dalli:

Time can not start or stop, speed up or slow down, because time does not exist. Time is our perception of change. Nothing more, nothing less. We use that perception to calculate. The universe, that is to say everything that exists, is infinite and alway's has been and alway's will be. It has alway's existed.

I disagree.  To say that time is only our perception is to imply that if we did not exist, neither would time.  Yet time must have existed long before we were around to have any perception of it; otherwise, we wouldn't be here. 

And if the universe has always existed, why are we here now?  As one author pointed out, in an infinite universe, anything that could happen, would have happened an infinite time ago.

You say that the big band is a theory for people who have trouble with the infinite, but maybe you just have trouble with the theory.  Your theory of "Everything has always been here and nothing ever changes" is hardly the most compelling that I've heard...

 

 

Ok guy's, I will stop throwing the tools about. First, thanks for a great response, and the maths refresh lesson, although that was'nt quite necessary.

Lets do the circle thing first.  Pi is an irrational number, it is also a transcendental number. While we have calculated it to over a trillion decimal places, and this is more than accurate enough for most applications, it is not exact. If one of you can come up with the final figure, I and a few more people would like to know.  Most people would consider Pi to be infinite, myself being one.

I don't mean to split hair's with anyone over this, all I search for is Truth. There is a lot more to this universe and life than meets the eye!

Megawatt it is your right to disagree, all I ask is for people to think for themselves instead of being influenced by so called experts. If you read my quote again, carefully. I did not propose a theory of "Everything has always been here and nothing ever changes"  Change is constantly happening all over the universe, but nothing ever disappears. What exists alway's has and alway's will exist.

Megawatt:

To say that time is only our perception is to imply that if we did not exist, neither would time. 

I did not imply anything. I stated ''time does not exist'' and never has. If we exist or did not exist, time still does not exist. As we do exist, we can percieve change that must have happened before we existed, and also change that might happen in the future. As I said before, it is this perception of change which is what we call time. It allows us to plan, calculate and organize our lives. As for the big bang theory. Yes Megawatt you are right. I do have trouble with that theory. It just does not make any sense at all. And why are we here now? That my friend is a very good question.

So Albert Einstein is a so-called expert, and not a true expert?  And people are foolish for being influenced by the ideas of one such as him?  You stated that time does not exist.  If I start to think of it your way, am I not being influenced by you?  How is that any better or different? And surely your viewpoint was influenced by some other so-called expert.  If you have ever read any papers on physics or cosmology it is inevitable that they will have some bearing on how you think.  Everything is influenced by something that came before it, in some way.  I wonder if anyone can truly think for himself.  Our task is to decide which theory makes the most sense to us based on what we perceive. 

I am no expert and have a lot to learn, but it still irks me a bit when people on websites such as this are so easily dimissive of theories developed by some of the greatest scientific minds these last few centuries have seen.   

 

Hello All

 

Hello Dalli

In my opinion you are on track

====================================================

Chipp said

 

A scientific theory is not just someone's crackpot idea: it's one or more hypotheses that are testable, that have been tested, and that have been demonstrated to work by passing those tests. The Big Bang Theory is our current standard model because it has been tested and verified and/or modified for many decades, surviving scientific rigor to reach its current state. Is it perfect? Hardly. Is it "good"? In the scientific sense, Yes. It is the best we currently have.   The BBT is only a theory and not a fact. The evidence supporting the theory is more ad hoc than evidence. As for being the best thats an opinion.

Where do you get that idea? There is empirical evidence to support it, going all the way back more than 50 years. The evidence is that not only is it expanding, but that also its expansion is accelerating.

If it is expanding show some form of evidence. Its very strange that all the images from so called BB observation are expanding from earth. According to the BBT it occured everywhere at the same time. As for accelerating, show some observation that indicate that.

