more big bang nonsense

[miriam_e]

Now, I'm not saying that the Big Bang theory is wrong. I just don't -- never did -- like it. It just seems too much like that thing we always do.

Europe is the center of the universe.
Oops, it turns out the Earth is round.

Ok, the Earth is the center of the universe.
Excuse me, but it travels around the sun.

Humph! The sun is the center of the universe.
Oh dear, all those little dots up there in the sky, they are suns, many of them like our own, and we are on the rim of our galaxy -- the Milky Way.

Well our galaxy is the center of the universe!
Sorry, not all those dots out there are stars -- countless numbers of them are other galaxies.

Then we all started from this single point in a Big Bang and that was the center of the universe.
Ummm...

You would never realise it by reading the popular science press these days (or even the technical science press) but there are actually still a number of highly respected astrophysicists who don't go along with the Big Bang theory.

What annoys me most about the Big Bang theory is the way it has become unquestioned dogma. I hate it when people treat science as a religion. People swallow the absurdities of the Big Bang without a hiccup, and when some piece of evidence comes up that flies in the face of the Big Bang, theoreticians alter the theory to suit the new facts rather than calling into question the theory. That is what religious people do.

And how about this oddity in 11th Oct 2003 New Scientist where they reported some work by New York mathematician Jeffrey Weeks. He took recent observations by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in measuring the microwave background radiation and came up with the conclusion that the universe might be just 70 billion light years across. They also report that David Spergel of Princeton University seems to have contradicted it by looking for some of the predictions made by Weeks' model and not finding them. From those results it looks like the universe may be infinitely large. During this article there was casual mention of the Big Bang and that the cosmic microwave radiation is the remnant of that fireball. But it ignores the fact that both Weeks' and Spergel's work make the standard Big Bang look like a joke. Last I heard the Big Bang was dated at being about 15 billion years ago (though they are always revising that number upward as we embarrassingly see further and further into the past). A 15 billion year old universe must be less than 30 billion light years across, but here is Weeks drawing conclusions from new observations that put the size of the universe at 70 billion light years diameter. Even worse is Spergel's rebuttal which effectively eliminates the Big Bang by showing that the universe is probably infinite after all. *sigh*

I still like the Steady State theory. Hoyle and Gold fixed major objections to that many years ago.

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Fred Hoyle, the major proponent of the Steady State theory and well-known critic of the Big Bang theory kicked himself many times over for giving them such a memorable name. He scathingly referred to it as the "Big Bang" theory as a put-down. Unfortunately the name caught the minds of news reporters everywhere and that alone was enough to drown out what always seemed to me the far more rational alternative of the Steady State universe.

The easiest way to understand how light losing energy would undergo a red shift is to think of it as waves rather than particles. Quantum rules prevent the waves changing height by more than a whole unit, or quantum (which is where Quantum physics gets its name from). The only way for light waves to lose energy then, is to drop in frequency. You can think of it as vibrating less quickly.
Hence red shift.

I have often wondered if the cosmic microwave background radiation -- that much vaunted relic of the Big Bang -- is not perhaps just tired light.

[striver.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there is nothing like a good buzz word to screw things up.

So you are saying that light acts like waves rippling out from a stone dropped in water…the further they get from the center, the further apart the waves are?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

there is nothing like a good buzz word to screw things up.

How true!

like waves rippling out from a stone dropped in water…the further they get from the center, the further apart the waves are

A nicely evocative comparison, however I have a feeling ripples on water get closer together as they spread and slow. I must try this next time I'm near a pond to check my intuition on this.

It would seem that in order for light wavelengths to lengthen the waves would have to spread further apart, but pressing the water wave analogy this way would appear to mean the waves in front speed up, which is nuts. I think the key to understanding this apparent paradox is to view each photon as a single little wave instead of a system of waves. If each photon spreads then its wavelength gets longer while maintaining its speed.

(Please remember that I am no great authority on any of this so could easily be barking up some very wrong trees. I am fairly well-read though and I try to keep up-to-date. I think I have this right.)