Cosmology

Re: Alternative Theory to the Big Bang

DaveMitsky — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:42:58 GMT

Teilhard09:
Let’s start first with the proven scientific fact that light and energy create gravity. This is not contestable.
SNIP
That said, maybe there wasn’t an explosion at all but simply a great light that emerged from nothing with the most powerful energy heretofore known (think Genesis again and first light but no explosion).

The first statement is certainly contestable. Nobody understands the origin of gravity. Physicists do know through the Theory of General Relativity how gravity and matter interact and some believe that the four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force) were once a single superforce.

The graviton has been proposed as the exchange particle of gravitation just as the photon is the exchange particle of electromagnetism (light).

The second happens to be right. There was no "explosion" in the usual sense of the word. One of the most common misconceptions about the Big Bang is that it was an explosion and every program on the Big Bang that I've ever seen (and there have been a great many of them) has continued to promote that misconception, complete with sound effects.

Similarly, the big bang happened everywhere--in the room in which you are reading this article, in a spot just to the left of Alpha Centauri, everywhere. It was not a bomb going off at a particular spot that we can identify as the center of the explosion. Likewise, in the balloon analogy, there is no special place on the surface of the balloon that is the center of the expansion.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=misconceptions-about-the-2005-03&page=2 (page2)

There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualised as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html

By the way, the universe was "opague" to radiation until it cooled enough for "uncoupling" to occur during the Recombination Era. Thus, there was no light until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang.

http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/recombination.htm

Dave Mitsky

Re: Alternative Theory to the Big Bang

SpeedFreek — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:06:31 GMT

Teilhard09:
The problem with the Big Bang is that it doesn’t explain why the further out you go the greater the speed of acceleration of moving bodies (like stars or quasars) seems to be.

Why would you think that?

The change in the scale of the background metric is fundamental to the theory. If the metric that defines distance is increasing in size, this has, by necessity, a cumulative effect on the apparent recession speed of distant objects - the further you look, the faster the apparent recession speed.

Re: Alternative Theory to the Big Bang

Dusty_Matter — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:07:13 GMT

It seems to me that you are still basically trying to describe a beginning to the universe, but you are choosing just an alternate reason of how. Why? Why is the accepted idea unappealing to you?

Teilhard09:
Let’s start first with the proven scientific fact that light and energy create gravity.

Yes, light is energy and energy and mass are interchangeable and it can be said that light generates gravity, but it is miniscule in comparison to matter.

Teilhard09:
Think of curved space as a sphere (a geodesic) with a certain volume.

Isn't that along the same lines as the Big Bang theory?

Teilhard09:
energy dissipates over time through a process known as entropy,

Yes, but that happens within the sphere of space/time. Energy does not leak out of it. Space/time is not growing because it is losing energy. It is increasing because of it's energy.

Teilhard09:
light which travels according to Einstein at a constant speed limit of approximately 186,000 miles per second, would have greater distances to traverse from one side of the spacetime geodesic to the other based upon the size of the spacetime geodesic relative to an observer. Think of different size globes as analogues for the spacetime geodesic as being smaller at the inception of the Big Bang and increasingly larger as energy disperses and gravity increases the size of the spacetime geodesic.

This is almost identical to the Big Bang theory, except for it's modus operandi. It's still an increse in size, but light does not have the power to do this. If so, then our own sun would be increasing in size, and it's gravity would be getting weaker.

Teilhard09:
the Big Bang is incorrect because the observation of an expanding universe is just an illusion and byproduct of the varying size of the spacetime geodesic

If the size of space/time is as you say increasing as you stated earlier, isn't that simply restating what the big bang is stating? Our universe is expanding or are you saying that your spacetime goedesic is oscillating? In fact we observe that our universe is still expanding and is showing no signs of slowing down. According to your theory then our universe should be slowing down as gravity and light should be becoming more dispersed. but 99.99999% percent of the gravity of the universe is created from matter not light.

