I was looking through some forums and I saw a guy rant against the Big Bang. He seems to be a Young-Earth creationist, and here are his brilliant arguments. He seems to use high school science against the Big Bang Theory.

I tried to cut out the "something from nothing" nonsense, yet I still do not have a clue as to what he is trying to say. Are his descriptions of the laws of physics correct, and how do they affect the BBT (not much probably, but still...)

I'm not that educated in physics and such but...it sounds like a large part of the laws and theories he is talking about are correct, but he is applying them wrong or not understanding many more laws of physics that will explain and fill in the gaps. Some of what he says seems to be him coming to a conclusion without the extensive knowledge needed. I can assure you the Big Bang Theory is not as simple as to explain it that easily.

He doesn't use high school science, everyone doing that would do better. He doesn't even describe any physical theory, he's just using the name "big bang".

Like someone said some time ago: "It's not even wrong".

The first sentence made me shake my head, the second one made me smile. What is an eternal system and how can energy itself be a system?
To what should the amount of energy added be equal? Adding energy to pure energy? I don't know what energy he's talking about, doesn't seem to be the one that is used in physics. What can go in circles for all eternity? The object? Energy? Why even circles?

BBT doesn't try to describe what happend before the big bang.

Just some "questions" that somehow crossed my mind while reading...

He doesn't have the first idea what he's talking about. I think I spotted something near the middle that appears to vaguely resemble the Cosmological Argument, which IMO is worthy of debate if for no other reason than that it occupied the mind of some great philosophers. The rest of it is rubbish.

There's some great sig line material in there though. I especially like "if the #of energies were proportional to #planets then it would work."

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"Scientific progress goes 'boink'?"

Source below.

As to the quoted article in the OP, it sounds like someone who learned his physics from press releases and now thinks he knows more than those who do it for a living.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Or, to paraphrase the great Eric Morcombe, "He's got all the right words, just not necessarily in the right order..."

Saying that the Big Bang breaks the laws of physics is as meaningful as saying that the flight of a bubblebee breaks the laws of physics - an old saw that never has been true.

The Big Bang is the currently accepted theory for the beginning of the observable universe. It is neither true nor false; it doesn't break the known laws because almost by definition, the observables are tailored about to be consistent with both this theory and laws as they are currently understood: If the BB breaks the laws, then either the law has to change or theory has to be modified or abandoned.

Many of us do not think that the BB is a creditable explanation, or even a good working theory. Even so, finding workable solutions requires analysis of the many observables. One of the firm observables is that the earth is very old, and the universe much older - perhaps too old for the current version of the BB. It is not going to get any younger.

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jwj

The Reluctant Cosmologist

Hogwash. Provide some evidence that the observables are "tailored" to be consistent. Sounds to me like you're accusing physicists and astronomers of fraud.

What those of your ilk think is so far off as to be unimportant to practicing scientists. Nothing you have provided on this board comes within a country mile of being as descriptive, as predictive, and as complete a theory as the complex of theories that together form current BBC. Yes there are phenomena unexplained (your beloved Pioneer anomaly) but the vast bulk of observables are well described. You complain about the anomaly that's almost lost in the weeds but have not come close to providing an alternative that describes the simplest of well-established phenomena. At the risk of getting Biblical, Get that log out of your eye before you look for splinters in ours. You have not shown any viable option and simply complain in typical self-rightous ATM paranoia style.


P.S. Ketterle still has his Nobel Prize.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

If you have looked in on the 'NASA puzzled by..." thread, you should know exactly what I am talking about: It is standard practice to fit observations to know physics, even if such a fit is improbable. The unexpected vector Messenger was found on after passing near Mercury was modeled using a positive gravity anomaly at the point of closest approach. Possible, but not likely. Likewise a large positive gravity anomaly was used to model Galileo's movement during her closest approach to Ganymede. A powerful downdraft was used to model the Galileo probes descent into Jupiter's atmosphere. This is a conservative approach: assuming everything is right in our understanding of the physical world, even though we have not yet found many things we expected to see, nor can we always find good fits, however improbable.

