Big Bang Disputed

[Helen]

The following may be of interest to some:


=============================
http://www.cosmologystatement.org/
An Open Letter to the Scientific Community
cosmologystatement.org

(Published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004)

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that "science is the culture of doubt", in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry.

Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method -- the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.

*****************

If you go to the website, you can see the names of those who have signed this statement. It's an interesting list!

 

[Ed Edwards]

Let me see if i got the Big Bang theory
right:

The universe consisted of undifferentiated
nothingness that did not vary
over time. Then part of if exploded.

And some say it takes faith to believe
the Genesis account

 

[Gina B]

LOL Ed!
Helen, explain the dark matter thingie in not real smart people terms! Until you do, I'm attempting to decipher two different sites.
(btw "thingie" is a VERY scientific term! )
OH, this might be a good thing to know. Is the info on this site trustworthy? http://www.shef.ac.uk/physics/research/pa/Dark-Matter-Introduction.html
Gina

 

[Helen]

Gina, I'm passing your stuff on to Barry to dictate an answer to me as soon as he is finished painting the fence!

 

[Gina B]

TY!
I kinda wondered earlier how long he'd let you help before he made you go in. LOL
Gina

 

[Helen]

AAAGGGHHHH!!! Bite your tongue, young lady! The neighbor loaned us his sprayer and so I just finished weeding their entire yard!!!! (Two people on a paint sprayer would be interesting, though!)

 

[Helen]

OK Gina, I'm typing and Barry is talking...

First of all, the site that you referenced gives very standard answers to the problems. The actual problem is that the proposal of dark matter itself is totally unsubstantiated. Astronomers have been searching for at least twenty years now and have not been able to find any, no matter where they look. But because they insist on a cosmos billions of years old, they NEED the dark matter to explain what we see.

What is 'dark matter?' No one knows for sure! Here is the problem they are trying to solve with it:

When you have clusters of galaxies, the galaxies on the outer part of the cluster appear to be moving too fast for the cluster to hold its shape. Gravity from the matter that we can see (stars, gas clouds, etc.) is not sufficient to hold the cluster together. If the cluster had been there for billions of years, they should have disrupted/disintegrated by now, and the individual galaxies wander off on their own. What is being proposed is that there must be some sort of matter that we cannot see with telescopes and have been unable to detect by other means that is present in the clusters to provide the gravitational field to hold them together.

Because the light-emitting (or reflecting) matter that we see is not sufficient to exert the gravitational pull necessary, it is presumed that the 'missing matter' must be dark. Otherwise we would see it.

The other side of the coin is that the universe is not old at all, in which case there is no need for the clusters to have disrupted yet and therefore no need for that elusive 'dark matter' to exist.

There is another aspect to this problem. The velocities of the galaxies in the outer part of the clusters that we measure as being so high as to disrupt the cluster in a certain amount of time is merely INFERRED from red shift measurements! If the red shift is not due to velocity at all, then the problem is also solved. In other words, we don't really know how fast these heavenly bodies are moving except by a very possibly wrong inference. If they are slower, there is no need to disrupt.

Redshift measurements should be 'smeared' across all possible measurements and fractions thereof if redshift is due to velocity. But we don't see this 'smearing.' What we see when we measure the redshifts are groups of measurements and then a jump to another group of measurements. This essentially denies the idea of redshift being due to velocity, as it would be very difficult for any moving body to shift speed so suddenly that it jumps from one speed to another without hitting the speeds in between. This discovery about redshift measurements has come to be known as 'quantized redshifts.'

This quantized redshift effectively proves that the redshifts of galaxies in the outer part of a cluster are not due to velocity at all, and so the cluster may not be under any physical pressure to disrupt in any amount of time! In fact, as Halton Arp and others have pointed out, the quantized red shift actually makes for very quiet galaxy clusters.

That's one problem that they have.

There is another.

As we look at individual galaxies, and the stars within them, it had been expected that those stars would orbit around the center of the galaxy in a mathematically predictable way. It turns out that they are not behaving exactly as predicted. One way of accounting for the discrepancy is to have a large amount of unseen matter associated with a galaxy at some distance from the core. In other words, a sort of halo of unseen matter completely surrounding the galaxy would be exerting its gravitational force on the stars which are not behaving as scientists think they should. This has also been taken as 'proof' that dark matter must exist. However, there are a number of other possibilities. One has been proposed by the Israeli scientist Milgrom, who has pointed out a very slight modification of the law of gravitation could account for this discrepancy without the need of 'dark matter.' Another avenue which I am exploring at the moment is the behavior of one of the key equations having to do with the redshift and the Doppler effect when the speed of light is changing. This also holds the possibility of providing a solution. However, again, if the galaxies have not been there for fourteen billion years, the motion of the stars within the galaxies would not have had enough time to cause disruption. In fact, the data suggest that this motion could well account for the spiral arms in these galaxies, and the number of turns of the spirals indicates ages of galaxies much less than fourteen billion years.

