I have a set of questions you might want to answer. I have my own answers, but i'll leave this for you, the now.

1. Are you happy with big bang theory?

2. Do you beleive that we will discover a GUT, and if you do, do you think it requires a mathematical model of the observer?

3. Do you beleive the universe is local or non-local?

4. Do you think God should be a requisite of theoretical physics?

5. Have we detected the most fundamental of objects (quarks)/v's\(strings)?

6. Is the universe really 15-20 billion years old?

7. Is the Hubble Expansion true or not?

1. It fits the facts. Feelings have nothing to do with it.
2. Yes. No.
3. Don't know.
4. By definition not. Science is not theology.
5. Who knows? What is an object?
6. The universe sure looks like it.
7. Maybe, maybe not. If so, why so. If not, why not.

Beliefs have little to do with science.

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then this may not be the appropriate area for this, might better fit in off topic babbling, or in general science, or even in ATM if you are proposing your answers for consideration.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Not so.

My answers are no more credible than the next. Anyone else care to answer my questions???

Snarky answer: I can't return it, I lost the receipt.

Scientific answer: Since BB is not one theory, but a number of theories with different premises trying to account for observed expansion, the question's not really answerable.
2A: Maybe.
2B: I doubt it.
The parts we can observe and interact with are local.
By definition, God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Odin, Zeus, L. Ron Hubbard, Crom and all other supernatural entities have nothing to do with theoretical physics.
Don't know. If so, it hasn't been identified as such, so in practice, no.
According to all evidence available, it's about 13.7 billion or thereabouts.
Don't know enough about it to give a meaningful answer.

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"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

1. I am happy with it for what it does, which is explain in a consistent way the red shifts of galaxies, and the CMB. I think that it will be refined with time. It may never explain how it all started.

2. I hope we can find a GUT, but I don't see why it would require a mathematical model of the observer. Can you say why it would be necessary?

3. I think that for many practical purposes you can treat the universe as local. If some special circumstances arise in which we have to treat it as nonlocal, I won't be shocked, but we aren't there yet.

4. Please avoid theological discussions on this forum.

5. Have we detected the most fundamental objects? Probably not, but we might have seen evidence of them. As noted by HD above, what is an object? Also what is 'most fundamental'?

6. The universe is estimated by a few methods to be between 13.5 and 14 billion years old. I don't know where you got that 15-20 figure. I think this is an accurate assessment of the age of the Universe.

7. "true"? It certainly works to explain what we are seeing. If another explanation comes along that also explains what we are seeing AND explains something that Hubble Expansion can't, then perhaps I'll jump to the new idea. Do you have such an idea?

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1. The big bang theories are not something to be happy or sad about. They attempt to explain observations in an objective manner. As to the cause of such a scenario, science offers no theory.

2. We may create a mathematical model, and it may even be of some use, but I don't consider it would be an "ultimate" explanation of nature. It would still be a model of an inaccessible underlying reality.

2a. What would you use to observe the "mathematical observer"?

3. There may be a mechanism that is something other than local in nature. But what that is would lie outside of what we can access using science.

4. The only requisite of theoretical physics is an acceptance that science suggests the existence of an underlying reality that is mind independent and hence inaccessible.

5. We have created models and called them electrons, photons etc. It is far from clear that we have detected fundamental objects with intrinsic properties.

6. Don't know.

7. Is a model ever "true"?

These are not independent questions. The universe can't have an age if it does not have a beginning, and the Hubble expansion is the expansion of the big bang. And I don't care much for the choice of words "happy with"; I haven't been to any big bang parties lately, and I have never heard cheers for Hubble during Happy Hour. Let us say that as scientific theories go, the big bang is well conceived; it is founded on the simplest interpretation of observations, and it is consistent with the large body of observations made since the theory was first introduced.

Personally, I am impressed with string theory, and it leads me to think that we will find a "theory of everything", or GUT if you prefer. I don't know what a mathematical model of the observer is supposed to be, so I don't know how to answer that part.

I have no idea.

It certainly seems that observation of high energy particle interactions are consistent with the existence & observation of quarks. Strings have certainly not been observed yet. Leptons are supposed to be fundamental, like quarks, and they certainly have been observed (i.e., electrons). So, some observed, some not.

My narrow answer is that science requires all known phenomena to be either explained in terms of other known phenomena, or to simply remain unexplained. The point of this approach is that there will always be somebody (and maybe several sombodies) willing to do the work to find out how to know the cause for those phenomena which remain unexplained. But if we simply assign some placeholder explanation, it stifles the desire to learn. Why bother to try to figure out anything, if you think you already know the answer?

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

I'll tell you my answers if you tell me yours (first).

Keep in mind the narrow scope of #4 permitted on this forum.

1. Are you happy with big bang theory?

yep--it seems to work for now

2. Do you beleive that we will discover a GUT, and if you do, do you think it requires a mathematical model of the observer?

yes, no.

3. Do you beleive the universe is local or non-local?

nonlocal (Bells inequalities seem to require it)

4. Do you think God should be a requisite of theoretical physics?

abstain from answering.

