Top 30 Problems with the Big Bang

[Backatcha Bandit]

I'd better keep my stuff tied down, just in case gravity gets overthrown!

What's to 'overthrow'? Did I miss that class?

Amusing quote on the site BF linked to, from Ambrose Bierce's 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)

GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain -- the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another.

Perhaps it might be useful here to list the 'evidence' upon the Big Bang Theory is predicated.

With regard to 'red shift', (the idea that doppler effect causes the light from bodies to appear to us at a lower frequency, thus all bodies are moving away from us, ergo they must have all been in the same place to begin with) I must admit I've always had a bit of a problem with that:

I remember as a small child standing on a level crossing, looking off down the line into the distance and asking my Dad were was the place that the railway lines met (converged). He looked amused and told me that they didn't - they remained parellel, consistantly the same distance apart.

This really troubled me at the time, as I could clearly see that they did meet far off in the distance.

The only thing in science and cosmology I am sure of is that our understanding is somewhat in it's infancy - perhaps we should remember how as children, before we had made too great an emotional or intellectual investment in our views and opinions regarding the way the world appeared to us, we could re-evaluate our understanding so much more readily.

The more I learn about this stuff, the more I realise we really don't know.

Since we learned that this mysterious force we call 'gravity' effects electromagnetic radiation (particularly 'light' from distant stars), how can we even trust our eyes as we look to the heavens to tell us anything reliably?

 

[Kameron]

What i've always wanted to know is how the gases that formed the big bang were created.

Every time i have heard the story it begins with some gases coliding and exploding but yeah that means they have had to be created at some point surely?

This story is being told to you wrong then. What explodes out of the big bang is not the particles themselves, we now that they are probabilistic arrangements of waves, what exploded out, unfolded or unrolled was space itself. There was no space, no dimensionality before it exploded, this explosion creates the ripples because it is imperfect, those ripples are fractal, they go as high as the macro distribution of stuff in the universe and the microwave background which it mirrors to some slight degree and low, as low as we can see in the biggest partial accelerators. Part of those ripples, the waves we see as partials, and that is how space in which the particles are thrown in our imagination by the big bang are features of the same thing.

Failure to understand this key concept of Einsteinian physics leads to numerous challenges by people for whom the light has not dawned. I think they should just all take acid and get a real handle on what nothingness and infinity might really be like, they could then close their eyes and see what a place with five or more dimensions and maybe ones that are flexible in a way that ours aren't.

I had a lot of fun what I was in a world where I was travelling up the road in the way we travel through time, i.e. outside of our control ... I was in a car being driven by someone else.

 

[kyser_soze]

*solves global warming with toast*

You'll never solve GW with toast - it's unsound food ecologically since you cook it twice.

Agree with what you said about wonky theories in cosmology - I'm still not convinced that the images of dark matter halos are anything of the sort, and the who DM/DE thing sounds like a tarted up version of the old idea of 'the aether' (can't get the conjoined ae symbol)...

Another of the problems obviously is the need to place human type linearity on things - there had to be a start, and something had to come before that...and now my head is starting to bend.

 

[J77]

This story is being told to you wrong then. What explodes out of the big bang is not the particles themselves, we now that they are probabilistic arrangements of waves, what exploded out, unfolded or unrolled was space itself. There was no space, no dimensionality before it exploded, this explosion creates the ripples because it is imperfect, those ripples are fractal, they go as high as the macro distribution of stuff in the universe and the microwave background which it mirrors to some slight degree and low, as low as we can see in the biggest partial accelerators. Part of those ripples, the waves we see as partials, and that is how space in which the particles are thrown in our imagination by the big bang are features of the same thing.

Failure to understand this key concept of Einsteinian physics leads to numerous challenges by people for whom the light has not dawned. I think they should just all take acid and get a real handle on what nothingness and infinity might really be like, they could then close their eyes and see what a place with five or more dimensions and maybe ones that are flexible in a way that ours aren't.

Probability waves from the explosion?

I like the repulsive gravity idea; creating a universe in which everything should be uniformly distributed, however, is not because of quantum fluctuations which grow large over the inflationary period. Gravity then becomes attractive and the matter clumps together as galaxies and the like. This is good for me. Didn't I also read that the universe as a whole is now subject to repulsive gravity again -- which doesn't effect our local attractive sense of gravity?

 

[Kameron]

Didn't I also read that the universe as a whole is now subject to repulsive gravity again -- which doesn't effect our local attractive sense of gravity?

