You will not call other posters insulting names in this forum.
Please read the rules in the guidelines in the ATMB forum.
[ /Moderating ]
I’m not a scientist, but I’m enough of a geek to know this…
As humans, we know VERY LITTLE about subjects as big and as distant as the BBT. It is simply the best explanation we have at this point, and we must be willing to admit that there is much we don’t know and a lot left to learn. You shouldn’t be surprised that some question your motives (the religion angle) in asking the question since most understand that the BBT is just our best guess on a subject which is FAR from being understood. It is the Big Bang “Theory”
I have never known the BBT to be “ubiquitously presented as basic truth” in any forum. Hell, I had a science teacher in high school who wasn’t at all hesitant to say, “We just don’t know,” when asked a few too many questions on the subject. Despite your denial, I still suspect you have a religion-oriented motive for asking the question.
Saying you find the BBT absurd is like a five-year old saying they find the concept of Santa Claus absurd. It’s kind of pointless for a layman to take a strong stance on something about which you/we know so little.
:eek: I did not know this.
Nor me. I’m sure I’ve heard (knowledgeable) people describing the early size of the universe as compared to the size of a single proton, and expanding to the size of a grapefruit in some specific short period of time.
I understand how things can be finite but boundless (so it doesn’t have to be a grapefruit sized universe floating in any kind of void at all), but the notion that the universe started off big is news to me.
Have you (or will you) read the wiki page on the Big Bang? That strikes me as barely-minimal “research” for someone unfamiliar with the theory.
“In both cases, the model implies that the universe is expanding into some larger, pre-existing volume. In fact, the theory says nothing like that. Instead, the expansion of the universe is completely self-contained.” -Talk origins-
So here theyre saying that the BBT implies(says) that the universe’s original size(whatever that was) was all that existed at that time and that as the volume of space that the universe’s stuff occupies has gotten larger that has then become all of space but that outside the border of that balloon there is nothingness, not even empty space.
“A simpler way to put this is that the universe looks the same everywhere and in every direction. The combination of these two assumptions is often termed the cosmological principle. … so these assumptions must remain exactly that.” -Talk Origins-
Here they basically just say that they assume that the universe is uniform if you look at big enough hunks of it at a time and their total contents. Also that it seems like it but they don’t know since they can’t actually look at this much space and account it’s contents.
Just working my way through. I’ll continue to go through it and go over my understanding of various points of the theory from what I read. I figure this will make it easier to understand and discuss, at least for me.
Since the mod has decided I’m not allowed to defend myself from vitriolic hostility in any way other than being descriptively hostile in 20 words or more I’ll just ignore negative comments from here on out and respond only to people that clearly want to discuss and not just react emotionally to honest questioning about science.
Things can be finite, but boundless - the surface of the Earth, for example - there’s no end to it, but it’s not infinite either. Of course, it’s floating in space, which makes the analogy imperfect.
The universe may be curved in such a way that it is closed upon itself - and has no end, but has a finite size. It is not necessary for there to be any such thing as an ‘outside’.
The concept isn’t possible to grasp completely, but that doesn’t necessarily make it untrue.
IANAMod, but I thought it might help to point out; you should be able to defend yourself against hostility all day long within impunity. It only becomes a problem if you step outside the rules and post a direct insult.
FWIW, I don’t think you’ve been fairly treated in this thread. Folks appear to be assuming you’re a closet creationist or some such. I can see why they might have made that assumption, but assumptions have no place in this forum (even assumptions about the actual subject matter are frowned upon).
You are absolutely allowed to defend yourself, just not by calling people names lol.
Reading through the thread, where is this “vitrolic hostility”? Most of the replies were perfectly polite. The reason your OP attracted some sarcasm is because it’s an argument from ignorance - “I don’t understand this, it seems absurd to me”. Pointing that out is neither hostile nor unfair. It’s a position often taken by creationists, climate change deniers and other conspiracy believers, so it doesn’t go down too well here.
The Hubble Ultra-Deep field looks back 13 billion years, there are real samples to look at.
