Big Bang Critics

I wasn't meaning to say that Big Bang and Evolution were the SAME theory, only that they are both based on similar faulty "backward" reasoning.But, having cleared that up...
are you aware that what is being taught in public school is that Big Bang was the initial kick-start to the universe, but Evolution governs what it became.There may be specific, clear, deliniated lines among the sciences, but among us "layman" we're told that one brought about the other!

I can't agree with your characterization as "backward" reasoning. I'm still a little skeptical of Big Bang, mainly because I don't think there is yet enough empirical evidence. By contrast, there is a great deal of supporting evidence for evolution. I don't know exactly what is being taught. I am aware that there are serious problems in the quality of science teaching, particularly at elementary schools. I guess that's what happens when you hire a teacher in one area, and then ask that teacher to handle classes outside the area of expertise. Many schools have not recruited teachers with adequate expertise in science.

As far as I know, there isn't anything that would preclude your version of the source of the singularity. But there isn't any empirical evidence in support of it either, so such an assertion would not be part of science. "Evolving" is correct there. That just means that it is changing. Note that the word "evolving", when used for the universe, is not in any way related to the biological theory of evolution. I sure hope that people are not being confused by two unrelated uses of the same word.As for "improving" -- that's a mistaken idea. Many scientists would be more likely to say that the universe is slowly running down. But there are regions with young stars, as well as regions with old and even some burnt out stars. The term "Big Bang" is a metaphor. As used, it does apply to a singularity. To use "Big Bang" as the outcome of expanding would confuse people, because that would be a change of meaning. Science should not say that it is, and science should not say that it isn't.

No reason why not! This is precisely why the Vatican accepted big bang theory as its official view of the creation of the universe. BB leaves a question mark that is perfect for the religiously inclined.Indeed, one the main reason BB was so vehemently rejected by many cosomologists for many years was that it provided this "religious" moment of creation. It was viewed as the religious option. Its primary competitor, the Steady State theory, was the atheists' choice, because that gives an eternally existing universe which many thought, erronously, removed the possibility of divine creation. This has been addressed by soneone else, but just to back that up...
growing - yes
evolving - well, changing, yes
improving - not a view of science, but sort of my view: the universe grows and evolves to provide the perfect place for our existence. But this is based upon my own Christian faith. This could quite well be a valid scenario. This is a very good picture of what we call the "Big Rip" possibility. In the end, yes, but there has to be plenty of birth, growth and development to generate all of that death and decay.Our current understanding of the universe suggests that it will all end in fire or will all end in total decay. The Big Rip suggests a third option, that it will all end in complete disintegration. I will never say that it isn't God, becasue I believe that the source is God. Other cosmologists do not. But that is what faith is all about...This message has been edited by cavediver, 09-17-2005 05:55 AM

Intersted in exploring your skeptism?I seem to have a window as RAZD is taking a while coming back to my attempts to cure him of his skeptism of GR

Well, this is our best theory of the early universe at the moment. But as Chirop said, it is not a theory of "how the universe came into being". To be fair, many other "scientific" theories of which you are likely to hear are ridiculous, ignorant, or delusional. This is becasue for some reason, it is the wacky theories that tend to get publicity in the popular "science" press. There are many valid competing theories, but you won't hear about them in the classroom, unless you happen to have a cosmologist for a teacher. My students had that fortune However, when I say competing theories, most are just small corrections and tweaks to the basic theory. Observations of the universe are very good at sorting the wheat from chaff when it comes to cosmological theories. This is not true in cosmology. We do not look into the universe and see what remains. We look into the universe and see the whole development of the universe. We can literally see all the way back to 300,000 years after the initial singularity. That's 12-14 billion years of development for us to observe directly. That's the beauty of having a finite speed of light. We look at each other as were 10e-8 seconds ago. Our observations of the moon are of it about a second ago.Our observations of the Sun are of it 8 minutes ago. Of the local stars, several years ago; more distant stars, 100s to 1000s of years ago; of the Andromeda galaxy, 2 million years ago; of the distant quasars, 10 billion years ago. This is direct observation. We are not looking at remains, memories, old images... we are looking at the actual objects at those times. It still blows my mind... No. Light, time, and space are not a "result" of the Big Bang, despite what many may tell you.I can see why you say this, and it is again unfortunately a result of popular "science" and also the difficulty in getting one's head around the ultra-bizarre notions of General Relativity. I personally know a number world-class physicists and mathematicians from the top universities, and the only ones I would trust to teach BB theory and General Relativity convincingly are those who actually work or have worked within those areas. You are not going to get anything close to a good explanation from your science teacher or from your textbook. No, it is science. You have provided a rough description of what scientific enquiry is all about and this fits. So unless you describe all of science as a guess, this is not a guess.However, I would describe most attempts at describing BB and General Relativity as guesswork at best, so I can understand the confusion.At the most basic level, BB makes predictions. All of those predictions are consistent with what we observe. None of those predictions are inconsistent with what we observe. Is this what we call a guess?