Astronomers have also had to account for the maintenance of the spiral structures themselves over this period of time, and a number of mechanisms have been proposed to do this. Dark matter is not one of the explanations here, though.

 

[UTEOTW]

SO many issues raised, I am just going make some short posts on different issues until I either run out of topics I want to discuss or my brain quits working and I go to bed. Stuck for 5 hours today at the Dallas airport. Not sure which will happen first.

First the original link. I know that you support a very alternative view of the history of the universe. So why post this? Is it an example of the eenemy of my enemy is my friend? For the rest of my response, I will just copy what I wrote when danrusdad posted the same thing a few months ago.

The obvious question becomes then what DO these people believe. ( I am going under the assumption that you think the universe is young.) First, there do not seem to be too many actual astronomers on the list, so for many of these people, their opinion on the matter is no better that your opinion or mine. It seems that those who are astronomers either go for some form of steady state universe or for some sort of plasma theory. Now, what is the benefit for you of supplanting one old universe theory for another? I do not believe that any of these guys are actually advocating a young universe.

As an example, let's take the first person on your list, Arp, who does happen to be an astronomer. His ideas boil down to a continous creation of matter in the universe. I think he has described that what we normally think of as colliding galaxies are actually new galaxies of new material being formed. He replaces the creation of all matter and energy at one point (sound familar if a bit longer ago than you think) with an ongoing creation of matter. But nothing to support a young universe.

But beyond that, there are a number of falsehoods in the statement they made. For space, let's consider two. First, the author asserts that inflation makes no predictions nor has any observational evidence. One prediction of inflation is that the small scale variations shortly after the Big Bang gave rise to the large scale structure that we see today. Observationally, it predicts that if you look at the variation at various points in time, they should be the same. And with the new cosmic microwave background (CMB) data, this has been confirmed. The variation in scale is the same whether you are looking at flucuations in the CMB, or at the distribution of galaxies in the past or the distribution of galaxies today.

Second, it asserts that there is not any observational evidence for dark matter. Three examples. First, if we look at a spiral galaxy, add up all the visible matter and then measure the rotational velocities of the galaxy, we find that there is not enough mass to explain the motion according to the laws of how things orbit. This implies that there is a mass of unseen matter. Reconciling the visible matter with the observed rotation rates tell us how much dark matter is in the galaxy. Second, we can look at clusters of galaxies and also add up all the visible matter. Then we use some method of checking the actual mass. Perhaps another galaxy lies behind the cluster and has its light bent when passing the cluster. The measured mass is different than what can be observed, again telling us how much dark matter is present. Third, by looking at the details of the CMB, we can directly measure how much dark matter is present by its effects. These three different methods all give consistent results of about 5 times as much dark matter as ordinary matter.

 

[UTEOTW]

Gina

About dark matter. Barry through Helen gave a couple of the reasons that we suppose that dark matter exists. There are a couple more. Let me go through them, if I may.

The first three reasons all have to do with the effects of gravity. The effects that we see indicate that there is more gravity there that what can be accounted for by the visible matter.

First, galaxy rotation. The laws of how objects orbit becasue of gravity are fairly straight forward. When we look at galaxies, the outer parts are rotating faster than can be accounted for by the amount of visible matter. The motions are correct if the amount of matter is higher but most of it is not visible.

Second, galaxy clusters. Again, when you measure the rate at which clusters of galaxies orbit one another, the velocities are too high unless there is a substantial amount of unseen matter.

Third, gravitational lensing. When light passes by a cluster of galaxies, the light is bent by the gravity of the cluster. The amount of bending we see is much higher than the amount that the visible matter can account for.

Finally, there is the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Details about the CMB indicate stretching of the light by dark matter. The CMB is a different subject. Let me know if you want me to try and explain that one in 100 words or less.

For each of these distinct methods, the amount of dark matter come out to be in the general neighborhood of five times the amount of visible matter.

 

[UTEOTW]

"The other side of the coin is that the universe is not old at all, in which case there is no need for the clusters to have disrupted yet and therefore no need for that elusive 'dark matter' to exist."

You still must account for the gravitational lensing and CMB effects. These, too, indicate dark matter.

"This discovery about redshift measurements has come to be known as 'quantized redshifts.'"

It is also quite controversial and not widely accepted at all. In fact, only a very small group advocate this though that in itself is not a reason to dismiss, but it is a reason to be suspect. The ideas have been out there for a long time and have yet to draw support.

"Another avenue which I am exploring at the moment is the behavior of one of the key equations having to do with the redshift and the Doppler effect when the speed of light is changing. This also holds the possibility of providing a solution."

As I have said in other posts, I am very interested in this one. The varying light speed seems to me to indicate that our measurements of galaxy rotational velocities through doppler shift should be many orders of magnitude different.

"In fact, the data suggest that this motion could well account for the spiral arms in these galaxies, and the number of turns of the spirals indicates ages of galaxies much less than fourteen billion years."

I believe that the consensus opinion is that spiral arms arise through density waves and are in no need of being explained.

