NationStates Jolt Archive

Found this what do you guys think?

T. Van Flandern, editor of the Meta Re search Bulletin, has compiled a list of Big-Bang problems -- and it is not a short list. Can the Big-Bang paradigm be that shaky? Like Evolution and Relativity, the Big Bang is usually paraded as a proven, undeniable fact. It isn't.

1.Static-universe models fit the data better than expanding-universe models.
2.The microwave "background" makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball.
3.Element-abundance predictions using the Big Bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work.
4.The universe has too much largescale structure (interspersed "walls" and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years.
5.The average luminosity of quasars must decrease in just the right way so that their mean apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely.
6.The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe.
7.The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform.
8.Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe.
9.The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them apparently having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the faintest quasars.
10.If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just one part in 1059. Any larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed on itself or already dissipated.
(Van Flandern, Tom; "Top Ten Problems with the Big Bang," Meta Research Bul letin, 6:64, 1997. Bulletin address: P.O. box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20825-5186.)


From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998. © 1998-2000

That's pretty old. Regardless, the Big Bang theory definitely hasn't been proved beyond doubt, though it's probably the most plausible compared to other scientific theories.

I think I'm ashamed of myself that your source was published 10 years ago and I wasn't aware of it before now.

That's pretty old. Regardless, the Big Bang theory definitely hasn't been proved beyond doubt, though it's probably the most plausible compared to other scientific theories.

This is something that's always confused me and I hope you can do a better job of explaining it to me than my buddy did when we were discussing a related topic.

if you have a Theory about something (doesn't matter what) and data is gathered that refutes this theory, why continue to stick to it just because it's all you've got at that moment? Why not just say "Well, that theory is blown so let's get back to th edrawing board?"

Does it matter? The main thing is how do we stop the universe imploding and killing us all?

This is something that's always confused me and I hope you can do a better job of explaining it to me than my buddy did when we were discussing a related topic.

if you have a Theory about something (doesn't matter what) and data is gathered that refutes this theory, why continue to stick to it just because it's all you've got at that moment? Why not just say "Well, that theory is blown so let's get back to th edrawing board?"

That's not how science works. You create a hypothesis which best explains the observed phenomena/evidence and accept it until new evidence comes to light. If new evidence comes to light you either change the theory to fit the new evidence or get rid of the theory completely. You don't HAVE to scrap the theory just because of a few small problems, most physicists I believe reckon they have adequately advanced the theory today to fit this 'new evidence'.

Does it matter? The main thing is how do we stop the universe imploding and killing us all?

More sex, drinking, soft drugs in moderation - its the holy trinity, really.

T. Van Flandern, editor of the Meta Re search Bulletin, has compiled a list of Big-Bang problems -- and it is not a short list. Can the Big-Bang paradigm be that shaky? It has a lot of unanswered questions, but it is not that shaky. Not to mention it has been much improved upon in the last 10 years.
I have to wonder why anyone would pay heed to anything written in a bulletin that has "Meta" in its title though. I doubt it is even peer reviewed, or has any notability in the scientific community.

Not to mention that talkorigins (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html) gives many of the same things as evidence for the big bang. (And they're not ten years behind.)

if you have a Theory about something (doesn't matter what) and data is gathered that refutes this theory, why continue to stick to it just because it's all you've got at that moment? Why not just say "Well, that theory is blown so let's get back to th edrawing board?"If you're adrift on the ocean in a rowboat, and it has a tiny leak, do you jump overboard looking for a boat without a leak? Or would you rather patch the hole and see how it goes?

Analogies aside, the OP is probably more correct in calling it the Big-Bang paradigm rather than Big-Bang theory. There are a lot of theories, hypotheses, ideas and intuitions tied up in that paradigm. If some of those face serious problems, they can be replaced or adapted without compromising the rest of the paradigm.

Like Evolution and Relativity, the Big Bang is usually paraded as a proven, undeniable fact.

I don't think any of these are paraded as undeniable fact by anyone apart from those who wish to set them up to knock them down. Anyone who knows anything about science will know that they are the best theories we have to explain what we know.

Nothing in science is paraded as a proven undeniable fact. That's why IDers hate science.

Found this what do you guys think?

