Oh. Ok.

Lucky for you when you travel, the distance between you and your destination contracts...

Dear freddo, Tensor, Sam5, DoctorDon, Taibak, TravisM, cyrek1, and all who read or posted here, and Bad Astronomy forums administrators:

I wish to thank you all for your attention, and I say that with genuine sensitivity, since I find the threads on Bad Astronomy's Against the Mainstream very informative and challenging in a gracious way.

I do not wish to leave the impression I am dead set against the Big Bang, or any of Relativity's predictions, especially since I am not an expert in all its fine points. Rather, I wanted to express some of my doubts, and why I think perhaps there may be room for improvement on these ideas. One must deeply respect the very impressive edifice of theory that had built up over the past hundred years on this subject, and the many thousands of fine minds who had contributed to it. One man's voice of doubt cannot undo what had been so thoroughly considered over such a great period of time. Relativity, and its offspring the Big Bang Theory, are truly elegant and thoroughly thought out concepts, which must be lauded for that, if for no other reason. If there should be some future time where these ideas are disproven, by minds greater than mine, then it will be with regret rather than joy, since the whole edifice may one day crash, which would be a time truly sad. Such great work and dedication should be its own reward.

My doubts really may be reduced to two items:

• The lightspeed constant was compromised when space expansion was no longer thought of as Doppler related receding cosmic bodies, but became an expansion of space itself. I felt that this was a violation of sorts, which perhaps was not totally honest in how it dealt with the observations that very distant bodies were moving away from us at multiple lightspeeds. Nevertheless, I understand why this shift of theory was necessary.
  
• The Big Bang calculations had been subject to repeated revisions, so what started as an origin some 7-8 billion years ago has been pushed back to 13.7 billions years, and possibly to 15 billion years. This is understandable as more astronomical data comes in, but it points to a possible weakness in the original theory.

The other concern I have, such as evidence of galaxy formation as we look further towards t=0, may be no more than the fact that we have not yet looked far enough. Or whether or not a Big Bang expansion can be not only outwards, but also inwards, these are my own mental issues with which I need to wrestle, not to blame the Theory. As posted here, these have been amply answered.

What concerns me still, and why I have not bought into Relativity and Big Bang, other than my ignorance, is that I have a terribly irritating suspicion that this theory is unnecessary, that there is a much simpler explanation for why cosmic light redshifts over great distances. And that when this puzzle is finally solved, that the answer will be both obvious and simple. However, as such a theory does not yet exist, it is a red herring for now, and will have to leave it at that. I am not a physicist, so am not in a position to develop such a new theory, and must leave it to greater minds than mine. Should it happen, though, I would be saddened to see a century of work swept away. In a way, I hope we never find out otherwise. Then again, it is only theory.

That said, I'd like to leave behind a thought, call it a mental graffiti, which I had posted elsewhere, blogged for fun. Think of it merely as a curiosity, to ponder the imponderable, or just to have a good laugh.

In anycase, you all are a fine and intelligent crew. All the best, Ivan/Lunatik

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BIG BANG IS OBSERVATIONALLY INVISIBLE

There is another factor to be considered, not mathematically but conceptually, which calls into doubt the Big Bang:

If the universe began in a Big Bang, in the BBBT fashion where we are at the center of an observable Big Bang "bubble", so that in all directions we see the Ground Zero of this expansion 15 billion light years away, then the same expansion should also be taking place at our observational point as well. This means that we are not the center from which this expansion is taking place, but are actually moving along with it so that our position within the "bubble" is actually the margin of that expansion rather than its center, as we are being carried along by it. Our position here is the end product of this space expansion. We were never stationary for the past 15 billion years, if a Big Bang occurred.

Now, this is an important concept which may be difficult to visualize: But if we are the end product of this Big Bang explosion, then we are not its center, but its ending, which means the universe had been expanding with us and not away from us. Therefore, the "bubble" of expansion we see is actually an illusion, because the light and space from the explosion has for 15 billion years been moving towards us as we moved with it. The conclusion which follows, of necessity, is that the Ground Zero is not some 15 billion light years away, but because it had been moving towards us in all that time, is observationally also here. While we are the end product of such an explosion, we are also at Ground Zero, because we moved with it. Therefore, observationally, if such a Big Bang explosion took place, its visual observation "bubble" would simultaneously collapse on us as we are carried by it, so the universe would disappear. There would be no redshift of distant cosmic light, since it would be invisible to us, and the night sky would have absolutely nothing in it.

