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Post by Cine_Man on Nov 18, 2002 21:35:44 GMT -5
Cover story of Astronomy magazine December 2002 asks, "Do You Believe in the BIG BANG?"
Well, slap me silly and call me sweetheart, but... is it a question of "belief"? I thought this was supposed to be a little ol' thing called "science" which presumes anything BUT faith.
Hmmm... the article opens by stating that about 33% of American adults accept the "Big Bang" theory of cosmic origin. compared to 38% prior to the '90's.. so that's a decline. For comparison, 53% accept evolution. Try this out: 70 % accept Copernican 'heliocentric' solar system... ie the earth goes around the sun...
I haven't read the article in its entirety yet, but that won't stop me from making my opinions known... ;D
(Just like F1-Live)
Personally, I have a lot of trouble with the Big Bang...
I think its a fluke of mathematics, and so might we be.
I'll elaborate more, but first, with the stats, there must be other "non-believers" here... but please, no 6,000 year-old universes.
Cine_...
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Post by daSilva on Nov 18, 2002 23:31:36 GMT -5
You mean the earth is not flat?  |
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Post by Cine_Man on Nov 19, 2002 0:07:19 GMT -5
Well, in non-Euclidian geometry it is, but this is my point... you can jig the math to prove any kooky view of reality.
There are too many problems with the Big Bang to be taken seriously as anything but an elitist aristocratic view embraced and protected by the few. It is nothing short of "creationism" buried deep in theoretical numeric analysis.
Cine_...
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Post by daSilva on Nov 19, 2002 0:31:08 GMT -5
Yes but how long have we been using Euclidian math? The math proposes a theory, when we have the hard facts that provides the proof. Theoretical math is just that, theoretical until it is proven. I think the big bang is probably a reality. What we really have no idea about is the age of the universe. Furthermore, our universe was born out of elements, where did those elements come from? Are we the only universe? There are still enough unanswered questions, even by theoretical math, to support any arguments for God. You may believe it to be elitist, but I think the general public ARE stupid, in fact your stats prove it, 30% don't even believe we're a satellite of the Sun.  |
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Post by Topcontender on Nov 19, 2002 7:57:15 GMT -5
simple fusion created the stars.
hydrogen coming together and creating a gravity feild that set it a blaze. As for age i was told about 14 billion years. interesting part is that it seems that the speed of light slows.
the big flaw is the expansion principle. it is now belived that some kind of event just expanded the universe pushing the stars away. this thoery has some strange ideas in it.
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Post by raptor22 on Nov 19, 2002 18:35:29 GMT -5
Ahh the Big bang Theory.......... Well it's justthat is'n it,... a theory. ALong with the steady state theory, the constantly expanding universe, The expanding collapsing universe.
The only way we'll ever prove which theory is correct is if we fing out how much mater actually exits. Right now Astronomers believe that as much as 70 % of the universe is dark matter. Even the amount of anti-matter is'n t known.
It all all boils down to what you choose to believe based on the available evidence.
We know the universe is expanding.
We know that the rate of expansion is slowing by monitoring the relative velocities of our neighbouring galaxies against our own.
We know that current estimates on the mass of the universe cannot allow indefinate expansion, hence the assumption that expansion will cease and the universe will collapse in on itself.
I guess that though all the analysis and calculation it all finally boils down to belief. Funny that science tries to rationalise everything into absolutes and tonullify belief and in the end of it all Belief is all we're left with. I guess that qualifies science as a religion........
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Post by Pabss on Nov 19, 2002 18:48:33 GMT -5
Cine,
Reminds me of a poster we have in my lab:
"When experiment contradicts theory, throw away theory and come up with a new one"
The Big Bang is still a theory but much theory supports it. Same thing happens with Black holes and other singularities. As an example, even Einstein had a hard time accepting the concept of a white dwarf and a black hole because to him, Nature simply could not let such bodies exist. But they do, and there is a lot of data that backs it up.
Whether the Big Bang is the correct theory or not remains to be seen, but until then, it stands as the leading theory for the origin of the Universe.
