Big-bang-defying giant of astronomy passes away (article)

Creation.com ^ | 12-31-13 | John G. Hartnett

[buffaloguy]

The big bang seems reasonable to me. I haven't kept up with the current models but the black holes have not been eliminated just yet.

For every astrophysicist there is a different model.n

[exodus]

It's not that I'm skeptical about the math. I just can't accept that there is a limit to the universe. It's like a fish bumping into a concrete dam, and saying, “Well, that's it. There's nothing beyond this point.”

[Cboldt]

The universe came about somehow. Either it materialized in some spread out form, or it started small and got bigger. It appears to be getting bigger now, so the "started small and got bigger" theory seems to have a leg up.

Hawkings shift isn't all that dramatic. Hawking radiation is the escape of energy from a black hole, due to quantum effects. His modified stance is that the event horizon isn't a sharply delineated "surface," but somewhere, at a smaller radius, gravity rules. I would think that the same quantum effect can play at that smaller radius too, so energy has a way to work its way "outward" from the pull of gravity.

[exodus]

Thanks, Cboldt.

I guess that I'm having an Einstien moment, like when he said, “God does not play dice with the universe!” I do not like the limits the Big Bang imposes.

[Bullish]

I’ve never been able to fathom how time started moving forward. I mean, what was time even one second before a so called ‘big bang’? How could time even exist without a starting point, and what the heck was time before that point? I don’t believe that can ever be answered by any human being.

It boggles the mind.

[exodus]

My mind boggles too.

What time was it before time began? What did the Big Bang singularity expand into, if there isn’t anything beyond our universe? If things that fall into a black hole can’t come back into our universe when the black hole evaporates, where do they go?

If everything that ever existed, time, space, information, and all, is destroyed with every Big Bang cycle, there’s no point to either the universe or us existing at all.

I just can’t believe that.

[Bullish]

I rather like the new theory of ‘grey holes’ where light and other matter can slowly dissipate over time. It would mean light particles and other matter changing into other forms of matter, thereby allowing escape. That, IMO would fit in with string theory and could explain a lot of things that are unexplainable with the current ideas of matter, space and time.

[JoeFromSidney]

I was already aware of Arp's passing. I only recently, however, became aware of him and his theories. Here are some iconoclastic books that I think are worth reading.

Lerner, Eric J., The Big Bang Never Happened,Vintage Books, 1991. I'm a bit dubious about his argument, since he appears to propose that the universe is infinite in both time and space. I think he dismisses Olbers Paradox too quickly (the night sky is dark; if the universe were infinite in time and space we would expect the night sky to be as bright as day).

Weintraub, David A., How Old is the Universe, Princeton U. Press, 2011.

Arp, Holton, Seeing Red, Apeiron, 1998. Arp argues that the "red shift" has nothing to do with velocity and the Doppler effect, but instead is a function of the age of the source.

Ratcliffe, Hilton, The Static Universe, Apeiron, 2011. The author argues that the universe is not expanding at all, but the red shift is due to light losing energy as it travels great distances, thus increasing in wavelength.

Obviously these books are at variance with the "standard model" of cosmology, but each points to discrepancies that the "standard model" doesn't explain.

I'm not a cosmologist. The arguments in each of these books sound plausible, and some seem to be supported by evidence. However, it's outside my field, and I can only say it sounds interesting and worth reading about.

[exodus]

**** “... he appears to propose that the universe is infinite in both time and space ...” ****

Like you, I’m not a cosmologist, but I believe that both are infinite. It just feels right.

[exodus]

It's been a long time since I've looked at string theory.

As far as grey holes allowing matter to escape after that matter has changed into a different kind of matter, matter is still escaping from the hole. In my understanding that would preclude the formation of the Big Bang singularity, just as escape from a black hole would.

Plainly I don't understand the theories involved, but the subject is fascinating.

[SunkenCiv]

Galianni, P., Burbidge, E.M., Arp, H.C., Junkkarinen, V., Burbidge, G. and Zibetti, S., “The Discovery
of a High Redshift X-Ray Emitting QSO Very Close to the Nucleus of NGC 7319”, ApJ, 620, 88-94,
February 10, 2005.