The Big Bang Theory is Unscientific

http://astro.wsu.edu/allen/courses/astr135/Notes/cosmology.html

I wrote a paper on this but unfortunately I left the paper before coming home for Thanksgiving and I don't remember my sources.

Can anyone tell me how the inflationary model is supported by the scientific method?

I vote inflation down the toilet because it is unscientific. Not one shred of it seems unarbitrary. As to the topic title, if the inflation model is a "pipe dream", then the big bang theory falls apart too.

 

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Hum,
I know what you mean.
But that link you gave basically gave three good reasons why we `made up` that theory:
Monopoles, the flaws in space-time have to be got rid of (there were to many produced , and we don`t see any today),
The horizon problem,
The flatness problem,

And as Andrei Linde, one of the leading experts in inflation, once said
"<b>Inflation hasn't won the race, but so far it's the only horse.</b>"

(Edit - er, excluding colliding membrane theory, see link at bottom)

Perhaps after we discover more about the higgs boson or learn more about dark matter/energy then we may be able to get direct evidence (for or against) of the mechanism of inflation.

[ <i> I suppose that perhaps the scalar inflationary field is needed to create dark matter in the first place. It maybe that the energy of the inflation would decay into stable particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) and other fields (electromagnetic, etc), or `exotic` particles that make up darkmatter. </i> ]

I also imagine that the new theories of superstrings/membranes will also contribute to that `search`.

Check out this weird site (BEFORE THE BIG BANG)
http://willmar.ridgewater.mnscu.edu/library/508352.htm

 

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The question is, why is it at all entertained by science if it is actually unscientific?

Will take a look at the site when I get back, have to go make sure the big dinner is coming along fine.

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Yeh, the inflation model is needed for the BB theory but falls short, I mean it's suppose to have lasted 10^-24s and expanded the universe (radius) from like 10^-50/60cm to 1cm. This comes to an expansion rate of ~ (3.33^12)c - thats pretty rapid expansion, and I can't see how its possible, but I'm still open to suggestions.

On why its still entertained by the scientific community, without it, the BB theory has too many problems and would perhaps have to be discarded, but they have a lot invested in it and I'm not sure what theory they'd choose or create instead - maybe there needs to be another copernicus/kepler to come along and radically change our thinking.

but at the mo, I prefer Newton's approach - "I feign no hypotheses"

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Depends on how you define "viable". There are certainly alternative theories. I have books that descibe 4. The 2 I like best are The Plasma Theory and Hoyles Modified Steady State Theory. But the Big Bang Gang wont take their blinkers off long enough to study them thouroly and give them a chance. There is an old saying among scientists "if you have to choose between simple and complicated, simple is usually right". And the BBT including inflation and all the other amendments that has been added over the years, is about the most convoluted, complicated, artificial, ilogical theory ever devised by mankind. If I was a scientist with enough prestige to get puplished in Nature, I would write the following statement. "I'm sorry folks, but we just dont know what the hell is going on out there (in the universe) or where it came from. But we are trying our best to figure it out. Ask us again in annother 10 years, and we may or may not have the answer".

REGARDS APOLO

 

Ah, poor old Fred. Science needed people like Fred Hoyle, to challenge things, in a scientific manner.

His theories were entertaining, but he had a hard time explaining away the CMB, for instance.

The Big Bang is a simple explanation anyway. There are more questions pertaining to a steady state Universe, like, how it came into being? Where did the matter come come from? Hoyle proposed 'continuous creation' to explain away some facts that didn't fit his theory. That said, surely he shot the 'steady state' theory in the foot, as if matter was able to be created spontaneously in his model, he validated the concept of a 'bang', so all we're left debating is the size. Well, a finite amount of matter just _is_, so a bang, whatever size, could give rise to a whole Universe.

Apologies if I've stitched two of Hoyles theories together, it's been at least a decade since I read them last.

 

What utter, blinkered, unsubstantiated clap trap!.... Wait a moment, I see the problem. You've put an extra 'n' in another and missed out one of the zero's from 100. It should read 'Ask again in another 100 years.' Couldn't agree with you more if I tried.

 

It is not the big bang theory itself which I bring into question, but the inflationary theory which attempts to "patch" the original model's shortcomings. And if the inflationary theory is unscientific, then it only follows that the big bang theory is still flawed.

 

The point of this thread is that the inflationary model doesn't "fit the evidence" either.

 

@§outh§tar
Hum,
and that evidence is?
As far as I am aware the latest inflationary theory `tweak` implies a two stage expansion phase (to get it to fit observational data), but I’m not aware of anything that would question the actual theory itself.

if that were the case then it’s a case of throwing away (or tweaking) that theory.

BTW, did you read that link, about the membranes creating a universe without the need of an inflationary phase? - (it happened everywhere at once, type thing)

 

That is my point exactly. Zilch. How at all does this even come close to the scientific method?

Yes, I read about that. But what exactly is the speculation based on for us to know it is scientific?

I read it now and I must say it makes me feel very small!

The problem is however the same as the one I pointed out with inflation - cannot be subjected to the scientific method and is therefore not "viable" within any scientific realm. Also if anyone could tell me what evidence prompted the theory that we are a "small cross-section" of a grander universe?


Alan Guth (founding father of inflationary theory) is cited in the article, "I don't think Paul and Neil come close to proving their case;"

Ironically enough, he hasn't proven his either. We wait for the Pope to make the final decision.

