The Big Bang

Galoot

Here is a short summary:

http://www.cosmologystatement.org/


Here is a little longer summary:

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Cosmol...ang-Theory.htm


I'd also recommend the cover article of the August 2005 issue of Scientific American for a summary of the problems found in the WMAP survey of the CMB, which is based on a journal article from:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/serv...cvips&gifs=yes

you might try these articles as well:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ve_galaxy.html

and
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=5721


Most of these are popular-science journal articles, but they identify the main issues

Chronos

A rash is a good caricaturization. Casting doubts on inflation and BBT has been in vogue for a long time. But don't pony up the farm just yet. This horse is still way out in front of the pack for a number of unconnected reasons that point toward the same conclusion.

Example:

1] you are observed standing over a corpse in a vacant lot
2] holding a smoking gun
3] the gun is registered in your name
4] forensics matches the fatal bullet to the gun

This is analogous to the four pillars of BBT. Compelling evidence is required to break this case. A single anomaly, like Eric [the math challenged] Lerner's recent surface brightness paper [which I think is flawed], is not nearly enough to overcome the preponderance of evidence.

"An Open Letter to the Scientific Community"

is, IMO, a whiny diatribe of little substance. Researchers seek, and are awarded funds to test interesting new ideas all the time. If you repeatedly butt heads with 'the bosses' and fail to produce results, is it realistic to expect them to take your next research proposal seriously? The signatories of this petition are pretending no one ever gave them a chance, and that [for the most part], is simply not true [again IMO].

elerner

Chronos hides behind his anonymity to make groundless accusations and to avoid any semblance of scientific debate. I would be curious to know what mathematical errors he claims to find in my papers, or is “math-challenged" just a typical substitute for real scientific arguments?

More important, “chronos” whoever he is, does not seem to know what the scientific method is. Science advances though theories that make quantitative predictions that can be validated by observation. That is what makes science useful. When a theory makes clear predictions which are contradicted by observation it is falsified and has to be rejected. All Big Bang, expanding universe theories predict that surface brightness(AB magnitudes) decreases as (z+1)^-3. The data I presented in my recent paper shows that surface brightness is constant, as predicted by all non-expanding universe theories. The data further indicated strongly that it is physically impossible for “evolution” to compensate for the (z+1)^-3 decline due to absorption of UV by the dust that supernovae produce. If further work confirms this result, it is not an “anomaly”, it is a clear-cut invalidation of the expanding universe theory by the scientific method that has served us so well for four centuries or more.

Nor is it true that any of the “pillars” of the Big Bang remain standing. The light-element abundance predictions are clearly invalidated. For example, lithium-7 abundance is less than a quarter of the level predicted and almost every month there is more evidence that Li-7 could not have been substantially reduced by stellar processing. The Big Bang theory of the CBR, which predicts a Gaussian distribution of anisotropy, is clearly in contradiction with WMAP results. If anyone wants more contradictions, visit www.bigbangneverhappened.org.

If it concerns a theory that, like Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, has billions of accurate predictions to its credit and something seems to contradict it, that is “an anomaly”. But if you have a theory like the Big Bang, which has not a single accurate quantitative prediction—made BEFORE observation-- to its name, and is modified every time new data becomes available (inflation, dark mater, dark energy etc.) then observational contradictions invalidate the theory.

Eric Lerner

Garth

Hi Eric and welcome to these Forums!

We have discussed your paper here.

At about the same time another paper was published completely independently: A large population of galaxies 9 to 12 billion years back in the history of the Universe that seem to be describing the same effect, though using a different data set, but explaining it as an enhanced star formation period in the early universe.

Given that galaxies go through star-burst episodes do you not think that it is likely that they do so when they first form and now observed at relatively high red-shift?

It may indeed be true that as the standard ‘mainstream’ model and the theory it is dependent on, GR, requires Inflation, DM and DE, none of which has been confirmed in laboratory experiments, then it may need modification. However it is difficult to deny that the whole universe has gone through a period of intense compression, density and temperature to produce the relative abundances and CMB as observed.

Garth

wolram

A difficult idea to grasp, is that the U shrank to a density that i imagine should produce a Black hole, from whick AFAIK only Hawking radiation can escape, again i know little of the mechanics, how is re expansion possible ?

DaveC426913

Considering that gravity was one of the things that came as a result of the BB and subsequent expansion, we don't have to worry about applying our everyday laws of physics those the first moments.

IOW, there was no BH because there was no gravity.

turbo-1

If we live in an infinite steady state universe, the present elemental abundances are the product of millenia of stellar processing and reprocessing, and we do not need a BB creation theory to explain them. Also, if Mr. Lerner is correct in that we live in a non-expanding universe (and I believe he is), cosmological redshift does not equate to cosmological expansion, but is instead the result of light losing energy as it traverses and interacts with the EM fields of "empty" space. In an infinite universe with such redshifting, Olber's paradox is clearly resolved, as light is redshifted out of the visible, into the IR and longer wavelengths, eventually into wavelengths that cannot be sensed relative to our frame of reference - essentially flat-line. Remember that the temperature of "empty" space in a SS universe was predicted to be a few deg.K more than a hundred years ago. The CMB does not "prove" the BB or any variation thereof, and in fact the WMAP measurements of the CMB may pose significant problems for the BB model.

matt.o

please explain how "stellar processing" produces deuterium.

turbo-1

First of all, although deuterium can be destroyed in stars, it is not at all clear that all the deuterium in the universe had to be produced in the big bang, only to be destroyed in stars. In fact, there are many observations that indicate that deuterium may be far more plentiful than previously presumed, and that deuterium abundances can vary widely. This is conventionally interpreted as "enhancement" in which chemical processes increase the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in some environments.

