Big Bang Theory

Speaking from a remove (married to a scientist, proofread his papers, not a scientist myself), I'd say pretty darn comfy.

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Re: Big Bang Theory

kickycan wrote:

Like for example, evolution. This one seems to be widely accepted by science as fact, although it is, technically, still only a theory.

(More accurately, natural selection is the theory. Evolution is "merely" the tracking of change in gene frequency within a population, so it's something we observe--i.e. it's "widely accepted by science as fact" because it is a result of empirical [often straightforwardly numerical] observation. Natural selection is a theory used to explain the change.)

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Ah, thanks for the correction.

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I have a theory which I've pushed on various boards from time to time with an absolute indifferent response. It is called the Congenial Universe Theory and goes like this:

Whatever cosmologist can think up, the universe will pause for a moment and then respond..."Ok, we can do that".

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I don't know how well the big bang theory is doing.

I do know that I don't believe it, though I suspect that big bangs do occur, repeatedly (although a long time apart).

I feel that nothing can come from nothing.
I feel that what exists must go somewhere.
I think Gods were made by man.

Being aware of the cycles which it easy to witness in Nature, I prefer to think that there was no Start and there will be no End to the existence of matter (or energy).
Planets and stars etc., will come and go (including all lifeforms thereon).

The Universe just keeps swapping from one to the other at irregular and mind-boggling infrequency - hence the big bangs.

THis IS just my idea; I have no desire to expect anyone else to accept it, especially religious people with Faith.

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i've always been partial to douglas adams theory

(i'm paraphrasing here)

there is a theory which states, if anybody ever discovers the truth behind the existence of the universe it will automatically disappear and be replaced by something even more inexplicable

there is another theory which states this has already happened

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Perhaps the person who understands the truth behind the universum either a) understands the purposelessness of it all and commits suicide or b) gets depressed because there are no more goals to pursue and commits suicide or c) becomes an offensive variable in the grand equation of the universe and is eliminated by the cosmological Pi(e).

Perhaps Douglas Adams was such a person.
As for the BB theory, heck, it sounds reasonable to me. Why not?

Naj. The quester for trivial knowledge.

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djjd62 wrote:

i've always been partial to douglas adams theory

(i'm paraphrasing here)

there is a theory which states, if anybody ever discovers the truth behind the existence of the universe it will automatically disappear and be replaced by something even more inexplicable

there is another theory which states this has already happened

I love it. So, when will the whale drop on us?

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There is plenty of evidence that the Big Bang happened. Most scientists are very comfortable (as Soz said).

The Big Bang was first postulated by Edwin Hubble who noticed that the further objects were away from us, the faster they were moving. This implies a geometry that means that all objects started in the same place (this is an oversimplified brief version of this of course).

This was the hypothesis. Then (as with all theories) scientists started saying-- "OK if this is correct, what would we expect to see".

Well there are a bunch of things to look for:
- First you get better instruments and make sure that Hubble was really right about further objects moving faster.
- Scientists realized that the Big Bang would have left background radiation which one could look for and measure.
- Scientists realized that if the Big Bang happened there should be a certain "uniform" distribution of stuff in all directions.
- Scientists also realized that matter must of been "compressed" (again a gross oversimplification), and can see what the results of this.

So scientists built better telescopes to look at the distribution of things, they developed new ways to tell how fast things are moving, they built detectors and satellites to check for the background radiation they expected and they sent spaceships to get chemicals from comets.

All of these things have given quite strong evidence that the Big Bang theory did happen.

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Yes, this is all possible, but how can something be created from nothing, excluding the intervention of a God of sort? This why I prefer the concept of a Grand Cycle.

For me, even a God is out of the question, because a God raises the old and still realistic question, 'where did the God come from'?

The God could not create Itself, assuming It did not exist before It created Itself.

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rhymer, I don't think the making of the universe from a big bang necessarily means that something came from nothing.

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Re: Big Bang Theory

kickycan wrote:

It seems that there are theories, and then there are THEORIES. Like for example, evolution. This one seems to be widely accepted by science as fact, although it is, technically, still only a theory.

