Can someone tell me if this makes any sense? This was posted on my message board, and I don't know how to respond. The poster has made references to Hoyle, Alfvén and Shapiro to claim that the Big Bang did not happen.

Hi Nike,

I don't know what message board you are from, or what that board's take on things is, but unless he/she says something concrete, there is nothing specific to refute.

The writer seems to be presenting a recycled universe view which claims that stars do create heavier elements, but that some mechanism (there is variety amongst promoters of this idea what that mechanism is) converts those heavy elements back into Hydrogen, and distributes it to emptier space again.

If you can get this person to commit to observable specifics you can debate him/her seriously. As it is now, all you can do is discuss the predictive success of concordance cosmology, and ask this person to use his cosmology to predict some things that we will observe in the near future.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Ah, well, the vagueness is what makes it so difficult. I thought that perhaps there was some group out there advocating these ideas, where I could get the details. He does make some specific claims, such as which I have not been able to find information on. I have found that there is a "Shapiro effect", but Shapiro supports the Big Bang, so I don't see how it relates. This guy seems to believe in Hoyle's Steady State universe. Does anybody still support that?

I did not want to be seen as spamming, but you can find his latest post here, and others are here,
here and here. It's not a science site, but every time someone mentions the Big Bang he starts spouting. He claims to have a MSc in electron physics; I don't have a science degree, so I'm a bit out of my depth.

One thing that he repeats is that the BB is a form of "creation science", supposedly because there is supposed to have been no time or matter before the BB, but as I understand it, this was not necessarily so?

There are quite a few problems with the poster's declarations, but to specifically refute them would take pages and pages, and I can assure you the poster would not "see the light." It's probably best just to point the poster (and your other readers) to this excellent article about what the big bang is, what it isn't, and what evidence there is to support it.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Parts of what is written here is correct. There was no big-bang - it was invented to account for the observed 'expansion' of the Observable Universe. Other parts are not likely at all. That's how I see it.

What part(s)? Please be specific and quantify your answer with corresponding math, physics, reference papers and experimental data.


This statement is patently false. The Big Bang was postulated decades prior to the observed Hubble expansion.*

Can you cite specifics and support your claims with quantitative material?

It is clear that you do not “see” things in much the same way as the majority of the astrophysics community.

*If I am not mistaken, it was first suggested in 1927 by Georges Lemaître

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"I just have not come across anything that explains what I am trying to suggest."
- EU proponent not wanting credit for statement

Your website is promoting digital (as opposed to the more traditional sexagesimal time). Why not just block this guy altogether as he does not seem to be even thinking about your main point.

When you get someone like this, they have a mission, and don't care about yours, but are using your resources to try and spread doubt about the mainstream view of something.

We'd be happy to debate with him here, except that I think he's someone who's already been banned for life here (based on style and the MSc in electron physics claim).

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Forming opinions as we speak

He's posting in the general discussion (off-topic) area, and stays on the subject elsewhere. I don't have a problem with it; I just don't know enough about what he's talking about to debate with him. I have suggested that he debate his ideas here, but if he's already banned then I guess that's out of the question.

Perhaps the thing to do is simply not engage him. If someone makes a statement about the big bang, and he throws in his message about the recycling universe, go on with the thread as if he hadn't posted.

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Forming opinions as we speak

I was ignoring him, but now he's saying things like, "our galaxy alone is at least 250 000 000 000 000 earth years old", that gigayears is not enough time for it to evolve, "that there are fully formed galaxies visible from earth that are well over 10 000 000 000 lightyears distant", etc.

My response is, why are all the quasars, which exist in young galaxies, only found far away? That the most distant galaxies are less evolved. That the oldest stars dated in our own galaxy are about the same age as the oldest, most distant galaxies and just under the date determined for the BB.

Also, he claims that "as photons propagate through the vast distances of space
they encounter vast amounts of matter along the way - matter which absorbs photons and creates gravity induced drag on photons which are not absorbed" and "to clarify.. visible light is only capable of travelling a finite distance approximately 1.3 x 10¹⁰ lightyears on average before all source photons are lost". If this were true, then there would a very gradual dimming with distance, not a sharp cut-off near the limit predicted by BBT, and some photons would actually travel much further, especially those coming from quasars, which emit massive numbers of photons. Also, we would be able to measure such a decrease in photons over distance, which I'm sure we don't. Furthermore, all these observations are converging on the same pattern, which was predicted by BBT.

This notion that redshift is caused by gravitational drag from matter, rather than cosmological expansion, I don't quite understand. Wouldn't photons passing close to matter first experience a blueshift, then a redshift that would cancel it out, resulting in no net shift? And any photons actually hitting a particle of matter would be reflected or absorbed, which would cause dimming, as he said, but not redshift.

Any model that accounts for cosmological redshift will limit our seeing distance, so that by itself doesn't prove that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. There are other factors, such as the time dilation of light curves from distant type 1a SNe. Also the uniformity of redshift from distant objects across the whole spectrum (e.g. why are 21 cm radio waves redshifted in the same proportion as 120 nm Lyman alpha photons?)

