Big Bang a Bust

[foodchain]

I'm glad iNow gave you the website. If you can't get the full article, e-mail me and I'll send you the PDF.

 

 

 

Untrue. Big Bang was proposed and supported by data long before dark matter and dark energy were found.

 

Dark matter was proposed because the motion of stars within galaxies can only be explained by masses of invisible matter lying outside the orbits of the stars (peripheries of the galaxies).

 

It was originally thought that the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion (dark energy) would refute the Big Bang! However, it has now een shown that this is not the case:

12. MA Buchner and DN Spergel. Scientific American, 280: 62-71, Jan. 1999. Discusses changes in inflationary theory to account for new observations.

4. J Glanz, Microwave hump reveals flat universe. Science 283: 21, Jan 1, 1999. Data on microwave background radiation indicates that universe is flat. Means there must be the cosmological constant. And inflation theory survives.

 

And no, galaxies are not orbiting anything. The motion of various galaxies is not what we would see if they were orbiting anything. As mooeypoo noted, discussion with you will go better if you read a bit of the science and the history. If you had, you would not have made the glaring error that dark matter and dark energy are required for BB.

 

What I don’t understand is where and how during the big bang did dark matter for instance come about. I suppose it would help if I or scientists involved with such actually knew what it was. then of course you have the dark energy, which is I guess according to science currently a few possible things which coincide with either the big bang or simply is a process of the universe is action. Either way my big hang up, no pun intended, is trying to understand when and how during the big bang did the dark stuff come about.

 

If I understand things the standard model describes and accurately predicts the behavior of three of the four known fundamental or elementary forces of the universe, weak, strong and so on minus gravity. In relativity you have singularities, which are to point towards error in the model itself, on top of this you have the difficulty of trying to combine the two into a coherent model or I guess a GUT, which is the rave behind string theory because you get a consistent quantum gravity, yet ST failed because it cant be made empirical, or currently is failing is that department overall as to standards. I would imagine all of this has to tie into the big bang along with the higgs boson, so that to me would imply that the dark stuff would also have to be in the mesh unless we are treating the universe and all phenomena as isolated systems, which I don’t think you can do really.

 

I mean I am not trying to use all of this to pass on some idea of a universal reference frame but you do have a motion that I guess has to stay unitary right? From the big bang up until now correct? So for whatever explains things it has to be able to explain them, A GUT would have to be able to predict not only the big bang, but the stuff that came afterwards right?

[lucaspa]

What I don’t understand is where and how during the big bang did dark matter for instance come about. I suppose it would help if I or scientists involved with such actually knew what it was. then of course you have the dark energy, which is I guess according to science currently a few possible things which coincide with either the big bang or simply is a process of the universe is action. Either way my big hang up, no pun intended, is trying to understand when and how during the big bang did the dark stuff come about.

 

Let's start off with remembering what "dark matter" is. It is a catch-all term for any matter that does not emit light on its own. Earth is "dark matter". So are all the non-sun bits of matter (planets, asteroids, comets, and any odd rock) in the solar system. The hydrogen between the stars is also "dark matter". The problem is that estimates of the common types of "dark matter" are still far less than the amount of matter needed to account for the motion of stars in galaxies we can observe (such as Andromeda). http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dark_matter.html

 

 

Matter condensed out of energy as the universe cooled. It originally condensed as hydrogen and helium. However, there are other particles out there -- such as neutrinos. One hypothesis for the unknown dark matter is neutrinos. Neutrinos may have mass. Not much, but there are a lot of neutrinos.

 

"Dark energy" is a term to give some kind of "name" to the observation that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. That is, the rate of expansion is getting faster and faster. Something is pushing spacetime to expand. We have no idea what that is, but needed a short label for it because saying "whatever it is that is pushing spacetime to expand" is inconvenient every time anyone wants to refer to it. "Dark energy" is just much shorter. Big Bang does not depend on their being dark energy. Big Bang was just fine when we thought that there was enough matter to have enough gravity to stop the expansion imparted by the Big Bang.

 

If I understand things the standard model describes and accurately predicts the behavior of three of the four known fundamental or elementary forces of the universe, weak, strong and so on minus gravity. In relativity you have singularities, which are to point towards error in the model itself,

 

Singularities are not an error of General Relativity. Rather, they are a prediction, or expected result, of General Relativity. Enough mass in a small enough spacetime can warp spacetime to such an extent that gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. So singularities -- black holes -- are actually a confirmation of General Relativity.

 

What we have are two great theories that describe the universe on diffent levels: General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. GR describes gravity. QM tends to describe everything else, and everything else occurs in quanta. However, gravity apparently is continuous and does not occur in discrete units (quanta). String or M Theory is an attempt to find a theory of quantum gravity and unite GR and QM.