Deuterium in the Local Interstellar Medium
http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/shst2/ferletr.html

ENHANCED DEUTERIUM FRACTIONATION IN DENSE INTERSTELLAR CORES
RESULTING FROM MULTIPLY DEUTERATED H
3
http://jupiter.phy.umist.ac.uk/~tjm/helen.lett.pdf

Deuterium Enhancement in Water toward Orion IRc2 Deduced from HDO Lines above 800 GHz
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ...239140531Guest

Extremely rare molecule found in interstellar space
http://www.submm.caltech.edu/cso/pic...eflightnow.pdf

It is not unreasonable to ask if the apparent overdensity of deuterium can be interpreted as evidence that deuterium is being produced in these regions, as opposed to being simply concentrated by chemical processes. Deuterium is a stable isotope, and has a lower zero-point energy than hydrogen. If radiative activity in space (cosmic ray collision, for instance) produces a free neutron in the presence of hydrogen, there is an impetus for the hydrogen to capture the neutron and settle into the lower-energy state of deuterium.

peter.mason3

This is where Eric Lerner starts to go wrong. Its a simplistic philosophy which Lerner shouldn't take as a guide. In practice science does not proceed in this fashion. Both Stephen Hawking and more recently Penrose (2005) have said so. Without going into it, it is the outdated outlook of the discredited philosopher Karl Popper.

Pete

Garth

Hi Pete! Just as a matter of interest I would like you to go into it! How do you think science progresses?

Garth

WarrenPlatts

Everybody knows that it is a logical fallacy to assume that a hypothesis is proven true if its prediction is actually observed:

H -----> O
________O___
H

This commits the fallacy of affirming the antecedent because other possible theories might imply the same prediction.

Thus, Popper argued that if you can't prove theory to be true, you can at least prove that it is false:

H -----> O
_______~O____
~H

This is a logically valid form of argument called "modus tollens" that counts as logical proof--at least within logic and mathematics.

In the real world, however, things are not so clear-cut. According to the Quine/Duhem thesis, it is just as impossible to falsify a hypothesis based on not observing its predicted empirical observation as it is to prove that the hypothesis is true. That is because in every real world experiment, there are unspoken assumptions built into the theory itself and into the experimental setup:

H & (A1 & A2 & A3 . . . An) ----> O
____________________________~O____
~H OR (~A1 OR ~A2 OR ~A3 . . . OR ~An)

Indeed, is this not what happens in most normal science? That is, the experimental data is rejected instead of the iconic theory.

The fact is that what data there is can be show-horned to fit both the BB theory and the SS theory. We'll have to resort to other scientific virtues to settle the issue. Logical falsification won't work.

Garth

Thank you Warren that is what I think, however I hope that the "other scientific virtues" do include experimental verification/falsification and astronomical observation. It is interesting to conjecture, for example, what will happen if the Gravity Probe B results are not as GR predicts but many sigma significance different from them? Are you suggesting another 'epicycle' will be added to the 'Mainstream Model'?

Garth

peter.mason3

Hi Garth, I think Warren is right. I was just looking up what Hawking and Penrose said, if it helps.

In Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Hawking writes, “As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasised,” a good theory is characterised by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation….but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.
Then immediately adds: “At least that is what is supposed to happen, but you can always question the competence of the person who carried out the observation.” Taking the example of Newton and Einstein’s theories of gravity, Hawking goes on to show how, “in practice” falsified theories tend to be modified or “extended” rather than abandoned.

Roger Penrose, in his 2004 The Road to Reality (not 2005 as I thought) says that Popper has “too stringent a criterion, and definitely too idealistic a view of science in this modern world of ‘Big science’.” (p1020).

I think WarrenPlatts is correct but in addition I'm think we may say we are always likely to find contradictions within a theory - it's really how they develop - at some points a new theory is required, at other points, the theory is itself develping and deepening. I don't think there's any doubt myself that the Big bang theory is relatively new and developing.

Pete

WarrenPlatts

Einstein has never been wrong before, has he?

turbo-1

Interesting...I tend to think of the BB model as pretty mature - like a wealthy dowager attended by a crew of cosmetologists (not cosmologists) busily trying to keep her looking attractive and play down her faults.

It's not just the liberal application of DM, DE, Higgs bosons, gravitons, etc, but the repeated invocations of things that are logically inconsistent with causality. The BB needs not only inflation, but also the perfect simultaneous ending of inflation in all parts of the universe that were no longer in causal contact when inflation ended. Then we get around 6Gy of cosmological expansion slowing under the force of gravitation until simultaneously, all the regions in all the universe decide to start start expanding at an accelerated rate. Who ordered that?

I prefer Popper's broad definition that ideas that cannot be falsified are not scientific. The statement "the sun circles around the moon" is patently false, but it has some value as a scientific statement precisely because it can be falsified. The concept that the BB universe underwent a period of super-luminal inflation that stopped simultaneously in an incredibly smooth, coordinated manner in all parts of the non-causally-connected universe is not a scientific one. It cannot be falsified.