 

[Gina B]

Thank you, that was worded in a much more understandable way than the materials I found on the topic.
Your comment about "smears" got me thinking about a site I read when you first posted this, I'd saved a few links I ran across so I could go over them more later, here's the one.
http://cupp.oulu.fi/neutrino/neutrino98.html
Why am I telling you this? Because I'm all impressed with me for actually having put two things together! I'm gonna go back and tell that science teacher who tried to fail me...
Gina

 

[UTEOTW]

Neutrinos are particles created during nuclear reactions. Billions are passing through your body right now. They interact so weakly that they even pass straight through the earth without any but a tiny fraction having any interaction.

It was long believed that they were completely massless. It is also known how many of these things should be produced by the nuclear reactions in the sun. But we have a problem. The neutrino detectors we build only detect about 1/3 of the number that would be predicted.

Well, as it turns out, neutrinos come in different "flavors." The kind that the sun produces are the easiest to detect and so the detectors were only looking for those. When detectors were built that were capable of detecting other type, they found the right number of neutrinos but in different forms.

Through a quirk in quantum physics, this means that neutrinos have mass. If they have mass, then they can oscillate between the various types. There were some ingenious experiments performed to confirm this. Put simply, they generated their own streams of neutrinos and aimed them at detectors at different distances. (They also did a similar experiment with neutrinos naturally generated in the atmosphere.) Detectors near the source would find all one kind of neutrino. Detectors at a distance would find a mixture of the various types.

Now, let me try and tie this back to the subject at hand. Neutrinos are everywhere and in huge numbers. When they were found to have mass, some immediately proposed them as a candidate for dark matter. As it turns out, I do not think many people find that to be such a good idea after all once some thought was put into it. The other thing is that a common YE argument is that the sun must be young because it does not put out enough neutrinos. They say that this means that the sun is getting most of its energy from gravitational collapse (converting potential energy as the material falls in) not fusion. These experiments have conclusively put that idea to rest. You see a mixed response from the YE crowd. Some, such as AIG, explicity recommend that this not be used any more. Others, such as ICR ( http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-276.htm ) still use it. It is widespread enough that it crops up fairly often.

 

[UTEOTW]

For Helen

Since we have an outstanding discussion of the measurement of galaxy rotational rates by Doppler shift and the effects that a change in light speed would have on the measurments, I thought you might be interested in the following.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stellar-chemistry-04k.html

Basically they measured the speed at which a neutron star is rotating using Doppler shift. Since the star is 30000 light years away, a significant change in the speed of light would have been necessary to get the light here in 6000 years. This means that the actual velocity (I gave you the simple Doppler formula on the other thread http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/28/2587.html? ) would have to much faster also. As much faster as the speed of light was faster when it was emitted.

THAT would mean that the star was much larger than thought for the speed to be that fast. Which then means that the measured density is way way off. Which would mean that the physics used to show at what point a star degenerates into a fluid of neutrons are way way off. And that other techniques used to measure the size of the star are also grossly incorrect.

All that to get to this. You quoting Barry above said that you "exploring at the moment is the behavior of one of the key equations having to do with the redshift and the Doppler effect when the speed of light is changing." You may want to consider the effects on Doppler shift at smaller scales also.

 

[The Galatian]

As an example, let's take the first person on your list, Arp, who does happen to be an astronomer. His ideas boil down to a continous creation of matter in the universe. I think he has described that what we normally think of as colliding galaxies are actually new galaxies of new material being formed. He replaces the creation of all matter and energy at one point (sound familar if a bit longer ago than you think) with an ongoing creation of matter. But nothing to support a young universe.

This seems very unlikely. If matter is being continuously created, then the universe would be essentially infinite in size. And if that's so, we should be getting an infinite amount of radiation from an infinite number of stars.

Seems unlikely.

 

[A_Christian]

Actually, GOD holds everything in the Universe together... GOD is Light.

 

[The Galatian]

In a metaphorical sense. Light, as we know it, is only a physical pheneomenon, an poor imitation of the illumination that is God.

 

[UTEOTW]

That sounds like that Chick tract where he states that it is God, not the strong nuclear force, that holds the nucleus of atoms together.

In the end it is the fallacy of equivocation. Yes God is light but I do not think that He is anymore the light coming from M31 than He is the light coming from the light bulb over my head. Something else entirely is meant.

 

[Debby in Philly]

Has anyone read 'The Case for a Creator' by Lee Strobel? He goes into a lot of this stuff in interviews with scientists. Most of it is too complicated for me to repeat, but it made sense while I was reading it.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Debby, I've read that book, and a lot of his evidence for a creator depends on believing in an old universe! Did you notice that? For example, the moon's orbit around the earth stabalizes the earth's polar axis, keeps it from wandering around over the millions and millions of years. An example of God's care for our earth. But if the earth is only here for a few thousand years anyway, who cares if its stabalized for the long haul of a few billion years?

 

[jcrawford]

Big bang theory is a mental problem.