Is Big Bang True? Physics and SR/GR

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the validity of the Big Bang theory, exploring various aspects such as redshift, dark matter, cosmic background radiation, and the universe's expansion. Participants express differing views on the implications of these concepts and their relation to established physics, including special and general relativity.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants propose that redshift could be due to a decrease in light energy rather than a cosmological effect, questioning the interpretation of redshift as evidence for the universe's expansion.
  • Concerns are raised about the horizon problem and the implications of inflation, with some arguing that light speed limits contradict the feasibility of inflation.
  • Participants express skepticism about dark matter, claiming there is no evidence for its existence and questioning its role in the Big Bang theory.
  • Some assert that the universe is static and criticize the scientific community for defending the Big Bang theory as a belief rather than a proven fact.
  • Others argue that the Big Bang theory is well-supported by evidence, including predictions about cosmic background radiation and the abundance of light elements, although they acknowledge some unresolved questions and competing models.
  • Discussions include references to Halton Arp's observations and the implications of redshift anomalies, with some participants asserting a consensus against Arp's interpretations.
  • Participants note that the assumption of a smooth and homogeneous universe has been challenged by observations of clumpiness and discontinuity, leading to debates about the validity of the Big Bang model.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the validity of the Big Bang theory. Multiple competing views remain, with some defending the theory and others presenting significant challenges to its foundational assumptions.

Contextual Notes

Limitations in the discussion include varying interpretations of observational data, differing assumptions about the nature of redshift, and unresolved questions regarding dark matter and the universe's structure.

jinchuriki300
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Hey guys, I'm deeply interested in physics and I want to be a theoretical physicist, I'm only freshman in high school, but I'm in 2nd quarter calculus. I've a question that want to ask. I've read many article about physics especially SR and GR, could it be that redshift that we see from moving stars are just decrease in energy of light, if the energy of light fainted just right, the result is red shift, another problem for Big Bang is the horizon problem, i believe that light is fastest velocity in universe so there is no way that inflation could be real. Dark matter, there are no evidence for dark matter, and how do we know it's expanding. In my opinion, even if everything is moving away from us, could it be that galaxy is not expanding could it be that matters are moving away but not the universe. Scientists today have found galaxy filament, the total mass could be add up to the missing 99% of the universe. So, is Big Bang true or wrong?
 
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Your note has many errors. I suggest you read up more on the material.
another problem for Big Bang is the horizon problem, i believe that light is fastest velocity in universe so there is no way that inflation could be real.
Light speed us upper limit on motion, but not on the expansion of space.
Dark matter, there are no evidence for dark matter, and how do we know it's expanding.
There is plenty of evidence for dark matter (holding galaxies together). The last phrase (expanding) seems irrelevant to the rest of the sentence.

Scientists today have found galaxy filament, the total mass could be add up to the missing 99% of the universe
.
Where did you get this idea?
 
Big Bang is true.

We are pretty certain of events all the way down to microseconds after the BB event. There are some tweaks, some questions and some competitors to the theory, true, but it's pretty much a done deal.
 
Read this contradiction I get from some website and tell what you think
False Assumptions?
The first problem involves the three predictions that the big bang theory makes, that the universe is expanding, that the cosmic background radiation exists and that the abundances of light elements are correct. The idea that the universe is expanding is based upon an assumption that may be false. This assumption is that the observed red-shift is a cosmological effect and is not an anomoly. Photographs taken by Halton Arp suggest the possibility that some objects which appear to be physically connected show widely divergent red-shifts. If it can be shown that the red-shifts are not cosmological, this would undermine Hubbles law, and the big bang theory. Likewise, the cosmic background radiation could be a general condition of the universe, not at all related to any big bang event. It's an example of the false logic mentioned above.
But these problems are not fatal. The really serious problems directly contradict the big bang theory with observational data. If the big bang occurred 20 billion years ago, it seems logical to assume that nothing in the universe can be older than this. Yet, mammoth clusters of galaxies have been discovered that are billions of light years across. Such clusters would take hundreds of billions of years to form, far longer than the universe has existed. A second part of the problem is that the universe is presumed to have started out smooth and homogeneous, like the background radiation. Recent observations have shown the actual universe to be profoundly discontinuous and clumpy. There are vast areas where there is nothing, and enormous ribbons of matter stretch out over the universe like strings of christmas lights. Another part of the problem is the alleged "dark matter". For the big bang theory to be correct, 99% of the universe must be made up of this invisible and unobserved form of matter. Yet, there is no evidence that this "dark matter" actually exists at all.
When cosmologists thought that the universe was smooth and homogeneous on its largest scales, they were happy to find that the background radiation matched perfectly to a "black body" curve. But when it became clearer that this smoothness did not really exist, it became necessary to find bumps in the background radiation, tiny non-conformities that could explain how the universe got from its smooth, homogeneous beginnings to a clumpy, discontinous present. Data from the COBE probe in 1989 seemed to confirm the perfect smoothness of the background radiation, although later interpretations by George Smoot claim to have found the necessary bumps. The picture above is from COBE data that purports to show the anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation
 