The cosmological principle is not just an assumption, scientists have attempted to test it. For example, the uniform red-shift of galaxies at comparable distances in all directions implies that the universe is expanding uniformly. Likewise, the CMB is uniform in all directions to one part in 100,000. It’s also been possible to determine that the fine-structure constant has not varied more than one part in a million in the last 11 billion years. This implies that, for example, the speed of light does not vary over time.
It does not say anything about the nature of anything outside our universe (if that is a valid concept, we just don’t know).
Saw an article in Scientific American about recent CMB observations that point to some directional bias in it. The researchers called it “axis of evil”. It may point to some asymmetrical topology of the universe.
There is no outside to the universe, and it doesn’t have border.
It’s not very useful to think of the universe as a little thing that gets bigger over time. It’s better to think of it as a dense thing that gets less dense over time. Size becomes a meaningless concept when you’re talking about something that might be infinite in extent.
They don’t just *assume *the universe is uniform. There have been a number of studies to measure how “lumpy” the universe is on a large scale, and the results have been used to tweak the big bang theory.
You’re correct that we don’t know what the rest of the universe looks like beyond the sphere of the observable universe. However, there’s not much we can do about that. There’s nothing in the models we create to describe the observable universe to suggest that the rest should be wildly different.
As other have pointed out, you’re certainly allowed to defend yourself. You’re just not allowed to call other posters names while you do it.
Somewhat true. Back before WMAP, the COBE probe hinted at anomalies in the CMB and WMAP showed strange hot and cold spots. Further investigation like CMB multipole measurements in the presence of foregrounds have basically addressed the issue as artifacts of foreground contamination - things like dust and local galactic radiation.
Let me just address the claim that no other model is equiconsistent with all the facts. There is at least one other model. The trouble is that its creator admitted that there was and could be no observational date that might separate his model from the BB.
Sir Fred (Hoyle) was a first rate cosmologist who never accepted the BB. I believe he actually created the name Big Bang intending it as a term of ridicule. His alternate theory was based on the hypothesis that the size of the universe was constant, but the gravitational “constant” was actually increasing all the time (maybe Higg’s bosons were being formed), The moment of the big bang was actually the moment that gravity was non-existent and since then we’ve been getting continuously heavier (well, I don’t know about you…). I heard him lecture on this and he carefully explained how there could be no evidence to distinguish the two models, but he obviously found his more satisfying. I don’t know if his model could survive the cosmic acceleration, but I think it did not survive his death.
I also heard Richard Feynman say that “Anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics is wrong.” Speaking for myself, I find the BB much less problematic than QM.
And as your Scientific Article states
So let me summarize for you “As we get more data, we may have to adjust our model”.
Well it turns out looking at the current theory that what I had thought were essential components to the BBT aren’t. Neither space nor time being finite are settled on in the theory as people have said it’s mostly just an expansion theory which I’m fine with. I don’t know if it’s correct but at least it doesn’t seem like an absurd possibility that much of what is said in it is true. Though I don’t think this thread has endeared me to science in social scenarios I’ll continue my own pursuits of cosmology for my curiosity.
It strikes me that throughout history while various people have held the position as guardians of the nature of everything that the multitudes taking them too seriously and with too much reverence has made it much more difficult for anyone to discuss it. I’m not the guy who knows something new and groundbreaking about these things but I imagine the guy who is has a lot of ridicule and hostility to endure.
What’s with this passive-aggressive martyr syndrome? You came onto SDMB and claimed the current scientific theory was “absurd” and “suspect”; and it’s everyone else’s fault if they disagree with you?
Since you’ve continued the train of thought with hyperbolic words and phrases, in this very post, such as “guardians of the nature of everything” and “too much reverence”, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll get more of it.
Nobody “reveres” scientists. But they do understand that they try to operate on an empirical and data-based level, and that their theories match observations. That’s about as good as it gets. What on earth else do you want from them?
This very basic idea, that our best theories may be wrong (either partially or completely), is hard for many non-scientists to understand. Coombine that with quantum mechanics, big bang theory, deep time, etc, which are nearly impossible to wrap ones minds around, it’s understandable that doubt may surface.
No actually, he or she has to prove that their model is better. It will have to explain what we see now and then will have to go beyond that and explain and make predictions that only it can support.