It is the right approach for the body of 'teaching knowledge'; but there is more than enough strangeness for research physicists to be in hyperchallenge mode: Questioning many assumptions down to the bare roots.

Supernova researchers are not doing this: There are many possible interpretations of the data in-hand, but there is little disagreement among the leading researchers. This is not a good thing: Our observations of supernovae polarity, rise times, ultraviolet emissions; and the known swings in local absolute magnitudes are not being weighed fairhandedly.

The level of content with the status quo is retarding scientific advancement. We are going to spend another potful of money on what has proven so far to be a failure in the searches for both dark matter particles and gravitational waves. These empty approaches have lasted for more than four decades - as long as the Navel Research Center kept flogging the Michelson Morley experiments.

I have complained that the Pioneer gravity experiment has not been followed up on. It has not. I have complained that there has not been comprehensive testing of the Newtonian Equivalance principle outside of the Earth-Moon orbit, and there has not. (Please, please don't tell me again putting probes in orbit about Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have demonstrated the equivalence principle, because they do not!) I don't believe good alternatives can be successfully modeled until we quit using 'gravity anomalies at the location of closest approach' to normalize exceptional observations.

Good science is skeptical science; not only skeptical of what is clearly outside of our world view, but also skeptical of standing theories when they have to be bent and expanded to accomidate new data. My entire adult life, local observance of gravitational waves has been advertised as being just one step away. Either many well-funded scientists have been over optomistic or the calculations have been wrong, because the constraints have kept pushing the threshold of observational expectations deeper into the universe. This is not a minor inconvenience, like the Pioneer probes, but a deep and possibly mortal wound: Gravitational waves have to be there, and we can't find them.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has duplicated the incredibly precise images Cornell obtained in the very first 'successful' Bose Einstein Condensation. BCCs may be real, but that does not mean all of the data used to support them is free of pencil marks. A good skeptical read of the experimental adaptations, timing, calibration, pressure and historical facts surrounding the first Bose Einstein 'success' is warranted. I don't expect the paper will ever be successfully challenged, but I don't have to believe the results, either. To me the precision painfully is incredible.

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jwj

The Reluctant Cosmologist

Just on this point of strangeness consider the 'color confinement' in quantum mechanics. It has the same problem that galaxy rotations do. Beyond a certain point there is no change and then beyond that it becomes more likely to produce an anti-particle.

Big difference sure. But who is looking at symmetry and structure. Well astronomers are yes, but what about the hit it harder brigade. I won't even bother with the 'w' word.

High school physics maybe, but if it takes a year or more to train mathematicians to not see the obvious then full marks to the education system because it has worked.

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"Nature is obliged to let reality determine its laws, whereas mathematics is under no such constraint."

Take for instance the film of a pico second pulsed beam of light and the electron.

One the pattern is wavelike, more like an interference pattern that one might infer should have been like what Michelson and Morley were after.

Two the motion of a 'real' particle is not observed by wave pattern interference indicates the electron is not 'matter'.

In the whole universe there are two stable forms of matter. Normal matter the proton to be specific. Electrons just associate with them and neutrons decay to protons over a ten minute time frame. The proton has a stable half life estimated at 35 trillion years and proton death not occurring until around 120 trillion years.

Strange matter from the few strange matter distant objects observed, magnetars and so forth. It is well to remember two things here.

One this appears to be an ancient stable form of matter as these objects have ended their 'normal' life as stars.

Two as the universe ages matter is gradually building up ... hydrogen to helium to lithium to carbon and so on. (The next heavier stage is upward to lambda matter, worth thinking about).

Neutrino's although hypothesised are detected by limited interaction only. A neutrino is detected by energy signature in luminous fluids (just as are cosmic rays). None have been captured, photographed or bonded into 'matter'.

The further up from the proton in size the less time a 'particle' stays in existence, for the W and Z bosons not much longer than a trillion trillionth of a second.

If the little stuff is energy and the big stuff can't hold energy then is a proton really a particle?

Now back to wormholes, a one side symmetry violation and surrounding gate with various energies. Gravity at the gate working within only at a distance using inverse squared laws along the corridor ... much like distant stars have so little effect gravitationally on earthly matter.