It is an uncute hack which isn't supported by any solutions to EToSR and is shoe horned into some models to stop everything ending up in one big clump. Dark matter to provide the unseen element that musty control the macro distribution of mater in the universe seems much more elegant. Applying Occam's Razor this solves more problems than it raises - something dramatically untrue of repulsive gravity. All my Special Relativity is a bit old now and I was never that good at solving the maths anyway but gravity kinda works as mater bending space on ~ an inverse square. The idea that it might bend it the other way beyond a certain distance is counter intuitive in the extreme.

 

[Crispy]

It is an uncute hack which isn't supported by any solutions to EToSR and is shoe horned into some models to stop everything ending up in one big clump. Dark matter to provide the unseen element that musty control the macro distribution of mater in the universe seems much more elegant. Applying Occam's Razor this solves more problems than it raises - something dramatically untrue of repulsive gravity. All my Special Relativity is a bit old now and I was never that good at solving the maths anyway but gravity kinda works as mater bending space on ~ an inverse square. The idea that it might bend it the other way beyond a certain distance is counter intuitive in the extreme.

In the 'lead weights on a sheet of rubber' analogy, dark energy is like resting the ball in the middle of the sheet, and this somehow produces 'hills' to appear far away from the 'dip'

 

[Crispy]

It is an uncute hack which isn't supported by any solutions to EToSR and is shoe horned into some models to stop everything ending up in one big clump. Dark matter to provide the unseen element that musty control the macro distribution of mater in the universe seems much more elegant. Applying Occam's Razor this solves more problems than it raises - something dramatically untrue of repulsive gravity. All my Special Relativity is a bit old now and I was never that good at solving the maths anyway but gravity kinda works as mater bending space on ~ an inverse square. The idea that it might bend it the other way beyond a certain distance is counter intuitive in the extreme.

In the 'lead weights on a sheet of rubber' analogy, dark energy is like resting the ball in the middle of the sheet, and this somehow produces 'hills' to appear far away from the 'dip'

Doesn't make sense

 

[kyser_soze]

I think the rubber sheet analogy has been stretched far enough, don't you?

*gets coat*

Seriously tho, I think we need another analogy that can stand up to:

Gravity causing dips
DM causing lumps of matter to cling together
DE producing hills that the matter can't roll up and thus stays together...fuck me, I've just properly understoof how DE is supposed to work...maybe it works lilke displacement - you push the sheet down with your finger and instead of remaining flat around your finger it rises up...that's pretty mangled even there...dammit I can see what it looks like in my head...

 

[Crispy]

So it's a rubber sheet overlaid on a sealed tank of water, then?

 

[kyser_soze]

That works - the water displaces the sheet upwards. Allows the rubber sheet analogy to work in 3d as well.

That would also work if you're looking at our 3d universe existing as a flat plane inbetween a higher and lower dimension (Culture view of reality I'm getting at here)

 

[Crispy]

It's getting stretched thin again

Anyway, hopefully some of these mysteries will be solved, or unravelled into new and exciting mysteries in our lifetimes. Can't wait!

 

[J77]

The dark energy's there to make the theories work -- it'd be interesting if it could be detected...

 

[Columbine]

At least one problem is that the current orthodoxy of the Big Bang can be used to justify the present economic order of the world.

The right wing analysis of science is well documented in Ted Grant's and Alan Woods 'Reason in revolt'.

 

[Blagsta]

At least one problem is that the current orthodoxy of the Big Bang can be used to justify the present economic order of the world.

The right wing analysis of science is well documented in Ted Grant's and Alan Woods 'Reason in revolt'.

*snigger*

 

[Jonti]

"We don't like science because our political opponents misuse its results"

I take it other posters can see the futility and bankrupcy of this position?

 

[kyser_soze]

Well from New Scientist this week on DE/DM, and the whole cosmological constant business, and it's relation to the possible change in course of the Pioneer probes...

http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19426064.300-is-dark-energy-fattening-the-sun.html

The gist being: teh CC required for the observed expansion of the universe is too high for galaexies etc to stay together. These guys ask 'Well, is the CC actually a constant or has it decelerated/accelerated as the universe has gotten cooler. If so this would explain that it's gravity causing the positional glitch through influencing radio signals sent from the probes rather than them actually going off course...