1. http://superstringtheory.com/

http://superstringtheory.com/basics/basic3a.html

2. MJ Duff, The theory formerly known as strings. Scientific American, 278: 64-71, 1998 (Feb.).

3. AN Arkani-Hamed, S Dimopoulos, G Dvali, The universe's unseen dimensions. Scientific American 283: 62-69, Aug 2000.

 

String Theory posits many dimensions, all but the 4 we see around us are "rolled up" and indectable to our naked senses. However, those rolled up dimensions are supposed to be detected if we can probe smaller scales. The problem right now is that we have instruments that are at the large end of the scales at which the rolled up dimensions can be detected. But they aren't: 5. Kaku M, Testing string theory. Discover August 2005 http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-05/cover/

 

So far ST has been saved by positing that the dimensions are smaller than thought and still lie below the detection threshold. But, as instruments get more sensitive, that ad hoc hypothesis won't last forever. ST needs to come up with some observational consequences soon or be falsified.

 

I have also seen (mostly advertised by Smolin) that some physicists have done some math and there are thousands of variations within ST that could all be consistent with our observed universe. That doesn't sit well within science, where the idea is that only a single theory will describe reality. If you've got thousands of solutions, all of which are equally compatible with observation, then the feeling is that the theory is fatally flawed.

 

I would imagine all of this has to tie into the big bang along with the higgs boson, so that to me would imply that the dark stuff would also have to be in the mesh unless we are treating the universe and all phenomena as isolated systems, which I don’t think you can do really.

 

This doesn't have to tie in with Big Bang. Big Bang is independent of what dark matter is or whether there is dark energy and what it is.

 

I mean I am not trying to use all of this to pass on some idea of a universal reference frame but you do have a motion that I guess has to stay unitary right? From the big bang up until now correct? So for whatever explains things it has to be able to explain them, A GUT would have to be able to predict not only the big bang, but the stuff that came afterwards right?

 

Sorry, but "no". What caused the Big Bang is separate from a GUT. The GUT describes the interrelation of matter/energy/spacetime within the universe. It is not going to tell you how to get a universe to begin with -- and getting the universe to begin with is the cause of BB. Now, we may get lucky and the GUT might also tell us the cause of the BB. But it doesn't have to.

 

BB is simply the idea that the universe started off in an infinitely small, infinitely hot point of spacetime and has been expanding ever since. Included within the "hot Big Bang" theory is how the matter of the universe got to be so evenly distributed on large scales -- inflation. The cause of the expansion, the origin of that point of spacetime, the amount of "light" and "dark" matter and the composition of each, and GUT are not part of BB.

 

Foodchain, theories have limits and boundaries. NO theory describes everything. Even the so-called "Theory of Everything" really only unites GR and QM. That still doesn't explain abiogenesis, the origin of species, or any number of other things. IOW, the ToE will not explain everything. There are still going to be separate theories that explain different things within the universe.

[nstansbury]

What I don’t understand is where and how during the big bang did dark matter for instance come about

 

Though marginally off topic, I would like to put forward an explanation of where and how: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=33431

Edited June 10, 2008 by nstansbury

[Radical Edward]

Dark matter exist between the earlobes of people who believe in the Big Bang. Because without dark matter and dark energy you can't have your Big Bang. And that would be sacrilegious. Much easier believing in matter you can't detect (wimps and/or machos; give me a break) and energy coming out of nowhere making the galaxies go faster. All in the name of science??? I need to start snortin' some of that bb dust. It's a better drug then the ones I've been taking.

 

actually no. The earliest mentions of the idea of dark matter are related to galactic rotation curves. when one looks at the distribution of matter in a galaxy, the orbital valocity should drop off towards the edge of the galaxy, but it doesn't, the orbital velocity in the outer regions remains roughly constant. This means there must be some additional mass further out towards the edge of the galaxy that we can't see. Given that we can even see dust and so on from its effect on the spectra of the galaxies, it follows that some of this mass shouldn't interact electromagnetically, rendering it "dark" and so the idea of dark matter was born.

 

Is 13.7 b ly years the edge of the universe or not? Obviouly it it not.

 

nope, as lucaspa says, the universe has no (observable) edge. the 13.7 billion years is calculated principally from the CMB. we can quite clearly see that the CMB is a black body spectrum, and these are only formed by things in thermal equilibrium. Since the universe is quite obviously not in equilibrium, it follows that in the past it must have been. The only way for it to be in thermal equilibrium between matter and energy was at a point where the temperature of hydrogen was above the ionization point, and once this point was crossed, hydrogen became transparent and equilibrium was broken. By looking at the temperature of the CMB now (4.7K) and the opacity-transition temp of hydrogen, we can work out how old the universe is. It has nothing to do with how far we can see.

