Posted on 09/15/2022 12:56:44 PM PDT by OneVike
Physicist Eric J. Lerner comes to the point:
To everyone who sees them, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of the cosmos are beautifully awe-inspiring. But to most professional astronomers and cosmologists, they are also extremely surprising—not at all what was predicted by theory. In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies, galaxies that are surprisingly smooth, surprisingly small and surprisingly old. Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant ones. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”
Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The truth that these papers don’t report is that the hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since. Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,” says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, “and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.” [Update: Kirkpatrick has protested Lerner’s handling of this quotation. See Note below.]Eric J. Lerner, “The Big Bang didn’t happen” at IAI.TV (August 11, 2022)
Although we didn’t usually hear of it, there’s been dissatisfaction with the Standard Model, which begins with the Big Bang, ever since it was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre nearly a century ago. But no one expected the James Webb Space Telescope to contribute to the debate.
Now, Lerner is the author of a book called The Big Bang Never Happened (1992) but — while that makes him an interested party — it doesn’t make him wrong. He will be speaking at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London (September 17–18, 2022) sponsored by the Institute for Art and Ideas (IAI), as a participant in the “Cosmology and the Big Bust” debate.
The upcoming debate, which features philosopher of science Bjørn Ekeberg and Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan, along with Lerner, is premised as follows:
The Big Bang theory crucially depends on the ‘inflation’ hypothesis that at the outset the universe expanded many orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light. But experiments have failed to prove evidence of cosmic inflation and since the theory’s inception it has been beset by deep puzzles. Now one of its founders, Paul Steinhardt has denounced the theory as mistaken and ‘scientifically meaningless’.
Do we have to give up the theory of cosmic inflation and seek a radical alternative? Might alternative theories like the Big Bounce, or abandoning the speed of light provide a solution? Or are such alternatives merely sticking plasters to avoid the more radical conclusion that it is time to give up on the Big Bang altogether?
Here’s a debate on this general topic from last year’s festival (but without JWST data). It features theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, along with Ekeberg and particle physicist Sam Henry.
So, yes, it’s been a serious topic of discussion for a while. Now, what to make of Eric Lerner’s approach? Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon offered Mind Matters News some thoughts and a potential solution:
The current thinking is that the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis era produced 75% Hydrogen and 25% Helium (by weight) and a smattering of Lithium, but not much else. Then after 300 thousand years, the universe cooled down enough to produce atoms, and gravitational attraction slowly, slowly built up stars. The early ones were big enough to explode, and the shock waves sent through the hydrogen gas caused pockets to form that began star-making in earnest. But it still took 500 million years to get enough stars for a galaxy. Now the earlier a galaxy forms, the further back in time and the further away it is from astronomers today, and the further away it is the faster it is moving away from us. This movement causes the light to be redshifted. So robust is this relationship, that astronomers replace “time” with “red-shift”. But the Hubble Space Telescope could only see visible light, and those early galaxies were so red-shifted they were only “visible” in the infra-red, which is where the James Webb telescope shines. So one of the goals of the James Webb telescope was to see the earliest galaxies, and indeed, they’re seeing a lot.
So what does this mean for the standard model?
Theorists have an answer. Lot’s of clumpy dark matter to get the Hydrogen gas to clump early. Which leads to the question, “why isn’t the dark matter clumpy now?”
I don’t have endurance to run down every rabbit trail cosmologists propose. Instead, I propose that the first stars were not made of Hydrogen, they were made of ice. The Big Bang synthesized abundant C and O which combined with H to form H20, CO2, CH4 etc. These gases freeze relatively early in the universe time frame, so clumping was not gravitational but physico-chemical, the same way snowflakes form. So we didn’t have to wait 500 million years for snowflakes to clump, it happen very quickly once the universe cooled below the freezing point. Hence James Webb sees lots of red-shifted galaxies from the early universe.
The paper on that (and maybe the prediction of what James Webb would find?) is in my open-access paper in Communications of the Blythe Institute in 2021.
That’s one possible solution. We know it’s science when it’s always posing challenges.
This sometimes comes up: Could the universe have always existed? The problem is, if the universe had existed for an infinite amount of time, everything that could possibly happen must already have happened an infinite number of times — including that we don’t exist and never did. But we know we do exist. As Robert J. Marks has pointed out, playing with infinity quickly results in absurdity. To do science, we must accept that some events are real and not mutually contradictory. So we can assume that the universe got started but we are a little less sure just now how that happened.
“the BBT posits a beginning just like Genesis is a beginning. “
The BBT does not posit a beginning. It posits a point in time after the beginning.
So does Genesis.
Well considering it was proping up the FBI, maybe they should in light of today’s modern FBI.
