Was there no Big Bang?

Question

How accurate is this?
"Scientists, including Albert Einstein, did not believe the universe had a beginning. Then Hubble said he saw red shifts when he looked at other galaxies through a telescope, and to him that indicated all galaxies were moving away from us. Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre then invented the "big bang" idea, which he saw as a way of combining science with the story in Genesis. Simply because there is a red shift does not mean it is caused by a Doppler effect from everything moving away from each other. We have many photographs of galaxies colliding with each other to show that is not the case. The red shift is simply caused by the wave lengths increasing as they travel farther from the source, the way ripples do in a pond. Therefore, if there was no "big bang", then there was no beginning. If there was no beginning, then that means the universe has always existed, just the way the scientists like Einstein believed before the "big bang" idea was invented to to try to make the biblical Genesis story believable."

Answer 1

Yes, the Big Bang occurred. It has been proven beyond any plausible refute.



Galactic mergers between gravitationally-bound local galaxies proves only that gravity between nearby galaxies overwhelms spatial expansion. Nothing else.



The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiations proves the universe's temperature and density dropped below a critical point 370,000 years after Time Zero, allowing stable atoms to form for the first time.



The Big Bang Theory correctly predicted (meaning *before* it was discovered), the elemental abundance resulting from primordial nucleosynthesis, and the predictions were accurate to *forty orders of magnitude*.



This is as close to "proof" that you get in science. The Big Bang happened. It's a fact. New models may *refine* what we know about what occurred in the very early universe, but they will *never* overturn it, providing no exotic scenario is uncovered (e.g.: We're all living in the Matrix and the "real" universe is a very different from ours; a deceitful God exists and tricked us into thinking the Big Bang happened; Last Thursdayism; etc.)

Answer 2

Terrible

1. I do not know what Einstein's belief was after he knew all the evidence ( available in 1955 or before) so can not comment on him. But saying "scientists did not believe" is at best misleading and sloppy. Some did, some didn't. It is fair to say many didn't in 1900 but whether that was a majority position, I leave to the historians and philosophers. Many scientists accepted a creation event, you know that right?

2. I don't think Lemaitre invented the modern big bang concept since the modern big bang includes a (hyper) inflationary period which was only invoked after the evidence and models were in disagreement. To some extent this is semantics, but without inflation, there isn't much of a "bang".

3. It is a profound error to claim that the doppler shift is due to things moving away from one another.

The distance between non-interacting objects is increasing but it is absolutely NOT because of movement. That is exactly wrong.

4. You are really confused if you think colliding galaxies are non-interacting. Huge misunderstanding.

You really need to go back and start over and learn and understand what you are reading.

5. You make a claim that there is no expansion. Then you claim red-shift is caused by distance. You need to cite a source for this extraordinary claim. (It is not original, I expect there is a lot written on it). If this were true, then interacting galaxies would also display the effect, right? I can not argue the point with you, but unless you have published on the subject yourself, you need a reference.

6. A beginning does not require a big bang. Again, a profound logical error.

Answer 3

Well you are asking a really fundamental question. Was there a bang? Maybe. Lets start with Einstein. Einstein's equations for general relativity actually predict an expanding universe. Due to the fact that Einstein thought the universe was static and has been here forever and will always be here, he added a cosmological constant which helped tweak his equations to give the result he was looking for. A static universe. However, Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving away from us, due to them being red shifted. His results suggested an expanding universe. How you mention red shift being like ripples in a pond is probably wrong. The ripples in a pond lose their energy due to friction and other various forces. However, photons do not exactly work like that.They may lose energy from absorption by other particles and end up having a lower wavelength. But it is very unlikely this would happen (because space is just so empty). A galaxy moving away from us would have its light red shifted and if it was moving towards us it would be blue shifted. As for the Belgian priest, I personally do not believe that the big bang theory supports genesis.

Plus, the Andromeda galaxy is blue shifted, due to the fact it is moving towards The Milky Way. Which pretty much supports the idea of red shift.

Answer 4

--"Scientists, including Albert Einstein, did not believe the universe had a beginning."

A few had this belief (look up Fred Hoyle), but I do not know about Einstein -- he simply believed that space could not expand. After a private conversations with Father Lemaitre (the priest/mathematician who came up with the idea that would become the Big bang theory), Albert announced that his belief (space could not expand) was the biggest mistake of his career.



So, in the end, Einstein accepted that space was expanding, which (indirectly) means he accepted that the Observable Universe had a beginning.



--"The red shift is simply caused by the wave lengths increasing as they travel farther from the source, the way ripples do in a pond. "



Starting from this sentence, your posting makes less sense. It begins to smell like the "tired light" theory which was proven false around the 1980s.



The other statement: "If there was no Big bang, there was no beginning" is also false. It is very much possible that there was a beginning without a Big Bang.

In addition, the Big Bang theory describes the expansion of space and its effect on energy density. The expansion of space can still be observed, therefore it is very difficult to deny it.