I believe that the universe is static, and 1 day i'll try to prove it, even Einstein has some fallacy in this theory. He believes that universe is non-Euclidean geometry and you have to use complex math to solve but you could use a high school math to solve something like Mercury's perihelion, bending of light, etc...and space could be Euclidean geometry. Big Bang has become a religious belief of science and no matter how people find errors in the theory. Scientific community will defend it.
 
jinchuriki300 said:
The idea that the universe is expanding is based upon an assumption that may be false. This assumption is that the observed red-shift is a cosmological effect and is not an anomoly. Photographs taken by Halton Arp suggest the possibility that some objects which appear to be physically connected show widely divergent red-shifts.
There is a virtually complete consensus among astronomers that Arp's interpretation is wrong.

jinchuriki300 said:
If it can be shown that the red-shifts are not cosmological, this would undermine Hubbles law, and the big bang theory.
If red-shifts are not cosmological, then we would have to overturn quantum mechanics and general relativity. There is no evidence to support such a radical change in the known laws of physics.

jinchuriki300 said:
The really serious problems directly contradict the big bang theory with observational data. If the big bang occurred 20 billion years ago, it seems logical to assume that nothing in the universe can be older than this. Yet, mammoth clusters of galaxies have been discovered that are billions of light years across. Such clusters would take hundreds of billions of years to form, far longer than the universe has existed.
This is out of date. The "you can't be older than your ma" problem has been resolved.

jinchuriki300 said:
A second part of the problem is that the universe is presumed to have started out smooth and homogeneous, like the background radiation. Recent observations have shown the actual universe to be profoundly discontinuous and clumpy. There are vast areas where there is nothing, and enormous ribbons of matter stretch out over the universe like strings of christmas lights.
The author of this doesn't understand the subject. Nobody ever assumed that the universe had to be exactly homogeneous. It is very nearly homogeneous on large scales, and this is why we can, for many purposes, make homogeneous models.

jinchuriki300 said:
When cosmologists thought that the universe was smooth and homogeneous on its largest scales, they were happy to find that the background radiation matched perfectly to a "black body" curve. But when it became clearer that this smoothness did not really exist, it became necessary to find bumps in the background radiation, tiny non-conformities that could explain how the universe got from its smooth, homogeneous beginnings to a clumpy, discontinous present. Data from the COBE probe in 1989 seemed to confirm the perfect smoothness of the background radiation, although later interpretations by George Smoot claim to have found the necessary bumps. The picture above is from COBE data that purports to show the anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation
This is more of the same error.

jinchuriki300 said:
Another part of the problem is the alleged "dark matter". For the big bang theory to be correct, 99% of the universe must be made up of this invisible and unobserved form of matter. Yet, there is no evidence that this "dark matter" actually exists at all.
Efforts are underway to detect dark matter directly. Two such efforts are claiming positive results: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26861/ So "no evidence" is completely incorrect, although there is still a lot of uncertainty at this stage, and the positive results could turn out to be wrong.

The big bang model is consistent with all the known data. It makes many detailed predictions, e.g., about abundances of nuclei, that are verified by experiment.