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Forming opinions as we speak

The onus of proof is on him with the appropriate scientific community.

If he has factual evidence of his claims then he should place them in the areas that will recognise them.

Here is a baker's dozen for fun:-
1 The big bang
2 Creation
3 steady state
4 Cyclical whole universe or parts
5 Binary captured charge separated cyclical
6 Singular crunch cyclical inversion to big bang
7 Aliens did it
8 Heat death
9 We have to kick start it
10 Individual galaxy formation
11 Space from another dimension
12 Formation of hydrogen from the gravity
13 Charge density to matter

And no I do not intend to promote any but just showing if he is genuine he will go to the appropriate arenas to debate his ideas instead of being brilliant to those who do not need to heed his ideas, much less make any use of them.

My reading tells me that the Big Bang was invented by George Gamov in 1948. I got this from Wiki

He suggested 'the primordial atom', not quite the same thing.

Nike:

Take a look around.

Not only does most of that make sense, duality has been offered up as a plausible expansion model compatible with it.

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

Do you mean Wikipedia, or some other wiki? FWIW, the Wikipedia article on Big Bang credits Lemaître for BBT, and Gamov for big bang nucleosynthesis. I do not know the details of "the primordial atom" model, but it sounds like he had the general principles of BBT. Modern BBT models are surely different from his, but modern evolutionary biology is a lot different from Darwin, and yet Darwin is still rightly credited as the father of evolutionary theory, even though many others also contributed to the modern synthesis.

But Wikipedia also says that Hubble's Law was formulated in 1929, only two years after Lemaître, not "decades".

Take it for what it's worth; Wikipedia is fine for a starting point, but it's not the most authoritative source. Really, quoting Wikipedia to support a position does not look good; it's like saying, I don't know what I'm talking about, but I spent 30 seconds researching it. (I use it a lot, myself, but not when I need a debate reference.)

If theres no big bang, how we would exist? How it comes in first place? The truth is Big Bang is true.

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Matt


Website:
www.freewebs.com/mattweather/

Forums: http://stormshunters.informe.com/

The Big Bang is a theory (several related ones, actually). It has yet to be proven, nor is it the only theory about how the universe began.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Yea i believed that. So we have to wait til what scienctists says about this.

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Matt


Website:
www.freewebs.com/mattweather/

Forums: http://stormshunters.informe.com/

Well, the Big Bang theory was originally based on the observed motion of galaxies, no matter what justifications it was later given. And, since that time, it's been shown to be consistent with further observation and evidence, so the theory's origins are irrelevant.

Saying it's not true because of it's origins is like saying, "The Nazis invented Volkswagon, so riding in one of their cars is evil!"

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Uh, sure they can. Especially since those who offer a religious origin for the universe often deny the Big bang theories?

What does the story you mentioned have to do with modern Big Bang theories?


No, but it's still confusing the originator with the merits of the product itself.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

It's not an "extraordinary claim". It's the prevailing set of working theories used by most cosmologists and astrophysicists today.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

By who and in what way? Please provide your reference material to validate this statement.

Note that links to EU and other metaphysical sites do not constitute legitimate supportive evidence.

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"I just have not come across anything that explains what I am trying to suggest."
- EU proponent not wanting credit for statement

Are you for real?

Are you trolling?

There are no religious motives behind the Big Bang cosmology. You are invited to submit evidence if you differ. The "motives" behind BB cosmology is the investigation of the physical reality of the Universe. The "alledged" expansion of the Universe is quite easily demonstrated and rests on several almost irrefutable pillars of evidence:

1. cosmological redshift - the fainter the galaxy, the higer the redshift, implying greater speeds of recession for galaxies further away; this is confirmed by other distance markers on the cosmic distance ladder. There is no other intrepretation for the redshift/distance/expansion relationship. It is not tenuous and it has not been falsified. You are invited to provide evidence of this "falsification" from the peer reviewed literature.

2. The observed ratio of hydrogen to helium (75:25) in the Universe is consistent with a big bang nucleosynthesis. This was worked out by Gamow et al (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis).

3. the cosmic background radiation at 2.7 degrees K, exactly matching predictions of a black body cooling from the primeaval fireball. This evidence killed the Steady State Theory back in the 1960's. This powerful evidence is everywhere you look, and has been throughly investigated by COBE and WMAP.

4. In the deep Universe, galaxies appear younger, or at least how you would expect young galaxies to look. The fainter the galaxy, the more young stars constitute its population, the more warped and distorted it appears due to tidal interactions with other galaxies in a smaller universe. (see Hubble ultra deep field http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/arc...eases/1996/01/

5. Finally, the big one, the irrefutable darkness of the night sky. No other cosmology explains why the sky is dark at night. Either the universe is finite, and had a definite beginning not too long ago, or there is lots of gas and dust out there that have yet to turn into stars and light up the night sky - this too implies a finite age. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers_paradox)

6. Also Einstein predicted the expansion of the Universe in his field equations, but stuffed it up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_big_blunder)

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics