Big Bang Problem

Several thousand (minimum) astronomers and cosmologists, a couple of whom post on this forum, have spent the last eighty years gathering the information that supports the Big Bang having happened. A half-dozen or so astronomers disagree with the majority interpretation, but new data keeps coming in and is starting to make them look foolish. Any introductory astronomy text written since 1980, or, say, NASA's website on cosmology, will give you bunches of details.Stars are different from one another. That's part of why there is a whole elaborate classification system for them, with ten major divisions and many subclassifications within each of those.[This message has been edited by Coragyps, 04-20-2004]

Think about the 4th of July and those bright white loud shells: you see the flash, and then it's a second or more until you hear the BOOM - enough time to cringe. Even light only travels at 186,000 miles per second (and sound at 1100 feet per second), so the sunlight you see actually left the sun's surface eight minutes ago - just like the sound from the shell left with the light, but took a bit longer getting to you. The next-nearest star that you can see from Lovington is far enough away that its light left eight years ago. (The Dog Star - the bright one high in the South this time of year when it first gets dark.)
I've seen 2,000,000,000 year old light in my telescope, from the quasar 3C273. And you can see two million year old light with your naked eye, from the Andromeda Galaxy. Nope. It changes all the time. Stars orbit other stars, some stars pulsate and change brightness, and others explode. Never a dull moment, in fact.

That's called a "train." They're unusual but not exactly rare. The fantastic Leonid shower four(?) years ago had quite a few meteors with trains, some of them lasting 30 seconds or so. Pretty stuff!