There is no other model that is consistent with all the known data. If you can come up with one, that would be very cool -- knock yourself out!
 
jinchuriki300 said:
I believe that the universe is static, and 1 day i'll try to prove it, even Einstein has some fallacy in this theory. He believes that universe is non-Euclidean geometry and you have to use complex math to solve but you could use a high school math to solve something like Mercury's perihelion, bending of light, etc...and space could be Euclidean geometry.
There is a vast amount of evidence in favor of general relativity: http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/ , The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment, Clifford M. Will

jinchuriki300 said:
Big Bang has become a religious belief of science and no matter how people find errors in the theory. Scientific community will defend it.
This statement would be more convincing if you could point out one such error. The supposed errors listed in #4 are not errors. The scientific community entertained the steady-state theory on an equal footing with the big bang models up until observation proved that the steady state was not viable.
 
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FAQ: What is the evidence on Big Bang versus steady state cosmologies?

Let's consider this question first under the assumption that general relativity and standard quantum mechanics are valid. (GR has been verified to high precision by a wide varirty of empirical tests.[Will]) After that we'll see what happens if this assumption is relaxed.

We have a variety of evidence that the universe's state has been changing over time:

The Hubble law is observed. If standard quantum mechanics is valid, then these redshifts cannot be intrinsic to the emitting body. If general relativity is valid, then these redshifts are to be explained by the expansion of the universe. The Hubble expansion requires that the matter in the universe become more dilute over time. If general relativity is valid, then mass-energy is locally conserved, so there is no possibility of spontaneously creating more matter to "fill in the gaps."

When we view light from the deep sky that has been traveling through space for billions of years, we observe a universe that looks different from today's. For example, quasars were common in the early universe but are uncommon today.

Most dramatically, we observe the cosmic microwave background radiation. The universe full of hot, dense gas that emitted the CMB is clearly nothing like today's universe.

Not only has the universe changed over time, but there is a great deal of evidence that it has a finite age:

In the present-day universe, stars use up deuterium nuclei, but there are no known processes that could replenish their supply. We therefore expect that the abundance of deuterium in the universe should decrease over time. If the universe had existed for an infinite time, we would expect that all its deuterium would have been lost, and yet we observe that deuterium does exist in stars and in the interstellar medium.

The second law of thermodynamics predicts that any system should approach a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, and yet our universe is very far from thermal equilibrium, as evidenced by the fact that our sun is hotter than interstellar space, or by the existence of functioning heat engines such as your body or an automobile engine.

The combination of all these observations clearly establishes that static cosmological models are not consistent with observation, provided that general relativity and quantum mechanics are valid.

Around 1948, Hoyle and others created a steady-state cosmological model by relaxing general relativity's prohibition on the spontaneous creation of matter. A detailed account of the evidence against this model, and later variations, is given by Wright. The model was falsified in the 1950's by counts of faint radio sources. It is also inconsistent with observed abundances of helium and with the discovery of the CMB in 1965. An oscillating variant called Quasi-Steady State Cosmology was proposed by Hoyle, Burbidge, and Narlikar in 1993, but it was inconsistent with preexisting observations. They later produced a modification of the model, which is also inconsistent with observation.

Will, "The confrontation between general relativity and experiment," http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/
Wright, "Errors in the Steady State and Quasi-SS Models," http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/stdystat.htm
 
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jinchuriki300 said:
I believe that the universe is static, and 1 day i'll try to prove it, even Einstein has some fallacy in this theory. He believes that universe is non-Euclidean geometry and you have to use complex math to solve but you could use a high school math to solve something like Mercury's perihelion, bending of light, etc...and space could be Euclidean geometry. Big Bang has become a religious belief of science and no matter how people find errors in the theory. Scientific community will defend it.

Why would a freshman in high school assume that tens of thousands of people, if not more, are incorrect? It looks to me like you only looked at the very basics of the big bang, then saw something that said it was wrong, and never bothered to look at the actual evidence or explanations about it. I implore you to explore both sides before making a decision in the future. Find something that says the big bang is incorrect? Find out why and see what current science says about it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being skeptical. It is a very good quality for not only science, but for life in general. But don't mistake skepticism for outright denial.
 
  • #10
Drakkith said:
Why would a freshman in high school assume that tens of thousands of people, if not more, are incorrect? It looks to me like you only looked at the very basics of the big bang, then saw something that said it was wrong, and never bothered to look at the actual evidence or explanations about it. I implore you to explore both sides before making a decision in the future. Find something that says the big bang is incorrect? Find out why and see what current science says about it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being skeptical. It is a very good quality for not only science, but for life in general. But don't mistake skepticism for outright denial.


