I was feeling pretty good about the big bang until it hit a wall (or cosmic speed bump?). Cecil’s recent (disappointing) answer on God combined with a conversation I had with a Christian friend of mine got me to thinking - both Christians and Big Bangers are stuck at an impasse, which is to say neither may have their proof, yet.
Christians are often chided by non-believers because of the intangible nature of the Trinity (I’ve never been able to wrap my head around 3 equals 1). It’s one of those things that creating a sticking point for on-the-fencers who might be interested in learning more.
Would it be fair to say there is a similar inescapable truth regarding the Big Bang, that it is spackled together with it’s own trinity of sorts?
I refer to inflation, dark matter, and dark energy.
If I’m not mistaken, those three things can’t be physically detected. Are they not desperately contrived equations to patch together a popular “belief” based on an assertion that is likely never to be proven?
Are there any current advancements regarding the 3 aforementioned theories that place the Big Bang above Christianity? How long do you feel these things will remain on the cusp of becoming tangible?
Now, I could have just asked about the three subset theories without comparisons to Christianity but I’m a sponge for both and well,…it’s more fun. (I am not a Christian or have any spiritual belief system, it is simply an exercise as a devil’s advocate for team halo.)
Joe Schmoe would like to get his learn-on without reading material geared for scientists. The Discovery Channel, BBC, Nova, and Cecil’s columns only take a person so far, please enlighten me.
I think you need to clarify what you’re talking about when you say “inflation” and “physically detected.” If you’re talking about the expansion of the universe, then yes, that’s been detected. We can see from Dopper shifts that some galaxies are moving away from us, and we can see that galaxies that are farther away are moving away faster. If by “inflation” you mean the period of rapid cosmic expansion shortly after the Big Bang, I’m not sure that that’s detectable in but it’s theorized. I think I would say that dark matter and dark energy have both been detected. We can see their effects. We don’t know what exactly they are, which is why they have a super cool name that makes regular matter look lame by comparison.
No, they’re not. The Big Bang Theory existed before either of these concepts, and the first piece of support for that theory is the cosmic microwave background. The Doppler shifting of light is also a significant piece of evidence.
Erm, no, not according to my understanding. Cosmic inflation (aka big bang) was determined by empirical measurement, via red shifting among other things. Dark Matter/Dark Energy was discovered via other tests.
So, at one point, there was the Big Bang model sans Dark matter/energy.
You are mistaken, I’m less sure of the latter two, but there were many empirical tests (red shifting being one) that led to the conclusion of the Big Bang. It’s also a consequence of the theory of relativity (IIRC).
I believe they already are tangible, but to compare them to Christianity seems grossly misguided. Would you have compared Copernican heliocentricism to Christianity?
Inflation, dark matter, and dark energy are all postulated in order to account for observed facts, which I would not say is true of the Trinity. We can see the Universe is expanding (by measuring red shifts of distant galaxies) and we can also detect the background radiation left over from the “Big Bang”. The expansion is not slowing down; it’s accelerating. Dark energy is postulated to account for this.
Dark matter is actually not so directly related to the Big Bang; rather, it’s used to account for the way we see galaxies behaving–to account for how galaxies rotate (and other observed facts), either they have a lot more mass than we can see or we don’t understand something fundamental about gravity.
Inflation is postulated to account for observations about the distribution of matter in the Universe.
I would say inflation, dark matter, and dark energy are not much like the Trinity or any other religious dogma, but they do (as a layman) remind me a bit of the epicycles and so forth of the Ptolemaic system. I don’t really get the impression most scientists find them fundamentally satisfactory, and I think cosmologists would love to have some more elegant and straightforward way of accounting for the things they see when they look out into the sky–the homogenous Universe, expanding at an accelarating rate, full of galaxies and clusters of galaxies behaving they way we see them behave.
Stuff gets proven in mathematics. In the physical sciences, theories are developed, and either get holes poked in them, or get backed up by an increasing amount of evidence over time.
The Big Bang theory of the universe’s origin hasn’t been proven. But it explains a ton of stuff, there’s a pile of evidence that supports it, and little if anything in the way of contradictory evidence.
God’s not like that. There’s no body of evidence that supports the notion that there is a divine being that created this universe and all that is in it. There isn’t evidence that contradicts that idea, either, but that doesn’t mean it’s got a 50-50 chance of being true: there’s no evidence that Klingons exist or don’t exist, either.
Look at it this way:
Question: was our Universe created in the Big Bang?
Evidence for: tons and tons of it.
Evidence against: negligible.
Question: does God exist?
Evidence for: 0.
Evidence against: 0.
Rather different, isn’t it?
This is the difference between science and religion.
Here are some “pictures” of dark matter. You can detect it by its effect on light coming from sources behind it, through gravitational lensing.
IIRC, it was hypothesized because the mass of visible galaxies was not large enough to account for the lensing observed.
Inflation made predictions about the lumpiness of the cosmic background radiation - predictions which were confirmed.
Dark energy is required to explain the observed expansion of the universe, but I’m not sure it has been observed as such, unlike the other two. I’m not sure it has made it to theory status yet, but I could be wrong.
Now could the OP explain why he thinks these things are “beliefs” aside from not knowing much about cosmology? There are plenty of books and popular articles on this, including a full book on gravitational lensing.
Is anyone else stifling an urge to nitpick about the Trinity being a mystical three-things-that-are-one-thing and inflation, dark matter, and dark energy being three separate things that are . . . separate? And that are part of a larger group of postulated things that are part of the universe (dark matter/energy) or events in the past (inflation), so that the 3 part is arbitrary.
Other parts include regular matter, electro/magnetic energy, gravity, the weak and strong nuclear forces, etc. Within the category of regular matter, there are atoms*, atomic particles, and quarks. Why leave them out? Or is the category really “things that physicists have been arguing about recently?” Because that’s a larger category, too. Isn’t the biggest thing there String Theory?
Bazinga!
I should have put this in the GQ section, because I was sincerely asking for insight - not to debate with anyone. (my gut feeling was it might become heated because it’s to do with God vs science)
Thanks for the references and answers. I need ammo next time Im drinking with my Christian buddy.
Let me ask the same thing I ask everyone that wants to talk about this sort of thing: What has your research shown you already? Y’know, that research you did on your own before arriving at your conclusions?
“Oh yeah? Well, if the Big Bang is true, why are there still monkeys? Huh?” “I don’t know. What has your research told you?”
Then yes, we’re not exactly sure what dark matter and energy are. Measurements indicate they’re out there. They do account for the difference in the amount of matter we can see and the amount that is evidently out there, and I would love to see that resolved. Can you clarify what you meant by inflation? It looks like people are taking that a few different ways.
From what I reading here, they’re not discoveries per se, but sort of like theoretical placeholders to fill in the “why” behind what we can observe. That’s what Im getting out of it anyway. (well i guess that accounts for all theories right? doh)
Well, modern science can explain and account for just about everything from today working backwards to the earliest moments after creation. Really close moments. It’s true there is a lot of matter and energy we can’t explain yet, but all things considered the amount that we know about everything in science is mindbogglingly greater than simply "someone told me God did it, someone before that told him, someone before that told him… going all the way back until we have no idea what language that idea even originated in.
We have a lot of information about Dark Matter, proof of its existence from several independent sources and a lot of constraints on its properties. I’m not really sure its correct to call it a “place holder”. There are things we don’t know about it, of course, but then there are lots of things we don’t know about dinosaurs either. But I don’t think anyone would call the theory that posits the existence of dinosaurs as a “place holder” to explain the existence of T-Rex fossils.
