Quote:
Originally Posted by Christian.Muys
Recently, I discovered and admitted, I am ignorant about many, if not all, things concerning the very principles of the universe, as this branch of science doesn't seem to have laws that are solid as a rock (or, the laws may be perfect, but certainly not the interpretations).
After being a bit rude to forumcontributors who, lucky as they are, know and understand the truth, I have been slapped around my ears by the moderator with following amazingly good references on the web :
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310808 + http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~charley/publications.html
Charles H. Lineweaver and Tamara M. Davis deserves much respect for their very understandable overview of misconceptions about the Big Bang and expanding universe, it's certainly makes more sense than 'the truth' I learned at school long time ago, or 'the truth' I found in encyclopedia, or many truths I read or heard before. It resulted in a very vague view with many bits and pieces from various and contradictory explanations, rather than coherent logic, which I am used to have in other branches of science.
But is it any wonder if you read quotes 1 and 2 ?
However, as it comes to the quotes 2 and 3, also Lineweaver is only one of the countless interpretations, and even if I'm willing for the time being to accept his findings as most acceptable, it still is only one of the possible truths, and keep an open mind.
Quotes Lineweaver :
1. "The expansion of the universe is like Darwinian evolution in another curious way: most scientists think they understand it, but few agree on what it really means."
2."Renowned physicists, authors of astronomy textbooks and prominent popularizers of science have made incorrect, misleading or easily misinterpreted statements about the expansion of the universe."
3."Some newer theories such as string theory do postulate,extra dimensions, ...."
My questions are :
1. How many "mainstream-theories" are accepted as such nowadays ?
2. Do other theories have as well publishers like Lineweaver & Tamara, presenting a brief overview with common misconceptions ?
3. Will a be banished till the end of my days from participating this forum if I refer to, or ask more about other theories ?
3. Are there, besides Einstein and Hubble, other scientists (deceased or living), who are most likely being refered to in any theory concerning Big Bang and expansion of the universe ?
4. Which theorie(s) is nowadays being teached at schools in which country (or, what I doubt, in the whole world) ? With 'teaching at schools', I mean : what kind of global knowledge about the universe are your children and youngsters getting to read and learn in official published schoolliterature, I do not mean university or whatever it is called in your country.
Thank you for your time and willingness to give it a thought and maybe an answer.
Christian Muys
Europe-Belgium.
(P.S.: If you please, could you try to avoid abbreviations in your answers, I'm not a native English speaker, I only can lookup fully written words in a dictionairie, thanks.) |
A (belated) answer to some of these questions.
If we restrict our domain to cosmology, then there is, today, just one mainstream 'theory' - the 'big bang theory' (BBT).
However, this is really an oversimplification, because BBT is not one theory but rather a model, or a set of overlapping models, built from a set of theories.
The fundamental theories at the heart of BBT are General Relativity (GR) and quantum theory. The latter is applied to cosmology (in the BBT) through '
the standard model of particle physics'.
There is no serious competition, in cosmology, to the BBT (
these two threads may give you an idea why).
However, there are many different models - some incorporate just the standard model of particle physics, some build in extensions; most include some kind of 'inflation' (but how and what may vary); and so on.
The two fundamental theories incorporated in BBT
are mutually incompatible, so no modern theory of cosmology can be complete.
Several attempts to unify GR and quantum theory have been made, and, to date, none has succeeded (and several have failed). One difficulty is that the physical regimes in which most (any?) of these theories could be tested is far, far beyond our capabilities to create, in an Earth-bound lab (so we have only the universe itself, as our 'lab'). Of the theories you will read about, string theory (and M theory) is by far the best known, to theoretical physicists, cosmologists, and the general public. However, as I said earlier, it has some problems.
In terms of what's in the popular press, I feel the greatest error is conveying the idea that 'the universe began as a singularity' or 'the Big Bang theory says that the universe began as {insert words here}', etc. This is an error because none of the BBTs can possibly do that! ... unless they explicitly incorporate at least a quantum theory of gravity, and also make some rather sweeping assumptions about the state of matter/energy/etc in regimes we know essentially nothing about.
Myself, I feel these popularisations are almost dangerous, because they contain the antithesis of science (speculation untrammelled by observational or experimental tests) presented as being as sound as the physics you can use to build a laser (for example), or describe what happens in a supernova.