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Post by RacerX on Nov 29, 2002 12:45:06 GMT -5
I'm not sure if I believe in the big bang theory. I mean, only once has a prior girlfriend used the words big bang, and that was when she was describing what she heard after I'd slipped in the shower....not while I was performing between the sheets...LOL!  OK, OK, bad joke. ;D I was actually reading last Friday, where scientists have discovered TWO black holes in ONE solar system. Previously thought impossible prior to this discovery...two black holes co-exhisting. Funny how the SCIENTISTS described what they thought would happen when the two sucked each other up in another million years: descriptions such as "...the resulting explosion could rip the very fabric of space!" I laughed my arse off at just how unknowledgable we still are, as a race. It reminded me of an article I once read in the New Orleans Gazzette from around 1812, in regards to what is thought to be the greatest earth quake to ever hit this country. The article actually printed that they weren't sure what had happend to cause the ground to shake so hard for so long (three seperate, massive quakes-one lasted for 11 days straight) but they seem to think that the comet that was seen a week ago, had clipped the mountains in California, and that it's possible that that region of the country may no longer exhist. The newspaper said that! It went on to state that they were awaiting word from the learned, to confirm this thought! LOL, a comet clipped mountains?? We've come along way, but it's funny how back then they actually thought a comet could clip the earth, and here we are 200 years later & scientists are claiming two black holes could "...tear the very fabric of space!" That's some funky stuff, no? LOL, RacerX |
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Post by Srrh on Nov 29, 2002 14:14:40 GMT -5
OK, you got one here... I am "big-bang, big crush" person. Why? Because I am too ignorant to make my own theory, so I go with Hawkins, Reeves and Gould.  Rx, read that "twin black hole" story on the bbc too. I had the EXACT same reaction as you...lol....great minds think alike... S.... |
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Post by RacerX on Nov 29, 2002 14:53:59 GMT -5
Srrh,
Too funny. Hey if you're interested, the earthquake I was referring to is called the New Madrid Earthquake.
They have very little information (documentation), because of the time & location. It happened between December of 1811 and continued until March of 1812, and the epicenter is calculated to be in New Madrid, a small (very small) settlement on the Mississippi river, where very few people knew how to read or write!
A journal was recovered, and that's where alot of info came from. The lady whom kept the journal wrote that at one time between the two big quakes, the ground shook for 11 days straight. people fled the region, and others became sick, as if they were at sea! LOL, this stuff intrigues the hell out of me.
At the same time, it's said the Indians went on a killing spree, for fear their Gods were angry at them, for allowing the whites to settle farther & farther west!
The quakes were felt from as far north as Canada, and south as Florida, and east as South Carolina!!!
Unbelievable concept: that the ground could shake so hard, for so long & be felt that far away! Crazy stuff.
The newspaper articles are even funnier! It's the only "documented" time that the Mississippi river flowed BACKWARDS! That's freaking insane! They weren't sure how far to the west the earthquake was felt (lack of established towns & cities and all) but several travelers from California said Rivers at the base of the Rockies, were jumping from their banks...(can't be confirmed), but wild, nonetheless.
OK, enough of my babbling.
Cool story about the two black holes as well, no? I dig stuff like that! It seems some of human nature is to ALWAYS expect the worst from the unknown. Like when they detonated the first bomb. I read where some of the scientest feared they'd "...light the atmosphere aflame!" Crazy stuff.