The fact that we can see distant cosmic light, and redshift is observed, means that there cannot have been a Big Bang. The Universe always was, is, and will be what it is, and redshift happens for reasons we do not yet understand.

__________________
Caveat Lector. Experimentum summus judex...

I figure that's why he added "almost" to his statement, to leave the door open a crack for innovative thinking - but not so innovative that we throw out the good or proven ideas that are connected to what we observe. :wink:

You're kind of getting this back to front. Relativity holds that light speed cannot be exceeded (in a local frame). Our observations of distant galaxies show them to be (apparently) receding faster than c. If relativity holds, this can't be the case, and something else is going on. Enter expansion. It is the way 'the lightspeed constant' was maintained, not compromised.

Yes, it is improving as more data is available, but the thing is, the further we look, the younger the universe appears to be, which does lead us to the conclusion of a start point in time that exists somewhen.

Just remember that it's trying to picture the universe expanding outward in all directions - without any contractions (no 'inwards').

__________________
bunk: Empty talk; nonsense.
de·bunk: To expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/eddo/images/fredheadtsp.gif

And I wholeheartedly agree. Expansion satisfies the lightspeed constraint quite well, even if it is a bit counterintuitive. And yes, the *original* Big Bang theory was more flawed than its current incarnation - amongst other things, we now have plenty of evidence that Hubble's Constant (or, as it really should be called, Hubble's Parameter) changes over time. But that's the way science works: a theory is formulated, it's tested, and if it succeeds, great. If not, either alter the theory to fit the new data or, if it can't be fixed, scrap it.

As for not having looked back far enough, astronomers are working on that. As much as I'm going to miss the Hubble, I can't wait to see what the James Webb Telescope images.

And, as far as I'm concerned, having doubts is a good thing. Gets you asking questions and, hopefully, looking for answers.

WOW!
I cannot reply to all the critics on this post so I will add some more comment to refute the BBU

The main reason I refute the BB is that it is a violation of the conservation laws in physics.
My imterpretation of these laws is that matter cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed.
This tells me that matter always existed! Therefore, there was no beginning or end to the physical universe. Therefore, the BB did not happen.

I also wrote a couple of papers here about the two main unanswered questions in the BB. Click below:

http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...amp;highlight=

If I can provide a solution to these two main problems, than the BBers
should have solved these puzzles also. We have telecopes that can see the entire EM spectrum from Gamma rays to ragio waves. Also, physics has advanced accordingly. Therefore, these two problems should have been solved.

__________________
aka Michael Cyrek

And Romans should have come up with the combustion engine. They had all the resources, tar pits, fuel, iron smelters, brilliant mathematicians, gears, pullies, levers, etc...
They even had roads! And they failed critically... They were so close...

__________________

Feynman
>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Well, went there, read the entire thread and found your papers had been thoughly refuted by the other posters.

For those out there who enjoy good explanations, JS Princeton, Tim Thompson, and Spaceman Spiff were among the other posters.

__________________
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

Neptune- The original Dark Matter.

The author feels that this technique of deliberately lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. - Donald Knuth

Maybe they had trouble working out the proper engineering equations since they only had those Roman numerals for math.

How difficult would it be to calculate:

√[1 – (XXVI^II / CXXXLM^II)]

Would you believe :LIX:LIX:VII:XXXIII:XXXVII:XXXII to six sexagesimal "digits"? BTW, that number in the denominator should be MCLXXX.

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I now officially condemn CM's skits as smartaleck, ignorant, sophomoric, inflammatory and and a poor reflection on the level of discussion in BAUT. -- Bob Angstrom

Thanks! I’ll make a note of that in case I’m ever lecturing in Rome.

Uhh, wouldn’t MCLXXX be 1180?

Actually, I do all my calcualtions in octal. Sometimes binary if I have a few minutes to kill. =D>

__________________

Feynman
>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Yes, it is. What number did you intend to write?

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I now officially condemn CM's skits as smartaleck, ignorant, sophomoric, inflammatory and and a poor reflection on the level of discussion in BAUT. -- Bob Angstrom

Well, I was trying to write 186,000 but I think the proper way might be:

That's better but either the M or the I-overbar are redundant. I would omit the M, but that's my bias from living with Arabic numerals all my life. I suspect that an ancient Roman would omit the I-overbar.