T. Van Flandern, editor of the Meta Re search Bulletin, has compiled a list of Big-Bang problems -- and it is not a short list. Can the Big-Bang paradigm be that shaky? Like Evolution and Relativity, the Big Bang is usually paraded as a proven, undeniable fact. It isn't.

1.Static-universe models fit the data better than expanding-universe models.
2.The microwave "background" makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball.
3.Element-abundance predictions using the Big Bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work.
4.The universe has too much largescale structure (interspersed "walls" and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years.
5.The average luminosity of quasars must decrease in just the right way so that their mean apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely.
6.The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe.
7.The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform.
8.Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe.
9.The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them apparently having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the faintest quasars.
10.If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just one part in 1059. Any larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed on itself or already dissipated.
(Van Flandern, Tom; "Top Ten Problems with the Big Bang," Meta Research Bul letin, 6:64, 1997. Bulletin address: P.O. box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20825-5186.)


From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998. © 1998-2000

Wait... if the Big Bang didn't happen, what conditions are they going to be replicating in the LHC in September?!?!

Wait... if the Big Bang didn't happen, what conditions are they going to be replicating in the LHC in September?!?!

Umm I belive the clue is in the name. Could it be the Big Collision?

also, the face on mars is totally an alien statue

I'd have to see evidence of the assertions in that list. Many of them contradict what I learned in astronomy and cosmology courses a couple years ago.

also, the face on mars is totally an alien statuePersonally I'm more worried about planets spontaneously exploding. Although faster than light travel has its appeal. Van Flandern certainly has some weird ideas.

Wait... if the Big Bang didn't happen, what conditions are they going to be replicating in the LHC in September?!?!

The ones that destroyed the last universe.

A quick look at ads for this guy seems to turn up a lot of papers that aren't in peer-reviewed journals and virtually none that are published in astronomy journals.

His last publication in what is probably an actual journal is about the Perseid meteors in 2004, he's got something in Physical Review about gravity in 2003, another from the first journal in 2001 (about predicting comet locations), another about another meteor shower in a different journal in 2000, something about the speed of gravity in 1998 in Physical Review (and a response to someone's comment on this article in 2000)... his last paper in ApJ was in 1983 which seems really bad for an American astronomer who isn't retired. If his science was good, he would probably have got something published since.

A link to the author query on ADS here (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PRE&qform=AST&arxiv_sel=astro-ph&arxiv_sel=cond-mat&arxiv_sel=cs&arxiv_sel=gr-qc&arxiv_sel=hep-ex&arxiv_sel=hep-lat&arxiv_sel=hep-ph&arxiv_sel=hep-th&arxiv_sel=math&arxiv_sel=math-ph&arxiv_sel=nlin&arxiv_sel=nucl-ex&arxiv_sel=nucl-th&arxiv_sel=physics&arxiv_sel=quant-ph&arxiv_sel=q-bio&sim_query=YES&ned_query=YES&aut_logic=OR&obj_logic=OR&author=van+flandern&object=&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=200&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1).

Oh, I forgot my overall point. This guy doesn't have anything published in peer reviewed journals about cosmology, he studied celestial mechanics, which is not cosmology and worked at an observatory with a lot of light pollution instead of finding a better observatory post or maybe working at a university so I suspect that his comments on cosmology are not exactly expert comments. While he might be fine with predicting comet locations (I'll have to wait until I get to the office to read any of his papers and the papers that cite his) that doesn't make him an expert on the big bang.

Nothing in science is paraded as a proven undeniable fact. That's why IDers hate science.

Now, now....

Nothing in science is paraded as a proven undeniable fact. That's why IDers hate science.
Now, now....Yeah, they also hate it because it doesn't invoke God. Get your facts straight *shakes fist*

Yeah, they also hate it because it doesn't invoke God. Get your facts straight *shakes fist*

*Invokes God. Smites Damor* :p

The voices in my head tell me that the voices in T. Van Fladern's head have no clue what they're talking about.

Theory- the collected life-work of one or more commonly many scientists each lending a small part of evidence to the whole. The sheer weight of evidence does not invalidate any dissenting evidence; rather, it drowns it in such an enormous mountain of evidence that no knowledgeable person would confuse the two.

theory-something some nutjob made up after 15 minutes on google

Don't confuse the two.