Later,
RacerX
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Post by daSilva on Nov 29, 2002 16:13:36 GMT -5
Rx, I remember reading about that quake, and I heard a prediction that they are due for another of similar magnitude. It was when you said the Mississippi flowed backwards that I remembered it.  |
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Post by Cine_Man on Nov 29, 2002 17:48:56 GMT -5
The old planet had a belly-buster. Imagine what it was like when, say, the core flipped, or the magnetic field reversed.... talk about a bad hair day. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out why I wasted my $5 Cdn on that lousy magazine... which I read semi-religiously for years, until I travelled with the editorial group to see a total solar eclipse ('98), and consequently shifted over to reading Sky & Telescope, which I have lost interest in, because it was exactly the same "toe the line" orthodoxy. The article maintains that even if you don't believe, you WILL after reading it. Sorry... no can do. Article of faith #1. There was a Big Bang because the sky is dark at night. LOL Okay, so this apparently resolves a paradox -- ie, in an infinite universe with an infinite number of stars, the sky would appear to be uniformly bright in all directions... EXCUSE ME? A. By their own weird model, the universe is not infinite, since it has an "edge" in the time continuum, and B. the number of stars is not infinite, since they would fill that universe, and we know that the cosmos is not uniform, and is, instead "clumpy". So the sky is not uniformly bright because of the conceptual math at least. How about, 'because the universe is just really, really big, and nearly empty, and light peters out and gets fainter and fainter the farther away you are from the source? Or I am flying in the face of scientific logic? 2. The sky is dark because "space is expanding". When Edwin Hubble looked out and came up with the idea that some of the hazy objects in the sky were "islands of other stars", what we now know to be galaxies, and not vast bubbles of dust, or gas, he of course wanted to know how far away they were. Its hard to measure these unimaginably vast distances. So the idea of a "standard candle" came into play, and it turns out that a specific kind of star, a 'Cepheid variable' has an identifiable brightness. So he looked for Cepheids in other galaxies, and came up with them, and lo, they turned out to be a long, long, long way away. Two things became apparent: The Cepheids suggested that because they are all the same everywhere, the differences in observed spectra was due to "red shift"... similar to the change in pitch of sound as a source comes toward you, then away. The further away the Cepheid, the bigger the red shift. That means that things are going faster, and faster, the further away from "us" that you get. The only conclusion available, apparently, is that "space" itself is expanding in some marvelous mathematical way... not just the objects in it, but the very fabric of space-time, carrying the contents like the dots on the surface of a balloon being blown up, to borrow the popular analogy. Which I find incredibly patronizing. Because space is "expanding"... it must have some point that it started from, is the big bang logic. Does this have to be the truth? What is light? Better understand that, if you're predicating the origins of the universe on it. So its a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, a self-propagating wave with particle-like behaviour. It propagates at different rates through different materials... otherwise "lenses" wouldn't work. So the only reason why light arriving from distant stars is "red-shifted" is because the universe is expanding? Red Light! I'll continue again later... had a nice nap? You'll be in a coma after the next one... Cine_... |
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Post by PabsinSeattle on Nov 29, 2002 21:59:46 GMT -5
That's really odd....I'm reading "Black Holes and Time Warps" by Kip Thorne and as far as I understand, physicists have had the model for two black holes coexisting and collapsing for quite some time now. They were only waiting for experimental verification that they produce gravitational waves in the way that theory predicts.
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Post by Cine_Man on Nov 30, 2002 0:09:22 GMT -5
In my last installment, I stated my concerns about the "dark sky", and the "expanding universe"... Both so-called pillars of the Big Bang seem to go wanting...since the universe is neither uniform, nor completely infinite, and the idea of "Red Shift" is actually an extrapolation of an assumption based on a supposition... hardly enough to convince a judge.
The third pillar is the Cosmic Background Radiation. In the late 50's, a couple of Bell engineers found that there is a uniform microwave noise that permeates the cosmos, at about 3 or so degrees Kelvin. Now the first conclusion that you have to jump to is that it is the "fossilized remains" of that gigantic initial explosion.
.... Or it could be the Boltzmann noise of current flow in a resistive medium.... Take your pick. By the way, it wasn't until the late 70's and the flybys of the Jupiter-Voyager probes that space scientists realized that gigantic electrical current flows could cross space. Jupiter generates a whopper that probably keeps Io cooking. And the sun, and every star is a seething furnace of nuclear fusion plus magnetohydrodynamic energy production. Is the universe alive with ionized particles... in fact, most of the matter in space is highly charged... a state of matter called "plasma".
In the mid 90's, a research satellite named COBE, or COsmic Background Explorer, mapped the microwave distribution of the sky, and found, almost to the horror of the researchers, that the BG Radiation was uniform almost to perfection... virtually a mathematically seamless Gaussian black-box radiating body -- which, in practical thermodynamics, cannot exist. In fact, it described a totally featureless sky. Which didn't coincide with the clumpy, filamentary structure of the matter we do observe. Luckily, the data analysts were able to comb through the data, and found micro-miniscule variances that at least temporarily skirted the issue. But you don't hear about COBE much anymore.
Next, the "light elements".
Cine_...
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Post by PabsstillinSeattle on Nov 30, 2002 22:32:10 GMT -5
Red-shift is whaaaaat???
We can actually see the red-shift and we know exactly why and how it is caused. How is it an extrapolation of an assumption??
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