• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

The Big Bang - Woo or not?

Zeuzzz said:
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. - Terry Pratchett.
Click to expand...


Also from a book with TP's name on it:
It's misleading to think of the Big Bang, for example, as an explosion like a bomb or a firework, seen from outside. The whole point of the Big Bang metaphor is is that the moment the universe was born, there was no outside."
Click to expand...

The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen.
 
ben m said:
Disney's mistake appears to be that he takes, e.g., "the cosmic microwave background" to be a single data point. It isn't. It's a spectrum, with a very particular shape including dozens of peaks and valleys; every wiggle in this shape helps to probe a different cosmological parameter.
Click to expand...

I know this is not the spectrum you are talking about, but it's also CMB...

http://xkcd.com/54/
(Language slightly NSFW... maybe?)

Science, not pigeon poo.
 
Not!!

I agree with the broad sentiment expressed here: a theory that is not complete, or perhaps flawed in some ways, is not woo.

And I don't mean to say that other posters think that the BBT is incomplete or flawed.

I think it may be, if anyone cares what I think!
 
Contrary to popular scientific opinion the Big Bang doesn't say anything about the origin of the universe. BBT can explain how the universe evolved from an incredibly hot, dense volume about 13.7 billion earth-time years ago. But, it is completely silent on the 'origin' of that volume. Doesn't seem like a final cosmological theory of anything to me. It falls at the first hurdle of basic scientific logic: cause and effect. It also does not assert the universe is finite in age or size, merely the observationally accessible slice. Of course, you can always add the riduclous ideas of quantum loop gravity, multiverses, parallel universes, brane theories, etc, to try to resolve the huge problem of the origin of the universe, but these type of approaches will never solve it, they just delay it.

Now, there are very good reasons to presume that what we see may not be all you get, but these theories always falls far short of being a complete theory of existence, which is what they are often presented as. This is simply not true, to get a multiverse you need a universe generating mechanism, something thats got to make all the Big Bangs go BANG, so you need some laws of physics to do that, so then, where have they all come from? So all thats done is shifting the problems of the origin of the universe to the level of multiverse, but you still haven't explained it. The main problem for me is that people seem to be trying to explain the universe as it is by appealing to something outside of it, in this case an infinite number of universes outside of it, which to me is no better than when religion appeals to an unseen unexplained god outside of the universe. All these issues stem form the assumption of a definitive moment of creation. In a universe assumed infinte (the logical position), not so.


Its very easy to use well experimentally tested effects on light to explain redshifts which dont lead to an expanding universe or the Big Bang. Scientists have long believed that only the Doppler effect or Gravity could account for wavelength shifts in the spectrum of light as it travels through space, scientists have always assumed spectral invariance, ie, the spectrum remains the same no matter how far the light travels.

But experiments have shown that there is are other ways to shift spectral lines. This mechanism involves non-Lambertian sources that emit beamed energy, such as lasers and devices producing synchrotron light. The discoverer of this new effect is physicist Emil Wolf, who along with nobel laureate Max Born, wrote the textbook Principles of Optics.

Also another alternative mechanism to produce redshifts that imply a non expanding universe is the Coherent Raman Effect on Incoherent Light (CREIL). By using the tensors of polarization and Raman scattering you can derive a coherent radiation transfer function for broadband light. Impulsive Stimulated Raman Scattering (ISRS) has been studied in laboratories since the 1960’s. ISRS effects are observed when differential lasers are trained on tubes containing a gas in the presence of an electric field. In the resulting spectra, the higher frequency is redshifted and the lower frequency is blue shifted.

Such effects, if they turn out to be true, pull the rug from under the Big Bang inflationary hypothesis. So they should be at least noticed and considered by cosmologists. But they seem to be mostly ignored, most cosmologists seem to have made their mind up about the Big Bang and expansion already, despite perfectly valid alternatives like these existing.
 
Wangler said:
I agree with the broad sentiment expressed here: a theory that is not complete, or perhaps flawed in some ways, is not woo.

And I don't mean to say that other posters think that the BBT is incomplete or flawed.

I think it may be, if anyone cares what I think!
Click to expand...

