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To: Reuben Hick; RadioAstronomer; ThinkPlease; Physicist; PatrickHenry; VadeRetro; Gordian Blade
Yet...

1. The primordial explosion should have propelled all the matter/energy of the cosmos out radially from its center,....

The Big Bang ("BB") Cosmology posits no "explosion," nor any center to the universe. Whoever wrote this doesn't understand the theory he's arguing against.

.... and by the principle of conservation of angular momentum, none of it could ever thereafter have acquired any kind of curvilinear motion. Yet there are all kinds of curving and orbiting motions of the stars and galaxies of the cosmos, a situation that seems quite impossible if the universe began with the Big Bang.

Only someone who doesn't understand the BB theory and what conservation of angular momentum actually means could have written something like this. Conservation of Angular Momentum in no way poses an impediment to orbital motion of stars, galaxies, or anything else.

2. Sensitive measurements in recent years have increasingly been showing that the background radiation is not homogeneous and isotropic (that is, the same in all directions), as it should be if it had been produced by the Big Bang, but is anisotropic in all directions.

The author blunders again. The CMBR IS isotropic down to a relatively fine level of temperature resolution, below which point the Inflationary Model of the BB specifically predicts an amount, and distribution, of anisotropy that is exquisitely in agreement with the most recent observations of the W-MAP probe. Contrary to what the author proposes, the currently accepted BB theory (the Inflationary Model) predicts exactly what has been confirmed observationally.

3. The universe is anything but uniform in large-scale structure, as both the Big Bang and Steady State theories require, but instead is full of huge agglomerations of matter in some regions and vast empty spaces in others, scattered around the cosmos in far from any uniform manner.

The author errs again. On a Cosmological scale, the OBSERVED distribution of matter is homogeneous; it is only on smaller scales that the clumpiness is noted, but at cosmological distances, the clumpiness averages out, just as the BB theory predicts.

..... Some astronomers are now trying somehow to to imagine a primeval lumpy Big Bang.

The author appears to not understand, or misrepresents the degree of "lumpiness" in the early Universe. The subtle anisotropies observed by the W-MAP probe (as mentioned in my response to your item #2 above) are all that is needed to "seed" the universe for galaxy formation. So, in fact, the lumpiness WAS predicted, and has been found to be in agreement with the predictions of the BB theory.

4. In the context of the primeval fireball it is hard to justify the accumulation of any amount of matter in any one location such as a star.

It is not even clear what the author means by this statement.

.... If the explosion is driving all galaxies apart in the resulting expansion, how could it fail to drive all atoms apart before they came together in galaxies?

Again, the author implies the BB is some sort of "explosion" -- it wasn't. Secondly, he suggests that the BB is "driving the galaxies apart" when, in fact, under the BB theory, galaxy formation didn't take place for several million or even a billion years afterwards. He also seems to believe that the expansion of the Universe somehow imparts momentum to objects within it, which is NOT the case.

5. And saving the best for last, the most serious objection comes back to the second law of thermodynamics. Explosions produce disorder, not order. The primordial superexplosion surely would have produced absolute chaos and the most utter disorder.

Once more, the author incorrectly characterizes the BB as an "explosion."

.... If the universe is indeed a closed system as evolutionary cosmogonists allege, then how in the name of sense and science could this primeval chaotic disorder have possibly generated the beautifully organized and complexly ordered universe that we now have?

The author clearly doesn't understand thermodynamics any better than he understands the BB theory. Adiabatic expansion is isentropic, and there is nothing about the Second Law of thermo that precludes localized decreases in entropy as long as the net entropy of the system and its surroundings increases.

If you are interseted in learning about what the BB theory actually is, I suggest you abandon the website from which you plagerized your response, and check this out instead:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm

It is written by a real astronomer who is knowledgeable in the subject.

125 posted on 12/03/2004 8:10:52 PM PST by longshadow
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To: longshadow
Allow me to interject with some of my own ignorance.

Let me state the given:

1.The universe exists

2.For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

3.There are stars in the night sky

4.Occasionally a new star will appear in the night sky

5.Matter may neither be created nor destroyed/

So there are three possibilities for the existence of the universe.
A.) The Universe does not exist. Everything is an illusion

B.)The Universe has always existed.

And C.)The Universe was spawned into existence at some time. For example The BB theory.

For the sake of argument let us discard A as a possibility

Let us assume B. If the universe has always existed, then stars in the sky have been consuming resources for an amount of time equaling negative infinity. Therefore not only are there no resources presently existing, there are negative infinity resources. We know this is false. Therefore Case B is false.

Let us assume B again, only this time, we will go with the idea that resources will regenerate within stars via some reaction. So we know that stars have been shining in the direction of earth forever, therefore all stars in the universe, not concealed by phenomena such as nebulae, are visible from the Earth. However we know also that a new stars light will occasionally reach earth, so Case B is again false.

So let us assume C.

The Universe was spawned at some point. Therefore some body of mass must have existed before the creation of the universe, that is the make up of what is now the universe. We know this is true because of the given that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. So in order for the universe to exist as it is now, some reaction must have taken place to get the result of the universe. However there can be no reaction if there is no action to begin with.

THEREFORE THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT EXIST.

Or, if you prefer, the universe does exist, and the original first cause must be that some deity triggered the reaction that resulted in what is now the universe.



This has been on my mind recently, and I've been hoping someone would argue it with me, so please don't disappoint me. Thanks.
126 posted on 12/03/2004 8:39:38 PM PST by conservative_crusader (Annuit Coeptis (He has smiled on our undertaking))
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