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I now officially condemn CM's skits as smartaleck, ignorant, sophomoric, inflammatory and and a poor reflection on the level of discussion in BAUT. -- Bob Angstrom

Do you mean omit just the overbar or the I and the overbar?

Omit them both, meaning just use the M. My reasoning is that there already was a symbol for thousands, so why not just use it? So there would be M, MM, MMM, and they wouldn't start using an overbar until four thousand. Now would they have written four thousand as M followed by a V-overbar, or would they have written it as I-overbar V-overbar? Hmmm....

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I now officially condemn CM's skits as smartaleck, ignorant, sophomoric, inflammatory and and a poor reflection on the level of discussion in BAUT. -- Bob Angstrom

cyrek1 reply

TravisM
The Romans did invent the precurser to the internal combustion engine.
The gun and the cannon. The compressed chamber explosive inventions followed.

__________________
aka Michael Cyrek

cyrek1 reply

tensor
JS Pronceton was banned for profanity.
Tim Thompson admitted that the BB is cosmogony.

I still do not see anyone refute the 'conservation laws'.

What is your comment on this?

__________________
aka Michael Cyrek

It seems to me that in order to get the 6 in the number 186,000, the “I” with the overbar should be used, otherwise we wind up with just 185,000. (I think.)

Suppose we do it this way:

with the V and I together with a single overbar??

I just want to finish this up before we are accused of hijacking this thread. I agree that [CLXXXVI] (I'm going to use brackets instead of trying to format overbars) is a valid Roman numeral for 186,000 and is the one I would prefer, being steeped in Arabic numerals all my life. I believe that [CLXXXV]M would also have been valid and that the Romans might have preferred that to the former one. However, I'm not a scholar on ancient Roman manuscripts, nor have I played one on television. I strongly suspect that on examination of enough manuscripts we'll find both notations.

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I now officially condemn CM's skits as smartaleck, ignorant, sophomoric, inflammatory and and a poor reflection on the level of discussion in BAUT. -- Bob Angstrom

My comment is simply E=m*c^2, to clarify a possible error in your line of thought. Matter need not have existed, as long as the energy did. Since matter and energy are interchangable, so the total amount of *both* is conserved.

Now, as for where that energy came from. I don't claim to know and I don't believe that BBT does, either.

cyrek1 reply

tobin wrote (excerpt)
Now, as for where that energy came from. I don't claim to know and I don't believe that BBT does, either.

reply
The reason you don't know tobin, is that that is another impossibility.
Energy is an effect of charged particles or massive bodies in motion such as light or gravitational waves. This to me is 'basic physics'. I know this may push Einstein's formula aside but I believe in someting that is tangible.
After all, the 'string theory' is a mathematical product and it is embraced by most mathmaticians even though it is only a theory.
The inflation theory is anothe matamatical construt(?) without proof and yet it is acceoted by the BBer;s as a fact.

__________________
aka Michael Cyrek

Why can't the energy have simply always existed?

It may be basic physics to you, but you've oversimplified the concept. Energy is far more than that. You can have energy without being in motion (a chandelier hanging from the ceiling is at rest, relative to the Earth, but has gravitational potential energy). You can have energy without having mass (light and gravity waves). If matter and energy weren't equivilent and couldn't be converted into each other, nuclear power would be impossible.

True, but would you accept the theory if experimental evidence confirmed it? What sort of evidence would convince you?

Except that it goes a long way towards explaining the properties of the universe and fits the observational evidence. Again, what sort of evidence would convince you that inflation works?

Strawman. Exactly what does JS Priceton's banning or Tim's admittion have to do with their refutations (which are still good)?


Which conservation laws are you talking about? Energy? Baryon number? Parity? What? I haven't seen any reference to conservation laws in this thread. If you are talking about another thread, please post a reference.

And how about you? You start the thread with a bunch of statements, declare them impossible, and when asked by Milli360 why, you don't answer. So exactly why are your statements "impossible"?

__________________
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

Neptune- The original Dark Matter.

The author feels that this technique of deliberately lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. - Donald Knuth

As Taibak pointed out, your "basic physics" is incorrect. Energy is no more an effect than mass is, and it is not necessarily intangible.
I, too, want to know what evidence would convince you that any of these theories is correct.

cyrek1 reply

tensur
I have decided to answer Milli360's Why? as you suggested.

Milli360 Why?
1 - Cosmogony is a creation theory as portrayed in the Bible. It is
'creation out of nothing' It has no scientific basis. The BB is
nothing but a scientific endorsement of same.