I would venture to say that most astronomers think it is flawed or incomplete. The missing satellite problem comes to mind. That is, when some region of the universe, such as around what will be a galaxy like our own, is simulated under Lambda-CDM conditions, there are lots and lots of extra little dwarf galaxies created in that simulation that we don't see in our Local Group. Now, although much progress has been made in detecting ow surface brightness galaxies in the last decade, it doesn't clear the inconsistency. Either Lambda-CDM is flawed, or we are missing these "dark satellites." Further progress needs to be made in either of those areas in order to solve the problem.
 
Zeuzzz said:
So they should be at least noticed and considered by cosmologists. But they seem to be mostly ignored, most cosmologists seem to have made their mind up about the Big Bang and expansion already, despite perfectly valid alternatives like these existing.
Click to expand...

It's amazing. Dark matter had it's decades of being treated very suspiciously by the astronomical community. Now with the mountains of evidence in its favor, it's clearly a conspiracy!!!11!!!11
 
Zeuzzz said:
Contrary to popular scientific opinion the Big Bang doesn't say anything about the origin of the universe.
Click to expand...

It says something about the stage of the universe 13.7 billion years ago when it was extremely hot, dense, and curved. It doesn't tell you whether that was really the beginning.

Doesn't seem like a final cosmological theory of anything to me.
Click to expand...

Strawman. No one ever said it was.

It falls at the first hurdle of basic scientific logic: cause and effect.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. Physics tells us how to evolve some set of conditions on a time slice into the future (or past). It doesn't tell us what those conditions are. For that, we need observations, such as that the universe is currently expanding.

The main problem for me is that people seem to be trying to explain the universe as it is by appealing to something outside of it, in this case an infinite number of universes outside of it, which to me is no better than when religion appeals to an unseen unexplained god outside of the universe. All these issues stem form the assumption of a definitive moment of creation. In a universe assumed infinte (the logical position), not so.
Click to expand...

What's incredibly ironic about you, Zeuzzz, is that you attack BBT on the basis of totally unscientific pseudo-religious criteria. So what if BBT isn't a final theory of cosmology? It accounts for and predicts the observational data, which is the job of science. To contort yourself in ridiculous ways to try to build a steady-state model just because you, personally, can't comprehend the possibility that there was a big bang, is... completely unscientific, not to mention stupid.

Its very easy to use well experimentally tested effects on light to explain redshifts which dont lead to an expanding universe or the Big Bang. Scientists have long believed that only the Doppler effect or Gravity could account for wavelength shifts in the spectrum of light as it travels through space, scientists have always assumed spectral invariance, ie, the spectrum remains the same no matter how far the light travels.

But experiments have shown that there is are other ways to shift spectral lines. This mechanism involves non-Lambertian sources that emit beamed energy, such as lasers and devices producing synchrotron light. The discoverer of this new effect is physicist Emil Wolf, who along with nobel laureate Max Born, wrote the textbook Principles of Optics.
Click to expand...

Gibberish and word salad. I have no idea what you think you're talking about. Laser light and synchroton radiation behave just as all other forms of EM radiation do, and that physics has been understood by undergraduates and high school students since the 1880's. But as we all know, you haven't the slightest clue about the basics of the subject you write so much about.

Also another alternative mechanism to produce redshifts that imply a non expanding universe is the Coherent Raman Effect on Incoherent Light (CREIL). By using the tensors of polarization and Raman scattering you can derive a coherent radiation transfer function for broadband light. Impulsive Stimulated Raman Scattering (ISRS) has been studied in laboratories since the 1960’s. ISRS effects are observed when differential lasers are trained on tubes containing a gas in the presence of an electric field. In the resulting spectra, the higher frequency is redshifted and the lower frequency is blue shifted.
Click to expand...

Which is nothing like what happens in cosmology. Next.

Such effects, if they turn out to be true, pull the rug from under the Big Bang inflationary hypothesis. So they should be at least noticed and considered by cosmologists. But they seem to be mostly ignored, most cosmologists seem to have made their mind up about the Big Bang and expansion already, despite perfectly valid alternatives like these existing.
Click to expand...

No, they are ignored because they are nonsense or do not fit observations. Cosmology arrived at the BBT after a century of theory and observation, with tremendous resistance from many people for many years. Only a very few denialists still cling to discredited steady state models, and they're mostly about to drop dead from old age. In science, data beats theology every time.

Deal with it, or go home.
 