Well stated Drakkith!
 
  • #11
If you want to prove you'll have to find a better explanation for CMB and redshift objects quasars. Maybe if you said we are at the centre of the universe it might solve a few problems. Apparently some data from CMB suggests that. And the highbredshift objects would just mean they are moving away from us. Maybe if we were in a Hubble bubble. I still don't know if it could be argued for a static state universe though. Although I think the sun at the centre of the universe is the only other option where you could use some of the data to prove that.
 
  • #12
Shenstar said:
If you want to prove you'll have to find a better explanation for CMB and redshift objects quasars. Maybe if you said we are at the centre of the universe it might solve a few problems. Apparently some data from CMB suggests that.
Don't you mean the "centre of the observable universe"? If there are astronomers in distant galaxies, they would also see a uniform CMB that seemed to show that they were at the "centre of the universe", wouldn't they?
 
  • #13
Shenstar said:
If you want to prove you'll have to find a better explanation for CMB and redshift objects quasars. Maybe if you said we are at the centre of the universe it might solve a few problems. Apparently some data from CMB suggests that. And the highbredshift objects would just mean they are moving away from us. Maybe if we were in a Hubble bubble. I still don't know if it could be argued for a static state universe though. Although I think the sun at the centre of the universe is the only other option where you could use some of the data to prove that.
Er, what? No, there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that we are at any sort of center. Some have proposed something like this to explain the accelerated expansion, but it just doesn't work when examined in detail.
 
  • #14
DavidMcC said:
Don't you mean the "centre of the observable universe"? If there are astronomers in distant galaxies, they would also see a uniform CMB that seemed to show that they were at the "centre of the universe", wouldn't they?

Yes, any observer can claim to be at the center as there is no absolute center.
 
  • #15
Another point that should be made, jinchuriki3000, is that most of your information is extremely out of date, by decades. Nothing new has come from Arp's arguments in several decades, and your reference to COBE almost sounds like you've never heard of WMAP. Essentially your entire post could have been, and similar things were, written 30 years ago. Astronomy has come quite a ways since then-- you need to update yourself or you risk getting stuck in the past. They say "old dogs can't learn new tricks", but you are way too young to get stuck in such antiquated thinking about the Big Bang. Had you been 75 years old I could see where you were coming from, but a high school student-- that's a real pity.

Here is some more modern information you should google:
1) WMAP.
2) the Bullet Cluster.
3) type Ia supernovae (to correct your claim that 99% of the universe has to be dark matter-- it's more like 30% of the energy), though I doubt you are going to like dark energy much.
4) supermassive black holes
That should get you started back on the road to modern astronomy.
 
  • #16
I have always found Arp's ideas fairly convincing. This does not mean I also agrees his points of view on gravity, which are very exotic. But now we even have a quasar which has a relatively nearby galaxy in the background...

[Crackpot link removed]

Who can doubt that at least some of the redshift is intrinsic?
 
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  • #17
gvgomez said:
I have always found Arp's ideas fairly convincing.
That's unfortunate. Because he is completely and utterly wrong, and basically just a crackpot these days who doesn't bother to pay attention to the evidence any longer. His claims have been roundly shown to be false, and yet he still promotes them. It's nonsensical.

gvgomez said:
Who can doubt that at least some of the redshift is intrinsic?
Anybody that knows anything at all about physics.
 
  • #18
Then please explain the well known Hubble photo of a quasar with a galaxy in the background.
 
  • #19
gvgomez said:
Then please explain the well known Hubble photo of a quasar with a galaxy in the background.
Tell me: why are you so sure the quasar is in the foreground?
 
  • #20
I'm afraid that Mr. Gomez won't be around to answer that.
 
  • #21
From what I have read it would seem that the current big bang model is the Newtonian gravity of our time. It does a great job of explaining what can be observed but still has some flaws in it's origin just like Newton's gravity.

The theory works, and until we have a better understanding of the universe as a whole to give a better idea of where everything came from other than "it just phased into being" and where the laws of nature came from and time, the big bang theory is the best we have.
 
  • #22
The big bang theory does not go back to the beginning of the universe. It makes no claims on where the universe originated from, it only says that the universe expanded from a very hot dense state and describes the universe from then on.
 
  • #23
jinchuriki300 said:
the really serious problems directly contradict the big bang theory with observational data. If the big bang occurred 20 billion years ago, it seems logical to assume that nothing in the universe can be older than this. Yet, mammoth clusters of galaxies have been discovered that are billions of light years across. Such clusters would take hundreds of billions of years to form, far longer than the universe has existed.

bcrowell said:
this is out of date. The "you can't be older than your ma" problem has been resolved.

bcrowell: As I completed the thread I did not get the explanation over the statement that the “older than your mama-concept” was solved? It seems to me that you just avoid giving any kind of explanation or hint to that fact…
 
  • #24
Drakkith said:
The big bang theory does not go back to the beginning of the universe. It makes no claims on where the universe originated from, it only says that the universe expanded from a very hot dense state and describes the universe from then on.

What?

The official name isn't "The Big Bang Theory" it is "The Big Bang Theory for the Origin of the Universe"

http://www.rsc.org/chemsoc/timeline/pages/1927.html

Here is a bit from NASA: "The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe."

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_theory.html

According to the Big Bang model, the universe did not exist before the big bang because the big bang created time and space, therefor there was no time, nor space prior to the big bang for it to exist in.
 
  • #25
What I mean DNMock is that the model of the theory only describes the universe from a point in time greater than about 10^-43 seconds. Before that the model cannot make predictions about the state of the universe. Of course, that point in time is so close to the beginning I guess you could say that it might as well be the beginning. What happened at t=0 or possibly before if possible cannot be described by the standard model, however we do have new theories being developed that do make those predictions.
 
  • #26
DNMock said:
What?

The official name isn't "The Big Bang Theory" it is "The Big Bang Theory for the Origin of the Universe"

http://www.rsc.org/chemsoc/timeline/pages/1927.html

Here is a bit from NASA: "The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe."

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_theory.html

According to the Big Bang model, the universe did not exist before the big bang because the big bang created time and space, therefor there was no time, nor space prior to the big bang for it to exist in.
Read a little bit more carefully. See the following sentence:
It postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the portion of the universe we can see today was only a few millimeters across.

Note that it does not say that our universe was a singularity. This is good. If it did say that, I would be right now firing off an angrily-worded e-mail to NASA saying that their website was inaccurate and misleading. So it doesn't describe the absolute beginning, but it does describe our universe starting from a very early time.
 
  • #27
Hi Chalnoth, I was reading one of the other threads and ended up looking at the FAQ:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=506992
(About why the universe didn't collapse into a black hole)

Near the end, it says:
Although cosmological models do have a Big Bang singularity in them, it is not a singularity into which future world-lines terminate in finite time, it's a singularity from which world-lines emerged at a finite time in the past.
Does this part need to be updated? Or is it somehow talking about something else/a different kind of singularity?
 
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  • #28
cephron said:
Hi Chalnoth, I was reading one of the other threads and ended up looking at the FAQ:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=506992
(About why the universe didn't collapse into a black hole)

Near the end, it says:

Does this part need to be updated? Or is it somehow talking about something else/a different kind of singularity?
That singularity exists in the math, but cannot be real. Basically, the singularity is a prediction of General Relativity, but to describe densities approaching the singularity we would need a theory of quantum gravity, which we don't have. It's therefore a nonsense prediction: General Relativity simply isn't valid in that regime.
 
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  • #29
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.
 
  • #30
jinchuriki300 said:
I believe that the universe is static, and 1 day i'll try to prove it, even Einstein has some fallacy in this theory. He believes that universe is non-Euclidean geometry and you have to use complex math to solve but you could use a high school math to solve something like Mercury's perihelion, bending of light, etc...and space could be Euclidean geometry. Big Bang has become a religious belief of science and no matter how people find errors in the theory. Scientific community will defend it.
You started off telling us that you are a freshman in high school. Now, you tell us that you have "beliefs" that you are certain are true no matter what educated scientists and experiments say to the contrary. And then you talk about "religious belief" of scientists? So, to you "religious beliefs" are those that are based on experimental evidence while your own beliefs are based on what?

Sounds to me like you really don't want to be a scientist. Or, if you think you do, it's only because you have no idea what science is.
 

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