New cosmology model without a Big Bang

Hi, everybody!It's been awhile since I've posted. There are a lot of new faces avatars here, but I still recognize a good number of you.Anyway, one of my wife's Facebook friends posted an article about some new research calling into question the reality of the Big Bang. It was a Glenn Beck article, so I fully expected that it was just some cranks and their conspiracy theories, but there's apparently something to this. Indeed, there are some physicists who have proposed a model of cosmology that eliminates the "singularities" from Big Bang Theory and doesn't require dark matter, and it postulates an infinite universe with no beginning. Here's a link at Phys.org. This is all beyond me, so all I can do is wait while the cosmologists debate it among themselves. But, I was hoping the EvC community could talk us through this and give us non-cosmologists some insight into how this model is supposed to work and whether or not it has merit.

Thread copied here from the New cosmology model without a Big Bang thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

According to the article, they don't actually claim to have gotten rid of dark matter yet, although they claim not to need dark energy.

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In cosmological terms, the scientists explain that the quantum corrections can be thought of as a cosmological constant term (without the need for dark energy) and a radiation term.

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Motivated by the model's potential to resolve the Big Bang singularity and account for dark matter and dark energy, the physicists plan to analyze their model more rigorously in the future

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In fact the article is a bit short of telling us exactly what the successes are other than not requiring a singularity. I'm curious how the model works out as a theory of gravity on a local basis.Bunch of crank science to be found in the comments section though.

I'm very curious about this statement from the article:

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These terms keep the universe at a finite size, and therefore give it an infinite age.

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I have to wonder how they account for Hubble's law.

Including Hubble's law on the list, they also have to account for:1. Hubble's law, and the wavelength independence of cosmological redshift2. Tolman Surface Brightness Test3. Cosmic Microwave Background4. Time dilation in high redshift type Ia supernovaeWe could probably throw a few more on the list.

I can't find answers to my questions elsewhere ... maybe here.
Why do we see all galaxies moving away from us? If we say the observable universe's age is limited by the radius of our view, isn't this heliocentric? Aren't we putting ourselves at the center of the universe? Shouldn't all the galaxies on one side of be moving with us as we all expand away from the true center of the big bang?
If my understanding is correct, the only way that all teh galaxies would seem to be moving away is if we are only observing a very small percentage of the total universe. Our observable pocket could be just a fraction of a percent of the true size of the cosmos.
No?

Isn't it that all objects are moving away from all other objects? Meaning, if so, that it wouldn't matter where you are in the universe everything will appear to be moving away from you in all directions.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It would seem that way, yes. But no matter where you are in our visible universe, our Hubble Bubble, you would see the same thing. A few billion galaxies to the left of us sees themselves as the "center" of the expansion as well. Except there is no "true center" of the big bang. Or, more accurately, every point in space is the center of the big bang.There is an old analogy that is a bit tired but still works. Take a deflated balloon, put dots all over it, blow it up. Each dot moves away from every other dot. The further the dots are away from each other the faster the separation. No dot, and yet each dot, appears to be the center of expansion.This is only an analogy and some try to take it too literally by pointing to the center of the inside of the balloon volume. In the analogy only the surface of the balloon is meant to be our universe. Ignore the interior. That is the leading explanation. Our "observable universe," our Hubble Bubble, is about 48+- billion light years in radius. With the present expansion of the universe, every galaxy outside this distance is moving away at faster than light and we will never see them. Note: these far out galaxies are not moving through space at those speeds but the intervening space itself is expanding so there is no violation of relativity.We may be seeing our visible universe as a bubble sunk in the Pacific Ocean. Here is a write up that may help confuse matters even more.Edited by AZPaul3, : added site

"Except there is no "true center" of the big bang. Or, more accurately, every point in space is the center of the big bang."
"Each dot moves away from every other dot."I cannot grasp the "every point is the center" proposition.
I do understand that everything we see is part of the same "bang." It's not like a chemical explosion where heat and flame propagate outwards from an ignition point. It's more like "every point in space" IS the ignition point. But there still should be an epicenter. There should still be a point that it essentially motionless.
Everything between us and that point should appear to be moving slower than everything on the opposite side. One direction of our visible universe should be red shifted less than the other direction. Even with the balloon model ... the parts of the balloon expand faster than those closest to the mouth piece.What if we ARE on the surface of a balloon that is expanding outwards from a central point? just as an example:
Our part of the balloon skin could be 50 billion light years thick. At the center of the balloon is an empty space of unimaginable "empty" where dark energy has built to extreme levels. What we think of as the "dark ages of the Big Bang" is the build up time needed for dark energy to bloom into a new Big Bang. There would be a constant renewal of "universes" as the expansion of the previous universe "pulls" the center to required energy levels.It's just a thought experiment I've had that intrigues me.

No, this is not possible. The 2-D balloon image is supposed to represent all of the dimensions of space. There is no center or depth to the skin. Those things are part of dimensions that do not exist.To imagine 3-D space having a similar geometry requires us to envision a 4-D picture while we ignore one of the spatial dimensions. Turns out that no one is capable of doing that. (A few people are capable of saying that they can.) But similarly the balloon model requires ignoring the depth division. There is no interior.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I know the feeling. It took me decades to get my mind around the concept.Two points may help.First, everywhere we look we see the same thing. The further out we look the faster those galaxies move away from us. The phenomenon is consistent no matter what direction we look (except our gravitational-bound local group). (homogeneous feature)Second, consistent with the cosmological principle, every galaxy we see out there will see us in exactly the same way. Everywhere they look they see the same thing. The further out they look the faster those galaxies move away from them. The phenomenon is consistent no matter what direction they look. (isotropic feature)If what we see makes us the "center" then what they see makes them the center. Everywhere can be said to be the center, thus, there is no center. There can be no such thing as "motionless" since motion is relative to the coordinate system of a preferred frame of reference. There is no way to determine a static coordinate system universal to all such frames of reference. No luminiferous aether. No static scale to the cosmic microwave background. That is the mind trap in taking an analogy too literally. The central point of the blown-up balloon does not correspond to any real structure in the analogy. It isn't there. Neither is the mouthpiece. Just the outer surface of the balloon. No inside, no blow hole, no "thickness" to the balloon skin. None of these other real attributes of a real balloon apply to the analogy. Though the evidence of the homogeneous and isotropic nature we see in the visible universe does not support this view, our view is limited to what we can see and measure. Outside that, on a more massive scale beyond our view, you might be right, but we will never know.[abe - added by edit]Excuse my social faux pas. I forgot to welcome you to EvC.So, like, welcome to Evc, mikechell!As for the quote blocks you see in messages, hit the "peek" button on any message to see how that is done.Edited by AZPaul3, : welcome

You cannot just say, "this is not possible." Well, you can, but it's an empty statement.
Theoretical mathematics postulates ... what are they up to, 11 dimensions?
So, just because we can't imagine the dimensions doesn't mean they can't or don't exist.
Maybe we aren't ON the surface of the balloon's skin, we could be IN the skin.

In this case I believe I can say "impossible" because the 2D balloon imagery is just a metaphor, and the metaphor does not include a third dimension.If you want to postulate that the universe is really like a balloon, go ahead and do so. But that was definitely not the intent of the balloon metaphor and so your post is not a proper critique of that 'balloon model'. Instead you are addressing some other stuff you made up in an attempt to show us a deficiency in the everything is the center idea.And to what end? We know that the universe is not two dimensional and thus that it is entirely not like a thick balloon with an energy interior as you describe, right? Is it okay to say impossible now?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yeah, but there's still only three spatial dimension, i.e. dimensions of space.The 2-dimensional surface of the balloon, just the surface and nothing else, represents all three of the spatial dimensions. So to stick with the analogy you cannot "leave" the surface of the balloon. That's just a rejection of the analogy...Here's something I wrote before that goes over this stuff, it uses the globe instead of a balloon. It's from Message 201:

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In order to concepualize it, you're gonna have to be able to reduce dimensions in your mind. So, take a cube, it's 3-dimensions, and reduce it to 2 dimensions: It becomes a plane. That is, the plane is the "shadow" of a cube. Think about how your shadow on the sidewalk is a 2-D representation of yourself. Now, reduce that 2-d plane to one dimension: it becomes a line. If you take a sheet of paper (2D) and look at it just from its edge, it makes a line. Again, you can reduce a 1D line into a point in the same way: Take a pencil and look at it down the shaft and it becomes a "point" (0D). That's reducing dimensions in a nutshell.

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So, on to the analogy. Imagine the globe, the Earth. But just the surface of the Earth. Nothing on the inside just the surface, like a balloon. Let that 2 dimensional surface represent all three spatial dimensions, they're just reduced as per the above. Now, imagine that the lines of latitude represent the timeline. The closer you get to the North Pole, the farther back you are going in time. As you approach the North Pole, as you go back in time, the size of the Universe, the radius of the Earth, keeps getting smaller and smaller. That's the Universe getting smaller and smaller as we go back in time. So what happens when you get to the North Pole? You can't go farther north than that, i.e. you can't go back further in time than that. The surface "wraps back upon itself". That is, it is an asymptote <--. clicky. Asking what's before the Big Bang is like asking what's north of the North Pole. Your immediate reaction might be "upwards" from the surface, but due to the dimension reduction, there is no such thing as that. For, when you're at the North Pole, all directions are south. If you're confined to the surface, there is no upwards to point towards.

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That point, the North Pole, represents the singularity that the Big Band describes. All directions are "forward" in time and there is no such thing as "before". Time, itself, is an integrated part of the dimensions of spacetime, that is there are 3 spatial dimensions and one temporal one. So we're really talking about a 4 dimensions manifold <--. again, clicky. That manifold has a finite "shape" and that shape suggests a finite past, but that past "folds back onto itself" and exists at all points that time exists. Its like the Earth exists at all points of latitude even though there is only so far northwards that you can go.

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Does that make sense? If so, we can move on to how every point on the surface can act like the "center".

Actually, I am not questioning the metaphor of the balloon. I am questioning the idea that an explosion, even one as massive and incomprehensible as the Big Bang, has to expand from a central point.
I am no mathematician. This is due to an easy upbringing. I was allowed to be lazy and to let my intelligence stroll along. I love my parents, but they didn't push me when I needed pushing.
Anyway, I have a great interest in physics and the universe, but it's based in science fiction, not science ability.
So, my curiosity comes from an over active imagination. I've seen many articles about the math of the Big Bang, the Theory of Relativity and the attempts to unify everything ... which I read with a mixture of wonder, interest and confusion.But everyone always bases everything on the presumption of the Balloon Metaphor. I've never seen anyone working on an explosion model. Even in the act of exploding, if we inhabit a small enough region of that explosion, the observations would be what we see. But the scales used to determine the age of the Universe, etc. would be completely different than what is now used.I am not disagreeing with the current models ... just postulating a different one.