Zeuzzz said:
Such effects, if they turn out to be true, pull the rug from under the Big Bang inflationary hypothesis. So they should be at least noticed and considered by cosmologists. But they seem to be mostly ignored, most cosmologists seem to have made their mind up about the Big Bang and expansion already, despite perfectly valid alternatives like these existing.
Click to expand...

EEER-UUUHH (Think Family Fortunes/Family Feud noise accompanied with a big X). Such observations are worthless as an alternative to BBC unless you can also explain various other aspects of the Universe. Such as why we don't see black dwarfs, why the sky is dark at night, why we haven't run out of hydrogen to burn in stars, what keeps the Universe from contracting under its own self-gravity...
 
Zeuzzz: Contrary to popular scientific opinion the Big Bang doesn't say anything about the origin of the universe. BBT can explain how the universe evolved from an incredibly hot, dense volume about 13.7 billion earth-time years ago. But, it is completely silent on the 'origin' of that volume. Doesn't seem like a final cosmological theory of anything to me. It falls at the first hurdle of basic scientific logic: cause and effect. It also does not assert the universe is finite in age or size, merely the observationally accessible slice. Of course, you can always add the riduclous ideas of quantum loop gravity, multiverses, parallel universes, brane theories, etc, to try to resolve the huge problem of the origin of the universe, but these type of approaches will never solve it, they just delay it.

Now, there are very good reasons to presume that what we see may not be all you get, but these theories always falls far short of being a complete theory of existence, which is what they are often presented as. This is simply not true, to get a multiverse you need a universe generating mechanism, something thats got to make all the Big Bangs go BANG, so you need some laws of physics to do that, so then, where have they all come from? So all thats done is shifting the problems of the origin of the universe to the level of multiverse, but you still haven't explained it. The main problem for me is that people seem to be trying to explain the universe as it is by appealing to something outside of it, in this case an infinite number of universes outside of it, which to me is no better than when religion appeals to an unseen unexplained god outside of the universe. All these issues stem form the assumption of a definitive moment of creation. In a universe assumed infinte (the logical position), not so.

Weird.

If contemporary cosmology set out to do what you say, then it would indeed be woo ... at least until whatever phenomena predicted by models that included some kind of ultimate cause were at least testable in principle.

Doubly weird.

The OP introduced a document by Mike Disney, and declared a strong intention, or desire: "This thread should be about all the points raised in the above quoted article on the Big Bang and modern cosmology" Yet in your own next post in this thread you have proceeded to ignore it!

But perhaps I can save the day for you Z, by applying 'the Disney method' to assess the ideas in the rest of your post ... would you care to guess what the conclusion will be?
 
Last edited:
"Old Today, 09:41 PM
Remove user from ignore list
DeiRenDopa
This message is hidden because DeiRenDopa is on your ignore list."


Until you improve you attitude, I really cant be bothered. If anyone thinks DRD has raised an essential and valid scientific point, quote it and ask me.

As if talking about CREIL and the Wolf Effect is not relevant to cosmology. Sheesh. Thats just about verifies my point about most cosmologists ignoring them. And I'll get to Disneys points in a while. Also some of his other interesting publications on the Big Bang. I dont have time at the mo to engage my brain in a full discussion about it, challenging peoples belief systems and getting outnumbered here by 50:1 is not a mediocre job. Takes effort. :)
 
Last edited:
sol invictus said:
Gibberish and word salad. I have no idea what you think you're talking about. Laser light and synchroton radiation behave just as all other forms of EM radiation do, and that physics has been understood by undergraduates and high school students since the 1880's. But as we all know, you haven't the slightest clue about the basics of the subject you write so much about.
Click to expand...


So your telling me you have not heard about the rigurously experimentally verified wolf effect and its implications for cosmological redshifts? neither CREIL? Oh my.

Zeuzzz said:
• The Wolf Effect


• Coherent Raman Effect on incoherent light (CREIL)

Click to expand...

Deal with it, or go home.
Click to expand...


I am home.
 
Zeuzzz: Such effects, if they turn out to be true, pull the rug from under the Big Bang inflationary hypothesis.

And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

No wait ... the effects may well exist, but since extended sources such as galaxies show the same redshift across the whole galaxy (modulo some few hundred km/s, due to differential rotation for example), these effects must be shown to work over distances of tens of thousands of parsecs. Further, since the observed redshifts are the same irrespective of waveband - gammas to x-ray to visual to IR to microwave to radio - (same minor caveat), these effects must be shown to work in all these wavebands too.

