collapsing.”
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Hilarious. What with the Higgs boson being pretty important for particle physics regardless of the veracity of the Big Bang and everything.

Redshift in the light from galaxies led to the belief that the universe is expanding, and this belief has persisted for 80 years. But modern observational evidence, especially from NASA European Space Agency space telescopes and satellites, has clouded the picture and raised many doubts. In 2004, an open letter was published in New Scientist magazine, and has since been signed by over 500 endorsers. It begins: “The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.” (http://cosmologystatement.org)
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500. Call me underwhelmed. I was more qualified than some of them. Bearing in mind the number of people I qualified alongside who also believe the Big Bang is happened, this number is utterly risible. Not to mention the (other?) woo some of them believe in (see my earlier post). Oh, and they're still insisting dark matter has never been observed. So they're oh so wonderfully up to date too.

From the many lines of evidence presented at the conference, It now appears that those concerns were justified. Presenters also outlined the principles that a good cosmology should be based on. Chief among them is that it should not require a series of miracles to remain viable.
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And...?

We'll have to wait and see what their conclusions are when its published. Looks interesting.
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And, more tellingly, where they're published.
 
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Zeuzzz said:
We'll have to wait and see what their conclusions are when its published. Looks interesting.
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That quote about LHC indicates a truly embarrassing ignorance of the field. The physics being tested at LHC (primarily the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking) has little to no bearing on cosmology. Just about the only thing that would be of direct relevance would be the discovery of a dark matter particle, but not seeing such a particle will have essentially zero impact on the BBT. The LHC was not built for cosmology - the idea is totally absurd - it was built for particle physics.

I'm waiting for some even remotely plausible alternative to standard cosmology to come along - something that's even close to explaining the data it explains, with even close to as small a number of parameters. When something like that comes along I'll pay attention.
 
sol:

Well, to be fair, if the LHC does actualy create mini black holes that would lend support to the ideas of extra "rolled-up" dimensions in some of the string theories. So while I don't think it's fair to say it has little to no bearing on cosmology, I would say that this was not it's primary purpose, nor will this consitute the majority of the work there (unless something really unusual happens). And, while it may help set certain constraints on the theories, it won't invalidate them.

Basically, it could support certain types of theories if we get a suprise (i.e.-mini holes), but it won't invalidate them (it won't be testing into the proper energy ranges).

Is that a fair summary?
 
Hellbound said:
Well, to be fair, if the LHC does actualy create mini black holes that would lend support to the ideas of extra "rolled-up" dimensions in some of the string theories.
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Not just string theories, but yes, you're absolutely right. Actually it's extremely difficult to get cosmology to work in those models at all - once the Hubble length in the early universe gets below the size of the extra dimensions, all hell tends to break loose. In any case I don't consider large extra dimensions to be likely (although it's the most exciting possibility) - the hype about small black holes at LHC is just that. The machine wasn't built for that, because no one expects it to be there - it was built to find the source of electroweak symmetry breaking.

Basically, it could support certain types of theories if we get a suprise (i.e.-mini holes), but it won't invalidate them (it won't be testing into the proper energy ranges).

Is that a fair summary?
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Regarding to cosmo, in most scenarios - including all the ones regarded as most likely - its results simply won't tell us much of anything. At best it could find a dark matter candidate. So to call it a test of the BBT is absurd. In certain exotic scenaria (like large extra dimensions) it could change be a game changer.
 
sol invictus said:
You asserted that PC is more predictive than the BB. Now it's time to back that up.
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(Please excuse the paraphrasing)

You imply that BBT is more predictive than others. Time to back it up.

Your prediction has to be specific and quantitative and cosmological. And most importantly, you have to say - in advance, before I analyze it - that it is a core part of BBT, that the success of BBT depends significantly on it, and that if it were falsified, it would falsify or significantly weaken the case for BBT as a theory of cosmology.

Science is about making falsifiable predictions, that's what distinguishes it from religion.
 
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Why?

You appear to be confused.

This is a thread about the Big Bang. It has no direct relation to PC, or Lerner, or any other competing theory. I would appreciate it if you would answer directly the question raised above.
 
Zeuzzz said:
Why?

You appear to be confused.

This is a thread about the Big Bang. It has no direct relation to PC, or Lerner, or any other competing theory. I would appreciate it if you would answer directly the question raised above.
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The post I cited is an explicit explanation of the predictive power of the LCDM Big Bang hypothesis, particularly with respect to the CMB. My subsequent posts in this thread explain how the this predictiveness extends to the other standard precision-cosmology observables.
 
Another prediction:

I hereby predict that the majority of galaxies yet to be measured will be redshifted and that the amount of the shift will be exponentially proportional to their distance from Earth.
 
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KingMerv00 said:
Another prediction:

I hereby predict that the majority of galaxies yet to be measured will be redshifted and that the amount of the shift will be exponentially proportional to their distance from Earth.
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And how would you differentiate between a reasonable extrapolation of a trend in already existing data and a definite theory based pre-data collection prediction?
 
Zeuzzz said:
And how would you differentiate between a reasonable extrapolation of a trend in already existing data and a definite theory based pre-data collection prediction?
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There isn't a need to differentiate. Every new measurement is a new test of the theory.
 
Zeuzzz said:
Originally Posted by sol invictus
You asserted that PC is more predictive than the BB. Now it's time to back that up.
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(Please excuse the paraphrasing)


You imply that BBT is more predictive than others. Time to back it up.
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I am amazed that you remain ignorant of this, Zeuzzz.
The cosmic microwave background radiation.
BBT matches the data. Other theories such as PC do not.
  • black-body spectrum.
  • temperature.
  • primary anisotropy.
 
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