Edited June 12, 2008 by Radical Edward
multiple post merged

[D H]

Let's start off with remembering what "dark matter" is. It is a catch-all term for any matter that does not emit light on its own. Earth is "dark matter". So are all the non-sun bits of matter (planets, asteroids, comets, and any odd rock) in the solar system. The hydrogen between the stars is also "dark matter".

The Earth is not dark matter, nor is the hydrogen or dust between stars. It is not just emission that counts as to whether some kind of matter is "dark", it is also reflection. Dark matter does not interact electromagnetically (or interacts so weakly that we cannot sense it). The only kind of matter that we presently know of that qualifies as "dark" are neutrinos, and there aren't enough neutrinos to account for the gravitational behavior we see in galaxies.

[swansont]

The Earth is not dark matter, nor is the hydrogen or dust between stars. It is not just emission that counts as to whether some kind of matter is "dark", it is also reflection. Dark matter does not interact electromagnetically (or interacts so weakly that we cannot sense it). The only kind of matter that we presently know of that qualifies as "dark" are neutrinos, and there aren't enough neutrinos to account for the gravitational behavior we see in galaxies.

 

Anyone following along should note that this basically divides things into baryonic dark matter (difficult to detect electromagnetically) and nonbaryonic dark matter (doesn't interact at all electromagnetically). A cold planet or brown dwarf, etc. far away from any illumination might be an example of the former.

[D H]

Thanks for the elaboration, swansont.

 

Bernard Carr presents a somewhat dated but very good overview on baryonic versus nonbaryonic dark matter at this site: http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept01/Carr/Carr_contents.html. David Spergel presents arguments for nonbaryonic dark matter at this site: http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/MAP/Bahcall/final.html.

[lucaspa]

Thanks for the elaboration, swansont.

 

Which means, of course, that earth still falls within the purview of "dark matter". It's baryonic dark matter.

 

Going back to Radical Edward, the estimated amounts of baryonic dark matter were not enough, by orders of magnitude, to account for the observed galactic rotation curves. Thus the hypothesis of nonbaryonic dark matter to make up the difference.

 

But the main point is that hypothesis has nothing to do with Big Bang. It's not necessary for Big Bang to happen.

[New Science]

 

Say you are on the Nortn Pole with a telescope and look straight up and see a galaxy "A" that's 12 billion light years away and somebody on the South Pole looks up and sees a galaxy "B" 12 billion light years away. An entity on galaxy "A" could look past earth to galaxy "B" and say that it is 24 billion light years away. This disproves wmap's version of the cbr theory which states the universe is only 13.7 billion years old. If the cbr is wrong, then the big bang, which uses the cbr as a pillar is wrong. Give the devil his due.

 

You are right Jeff!

 

The BBT is LUDICROUS. Originally derived from the Slipher, Hubble and the Humason observations and wrongly interpreted as a DOPPLER redshift that had to be replaced because it implied a repeat of the geocentric theory that was REFUTED back in the 16th century.

 

So Lemaitraes expansion of space was accepted as the cause of the redshifts.

 

But that still did not convince the skeptics until the CMBR was discovered as a BB remnant radiation.

 

This proves nothing because this radiation is supposed to have a redshift of 1000.

This radiation is not a light radiation but a heat radiation similar to an ideal gas since it is expanding with space as a gas would. Besides, it is just a NOISE radiation that tells me that is is a gas.

 

I could give other reas9ons for discrediting the BBT but I think that should be enough.

 

NS

[iNow]

I could give other reas9ons for discrediting the BBT but I think that should be enough.

 

NS

 

Maybe you could start by at least giving units on your numbers. 1000 WHAT?

[swansont]

But that still did not convince the skeptics until the CMBR was discovered as a BB remnant radiation.

 

This proves nothing because this radiation is supposed to have a redshift of 1000.

This radiation is not a light radiation but a heat radiation similar to an ideal gas since it is expanding with space as a gas would. Besides, it is just a NOISE radiation that tells me that is is a gas.

 

I could give other reas9ons for discrediting the BBT but I think that should be enough.

 

NS

 

The CMBR is, by its very name, microwave, i.e. it is electromagnetic. It's light, not a gas. There is no such thing as "heat radiation," as such. There is thermal radiation, which is what the CMBR is, at a temperature of ~2.7 K, which is what you get from expansion, which is what you get from the big bang, etc. etc.

[Klaynos]

CMBR measurements are quite close to the predictions weren't they?

 

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