Fred Hoyle's belief (when he created the Steady State Theory) was exactly that the Big Bang theory was an attempt to justify the Genesis creation story (although modern fake American religions say that the Big Bang theory goes against their interpretation of Genesis). Fred was a proud atheist - said so himself on many occasions - and was pushing the idea of an eternal universe that did not need a "moment of creation".



However, the Steady State theory was proven wrong, starting in 1964, and was finally dropped by ALL scientists (except Fred himself and roughly 5 scientists) by the middle of the 1990s.



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The "Big Bang" (expansion of space itself) is still going on. Therefore it is difficult to deny it.

Answer 5

I'm not an astronomer, wish I were, but I'm not. However, here's what I think:



In Einstein's day, everyone thought that the Milky Way "was" the Universe. They didn't understand that there are galaxies beyond ours. That's why the astronomers believed that the Universe was static and unchanging. General Relativity was telling Einstein that the Universe could not be static, that it had to be either expanding or contracting but not standing still. Einstein blinked! And he believed his astronomer friends instead of his equations, and got it wrong. Hubble came along and basically proved that the Universe was expanding.



"(Simply because there is a red shift does not mean it is caused by a Doppler effect from everything moving away from each other. We have many photographs of galaxies colliding with each other to show that is not the case.")

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I doubt that is the case and here's why: galaxies bound to each other by gravity is a rather complex thing, and if they are red shifted or blue shifted depends on your own frame of reference. Galaxies can be in the process of colliding with one another and still (as a complete system) be red shifted and moving away from us. Your statement doesn't prove a thing as far as I can tell.



("The red shift is simply caused by the wave lengths increasing as they travel father from the source, the way ripples do in a pond.")

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No, not even close. Water waves are mechanical by nature and require a medium to travel in, namely water. Light waves have no mass and do not require a medium to travel in, thus they cannot behave in a 'mechanical' fashion. As I understand it, light photon wavelength stretches because it follows a geodesics path through space-time continuum. It is the 'space-time that stretches due to cosmic inflation and expansion, not the photon wave itself; though, it does decrease in frequency, energy, and it wavelength does increase as a result.



("Therefore, if there was no "big bang", then there was no beginning.")

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No big bang, no beginning? However, you have to account for the cosmic microwave background radiation. It is a residual effect from the big bang itself. The big bang was a true black-body radiation effect. And the black-body radiation effect "is" the cosmic microwave background radiation. In short, the CMBR, the expanding Universe and red shifted galaxies, the 75% Hydrogen to 25% Helium ratio for the cosmos and the smooth uniformity of the Universe on the largest of scales, among many other pieces of evidence all suggest that there had to be a big bang origin of the Universe as we know it.



See: Cosmic microwave background radiation - Princeton University

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation.html



Best regards

Answer 6

Only somewhat accurate. We know that not "everything" moves away from "each other", gravity is an attractive force, which is stronger than the expansion of the universe, so space inside clusters of galaxies is NOT expanding, and galaxies do tend to combine into larger more massive ones. Also, the Big Bang theory does not address "the beginning" or "creation" of anything other than more space. (your idea that it involved a beginning seems to be a common misconception). Einstein also did not believe in black holes even though his own theories predict them, he was human after all. The theory also has no correlation with either of the biblical genesis versions, it is completely different. There is considerable evidence for the theory which you don't even address here like the CMBR. But then maybe you are smarter than all the other scientists put together. What is your degree in?

Answer 7

It's not very accurate at all.



Scientists, including Einstein, did at one time assume the universe was static on the largest scales. However, they quickly dropped this idea once it became clear that both theory and observational evidence showed it isn't true. It's misleading to drop Einstein's name in support of an idea that he held only at a very early stage in the development of the field of cosmology, and later abandoned.



The early redshift measurements came from Vesto Slipher, not Hubble. Hubble's Law relates distance to redshift; Hubble measured the distances, Slipher measured the redshifts.



Lemaitre's cosmology came about by applying general relativity to cosmological questions. It had nothing to do with the Biblical creation story. His expanding universe was proposed before Hubble's Law was discovered, not after. (This means that it made true predictions that were later confirmed by Hubble, Slipher, et al. It was not an attempt to retroactively explain Hubble's observations.)



"The red shift is simply caused by the wave lengths increasing as they travel farther from the source [...]" -- it's not as if nobody ever thought of that idea before. It's called "tired light" and the idea has been around for many decades. Scientists did not simply assume that galactic redshifts are caused by an expanding universe. Instead, they proposed many other ideas (including "tired light") and thought of ways to test them. The expanding universe is consistent with observations; the other candidates are not.



"[...] the way ripples do in a pond." Do they, though? You really want the frequency, and I don't believe that changes with distance for pond ripples. I don't think the author has put much thought into this analogy.



At the end, they come back to the claim that the "'big bang' idea was invented to try to make the biblical Genesis story believable." However, your source provides no evidence for this claim. In fact, it's a silly claim; Lemaitre was working closely with Einstein and other theorists and observers, as part of a community with widely divergent religious and philosophical views. The Big Bang cosmology came out of that large community over many years. Trying to pin it to one person's religious beliefs as a Catholic priest is historically and scientifically nonsensical. Moreover, a scientific theory is judged not by what inspired it in the mind of its originator; it's judged by comparison with the evidence. Keep that in mind, and you'll see that your source is presenting an ad hominem argument, not a scientific one.

