Misconceptions about the Big Bang

Scientific American ^ | March 2005 | Charles H. Lineweaver and Tamara M. Davis

[PatrickHenry]

If there were a Science Forum would the SN's still come?

No need for a science forum. We're happy where we are.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[TigersEye]

But the universe doesn't have any requirement--mathematical or philosophical--that anything come "before" it, just as there's no requirement for anything to be south of the South Pole. Causality presupposes time, and time presupposes the universe. The universe doesn't require a cause.

Every phenomena that arises within the universe has as its cause some condition or conditions but the phenomena of universe itself arises without cause or conditions? What is the reason for that?

[PatrickHenry]

The article says this:
In the current standard model of cosmology, galaxies with a redshift of about 1.5--that is, whose light has a wavelength 150 percent longer than the laboratory reference value--are receding at the speed of light. Astronomers have observed about 1,000 galaxies with redshifts larger than 1.5. That is, they have observed about 1,000 objects receding from us faster than the speed of light. Equivalently, we are receding from those galaxies faster than the speed of light.

Question: why aren't there greater consequences than the appearance of the light from these objects? Why is this motion, relative to ours, immune from the effects of special relativity?

[Dimensio]

Please don't, I do not think I could handle that much nonsense this early in the morning.

I guess that's one way to avoid uncomfortable facts. Take comfort in your ignorance by declaring knowledge to be "nonsense".

[Dimensio]

First there was NOTHING and then NOTHING exploded!

Yes, that is exactly the kind of idiotic misconception that this article seeks to dispell.

[SouthParkRepublican]

Bump for later read.

[Radix]

John Derbyshire reviewed this book in the latest issue of National Review

 

Another link imbedded in image.

 

[biblewonk]

I can think of a really big and obvious one.

[Physicist]

The article is just wrong about that. 1+z = sqrt((1+beta)/(1-beta)), where beta is the velocity/c. Obviously as v goes to c, the redshift z blows up to infinity.

[newgeezer]

Flee, brother. ;O)

[Physicist]

Rereading that section, I think what it's saying is that the distant objects were receding from us at sublight speeds back at the time we are observing them, but since then they have picked up speed, and are now receding from us faster than light (which may be true, I'd have to work it out). Anyway, we can't observe them as they are right now.

[longshadow]

Exceptionally well written article. Badly needed, too.

[Ichneumon]

Next time I hear some Luddite say, "In the beginning was nothing, and then it exploded," I'm going to frap him upside the head with this article.

It obviously won't help, as several people have now *responded* to this article with that same twaddle.

Beauty may be only skin deep, but ignorance goes clear to the bone.

[longshadow]

That's the one paragraph I had difficulty understanding what they were trying to say....

[VadeRetro]

Sciam Articles have a higher than average tendency to find their way into the Smokey Back Room. Wondering ...

[Ichneumon]

[Like Darwinian evolution, cosmic expansion provides the context within which simple structures form and develop over time into complex structures. Without evolution and expansion, modern biology and cosmology make little sense.]

The structural complexity of the simplest one-celled organism far exceeds the complexity of joining together individual cells in a cooperative way to make multi-celled organisms.

Even if you were correct -- and from what I know of biology, you aren't, that still would make your comment a complete non sequitur to the material you were allegedly "responding" to.

Hint for the science-impaired: The "simplest one-celled organism" as we know it today is a *result* of evolution, not the *starting point* of it.

[furball4paws]

First there was NOTHING and then NOTHING exploded!

Aw... T'weren't nothing

It was gravity particles.

[Ichneumon]

The supposed expansion of the universe. Once people latched on to the concept of stellar red shift as an indication of recessional velocity, everything else was redefined (or ignored as anomalous) to fit.

Nice try, but the article itself points out that your "alternative" explanation just doesn't match the evidence:

SIDEBAR February 21, 2005
Misconceptions about the Big Bang: A Wearying Hypothesis
By Charles H. Lineweaver and Tamara M. Davis

	Image: P. CHALLIS Center for Astrophysics/STScI/NASA
	SUPERNOVAE,  such as this one (indicated by arrow) in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, serve as tracers of cosmic expansion. Their observed properties rule out alternative theories of cosmology in which space does not expand.

Every time Scientific American publishes an article on cosmology, a number of readers write in to argue that galaxies are not really receding from us--that the expansion of space is an illusion. They suggest that galactic redshifts are instead caused by light getting "tired" on its long journey. Perhaps some novel process causes light to lose energy spontaneously, and thereby redden, as it propagates through space.

Scientists first proposed this hypothesis some 75 years ago, and like any good model, it makes predictions that can be tested. But like any bad model, its predictions do not fit the observations. For example, when a star explodes as a supernova, it brightens and then dims--a process that takes about two weeks for the type of supernova that astronomers have been using to map out space. During these two weeks, the supernova emits a train of photons. The tired-light hypothesis predicts that these photons lose energy as they propagate but that the observer always sees a train that lasts two weeks.

In expanding space, however, not only do individual photons get stretched (thereby losing energy) but the entire train of photons also gets stretched. Thus, it takes longer than two weeks for all the photons to arrive on Earth. Recent observations confirm this effect. A supernova in a galaxy of redshift 0.5 appears to last three weeks; one in a galaxy of redshift 1, four weeks.

The tired-light hypothesis also conflicts with observations of the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation and of the surface brightness of distant galaxies.

So the expanding universe cause for the redshift has been verified in serveral ways, and the "attenuated light" cause has been falsified -- it doesn't match the observations.

Will you now drop your adherence to your falsified model, or is your belief in it based on personal bias and dogma, rather than evidence?

[VadeRetro]

An accelerating universe, then, resembles a black hole in that it has an event horizon, an edge beyond which we cannot see. The current distance to our cosmic event horizon is 16 billion light-years, well within our observable range. Light emitted from galaxies that are now beyond the event horizon will never be able to reach us; the distance that currently corresponds to 16 billion light-years will expand too quickly. We will still be able to see events that took place in those galaxies before they crossed the horizon, but subsequent events will be forever beyond our view.

I think this means that things we can see now are going to wink out of sight as the universe expandes and ages. We will actually see things appear to recede from us and leave us alone in the dark.

Makes me not want to stick around.