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Hum,
crossed wires
(never cross the beams)
All the evidence we have is all for the theory.
There hasn’t been anything that we have observed yet that conflict with it.

Perhaps your confusing `proof` with theory.
We theorise that Pluto is cold, but it’s only a theory base on spectral emissions etc. No one knows for sure. No one has gone there with a thermometer to check.

Anyway, the COBE satellite data agrees with the inflation theory.
The Universe's expansion is isotropic--the same in every direction. That was what was predicted, that was what we observed.
It’s not proof, but it good evidence.

There have been searches made for magnetic monopoles, none have been found.
If we started to find them then the theory is wrong.

And to answer the two stage inflationary period question; we had to sort out the problem that today we see that the mass density of the universe is still very close to the critical density ( first inflationary era). In addition, that the vacuum is very full of energy. Therefore, we are presently in another secondary inflationary expansion phase.
We would observe the Universe to be increasing its expansion over time. In addition, this is precisely the phenomena that observed by astronomers.

However, it is a bit too technical to get into here,
More here though.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/0408/0408084.pdf

But by observing distant supernovas we see that they are 20% dimmer than expected for a constant expansion, hence, the Universe is not constantly expanding.

This is not proof, but I for one am sticking with the theory, even if it isn’t scientific.

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Hm, So the universe is isotropic. I dont beleive that for a minute. I's true that in our neighbourhood THe galaxies appear to be distributed evenly all around us. But when you get out to a distance of 10 to 14 billion light years things get pretty lumpy, there are galaxy clusters containing millions of galaxies (the great wall f.ex.) seperated by many light years of emty space.
Some one said Hoyle could'nt explain where all the stuff in the universe came from, and how it got started. Easy, it did'nt come from anywhere, it was always there.Just extend the arrows of time backwards and forward infinitely.You have got to think outside the box. And dont be constrained by small mind thinking, e.i. everything has to have a beginning.
B T W Hoyle did not postulate continues creation out of nothing (it seems the BBT does though) he uses Einsteins principle that energy is the same as mass. Mass can be converted to energy- radiation- and energy can be converted to mass. So he reasons that as the stars convert their mass in to radiation, that radiation eventually coaless back in to mass e.i. atoms, those atoms become part of the inter stelar gas and dust clouds that sooner or later contract and become new stars. So the universe continually recycles itself. Nothing lost, nothing gained. It has been estimated that it only takes creation of one atom (out of the radiated energy) pr cubic mile every 10 years to keep the universe going.
And please dont dig up that old argument that Hoyle can't explain the microwave background radiation. Easy, it is simply the natural inter stelar background temperature of the universe, and it was predicted by several scientists long before Penzias and Wilson got the idea it came from the BB.
BTW I would like some of the big bangers to show me what proof or evidence they have that the radiation is actualy coming from the BB. I dont beleive it can be done.
REGARDS APOLO

 

Hum,
The Wmap probe looked back to about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, and found it was isotropic...
(of course only to a certain extent, er , otherwise there would be no clumps of matter)

Anyway to work out the 3k we see today we just work backwards...

A that time (300,000 years old) the temperature of the Universe (lets say, 3000k) had dropped sufficiently for electrons and protons to combine into hydrogen atoms, <b>p + e --> H</b>.
From that time onwards, radiation was effectively unable to interact with the background gas; it has propagated freely ever since, while constantly losing energy because its <b>wavelength is stretched</b> by the expansion (hubbles constant) of the Universe.

You can switch on your TV and `detune it` the static you detect is the radiation of the Universe at a very early stage on what is known as the `surface of last scattering'. (At this early phase of the universe ordinary matter consisted of hot plasma of nuclei and electrons. The free electrons made the plasma opaque; a photon of radiation could not have travelled far before being scattered.)
However, once the universe cooled to approximately 3000 K, the electrons did not have enough energy to escape the pull of the nuclei, and atoms were created. This EVENT is known as <i>recombination</i>…(we can do experiments in labs on the earth to verify that electrons/plasma behave like this.)
Photons in the cosmic microwave background have been travelling towards us for over ten billion years, and have covered a distance of about a million billion billion miles. These are the photons at the surface of last scattering make up the Cosmic Background Radiation.
Their energy has been red-shifted to the microwave wavelength to only 3K.
At some point before or near recombination, the matter density and the energy density were equally important. This is the epoch in which large-scale structure formation began. Large-scale structure formation could not have begun earlier, during the <b>GUT epoch</b>, because of the tight coupling between radiation and matter stopping the density perturbations from forming. Once matter and radiation were separated, density perturbations could evolve on their own. The most over dense areas collapsed gravitationally, forming galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
Less dense areas formed voids, the large lessdense areas we see in the sky today.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

Hum,
2 + 2 = 5
thinking outside the box, still makes it wrong.

Hoyle's theory was discarded because it was not as `good` a theory as the big bang theory at answering /matching up with what we observe.

That’s how science works.

 

I think that apolo's point was not the nature of the "begining" of the universe, but the need for a begining.

 

Ahh,
Yes, that true.
The big-bang is sometimes regarded / mistaken as a beginning point for the universe. That’s because the laws of physics, or the mathematical tools that we use just break down at a singularity. And while it maybe true that our conventional 3d space and time were `created` then, that still leave the door open for newer theories , (like that membrane theory - see other post) to look beyond the point when Time =0…

It sounds strange i know;

It`s a bit like when water is `created` from ice.