You could hardly call Einstein a sheep-follower, yet he explains time-dilation effects in relativity (at relativistic velocities). These not only exist, they have also been measured.   Einstein explained time-dilation and relativity and was read out of context. Absolute time and relative time are two diferent items.

 

 

Megawatt:

So Albert Einstein is a so-called expert, and not a true expert?  And people are foolish for being influenced by the ideas of one such as him? 

 That is not what I said Megawatt. I never mentioned Albert Einstein or foolish people. It is of my mind that the idea to debate these fascinating subjects, is to seek the Truth and have a better understanding of this Life and the Universe of which we are a part. Your mind, my mind, Einstein's mind, are all a part of the great universal mind. And are equally capable of great understanding.

Megawatt:

If I start to think of it your way, am I not being influenced by you?  How is that any better or different?

 

I hope not, as I hope I have not been influenced by others. If someone has shown me something that I can see to be True, then I am grateful. If my way of thinking is flawed in some way, and someone can correct me. Then again I am grateful. I, and I am sure many others on this site do not dismiss theories easily, so please do not get irked. It can only be good to share our understanding and different perspective's in this incredible and facinating life. My view on Time is shared by some but not all. I accept this. The infinite Universe is the one and only Big Clock.

Harry Costas:

The BBT is only a theory and not a fact. The evidence supporting the theory is more ad hoc than evidence. As for being the best thats an opinion.

We've argued this before. The opinion is shared by the majority of working cosmologists today.

... If it is expanding show some form of evidence. Its very strange that all the images from so called BB observation are expanding from earth. According to the BBT it occured everywhere at the same time. As for accelerating, show some observation that indicate that.

The evidence is explained at links from this Wikipedia page, among other places.

Hello Chip

As for:

 High-z Supernova Search Team

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-z_Supernova_Search_Team

That is not evidence, it is an opinion on red shift, which is under dispute.

Chipp in your own words what do you think is proof for the Big Bang and please do not tell me that most cosmologists think along this line as proof.

I can show you hundreds of cosmologists who do not agree with the Big Bang.

If it was not for the churches, schools and politics the Big Bang would not have become the standard model. Funds were directed to research supporting the Big Bang and if scientists did not support the big bnag than funds and the use of telescopes was limited or restricted. 

 All I want is for people to be reading more and not to be lead like sheep.

 

 

 

 

Harry Costas:

Hello Chip

As for:

 High-z Supernova Search Team

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-z_Supernova_Search_Team

That is not evidence, it is an opinion on red shift, which is under dispute.

Well, excuse me. Many, many researchers have actually observed and measured red-shift. That's evidence. You observe it, measure it, and then you decide how it fits into an overall scheme. That becomes a hypothesis. You then figure out how to test the hypothesis or otherwise potentially falsify it. If you can test it, and it passes the test, then it becomes theory or part of a theory.

The Big Bang has other testable hypotheses. The original statement of the theory predicted the existence of red-shifted energy that would pervade the Universe even today. A couple of decades later, that energy was detected and became known as the Cosmic Microwave Background. Subsequently, two different spacecraft were designed to measure this energy with better precision and to discover how uniformly it pervades the observable universe. The first of these, COBE, did so to a very much greater precision than was initially hoped. The second, WMAP, confirmed it to a truly astonishing degree. No more convincing explanation of this phenomenon has been advanced, tested, and accepted than that it is the relic glow -- red-shifted -- from the Big Bang.

Both must be considered evidence even by the most die-hard Big Bang opponent. One may not agree that they're evidence in support of the Big Bang Theory itself, but how could one deny that they are evidence?

Those who seek an alternative to the BBT are perfectly free to use that evidence in support of their own hypotheses.

Chipp in your own words what do you think is proof for the Big Bang and please do not tell me that most cosmologists think along this line as proof.

I don't know you, personally, Harry so I can't speak for you ... but I am not bright enough to come up with a proof for the Big Bang that has not already been put forward by professional cosmologists. So, I can't comply ... sorry.

