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| Thread: The Big Bang: did it happen or not? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · «PREV |
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TheDeath
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posted February 14, 2009 04:16 PM |
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Edited by TheDeath at 16:16, 14 Feb 2009.
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No. Actually the galaxies are not accelerating themselves, they only look so from our point of view. The Universe itself is expanding or we can say that the intervening space between galaxies is stretching.
No I'm pretty sure I read it all over the place. That's why they put Dark Energy into the equation -- i.e it "pulls" the Universe.
Remember that an object doesn't STOP ever EVEN if no energy is applied to it, as long as it is already in movement. That would mean there would be no point in Dark Energy, but they HAD to put there "Dark Energy" because it is accelerating -- i.e something is PULLING it.
As for redshift, suffice to say that we assume it is "ok" and that it happens because we think of it as sound, but maybe we're missing something. It's all based on an assumption 
RedShift faulty (the video itself doesn't matter, but somewhere along the video it cites an article that causes a "paradox" -- that's what should draw your attention, not the video itself)
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Minion
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posted February 14, 2009 05:02 PM |
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Quote:
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No. Actually the galaxies are not accelerating themselves, they only look so from our point of view. The Universe itself is expanding or we can say that the intervening space between galaxies is stretching.
No I'm pretty sure I read it all over the place. That's why they put Dark Energy into the equation -- i.e it "pulls" the Universe.
Remember that an object doesn't STOP ever EVEN if no energy is applied to it, as long as it is already in movement. That would mean there would be no point in Dark Energy, but they HAD to put there "Dark Energy" because it is accelerating -- i.e something is PULLING it.
Dark Energy is something weird, unlike dark matter. I don't understand peoples fierce objection to dark matter, something which is simply matter that interacts so little that it is hard to notice it. But as far as dark energy goes, the explanations aren't very believable. And they shouldn't be either, since we know very little about it  So far I like to think that it is simply the cost of the Universe, a volume of space has some intrinsic, fundamental energy. That has negative pressure (causing the acceleration).
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As for redshift, suffice to say that we assume it is "ok" and that it happens because we think of it as sound, but maybe we're missing something. It's all based on an assumption
RedShift faulty (the video itself doesn't matter, but somewhere along the video it cites an article that causes a "paradox" -- that's what should draw your attention, not the video itself)
The paradox is there for sure, but thinking that we know very little about Quasars, it is more safe to assume that there is something wrong with our knowledge of these enormous objects rather than in the redshift. Quasars are the most luminous objects in the known universe and they vary in luminosity on a variety of time scales. Some vary in brightness every few months, weeks, days, or hours. They are extremely fascinating really. We don't know why some large galaxies have them and some don't.
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TheDeath
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posted February 14, 2009 07:57 PM |
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Horizon Problem
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Minion
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posted February 14, 2009 08:29 PM |
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Horizon Problem
Cosmic Inflation explains the Horizon Problem in big bang cosmology.
btw I personally favor superstring theory, or M-theory, which don't need inflation to explain why the universe is homogenous for starters.
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TheDeath
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posted February 14, 2009 08:58 PM |
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The inflation thing is relatively ridiculous in my opinion, just "added" there, like Dark Energy etc... to fit the observations.
I'm not so sure about String Theory though, that could be more plausible.
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TheDeath
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posted May 11, 2009 07:23 PM |
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TitaniumAlloy
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posted May 12, 2009 08:31 AM |
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I don't know, I wasn't there.
Pretty sure we've had this thread before.
But: if time is increasing entropy then t=0 is a singularity, no?... hmm..
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xerdux
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posted May 12, 2009 01:52 PM |
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Im pretty sure that something similar might have happened, but on a trillion times lower scale.
We will have an better theory in the future.
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Totoro
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posted May 12, 2009 04:36 PM |
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That is an insanely long letter. I read the first paragraph and it didn't jump right into the subject so I'm not convinced enough to read it.
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TheDeath
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posted May 12, 2009 11:32 PM |
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You should. It says that the "scientific community" is like the medieval church or organized religion (this comes from some scientists themselves who just "happen" to not agree with the... mainframe -- makes you wonder if not the same thing happens in religion), with the Big Bang at its top.
There are fundamental problems with this approach, because it all leads down to favoritism and subjectivity, like in the "medieval church" setting:
1) "peer reviewers" favor Big Bang and "positive" outcomes.
2) if it's not mainframe, it doesn't get published (aka, you're not a catholic, you get converted)
3) Only the Big Bang theories gets funds. Likely it will show more results than something unfunded. And obviously peer reviewers ignore bad outcomes, as mentioned above.
I mean anything not in the 'mainframe' viewpoint will most likely be heresy. They used to burn heretics like that  These days they don't get funded and their articles don't get published (so much for anyone can do science -- rather, "anyone can do science as long as they agree with us"). Kinda the same fatality for a scientific viewpoint.
So much for neutrality in science.
This short quote from the article (not the letter) might detail it better than me:
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A challenge to orthodoxy tends to be ignored at first. But if it gains popular support, the first move is to discredit and silence the challenger. The protectors of the scientific faith often parade the 'scientific method' like a holy icon to warn off evil, heretical spirits. And the demand is made that 'extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
'Belief' is the crux of the matter. The usual declaration that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence is merely a smokescreen for the fact that no amount of evidence will change the consensus view until a sufficient number 'convert' to a belief in the new theory. Science is therefore a political numbers game based on subjective beliefs. Max Planck was right when he said, "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning."
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Corribus
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posted May 13, 2009 01:25 AM |
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Edited by Corribus at 01:27, 13 May 2009.
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While I won't go so far to say that politics doesn't get in the way of science (it does), this article greatly overstates the problem. Scientific professionals to not all bow to a single master, and there's way to much competition in the process to permit the kind of conspiracy alluded to here.
Revolutionary ideas DO get supressed - initially - and funding DOES often get diverted to research in more popular areas. This sort of bias is inevitable because people are involved. That's not a problem with the scientific method, mind. But it is also inevitable that better theories will replace worse theories; the issue is time. If the Big Bang is completely wrong, it WILL be replaced by a better theory eventually. Money and human ego is the bottleneck - but it's not so great a bottleneck that innovation is completely stifled, as this article wants to suggest.
EDIT: And by the way, probably upwards of 95% of articles submitted to nature are rejected even before review, so the fact that this letter was rejected really means nothing.
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TheDeath
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posted May 13, 2009 01:45 AM |
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Scientific professionals to not all bow to a single master, and there's way to much competition in the process to permit the kind of conspiracy alluded to here.
Well first of all this clearly is not a conspiracy, it would be like saying that religion is a conspiracy, which is not, even the medieval church wasn't a "conspiracy".
Psychologically speaking, in layman terms, it's simply that people don't like to have their viewpoints crashed, and they feel comfortable in a large flock of "sheep". This is a clear phenomenon not just in the scientific community, but ANY community: ethnic, racist, religious, sexual (gay for example), etc... any "differing viewpoints" whatsoever. Just human nature.
Obviously the letter was written by scientists. They do not blame SCIENCE, which is pure. They blame the SCIENTISTS or the "scientific community", which **** it up 
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That's not a problem with the scientific method.
Of course not. It is with the scientific community as I have stated 
And yes it probably will get surpassed, but that is only like Planck said, a new generation will adapt to the less-known theories ("maybe" not certain), not that the current ones will change
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EDIT: And by the way, probably upwards of 95% of articles submitted to nature are rejected even before review, so the fact that this letter was rejected really means nothing.
This letter wasn't rejected, this letter complained about the situation.
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Corribus
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posted May 13, 2009 03:18 AM |
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What I meant was, some sort of conscious universal decision to inhibit research into alternative cosmological theories. I don't mean conspiracy in the Hollywood sense. Scientists aren't a cohesive enough group of people to collaborate in this fashion, and there's no single organization representing "scientific belief" (not that there is a "scientific belief" per se). Thus a comparison of "science" to a medieval church or something is just wrong on many levels.
It's fine to criticize the way that modern science is carried out, and there are certainly things that deserve to be criticized. However, using a false comparison like this just for the sake of emphasis only makes you (not you, Death, I mean, the people writing the letter) look like a fanatic. If this is their tactic, it's no wonder people ignore them. It goes to show you that many scientists could really stand to consult with people having marketing expertise. Which of course they'd never do, because most scientists think science as a discipline is somehow too noble for that (and many tenured scientists believe they are experts in everything and don't like to consult anyone in anything - it's a power thing). Marketing is a taboo word in my discipline. In that respect, the essay is right - science as a discipline needs to modernize itself, but not for the reason this essay seems to be arguing.
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This letter wasn't rejected, this letter complained about the situation.
Read the first paragraph on the website you linked. It is apparent that the authors of this letter tried to get it published (probably as an editorial or something) in Nature. They then use the fact that it was rejected from Nature as evidence to support their claim of prejudice against scientists holding alternative viewpoints. But probably thousands of papers are rejected from Nature yearly, far more than are ultimately accepted, so it's really unfair to cite the rejection of their letter as bias against their viewpoint.
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RTI
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posted May 16, 2009 12:00 PM |
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Since humans began monitoring the heavens with telescopes, we have witnessed at least one big bang in addition to the one that created our galaxy. That's right. Big bangs are not unique. They happen all the time. Unfortunately, I am too tired to dig up the proof right now. ^^^[Get some Sleep RTI!!]. However, this makes sense intuitively. If the physics of our universe allows for a big bang, then why would it only happen once? Anything that can happen once can happen again. Science is the study of repeatable phenomena. If it only happened once then it isn't science.
Big bangs are major events. However, the big bang that created our galaxy almost certainly wasn't the first one, as certain elements of our universe appear to be much older than 13 billion years. For example, the cosmic background radiation is equal in all directions. That would take more than a trillion years by our current model. If one accepts the idea that big bangs happen regularly, then it becomes difficult to accept the idea that a Big Bang created our universe.
Sir Fred Hoyle came to the conclusion back in the 50s that the universe is infinitely old. Matter accelerates away and dissipates, but is then replaced by a new big bang, forever and ever. This is called Continuous Creation theory. It actually has fewer holes in it than Big Bang theory, but it doesn't irritate Catholics as much, so most scientists aren't interested. That's right, I just insulted Science, (but don't worry, I don't like religion either).
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