Does this mean that DE condences to DM? If they are saying that DE is the remaining energy from the Big Bang, and that stellar bodies can abosrob it as DM does this mean that as the universe cools we can expect to see more matter? I.e. does DE condense to DM which then condenses further to visible matter?

 

[david dissadent]

If we live in a steady state universe where does all the energy come from and where does all the heat go to?
Where did the matter in the universe come from originally.
How old is this universe then?
What started it all off.
Where does it end?


Have a read at some of the other articles on there
http://metaresearch.org/solar system/cydonia/proof_files/proof.asp

http://metaresearch.org/solar system/eph/eph2000.asp

Abstract. The hypothesis of the explosion of a number of planets and moons of our solar system during its 4.6-billion-year history is in excellent accord with all known observational constraints,

http://metaresearch.org/solar system/mars/VallesMarineris.asp

Abstract. Interlocking evidence implies that the largest feature on the surface of the planet Mars is likely to have been formed by impacts from the tidal decay of a former band of equatorial moons of Mars similar to Phobos and Deimos.

 

[Fruitloop]

The dark energy's there to make the theories work -- it'd be interesting if it could be detected...

The dark energy's there to explain the accelerating rate of expansion.

 

[SpookyFrank]

New scientist had some good stuff on this recently.

The trouble with NS is that according to them physics in its entirety is rewritten every two weeks or so. Normally this is put down to one or two dubious experiments they've stumbled across and then drawn ludicrous conclusions from. I remember one week they decided that time was actually running backwards, and that causality was essentially optional, based on an experiment that nobody had actually done.

This list seems rather more convincing than that stuff, however. I don't know why but the idea of there being no big bang is a bit scary for me

 

[SpookyFrank]

At least one problem is that the current orthodoxy of the Big Bang can be used to justify the present economic order of the world.

Incorrect, there is no justification for the present economic order of the world. Besides, the founding principles of modern economics were created long before anyone thought of the big bang theory.

Even if someone proved that the universe was actually excreted from a duck's arse, do you think the gnomes of zurich would cast their laptops into the bodensee and start demanding fair distribution of goods and the abolition of currency?

 

[jonH]

The BIG BANG is a non starter

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I don't get the static universe model.

It implies that there is no beginning and no end to time. Something I can't logically accept.

Not that I am going along with big fishes cut and paste model, but. . .

Everything suddenly coming from nothing is a bit hard to accept too. No wonder there are millions of backward religious types about.

 

[laptop]

The trouble with NS is that according to them physics in its entirety is rewritten every two weeks or so. Normally this is put down to one or two dubious experiments they've stumbled across and then drawn ludicrous conclusions from. I remember one week they decided that time was actually running backwards, and that causality was essentially optional, based on an experiment that nobody had actually done.

* forwards to editor *

 

[8ball]

Problem with big bang #27:

Jeremy Kyle

 

[Jonti]

It's all good stuff, there's no doubt about it, but, well, I'm not sure these theories are going to be The Last Word on the subject. Actually, I reckon just about everyone knows they won't be -- our understanding of the nature of the world is still pretty limited. So I tend to view the Great Cosmologies as modern myths of creation.

OK, they're couched in scientific terms, and they are the best that the methods of science can conjure right now. But something tells me that in a century or so our Great Cosmological Theories will look rather different. Just a hunch, like.

Another reason this kind of discussion hardly interests me, is that the blatant contradiction between QM and Relativity seems invisible to theorists of the great (and usually explicitly determinist) cosmologies. Relativity is explicitly determinist -- and QM explicitly not. Until we understand what is going on here, find some way of thinking that resolves the contradiction, I don't think it will be possible to think how to fuse them into a grand cosmology of life, the universe and everything.

 

[merlin wood]

Most of the problems with the Big Bang will be solved when physicists realise you can't make a universe just from causes that push or pull objects. Not by resorting to an "intelligent designer" but to an additional universal cause that is unlike the god of any religion and that confirms a non-inflationary Big Bang theory without dark matter or dark energy.

 

[stdPikachu]

Everything suddenly coming from nothing is a bit hard to accept too.

Not for exceptionally bizarre values of nothing.

 

[laptop]

Not for exceptionally bizarre values of nothing.

Given enough time, everything will happen.

 

[stdPikachu]

And bearing in mind that we have no certainty of what existed before the big bang, I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it "nothing". It's highly likely that if anything did exist before the big bang, its existence would be meaningless in the context of our universe. Bagsy shotgun in the first time machine that can go back before the big bang