I can show you hundreds of cosmologists who do not agree with the Big Bang.

I don't know the ratio of proponents to opponents, but would be willing to bet that it's very large. But, as we said in earlier posts and other threads, this is not a popularity contest.

The way science works is that if a theory is supported by the preponderance of the evidence (go look it up, no need to take my word for it!) then it will be accepted as a working model (if not a law). It likely also will be supported by the preponderance of workers in the field. That is just the way it works, Harry. You or I may wish or think otherwise, but ... well, sorry! No amount of thought experiment or arm-chair quarterbacking will change it. I think many working scientists -- especially in the field of cosmology -- would also consider themselves to be philosophers. However, if they're working scientists then their work mode prevents them from allowing philosophy to trump the scientific method.

If it was not for the churches, schools and politics the Big Bang would not have become the standard model.

Welcome to reality ... ugh!

Funds were directed to research supporting the Big Bang and if scientists did not support the big bnag than funds and the use of telescopes was limited or restricted. 

There is certainly an element of that at work. However, do not think for an instant that if COBE or WMAP, to take two examples with which I'm familiar, had discovered contradictory evidence that it would have been quashed. The denying of telescope time has more to it, however, than some committee politically deciding against granting it to someone they dislike or who they believe is trying to discredit a pet theory. While some of that undoubtedly happens (scientists being human, after all), a larger share of it is based on simple economics: research observatories are very expensive propositions. Shareholders will naturally tend to support research proposals that are more likely to provide near-term value. There are many ways to establish a value for a research proposal. But, generally, it's easier to convince someone your proposal has merit if you can show it is very likely to provide an immediate result -- even if it is not deemed to be Earth-shattering.

Also, for the current discussion the view that researchers are currently being denied such access is a bit skewed: Many independent lines of research were carried out from the 1950s through the 1970s with the specific aim of testing and verifying -- or refuting -- tenets of Big Bang Theory. They failed so routinely that it is only natural that by the 1980s committees grew tired of allocating significant time to repeated attempts.

So, if you're a researcher today trying to test and falsify a tenet of the BBT, then your proposal must address a significant pillar of the theory and your test must be a very interesting and reasonable method of doing so.

For example, if you could convince an allocation committee that a planned high-Z supernova project would either confirm or deny all or a portion of current cosmological redshift thinking (that it's due to expansion, or even that it would provide a higher-precision measure of such expansion), you'd likely get it funded. The links provided in the Wikipedia article indicate that multiple researchers proposed exactly that, got funded, and their research demonstrated the acceleration rather than refuted it.

 All I want is for people to be reading more and not to be lead like sheep.

That's perfectly fine. No problem.

But to do it one should not say that observational evidence is actually opinion, especially when it's been independently validated time and again. That's flawed logic, anyway, since evidence in support of an alternative position could simply be deemed, itself, to be opinion ... and then where are we?

We can agree to disagree on conclusions, but we should not disagree on the rules of evidence.

Hello All

Sometimes people are lead into theories without questioning the evidence. Chip it does not worry me if you think along the lines of the Big Bang. What worries me is that many go along with the so called evidence.

You said

The Big Bang has other testable hypotheses. The original statement of the theory predicted the existence of red-shifted energy that would pervade the Universe even today. A couple of decades later, that energy was detected and became known as the Cosmic Microwave Background. Subsequently, two different spacecraft were designed to measure this energy with better precision and to discover how uniformly it pervades the observable universe. The first of these, COBE, did so to a very much greater precision than was initially hoped. The second, WMAP, confirmed it to a truly astonishing degree. No more convincing explanation of this phenomenon has been advanced, tested, and accepted than that it is the relic glow -- red-shifted -- from the Big Bang.