And so on (there is quite a long list of good tests).

So an easy question is: do the people who have studied these effects claim that any of them could produce the extended source redshifts, the gamma-to-radio redshifts, the ... that are observed?

Perhaps Z knows better, but I have yet to read any paper, by anybody, claiming that any of these effects (or any combo of them) could match the relevant astronomical observations.

Oh, and let's not make a Disney mistake: the relevant astronomical observations number in the millions.
 
Well, looks like Z may be well and truly hoist on his own petard.

For the benefit of all other readers, the list of papers Z cites contains none that claim these non-Doppler/cosmological expansion causes of redshift can match observations of the redshift(s) observed in extended sources such as galaxies.

Nor do any claim to be able to match observations of (the same) redshift in widely separated wavebands (e.g. x-ray and microwave) from point sources.

And so on.

And the reasons why no such claims are made is quite easy to find ... the proposed mechanisms for producing these redshifts cannot work across tens of thousands of parsecs AND ALSO work across multiple wavebands (at least, not in a way to match the relevant astronomical observations). Read up on the various effects and you'll see this pretty clearly.
 
DeiRenDopa said:
Well, looks like Z may be well and truly hoist on his own petard.

For the benefit of all other readers, the list of papers Z cites contains none that claim these non-Doppler/cosmological expansion causes of redshift can match observations of the redshift(s) observed in extended sources such as galaxies.

Nor do any claim to be able to match observations of (the same) redshift in widely separated wavebands (e.g. x-ray and microwave) from point sources.

And so on.

And the reasons why no such claims are made is quite easy to find ... the proposed mechanisms for producing these redshifts cannot work across tens of thousands of parsecs AND ALSO work across multiple wavebands (at least, not in a way to match the relevant astronomical observations). Read up on the various effects and you'll see this pretty clearly.
Click to expand...

You read ALL of those references? I'm impressed. Especially given the mound of other questions you listed earlier that are still unanswered.
 
Zeuzzz: So they [CREIL etc] should be at least noticed and considered by cosmologists. But they seem to be mostly ignored, most cosmologists seem to have made their mind up about the Big Bang and expansion already, despite perfectly valid alternatives like these existing.

In case any reader (other than Z, who won't read my post) is interested, all these mechanisms have been considered by many cosmologists.

So why aren't there lots of papers exploring these, in cosmological settings? Or seeking to test them in astrophysical settings?

For a variety of reasons, one of which is that it's pretty obvious they are all DOA if their intended scope is galaxies, supernovae, the gas which produces the Lyman forest, or AGNs (there may be role for GRBs, however slim).
 
Tubbythin: You read ALL of those references? I'm impressed. Especially given the mound of other questions you listed earlier that are still unanswered.

Z has cited almost all these before, in some cases many times before, in the 'PC woo or not' thread. I addressed most of them in that thread, and the ~50 or so questions Z promised to answer include several on some of these papers (no surprise that Z has chosen to not address any of those questions, but is happy to drop another load of woospam).

Two are new to me - the last two in the Wolf Effect list. However, the Gallo paper is not really relevant, and the Palma et al. one does not claim to be able to produce extended source AND multi-waveband redshifts of the kind seen in hundreds (thousands?) of galaxies.
 
DRD: But perhaps I can save the day for you Z, by applying 'the Disney method' to assess the ideas in the rest of your post ... would you care to guess what the conclusion will be?

Z: This message is hidden because DeiRenDopa is on your ignore list.

Not much point me doing that then, is there?
 
Zeuzzz said:
So your telling me you have not heard about the rigurously experimentally verified wolf effect and its implications for cosmological redshifts? neither CREIL? Oh my.
Click to expand...

The Wolf effect I've heard of. It has no particularly important implications for cosmological redshifts. CREIL I've never heard of in this context (sorry, I don't keep track of every crackpot idea). But regardless, DRD says not one of the papers in that list even tries to claim it can explain cosmological redshifts for extended sources, rendering them all totally irrelevant to the discussion.

So - did you have a point? Oh, and for entertainment value:

Zeuzzz said:
This thread should be about all the points raised in the above quoted article on the Big Bang and modern cosmology. If you cant be bothered to read it and contemplate what is being said, then please don’t post anything. It makes some very pertinent points.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom