What Are the Key Flaws in the Big Bang Theory?

[iner7ia]

Hi, I'm sorry if this question has been answered before, but I was wondering whether anyone had seen the '30 Problems with the Big Bang article? I'm not a physics student, but I've a keen interest in it, and the Big Bang has always been a particular point of fascination for me and this paper seems to fairly comprehensively debunk it as a valid theory.

Now I'm not a physics student, just trying to learn as I've been interested in all things space since I was a kid, so forgive me if the maths or any information in this article is just plain wrong. I was just wondering what people who actually understand all of the relevant info would make of it.

I can't post a link, I've only recently joined, but a Google search of the title should bring you to it.

 

[Whovian]

Do you mean inappropriate link removed[/color] ? I'll post myself getting mad at it once I've read it.

 

[Whovian]

1. No. Expanding Universe models actually fit observations quite well, such as the redshift of distant objects.

2. Absolutely not. The argument about it not having any chance to reach us fails to take into account that it's everywhere.

And now it's starting to get so out of hand that I can't really point out all the mistakes.

 

[iner7ia]

Yep, that's the one. A comment on YT (where all the great minds meet lol) directed me to this list. Having a barely rudimentary grasp of the actual theoretical workings of physics doesn't help when trying to sift through jargonisitic language, so I thought it'd make sense to ask here. Thanks for the response.

 

[bapowell]

3) Having too many adjustable parameters should make any theory work. Whoever wrote this has zero idea how a theory is constrained by data.

4) The very fact that the Milky Way is a bound system today completely negates this argument, because it could then obviously have been a bound system earlier when it was first forming. The distribution of large scale structure has nothing to do with galaxies moving through space, and everything to do with the initial distribution and subsequent evolution of the initial density perturbations. These things are well understood and simulations show that current models agree with observations.

5) I'm not an astrophysicist, but I'll venture a guess at this one. The more distant quasars are older. Hence, they have indeed evolved relative to those at lower redshifts. This could certainly explain a change in intrinsic brightness. I don't know if it does, but if I had a burning desire to know, I'd fire up google and find out. Not write a sweeping refutation of this fact without any understanding.

6) Measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background by the WMAP satellite have confirmed an age of 13.7 +/1 0.11 billion years. This has been known since 2003. Improvements in our understanding of the evolution of globular clusters has largely resolved this problem, although I believe there is still some uncertainty in exactly how this process works. But that's science.

7) There's a lot wrong with this one, but I'll just point out that there is nothing in the standard big bang model that precludes us from moving relative to the CMB. In addition, the apparent anomalous motion of galaxies should be dealt with statistically. But that's probably too highbrow for these guys.

8) Yes, it appears that some new form of matter that does not interact electromagnetically must comprise the majority of the non-relativistic matter in the universe. It has not yet been directly detected, but many pieces of indirect evidence support it. In any case, we obviously don't fully understand the Universe yet; to point out areas where complete understanding is lacking and concluding that the entire theory must be thrown out is unsound and illogical. See: God of the Gaps.

9) Again, not an astro but I'll offer an explanation. There are no Population I stars -- those completely lacking metals -- in existence. The oldest globular clusters (remember those, fellas?) are Population II and in fact rather metal-poor.

10) Called the flatness problem. Solved back in 1980.

11) Understood with modern models of structure formation. Large scale structure should be essentially fractal in nature, exhibiting clusters, filaments (walls), and voids.

12) This is in reference to the GZK cutoff. There were a few cosmic ray events that appeared to violate this cutoff observed in the 90's, but recent experiments (like Pierre Auger) have indicated that these observations are likely due to a systematic energy shift, and do not comprise actual violations of the cutoff. And given that we observe the CMB, the only way the GZK cutoff could be violated is if special relativity is incorrect. Do these guys really want to go there?

...more to come later...

 

[bapowell]

13) Regarding the matter/anti-matter asymmetry. Here the authors get all sorts of confused. They claim that this asymmetry is purported to arise as a result of CP violation, but state that this violation has not been observed. In fact, neither statement is true: the matter/anti-matter asymmetry is expected to be due in part to CP violation; and of course CP violation has been observed in nature. It is true that how this asymmetry arises is not known, but we know what we need out of our theory in order for it to happen (see Sakharov conditions.) These are expected to be exhibited by most grand unified theories. For why this argument is illogical, see: God of the Gaps.

14)-15) Not an astro, can't comment.

16) This is BS of unbounded hilarity. The standard big bang model makes no claims regarding the nature of the bang itself. In fact, all explanations of a genesis -- whether religious, philosophical, or otherwise -- suffer from the same infinite regress of causations. And, why the First Law of Thermodynamics is accepted by the authors while virtually every other physical law and principle is of suspect validity is particularly interesting...

17) Not sure how to resolve this one. But due to the fact that the authors exhibit a profound and unfortunate misunderstanding of basic structure formation, we can probably chalk it up to that.

18) So what exactly is the problem? That the elliptical galaxies actually possesses stars with these errant motions but are somehow not being sheared, or that they don't possesses these stars but should? Sounds like the former, which unfortunately has nothing to do with the big bang, and everything to do with the physics of galaxy formation and evolution.

19) How do we know that the rotation angle is not "angle + 360 degrees"? Just asking.

20) CMB data most definitely does not favor MOND over dark matter; I'm not sure if Boomerang ever made this conclusion, but it certainly doesn't stand now (not since 2003 or so.) And again, not sure how this calls into question the big bang -- MOND is theoretically consistent with big bang cosmology.

21)-23) Can't comment

24) No, it doesn't.

25) A complex mixture of gravity, star formation, and hydrodynamics appears to be needed? I'd expect as much when describing the evolution of large scale structure. What's scandalous about that?

29) I suspect nothing is a mystery in "infinite universe models"

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[Mark M]

Brian gave great answer for all of the points, but I'll fill in a few he left blank.

14) Of course, they do not provide references. But, what they are referring to is a galaxy lensed by the cluster Abell 370, with z = 6.56. They claim this somehow 'refutes' the big bang 'prediction'. But they neglect something - the big bang model predicts that re-ionization occurred, but it doesn't give an exact period of time. The estimation that re-ionization occurred near z = 6 was based off of previous quasar observations. It was NOT explicitly predicted by the big bang model. The fact this new galaxy was observed means that re-ionization began before z = 6.6, which is in NO way in conflict with the big bang model. None.

15) 'QSO' is a quasar. This is a problem that still does not have a definitive resolution, but to say that is explicitly incompatible with the big bang model is nonsense.

Essentially, the redshift of quasars found behind foreground galactic clusters is higher than one would expect. Much higher, in fact, than what you would expect and was calculated from gravitational lensing. However, the calculations did not include a non-zero cosmological constant (which we now are pretty sure exists), a velocity bias between stellar objects and dark matter, and the contributions from cluster matter to the lensing. With these new parameters, the calculations were done (Zhu, Wu, Fang, 1997), and are closer to the observed values. They speculate that the remaining gap may be an observational problem, and that the quasar number could need to be recounted.

This doesn't conflict with the BB model, that's just false. You can do some more research on it. Considering much hasn't been published on the issue in the past ten years, it has been accepted to be resolved.

21)They need to get with the times. The observations of redshift quantization were thrown out by more accurate surveys, such as the survey (Richards et al. 2006) of SSDS DR5 that showed no redshift quantization.

If I can get a chance to, I'll do the other ones left out.

 

[GeorgeDishman]

Do you mean inappropriate link removed[/color] ? I'll post myself getting mad at it once I've read it.

I believe this site may have originated with Tom van Flandern who died a few years ago but I can't be sure of that.

The page hasn't been updated in a decade and it crops up now and then in questons so it would be useful to have a FAQ page for it if someone could collate the answers in this thread. That may have been done already elsewhere of course.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The site in question and its author are crackpottery. As per the PF rules we do not link to, nor bother discussing, crackpot personal theories. Thank you to members for their detailed replies already though.

 

[iner7ia]

Apologies for posting what appears to be complete BS, (especially to bapowell and mark for wasting their time).