To answer your question politely, as it requires an answer.
No disrespect to your good self or other working scientists who have put so much of their lives into the understanding of our world, but yes even if inadvertently refusing to or being incapable of understanding a different perspective.

Given that there are so many brilliant minds in science and so much research if this is known and being kept quiet by anyone then absolutely I would be screaming from the rooftops that the greatest and most extraordinary fraud imaginable has been committed. I do not believe it is the case and I hope this isn't the case. I believe the answer is so obvious that it has been missed because nobody even stopped to consider it.

Prizes to the scientist or scientists that rewrite all the rules of physics and still manage to keep the laws of physics intact.

It was my privilege to listen to an interview of Professor Lisa Randell where the concept of a gravity strong and gravity weak brane. Answers are being looked for at the smallest scales and at the largest scales and somehow we missed the very stuff right in front of our noses.

Gravity is not being looked for at the strangest scale, normal matter. Why ... perhaps because we assume that it must be a particle.

Why?

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"Nature is obliged to let reality determine its laws, whereas mathematics is under no such constraint."

I don't think this is a valid assumption. As far back as we can breakdown the spectral evidence of quasars and galaxies, there is an abundance of higher elements. We can also find vast fields of 'primal' hydrogen rather locally - and I mean apparently emitted from galactic cores. Without any theories that demand otherwise, the evidence suggests that there is a renewal or recycling process. Yes, this is at odds with thermodynamic rules, but then, so are the observations.

Why?[/quote]

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jwj

The Reluctant Cosmologist

I can take another look at the model I have. What if it means the universe could be potentially much older than current projections. Or the difficulty is that in order to keep the thermodynamic rules in place the universe is also far larger or circulating energy differently.

I do see that it is possible but not without including some aspects of EU cosmology. I will rethink the process a bit because it is not a path I am too familiar with or have read anywhere near enough about.

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"Nature is obliged to let reality determine its laws, whereas mathematics is under no such constraint."

Let us take big bang cosmology simply at "face value" for a moment, and assume that the bang is in fact the birth of the universe. The laws of physics, certainly part of the "universe" do not therefore exist until the universe does. So how is it possible for the bang to violate laws of physics which do not yet exist?

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Don't try this at home - We're what you call "professionals" - MythBusters.

Well, this is beating a dead horse, but a few quick comments about the first two sentences:

That doesn't even make sense, at least not without a lot of context and clarification which from the sound of things your source probably fails to provide. In mainstream physics, a "system" can possess "energy", but it would not be -identified with- "energy"--- this is quite irrespective of how long-lived the system might be!

That's not even grammatical. And "go on in a circle for all eternity" is not standard language in physics.

Several things wrong there. To mention just one, the strong spacelike scalar curvature singularity which appears in most FRW models is not really something to which one can glibly assign a dimension. One thing one -can- do is to find a conformal chart which allows one to interpret it as a locus in a larger (artificially introduced) manifold, and thus to think of it as a kind of "boundary" to some region, but this gets pretty technical and what I just said could easily mislead someone who hasn't studied the mathematical treatment I am thinking of. (See Hawking and Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime.)

"Triangular" and "eternal", "motion", and "system" all seem to be used here in vague, ambiguous but non-standard ways.

My verdict: clearly, the writings you are quoting from are too vapid to have any meaning. Or as Eta C, channeling Pauli (isn't that his portrait?), wrote: "not even wrong".

One other thing: most of you are probably well aware of the existence of cranky "creationist cosmologies" motivated by biblical literalism. But there are also quite a few crank cosmologies out there which appear to be motivated by other religions (?) such as Theosophy and Scientology. In particular cranky "cyclic cosmologies" are often propounded by followers of Theosophy and allied New Age movements, while cranky "ancient cosmologies" (trillions of years old) may be motivated by Scientology doctrines. All of these efforts are doomed to failure because they all ultimately attempt to use scripture to dictate to Nature rather than observing , theorizing, reobserving, and revising theory as needed (the hallmark of true science being its ability to adapt theory to observation, which is quite different from trying to force observations to fit a "mystically revealed" doctrine).