5. Have we detected the most fundamental of objects (quarks)/v's\(strings)?

probably.

6. Is the universe really 15-20 billion years old?

more like 13.8 (last I'd read), but that's in the ballpark

7. Is the Hubble Expansion true or not?

could get into "what is truth" here, but short answer--we observe it, Cccam's razor says don't assume it's a clever and elaborate fiction, so it's true.

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Deliriously. It is by far among the small handful of best theories science has ever manufactured, in terms of its consistency, agreement with observation, and predictive power. That does not mean it may not undergo considerable changes in the future, as did Newton's theories. This answer extends to #6 and #7.
I believe we will one day unify gravity with the other forces, but by then this may no longer be termed a GUT. We may have learned our lesson by then and avoid grandiose claims of finality. The theory will almost certainly not involve any model of the observer, nor will it need to to accomplish its goals.
Neither. I believe that for some things, local models suffice, for others, we need nonlocal models (that encode nonlocal information like multiple-particle wave functions), and many other things will not succumb to either type of modeling. The universe is quite a bit different from our models of it.
No, there is no way to claim scientifically that one has detected the most fundamental anything.

I'm going to answer these prior to reading the thread just so I can see who is like-minded and who is not without being biased by other people's opinions and comments.


It works for me. I haven't developed my own theory yet, once I have I'll probably say the big bang is rubbish.

Wow, great question. Yes I think we'll develop a unified theory and yes I think our perception will have to be taken into account at some point.

You got me on this one. You are using a term I'm not familiar with if my assumptions are correct.

I think...

No. I personally know of many things that are smaller but I'm keeping it a secret until I have a patent on the microverse.

No. It has only been around for thirty seconds.

I believe empirical evidence has shown it to be true, has it not?

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Yes, and no, I think the BB is only part of a greater Cyclic Universe therory, we just don't know enough yet to say for certain.

Yes, and I think it will have to account for observer as the act of observation does effect things at the quantum level.

It's Local, there is nothing to say the the circumstances that made this univers didn't happen elsewhere or elsewhen, or both.

No, it should not be a requisit, at all. I do belive in a God but personaly think he left this stuff for us to figure out on our own.

No, were still missing some Quarks even.

Everything seems to point that direction.

It's likely true, however this is subject to change or ammendment if new physics are developed because Gravitons, Tacheons or Cronitons are discovered.

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... On that note everyone, thanks for your interesting, and yet mixed replies.

1. Are you happy with big bang theory?

I am unhappy about the nature of something coming from nothing. I also have problems with a singular spacetime region. If everything is somehow predetermined in this universe, i find a totally lawless region very hard to comprehend. I am liking the idea of linking tunnelling with the universe - a theory stating that the universe ''tunelled'' into existence, much like a particle can tunnel through a certain thickness in space and time.

2. Do you beleive that we will discover a GUT, and if you do, do you think it requires a mathematical model of the observer?

No. Too many things stand in the way of a ''definate unified theory.'' For intance, imagine we created a unified model. What equation is there to stand in the way of some chaotic system taking over? Also, how does one define the uncertainty principle?

3. Do you beleive the universe is local or non-local?

Maybe just a local universe. I don't hold entanglement as definate proof of a non-locality. Bells hypothesis only showed it was possible to measure entangled photons. However, superluminal information can also answer for the action at spooky distances.

4. Do you think God should be a requisite of theoretical physics?

Not really. Some see God as being somehow ''outside'' the conventional physical rules.

5. Have we detected the most fundamental of objects (quarks)/v's\(strings)?

No. There are such particles as ''solitons...'' hypothesized particles that are even smaller than the Planck Box... of... 1.616 x 10^-33

6. Is the universe really 15-20 billion years old?

I think we don't have enough evidence to have a precise calculation.

7. Is the Hubble Expansion true or not?

It is a useful tool for big bang. It is also well-established, but time will tell if the shift was indeed a cause of something other than some expansion from an infinitessimal point in spacetime.

But that is not part of the Big Bang theory, it is part of the popular philosophy many people associate with the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang theory, at it's core, is the assertion that the universe was much much hotter and denser 13.7 billion years ago, to the point that the temperature was high enough at some point to create the baryons we find in our universe, and then subsequently expanded and cooled to what we see today. That's all it is, it says nothing about the origin expressly because it's own physics breaks down before that point. That's nothing new, Newtonian physics breaks down at small scales and Galilean relativity breaks down at high speeds, yet we like them both to use them constantly.
The Big Bang model does not formally require a singularity, it merely extrapolates our physics as far back as we are capable of, and inserts a big ? at that point. That is a fair description of what science always does.
That would certainly be considered a Big Bang model-- so you like the BBT more than you realize.
It's not a DUT, it's a GUT. I agree the word "grand" is overstated, but the real point is, science is all about unification. The goal of science is to replace what is complicated by what is simple yet still as effective, or nearly so, and that's a pretty good definition of what "unification" means. So "grand unification" is synonymous with "grand science". A GUT has always been, and will always continue to be, the holy grail of science-- but we should not think the unification we achieve is ever "definite" or "ultimate", because the concept is not scientifically testable and history schools us differently.