Teilhard09:
That said, maybe there wasn’t an explosion at all but simply a great light that emerged from nothing with the most powerful energy heretofore known

And wouldn't you think that somebody would make fun of your "great light" and "most powerful energy" idea, perhaps even calling it in jest your "Big Light" theory? What's the difference between your light theory and the big bang theory? It would still appear as an explosion would it not? The only difference is that you are thinking light can do it all which it can't, but the big bang theory says that it was energy.

No I would call your theory "The Great Light - non plausible theory"

How does Edwin's training as a lawyer disqualify him from making telescopic observations? At least he had some training in how to reason objectively on things.

Re: Alternative Theory to the Big Bang

chipdatajeffB — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:58:40 GMT

Teilhard09:

... Let’s start first with the proven scientific fact that light and energy create gravity. This is not contestable.

It is, indeed, contestable. How does light create gravity? Explain that, please. Citations would be a good idea.

... and leave off with the references to Genesis, please (see the Forum guidelines) ...

Alternative Theory to the Big Bang

Teilhard09 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:24:01 GMT

MAYBE THE BIG BANG IS WRONG? I learned this morning that Edwin Hubble who discovered that the universe is expanding and led to the Big Bang theory was first trained as a lawyer and then moved on to astronomy. Maybe there’s still hope for me! This is my contribution today to the field of cosmology wherein I will propose a simple explanation why the Big Bang theory is likely incorrect. Here goes. The Big Bang theory which is now accepted as fact says that the universe began with a huge explosion of energy which literally came from nothing (think Genesis). Thereafter all particles and later stars and us proceeded to accelerate away from each other at increasing speeds. Hubble figured this out by noticing that far away stars were red shifting, in other words, the wave lengths were stretching out. From this he concluded the universe is expanding and traced that back to a beginning point which was later termed the “Big Bang”. The problem with the Big Bang is that it doesn’t explain why the further out you go the greater the speed of acceleration of moving bodies (like stars or quasars) seems to be. Here’s an alternative idea. Let’s start first with the proven scientific fact that light and energy create gravity. This is not contestable. If that is so, it is logical to conclude that at the moment of the purported Big Bang, light and energy were at their max and so was gravity. It is also a fact that gravity bends spacetime and creates curvature. Think of curved space as a sphere (a geodesic) with a certain volume. I would posit that the greater the energy, the greater the gravity and the smaller is the circumference of the “spacetime geodesic”. That said, it stands to reason that as energy dissipates over time through a process known as entropy, the spacetime geodesic become larger or more stretched out. If that is so, light which travels according to Einstein at a constant speed limit of approximately 186,000 miles per second, would have greater distances to traverse from one side of the spacetime geodesic to the other based upon the size of the spacetime geodesic relative to an observer. Think of different size globes as analogues for the spacetime geodesic as being smaller at the inception of the Big Bang and increasingly larger as energy disperses and gravity increases the size of the spacetime geodesic. Thus, when we view an object at the furthest regions of space and closer to the inception of the Big Bang, the light from this object traveling at the speed of light to our stationary observer on earth would pass through progressively smaller and smaller spacetime geodesics before reaching the eye of the observer. Seems to me that the varying size of the spacetime geodesic would create the illusion of an expanding universe and increased acceleration the further you go out. So the problem with the Big Bang is that it is predicated on the assumption that the measurement of light from our quasar to the observer is the relative distance between two discrete objects wherein measurements are taken. Maybe not so. The deciding factor might simply be that distance is not creating the measurement but the varying sizes of the timespace geodesic. If that is so, then the Big Bang is incorrect because the observation of an expanding universe is just an illusion and byproduct of the varying size of the spacetime geodesic based upon the amount of energy and correlating gravity at any particular moment. That said, maybe there wasn’t an explosion at all but simply a great light that emerged from nothing with the most powerful energy heretofore known (think Genesis again and first light but no explosion). Then think of the energy decreasing over time thus changing the size of the spacetime geodesic. Best analogy would be to think of an inverted cone with the apex as the moment of First Light. The circumference at the apex is tighter than the larger circumferences as you move away from the apex to the furthest edge of the cone. Thus, the objects that seem to be incredible distances away only appear to be so because they are at different points at the spacetime geodesic.

So what should we call this theory which might replace the Big Bang- how about the “Theory of First Genesis”.