Not really. I'm not arguing that BB is wrong. I'm just seeing it as a little short on evidence at present.

Fair enough. However, I'm not sure what extra evidence will be forthcoming. I guess it comes down to what you understand by BB. At the classical level, GR plus expansion implies an initial singularity (via the Hawking Penrose singularity theorems) without specifying any particular solution. GR abounds with evidence, it is hard to argue with the expansion, the theorems appear to be sound. That just leaves the classical bit as possibly problematic. But we knew that anyway as we live in a quantum world. But that still suggests that we are on the right tracks all the way back to the first second, possibly the Planck era. Missing 1 second (or 10^-43 seconds) from 10^10 years aint bad for a theory...

Agreed. I expect that the evidence I would like to see is beyond our capabilities. I take scientific theories to be models that fit the data well. I do not take them to be metaphysical truth, and I am inclined to be skeptical on whether "metaphysical truth" is even meaningful. Thus I see GR as well confirmed by the data. But to assume an actual singularity requires extrapolation that goes beyond what the confirming data can support.

Yes, I've noticed that about a number of participants around EvC, and also the general absence of theoreticians (myself excluded). I think the two are inextricably linked in that it is only in GR and QFT (and more generally cosmology and particle physics but not to quite the same degree) that one is pushed to consider anything other than your view.But back to my point on what you regard as the BB... is it just the singularity with which you have a problem? Because none of us believe in the singularity anyway!

In a way, I am a theorist about cognitive science. And it is my investigation there that leads me to my current view on the role of scientific theory. I would like to see some actual evidence that the universe is expanding. This could be in the form of the velocities of distant galaxies. But this would have to be velocity in the sense of rate of change of distance -- not merely red shift.

Interesting. Though it is more the "fundemental" nature of GR and QFT to which I was refering, rather than their theoretical nature. And to be clear, I do not talk of my work (when I was practising) as science but as mathematics/mathematical physics. I think these are quite distinct from the ususal sense of science, but I do not think that this pushes them into the realm of metaphysics. From the perspective of the theoretical physicist, it is a search for the nature of reality, rather than an attempt to model reality. Ok, good point. Off the top of my head, how about the fact that the universe appears smaller in the past? When we look at angular size of distant objects, they appear larger than they should from perspective, and their visual size correlates to their distance in an expanding universe. Of coure, we could have a "shrinking object" theory that might be fun...

That could be an indicator of curvature of space-time. And the cosmic redshift could also be a consequence of that curvature.I'm skeptical, in the sense that I am keeping my options open. Big Bang is a good theory in the sense that it accounts for much of the evidence. But it goes a bit too far in that it has consequences that go beyond what the currently available evidence can support.

just giving you guys a breather . I'll have something soon.

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Well, it certainly is an indicator of curvature of space-time. Expansion is after-all just curvature of space-time in the temporal direction! I do not see how a purely spatial curvature could generate the effect globally. I think the two effects together making an exceptionally compelling case for expansion. Such is the nature of theories that describe reality at the large and small scales. I'm afraid you will be disappointed for many millenia yet!