Answer 8

There's evidence for and against the big bang, it's your personal preference. Usually, if you don't believe in the big bang, you believe in creation (like me). Evidences against the big bang/against billions-of-years-old earth universe include:

1) Conservation of angular momentum: I don't keep up with the ever-changing big bang theory so this might not apply to the most up-to-date model, but the big bang theory says that the universe began from an infinitesimal spinning dot which exploded. From the conservation of angular momentum, we should be able to deduce that all the planets, galaxies, etc.should be spinning in the same direction. However, this is not what we observe. Even in our own solar system we have planets which spin in the opposite direction of earth.

2) Polonium halos: This is very strong evidence against the old-universe theory. It follows from the big bang that earth formed as an agglomeration of particles that came were attracted to each other and melted down into a ball of lava which cooled off and became the earth. Therefore, if there were any radioactive elements withing the lava, they would have decayed into daughter elements which would have floated up (if they were less dense). Again, this is not consistent with observations. Throughout rocks from many places in the world are found what are called radio-polonium halos. There are microscopic halos in the rock where polonium is trapped with its daughter elements, proving that the earth was never a molten mass.

3) Higher elements: According to the big bang theory, the only element that was produced from the big bang was hydrogen. Then the question arises: "how do we have elements with such high atomic numbers, such as Uranium?". Many people answer that these elements are the result of fusion inside of stars, but stars cannot fuse past iron.

4) Carbon 14: It is predicted that the amount of C14 (which is used in carbon dating) in the atmosphere would reach equilibrium in 30, 000 years. However current observations show that C14 is still not in equilibrium.

Remember, neither side can be proven wrong, since there are arguments and counter arguments to everything. For example, somebody told me a counter-argument to the C14 argument. However, apparently he didn't realize that even with his argument, carbon dating is still not usable. And most of the counter-arguments by evolutionists that I've heard always tell you how it have happened, but they never give any sciencific evidence for their explanations. I don't know the answer to your question about the Belgian priest, but a big explosion is not the only explanation for the red shift. In the bible there are verses that talk about "God stretching the skies" (I think it's somewhere in Issiah). Last of all, remember that most scientists accept millions of years because the only other alternative is creation, which they have already ruled out either because they don't like the idea of a God, or because they've been indoctrinated with evolution all their life and it have been taught to them as a fact. I suggest you study both sides of this topic; you can watch debates, read books, etc. One of my personal suggestions would be debates by Kent Hoovind.

Answer 9

Quote: wired.com



"There was no Big Bang, because mass and time convert to length and space.



http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25492/



Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe



A new cosmology successfully explains the accelerating expansion of the universe without dark energy; but only if the universe has no beginning and no end.



As one of the few astrophysical events that most people are familiar with, the Big Bang has a special place in our culture. And while there is scientific consensus that it is the best explanation for the origin of the Universe, the debate is far from closed. However, it’s hard to find alternative models of the Universe without a beginning that are genuinely compelling.



That could change now with the fascinating work of Wun-Yi Shu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Shu has developed an innovative new description of the Universe in which the roles of time space and mass are related in new kind of relativity.



Shu’s idea is that time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other. In his formulation of the geometry of spacetime, the speed of light is simply the conversion factor between the two. Similarly, mass and length are interchangeable in a relationship in which the conversion factor depends on both the gravitational constant G and the speed of light, neither of which need be constant.



So as the Universe expands, mass and time are converted to length and space and vice versa as it contracts.



This universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction. In fact, Shu shows that singularities cannot exist in this cosmos."

Answer 10

Listen there was those wavelengths is visible light the farther away the more of the color red appears the close it looks like violet My father is a scientist and well he said. We can only trace it down into the hours after it happened they can't seem to find the exact point it happened but they said all our galaxys were together than a big eplosion happened seperating them (big ban)

Answer 11

Well if you watched family guy you would know that stewie and Brian created the big bang by traveling back and forth in time and then breaking the time machine and then they were trapped in a time were absolutely nothing exsisted and then they broke a thing that caused such a giant boom that created the big bang therefore stewie and Brian created the big bang soooo yea...watch family guy or look for that episode ... c:

Answer 12

"huge Bang" is a coined word initially utilized in mockery of the perception. in loads of respects it really is punctiliously incorrect. the large Bang become easily a shocking enlargement of area from some element that we lack the contraptions to detect, because it really is secure hostile to us by technique of the particle horizon in which remember become first allowed to tackle of skill. previous to that the universe become opaque, so there are purely hypothesis to describe what existed earlier then.

Answer 13

Galaxies have a beginning but the universe always existed. It doesn't make sense how something begins from nothing. Everything comes from something and that something comes from something else and that something else comes from something else else etc.

Answer 14

Yeah, you have it all figured our whereas experts in the field are incorrect. Sure.



*Reported*