2 - It is an expansion of space rather than an explosion which would
be more scientific since those extremely high temperatures are
obviously indicative of an explosion.

3 - There is no center to a three dimensional universe? All three
dinensional bodies have a 'center of gravity'. The example of the
surface of an expanding sphere supports this view but it is a false
analogy.

4 - The uniform expansion of this BB space in not realistic because
of the initially high temperatures and the current cooling to our
current temperature of 2.73 K. As far as I know, high temperature
objects expand faster than cold temperature objects.

5 - This expansion of space is the cause of the redshift which would
indicate that the light is intertwined with space? Light uses the
EM fields on its journey through space rather than space itself
though it does occupy space but it is not influenced by it.

6 - You cannot imagine yourself being outside of the BB because
there is no space out there. With this limitation, you cannot know
what shape the BB is? Whether it is spherical, donut shaped or a
hollow sphere? The logical shape to the BB would be a hallow sphere
because the initial high temperature expansion was brief and the
created matter would have momentum to empty the center and leave a
void.

7 - The unanswered questions regarding the dark matter and dark energy
is indicative that the current proposals are not correct since this
solution should have been forthcoming in this modern age of high tech
telescopes and advanced physics.

__________________
aka Michael Cyrek

Actually, no. As I understand the Big Bang theory, all the matter and energy in the universe existed prior to the Big Bang. The Big Bang just led to it being changed into the forms we see today.

Forgive me for being blunt, but there's a huge logical fallacy there. Not all explosions produce a high temperature and not all high temperatures are due to an explosion. Again, it comes down to energy. Temperature is related to the average kinetic energies of a group of particles. In the original singularity, ALL the energy/matter that currently exists was packed into a single point. Its energy was huge, so its temperature was huge. It has been cooling ever since.

A good analogy might be the good ole ideal gas law, PV = nRT. P is pressure, V is volume, n is the number of gas particles you have, R is a constant, and T is temperature. If P and n stay constant but V increases, T will drop. Something similar happened (and is still happening) to the universe.

Apples and oranges. 'Center of gravity' has to do with how an object's mass is distributed. It is not necessarily the geometric center of an object.

And incidentally, who says the universe is only three-dimensional?

Again, you're confusing some very different concepts here. First off, thermal expansion doesn't work the way you think it does. Generally, if you heat something, it expands and if you cool something, it contracts.

More importantly, the overall temperature of the universe, as observed through the cosmic microwave background, is astonishingly even. The implication is that the entire universe started out at the same and cooled evenly. What's unrealistic about that?

Light moves through space and time, just like everything else. Gravitational lensing and cosmic red shifting both prove that light *is* influenced by spacetime.

And, incidentally, light doesn't 'use' EM fields that it encounters on its way. Light is an oscillating EM field, moving through space.


With some reservations, I would agree. We are still stuck inside that original singularity, only now it's much bigger.


Actually, we can. By looking at how things move through space, we can use a bunch of mathematical tools (topology, differential geometry, tensor calculus...) to reconstruct the shape of the universe.


Not necessarily the way you're thinking about it though. You're thinking in three dimensions whereas there's plenty of evidence that the universe is at least four dimensions - and may very well be eleven. The universe may very well be a hollow sphere, but, if it is, it's a sphere whose surface is four-dimensional. That's something you just can't visualize in your head, but the evidence supports that theory.

The solution IS forthcoming. Physicists and astronomers are working on these problems as we speak. Do you really think that physicists solved all the mysteries of the universe as soon as 'this modern age' began?

Anyway, why do you think that dark matter and dark energy are incompatible with the Big Bang? Please give give some evidence rather than just saying that they are.

If they are matter and energy, as we understand them, they would simply be additional forms of matter and energy that came out of the Big Bang. Part of the problem is that we haven't yet figured out how physics works at the ultra-high temperatures that existed shortly after the Big Bang (although we're getting REALLY close), nor do we understand how things like gravitation work on a quantum level. Once we figure those out, we may find out what dark matter and energy are, or we may not. Still, there's no evidence that either are incompatible with the Big Bang theory. Dark matter seems to be just a new form of matter that we can't directly observe. Dark energy seems to be what's driving the expansion of the universe - how is that incompatible with a theory that states that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe's expansion? (Incidentally, dark energy is also predicted by quantum mechanics, so it's not just a cosmological problem.)