How about the Big Bang though? Is that one widely accepted by science as fact? Just how comfortable is science with this theory?

The general aspect of the Big Bang is pretty well established. But I think the details which have yet to be discovered are going to alter our view of why things evolved the way they did.

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Actually, it isn't a bang, it was/is a rapid inflation which is still on going. A bang implies it was/is expanding into something and as far as is known at the moment the inflation was/is creating space/time as it expands. Logic would imply that the source material that was/is expanding came from somewhere but the possibility of us knowing that are probably nil, as all the information about the universe is contained within the universe. That is probably the most significant aspect of this discovery, it place boundaries on our knowledge of reality. Anything beyond that boundary is speculation.

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rhymer wrote:

Yes, this is all possible, but how can something be created from nothing, excluding the intervention of a God of sort? This why I prefer the concept of a Grand Cycle.

Well, physicists don't really know what was there before the Big Bang theory, so your Grand Cycle could fit in just as easily.

The only thing is, no one can prove your Grand Cycle Hypothesis is correct. It already exists out there in the minds of some physicists, as the argument of the Big Bang must be the result of a Big Crunch where the gravity of the previous universe pulled all its contents to create one huge blackhole.

Stephen Hawkings himself has found out that black holes will eventually die and explode in a huge burst of energy.

So the Big Bang really could be a result of a collapsing Universe, which would fit in nicely with your Grand Cycle Hypothesis. That, however, does not mean the Big Bang Theory is incorrect.

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Acquiunk wrote:

Actually, it isn't a bang, it was/is a rapid inflation which is still on going. A bang implies it was/is expanding into something and as far as is known at the moment the inflation was/is creating space/time as it expands. Logic would imply that the source material that was/is expanding came from somewhere but the possibility of us knowing that are probably nil, as all the information about the universe is contained within the universe. That is probably the most significant aspect of this discovery, it place boundaries on our knowledge of reality. Anything beyond that boundary is speculation.

Agreed.

"Big Bang" was probably not a very good choice for a title. Oh well. Who knew?

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rosborne979 wrote:

"Big Bang" was probably not a very good choice for a title. Oh well. Who knew?

Certainly not the Catholic Priest that first proposed it.

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Perhaps he conceived it in the after glow which is our only evidence of its existence.

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I realise that the 'cyclic' theory I prefer is unproven.

It just appeals to me as most likely, bearing in mind the cycles which we know do occur in Nature.

It is purely a gut feeling and though I have a scientific background, I well realise that determining the real truth of how it all works will be difficult for the best brains to unravel!

I have also googled this topic this week and found out that indeed there has been a theory of this ilk for some time (no fame for me then - thank God!)

...was that a Freudian slip, I hear you say....

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rhymer wrote:

I realise that the 'cyclic' theory I prefer is unproven.

It just appeals to me as most likely, bearing in mind the cycles which we know do occur in Nature.

It is purely a gut feeling and though I have a scientific background, I well realise that determining the real truth of how it all works will be difficult for the best brains to unravel!

I have also googled this topic this week and found out that indeed there has been a theory of this ilk for some time (no fame for me then - thank God!)

...was that a Freudian slip, I hear you say....

The problem with "gut feelings" is that when examined and tested scientifically, they very often turn out to be dead wrong.

Newton was very systematic and his science holds up today... except for one thing that uncharacteristically he accepted based on "a gut feeling" rather than math or true reasoning. This was his belief on the consitant progress of time (in an absolute sense) which he accepted as true without questioning. This belief unravelled in the late 1800's when it was questioned and didn't hold up to experiment.

Eintstein theory was arrived at by questioning Newton's gut feeling.

But then Einstein wasn't immune to a "gut feeling either" when evidence started to be collected that the only model of how electrons work was based on probability at its core... Einstein rejected this idea with his famous comment -- "God does not play dice with the universe".

However all of the experiments done since (including work that lead to the development of semiconductors and are necessessary for the computer you are reading this on) show that again, the gut feeling (even of Einstein) was wrong.

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Big Bang Theory

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