Quote:
Originally Posted by rcglinsk
What experiment do I conduct to try to disprove any or all of that hypothesis? What apparatus would I build? What would the experiment entail? How would I tell my results have disproved the hypothesis?
What prediction could I make about something people have yet to observe? That is, what could we do to check that hypothesis' predictions? Does it even make predictions that are checkable? If so, what are they, or what is one of them?
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Well, a first step is to recognise that the BB wasn't proposed yesterday, and that people have been (and continue) to devise tests and experiments since the day it was proposed. The BB is the predominant theory at present because it's predictions have repeatedly been confirmed by experiments and observation, including :
- existence of the CMB
- that the CMB has a black-body spectrum, but with fluctuations
- relative amounts of Hydrogen, Helium and Deuterium
- galaxies look different (younger) the further out you look
In addition (though I'm not sure this counts as a prediction), the age of the universe derived from CMB agrees with other methods of estimation.
So, what further tests/experiments?
Well, a few ideas :
- we've no idea what Dark Matter / Dark Energy are, so it's possible as we learn more about them that they could support or destroy the model (eg. making it impossible for galaxies to form).
- The Large Hadron Collider has been built specifically to examine behaviour at temperatures/pressures not seen since the BB. The behaviour observed could affect the model.
Bottom line, BB is still a falsifiable theory, but it's up to the supporters of other models to make predictions that better match observations before people will switch