Both readshift and CMB have been disproved and at this moment cannot be taken as evidence. I do not understand till this day, how so many people were taken in by the theory and made it look as though it was fact. =================================================================== For Those who do not know the model of the big bang, here is some links Big Bang Big Bang

Nucleosynthesis

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/BBNS.html

A Glimpse of the Young Milky Way

http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p.../pr-19-02.html

Evidence for the Big Bang

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astr....html#firstlaw

Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/co...y_faq.html#XIN

History of the Big Bang Theory

http://astrophysics.suite101.com/art...ig_bang_theory

Chapter 10 Origin of the Elements

http://www.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/tea...pdf/Chap10.pdf

Mysterious iron factory in the Early Universe

http://www.mpe-garching.mpg.de/Highl...r20020708.html

Phase Transitions in the Early Universe

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/cs_phase.html

THE BIG BANG:

 http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm

Foundations of Big Bang Cosmology

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bb2.html

Reading many posts I find people do not understand the theory behind the Big Bang. ===================================================================== Maybe for starters read:

http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2007_year_end.htm

Quote

In the past year, evidence again the conventional Big Bang model built up on several fronts. The evidence that the cosmic background radiation (CBR) is not randomly spread across the sky, as the inflationary Big Bang predicts, has become overwhelming. The contradictions between Big Bang predictions of the abundance of light elements and observations continue to get worse. In addition, new observations have contradicted the conventional concept of a universe that is homogenous and isotropic, demonstrating alignments of galaxies on extremely large scales. Unfortunately, the accumulation of evidence hasn’t yet sparked a general debate in cosmology over whether the Big Bang model is a valid one. But there are a few small signs that there is beginning to be a greater openness to questioning at least some aspects of the “convergence cosmology” and its ever-growing grab-bag of hypothetical constructs, like inflation, dark matter, dark energy, and quintessence. As conventional cosmologists leap ever higher into the realms of fantasy, even the popular press is starting, ever-so tentatively, to wonder if the Emperor really is naked. =====================================================================

I had to edit the post, I did not notice that it grouped up.

Harry Costas:

Hello All Sometimes people are lead into theories without questioning the evidence. Chip it does not worry me if you think along the lines of the Big Bang. What worries me is that many go along with the so called evidence. You said The Big Bang has other testable hypotheses.

Harry: The evidence is not so-called. The BBT certainly does have other testable hypotheses.

... Both readshift and CMB have been disproved and at this moment cannot be taken as evidence.

What? That is completely untrue.

I do not understand till this day, how so many people were taken in by the theory and made it look as though it was fact.

Well, one could say in the same way that he does not understand how someone who has repeatedly been allowed to test the evidence, and failed to falsify it, fails in turn to recognize the validity of its tenets. I'm not saying that such a person must adopt the theory on faith and abandon testing it. But if you test something and fail to falsify it, you need to come up with another way to test it, or another thing entirely to test (and thereby falsify it). That goes on all the time in cosmology, especially as new data comes to light. Nothing wrong with that at all.

What I find objectionable is broad statements without support of evidence. It's okay to hypothesize and then go look for evidence. But that doesn't mean you can simply say that a hypothesis disproves a theory. There's data to be gathered, independent testing to be done, and verification of results prior to proclaiming the theory is "dead."

The evidence that the cosmic background radiation (CBR) is not randomly spread across the sky, as the inflationary Big Bang predicts, has become overwhelming.

Again, that is completely untrue. The most complete evidence we have is the WMAP survey. It confirms the BBTpredicted distribution of the CMB to an astonishing degree. The key word in the prediction is that the distribution should be roughly uniform on cosmological scales. This does not mean it must be perfectly uniform at any scale. What the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe measured was the degree to which the CMB is not uniform. The surprise in the data was the astonishing degree to which it truly is uniform at cosmological scales.

... In addition, new observations have contradicted the conventional concept of a universe that is homogenous and isotropic, demonstrating alignments of galaxies on extremely large scales.