This is something that's always confused me and I hope you can do a better job of explaining it to me than my buddy did when we were discussing a related topic.

if you have a Theory about something (doesn't matter what) and data is gathered that refutes this theory, why continue to stick to it just because it's all you've got at that moment? Why not just say "Well, that theory is blown so let's get back to th edrawing board?"Actually some have moved on past the Inflationary Model. The Cyclic Model so far has eliminated a lot of the patchwork problems of the Inflationary Model, and hasn't needed extra elements tacked onto it to match new evidence.

http://www.amazon.com/Endless-Universe-Beyond-Big-Bang/dp/0385509642

OK, first and foremost, let’s start off with a simple question.

Why is the sky dark at night?

No seriously, why is the sky dark at night? The only reason why the sun is brighter than the stars is because being closer it is larger in the sky. The average luminosity of a point taken from the sun is in and of itself not significantly brighter than the pinpoint of light that comes from a distant star. In fact, if you do the math, assume that there the universe is infinite in space and time then sooner or later every point of light will stretch back to some star, no matter how far. This means that the light of the sky should be three times brighter than it is now, even at night!

OK, the universe is not bright because the universe is “finite” in the distance of time you can view it. We can discuss the where’s and why’s later but for now I think we just proved either the finite universe (note that time and space are relative dimensions, so a closed universe in space is a closed universe in time) or an event we can call the “big dark.”

In discussions I have with different people it seems that no one has a constant definition for the “Big Bang,” because it was used to describe two different things which originally were linked. So instead I will call it the “Big transparency event.” The moment the universe went from dark (opaque) to transparent is when the background radiation was formed. This did not occur at time = 0. The universe was already non uniform at this point.

Needless to say there is something funny going on with the universe. There are some interesting ideas to explain it, including multiple universes which are somehow impacting each other. One can even wonder if the “speed of light” (the dimensional conversion reference between space dimensions and the time dimension) is actually constant or might depend on some other factor.

The universe could we incredibly complex or we could be incredibly dense. Consider the orbits of the planets. Early attempts at describing them were vastly complex, consisting of circles within circles. That was because orbits are ellipses not circles. (DUH!) The same could be easily be true of our understanding of the universe.

One can literally argue the opposite; that the static model of the universe is so unstable that it is impossible to achieve. No matter how much people try to make it work something always comes up that must be compensated for. In that sense it is as plausible as creation science; an attempt to find any excuse to justify ones preconceived notion.

This is something that's always confused me and I hope you can do a better job of explaining it to me than my buddy did when we were discussing a related topic.

if you have a Theory about something (doesn't matter what) and data is gathered that refutes this theory, why continue to stick to it just because it's all you've got at that moment? Why not just say "Well, that theory is blown so let's get back to th edrawing board?"

Because you go with the theory that is the best fit. Usually that theory can be improved so that it fits more of the observed data. Theories essentially evolve. Sometimes though something will come up that means it is best to start from scratch but that is a lot rarer now than it used to be.

Why is the sky dark at night?

No seriously, why is the sky dark at night? The only reason why the sun is brighter than the stars is because being closer it is larger in the sky. The average luminosity of a point taken from the sun is in and of itself not significantly brighter than the pinpoint of light that comes from a distant star. In fact, if you do the math, assume that there the universe is infinite in space and time then sooner or later every point of light will stretch back to some star, no matter how far. This means that the light of the sky should be three times brighter than it is now, even at night!What sort of assumptions underlie that calculation?

Does it assume a static universe? Because expansion would shift light so far to the red we wouldn't detect it beyond a certain distance.
Does it assume a uniform distribution of stars? Admittedly the universe looks fairly homogeneous, roughly speaking. But you can place stars in a 3D space in such a way that it wouldn't be very light everywhere.
Does it take into account interstellar dust, and black holes which act like light-sinks?
And I'm not sure the quantization of light wouldn't have an effect; stars don't emit photons in every direction (it's a large but finite number of random directions).
And I'm sure there's other confounding factors that might affect the outcome quite a bit.

The universe could we incredibly complex or we could be incredibly dense. I wouldn't rule out both either. And you know what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says; once we find out the answer, the universe is just replaced with a more complex one.

I wouldn't rule out both either. And you know what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says; once we find out the answer, the universe is just replaced with a more complex one.

We know the answer its the question we have to find ;)