“Anyway, theories are proposed,”
Hypotheses are proposed and tested.
“As explained elsewhere, their understanding of the inflation was drastically overstated, because they expected to find young universes, and what they found was universes looking like our universe and all the others they found,”
We have never found another universe. Our best understanding is our universe is infinite.
Yes, they are.
BBT had met some tests, not others, maybe failing. Jury’s still out as far as I can tell.
What do you replace it with?
Go back to Steady State?
The big bang happened “Everywhere”
It was smaller than a proton..that was the size of the universe when it happened and expanded from there.
So they say...
There is no center of the universe.”
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As a matter of fact it’s all centrific.
Nice Pink Floyd reference. Now for something completely different.
I’m not dead yet. Think I’ll go for a walk.
He doesn’t seem pissed off to me. He seems to be reveling in the schadenfreude - as am I.
Apparently the science isn’t “settled”.🤣
Which pretty much aligns with Scripture. GOD may exist in many dimensions, while we know of only two, HIS and ours. In a Judea Christian understanding we exist from HIM, and thus from our perspective we understand things from our reality.
From GOD's reality, since HE created everything for us to live in, we are the center of HIS physical creation. Yet from our vantage point we see the physical universe World we live in and can only understand it by what we see.
However, if we could see it from HIS universe, we may then realize, we are the center of our universe from HIS perspective.
Here is a good article I wrote about parallel universes which even secular scientists admit possibly exists, Is There A Parallel Spiritual World?.
Haven't we been told that the closest galaxy will collide with us in 4 billion or so years?
“Yes, they are.”
No. Theories are developed, not proposed.
Below is a generalized sequence of steps taken to establish a scientific theory:
Choose and define the natural phenomenon that you want to figure out and explain.
Collect information (data) about this phenomena by going where the phenomena occur and making observations. Or, try to replicate this phenomena by means of a test (experiment) under controlled conditions (usually in a laboratory) that eliminates interference’s from environmental conditions.
After collecting a lot of data, look for patterns in the data.
Attempt to explain these patterns by making a provisional explanation, called a hypothesis.
Test the hypothesis by collecting more data to see if the hypothesis continues to show the assumed pattern. If the data does not support the hypothesis, it must be changed, or rejected in favor of a better one. In collecting data, one must NOT ignore data that contradicts the hypothesis in favor of only supportive data. (That is called “cherry-picking” and is commonly used by pseudo-scientists attempting to scam people unfamiliar with the scientific method. A good example of this fraud is shown by the so-called “creationists,” who start out with a pre-conceived conclusion - a geologically young, 6,000 year old earth, and then cherry-pick only evidence that supports their views, while ignoring or rejecting overwhelming evidence of a much older earth.)
If a refined hypothesis survives all attacks on it and is the best existing explanation for a particular phenomenon, it is then elevated to the status of a theory.
A theory is subject to modification and even rejection if there is overwhelming evidence that disproves it and/or supports another, better theory. Therefore, a theory is not an eternal or perpetual truth.
Although parallel universes do exist, even secular scientists admit there is a good possibility. I wrote about it once. Yet no telescope is going to ever detect them.
Here is a good article I wrote about parallel universes which even secular scientists admit possibly exists, Is There A Parallel Spiritual World?.
Yes yes I know all that.
What happens when the experiments to confirm the hypothesis can’t be performed?
BBT has had a run, future data will modify it or subsume it or return to validate it. Only time will tell.
You posted a baseless rant because you are confused about how the world works.
“My theory is a lot simpler and can never be disproven - God created the universe.”
Conjecture. To become a theory you first have to develop a testable hypothesis.
The required test must be observable capable of proving the hypothesis wrong.
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Space, time and all the matter in the universe cannot bring meaning to life. Only the irrational knowledge of faith can do that. Tolstoy
Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for. What is seen is temporary, what is not seen is eternal. The Bible
“Haven’t we been told that the closest galaxy will collide with us in 4 billion or so years?”
I don’t remember the best number but yes, galaxies have collided and more will collide. I was posting in context but didn’t explain in detail.
Gravity attracts nearby objects and can override the expansion effect. When we look at objects far away not affected by our gravity every thing is moving away from us.
The Big Bang fit the evidence for a long time. Now new evidence is coming in and people are having to rethink the Big Bang. Ideas have a certain momentum to them and people have difficulty letting them go when they have been held for a long time.
Scientists are people with their flaws. My biggest objection is when the science was fraudulent from the get-go and people are so vested in the fraud they actively suppress the truth, i.g. Global Warming.
Have never watched "The Big Bang Theory" so they could be propping up the FBI or not and I wouldn't be the wiser.
As a famous American once said, "facts are stupid things."
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