Once again your statement ignores the scale. When you look at clusters, superclusters, and the alignments of these arrangements, there is no general alignment of the filamentary structure. That is, there is no preferred direction of smaller alignments. This is the same thing as saying that the alignments (and therefore the cosmological distribution of matter) is essentially random.

Unfortunately, the accumulation of evidence hasn’t yet sparked a general debate in cosmology over whether the Big Bang model is a valid one.

Au contrare. Such debate is ongoing. Research continues. There is currently no serious challenge to the theory overall, but there are numerous lines of research seeking to refine or even falsify some of the supporting tenets. That's how it works. It is not by proclamation, or primacy of place, but by continued testing --and withstanding such tests-- that a theory survives.

...

As conventional cosmologists leap ever higher into the realms of fantasy ...

You're entitled to your opinion, as always.

Hello Chip

You said

 

 

... Both readshift and CMB have been disproved and at this moment cannot be taken as evidence.

 

What? That is completely untrue.

This is the part that you need to research, does not matter what I say. Close your mind to this and you float like a dead log down main stream.

 

As a start read :

http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/041018fingers-god.htm

Quote:

The big bang theory predetermines the size, the shape and the age of the universe (according to the latest satellite data, it is an expanding sphere 78 billion light years in diameter and 13.7 billion years old.) Because astronomers believe that redshift is a measure of distance, most of the distances of millions of galaxies, quasars, and gamma ray bursts have been distorted. A different interpretation of redshift will imply a much different universe. Halton Arp's research shows that redshift cannot be a measure of distance. The charts above compare a galaxy cluster in Arp's observed universe to the big bang's theoretical universe.

A New Non-Doppler Redshift

http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/hubble/index.html

Quote:

It is known that many astronomical observations cannot be explained by means of the ordinary Doppler shift interpretation. The mere examination of a recent catalog of objects having very large redshifts shows that among 109 quasi-stellar objects for which both absorption and emission lines could be measured, the value of the absorption redshift of a given object is always different from the one measured in emission for the same object. It is clear that such results cannot be explained as being due solely to a Doppler redshift.

A new mechanism must be looked for, in order to explain those inconsistent redshifts and many other observations related to the “redshift controversy”.

International Workshop on

Redshift Mechanisms in

Astrophysics and Cosmology

(Clonakilty-Cork, Ireland, May 15-18, 2006)

http://redshift.vif.com/NewsWire/BrassTacksRelease1.pdf

Quote:

An extraordinary event took place recently in Ireland. A group of

independent and professional researchers met to discuss an old

heterodox topic with important consequences in astrophysics and,

especially, in cosmology: possible causes of the redshifts in the

spectra of astrophysical objects other than a Doppler or expanding

universe mechanism. Many decades of work have been devoted to

this kind of research, most of it forgotten by the greater part of the

astrophysical community nowadays. But the question is still open, the

debate is still alive, as was shown by the participants in the present

Workshop. There is no smoke without fire, and the existence of many

facts and theories on alternative origins of redshifts may point to some

new pathways in physics that deserve further attention. This was

precisely the aim of this meeting.

Further Evidence that the Redshifts of AGN Galaxies May

Contain Intrinsic Components

http://www.citebase.org/fulltext?for...rg%3A0704.1631

Quote:

Because the belief that the redshift of quasars is cosmological has become so entrenched, and the consequences now of it being wrong are so enormous, astronomers are very reluctant to consider other possibilities. However, there is increasing evidence that some galaxies may form around compact, seed objects ejected with a large intrinsic redshift component from the nuclei of mature active galaxies. In this model, as the intrinsic component decreases

the compact objects evolve into mature active galaxies in a time frame of a few times 108 yrs (Arp 1997, 1998, 1999; Bell 2002a,b,c,d, 2004, 2006; Bell and McDiarmid 2006, 2007; Burbidge 1999; Galianni et al. 2005; Lop´ez-Corredoira and Guti´errez 2006). In the DIR model radio galaxies represent the end of the AGN evolutionary sequence, where most of the intrinsic redshift component has disappeared and their luminosity has peaked. Only then can these objects be detected to large cosmological distances and can it be seen that they are good standard candles. There is every reason to assume that at each stage of their evolution (at each zi value) they will also be good standard candles.

On the Quantization of the Red-Shifted Light from Distant Galaxies

http://www.ldolphin.org/tifftshift.html

Quote:

As the turn of the next century approaches, we again find an established science in trouble trying to explain the behavior of the natural world. This time the problem is in cosmology, the study of the structure and "evolution" of the universe as revealed by its largest physical systems, galaxies and clusters of galaxies. A growing body of observations suggests that one of the most fundamental assumptions of cosmology is wrong.

Most galaxies' spectral lines are shifted toward the red, or longer wavelength, end of the spectrum.

Edwin Hubble showed in 1929 that the more distant the galaxy, the larger this "redshift." Astronomers traditionally have interpreted the redshift as a Doppler shift induced as the galaxies recede from us within an expanding universe. For that reason, the redshift is usually expressed as a velocity in kilometers per second.

One of the first indications that there might be a problem with this picture came in the early 1970's. William G. Tifft, University of Arizona noticed a curious and unexpected relationship between a galaxy's morphological classification (Hubble type), brightness, and red shift. The galaxies in the Coma Cluster, for example, seemed to arrange themselves along sloping bands in a redshift v.s. brightness diagram. Moreover, the spirals tended to have higher redshifts than elliptical galaxies. Clusters other than Coma exhibited the same strange relationships.

By far the most intriguing result of these initial studies was the suggestion that galaxy redshifts take on preferred or "quantized" values. First revealed in the Coma Cluster redshift vs. brightness diagram, it appeared as if redshifts were in some way analogous to the energy levels within atoms.

These discoveries led to the suspicion that a galaxy's redshift may not be related to its Hubble velocity alone. If the redshift is entirely or partially non-Doppler (that is, not due to cosmic expansion), then it could be an intrinsic property of a galaxy, as basic a characteristic as its mass or luminosity. If so, might it truly be quantized?

Research Proposal 'Cosmological Redshifts'

http://www.plasmaphysics.org.uk/research/#A11

Quote:

The Hubble law for the large scale redshift of galaxies is usually taken as evidence (if not proof) for the picture of an expanding universe in general and the Big Bang theory in particular. However, recessional velocities have by no means been actually measured and the assumption of the Doppler effect being responsible for the shift is only reached due to the absence of other known physical explanations. In fact, the Hubble law appears to be based on rather limited data sets, and in particular has not been examined for its strict validity throughout the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum (in fact, it is known that the redshift factor for certain spectral lines from the same object differs by up to 10% even within the visible part of the spectrum itself).

Non-Doppler Redshift Mechanisms with Possible Cosmological

http://flux.aps.org/meetings/YR03/AP...0.html#SR9.015

So! What do we have?????

A conflict in Redshift, meaning let the dust fall and see what the scientists come up with.

To be accurate here, what you said was that "both redshift and CMB have been disproved" ... and they have not, nor do any of the articles you posted make that same claim. To disprove is completely diffrent than to question. I certainly agree that you can put a different interpretation on redshift, even though those who have tried so far haven't gotten very far with their alternatives. I do not agree that you can put a different interpretation on CMB. It has been resoundingly and thoroughly confirmed. I do not know of a credible alternative explanation, at least one that can be tested using observational data.

As to Halton Arp's ideas about redshift as a failed measure of distance, they have been thoroughly discredited. I do not think he continues to hold the same interpretation.

I am content to let the researchers get on with it and see where the chips fall. I'm also perfectly content to drift with the mainstream until the dust settles on the questions.

All I'm trying to do in these discussions is to challenge the notion that Big Bang Theory is widely questioned and in danger of collapsing.