Is the Big Bang in the Bible?

[Lorizael]

Dark energy was an anomaly in 1998, but it's significantly more than that now. Its effects are felt in the supernova data, the CMB, large-scale structure, and elsewhere. The universe would not look the way it does today without some source of mass-energy perturbing it, and the leading candidate for that mass-energy is something akin to a cosmological constant.

[Geo]

I wonder how the observed "background mass" of the Universe would look with a gazillion starships flitting between stars at near lightspeed...
I don't know if this has been refuted since I first read it, but the faster something goes in interstellar space, the more massive it appears to be.

[Buster's Uncle]

I still wonder about the bookkeeping for that...

[Rusty Edge]

Any way He said they ruled out dust and other explanations without explaining.

The third post goes into some detail about why dust cannot be the culprit. It can't be normal dust because normal dust wouldn't affect all wavelengths of light equally the way observed dimming appears. And it can't be an unknown type of grey dust because that would cause a steadily increasing level of dimming the farther out you get, which is not what astronomers actually observe.

I'm still wondering if there aren't gravity waves and magnetic fields, or some other such residue of the big bang out there affecting the red shift in la supernovas .

There are certainly gravity waves acting on large scales, but cosmologists have pretty good models of what sort of gravity waves would have been produced by the Big Bang, and there's no evidence at present to suggest that could account for extremely uniform dimming of distant supernovae. Moreover, there's significantly more evidence than supernovae alone pointing to dark energy.

Magnetic fields are extremely unlikely, however, because there's no good reason why magnetic fields would produce a uniform effect across the universe. Magnetic fields are only going to exist in the vicinity of charged particles, and which means they're only going to occur in areas of high density. So any effect from a magnetic field would depend on where you look, and to date the expansion of the universe looks identical in all directions.

In the third one, I understood the grey dust discussion to mean that they have ruled out matter. Beyond that I didn't understand it or the math.

I suppose I should have thought the magnetism example through. I understand that it wouldn't be consistent, and that it would require matter in the vicinity.

Yeah, I suppose there are enough astro-physicists studying gravity to figure it out.

I didn't get that there are more effects than super-novas. If that's true, then I guess you've convinced me that it's the best explanation, and it's more a matter of grasping the concept.

The name dark energy  sounds too much like "the Dark Side of The Force". Maybe that's my problem. Quarks, Quasars and Quantums sound like latin/science to me. Dark energy sounds like mysticism. A constant universal energy field sounds like a description of God.

I'm totally lost when it comes to the part about dark energy having negative pressure. What does that mean in this context? I assume they aren't comparing it to Earth's atmosphere.

[Rusty Edge]

Lori, can you explain the braided rings to me, then?  Has anyone worked the math out and survived peer review?

Closer observation has revealed that the rings only appear braided and really just have a number of clumps in them. The clumps are thought to be due to the presence of a large number of hard to detect mini-moons that inhabit and influence the rings.

Why energy?

Because so far scientists have seen nothing in the universe not composed of matter/energy. As far as we can tell, that's what reality is--matter and energy. If scientists find something new happening, there are two basic ideas: new matter/energy, or new laws. There's no reason to think any other option is meaningful at this point.

So yes, dark energy could be some heretofore unknown consequence of general relativity, but so far the evidence doesn't suggest that. And when you have an incredibly successful theory that has passed every test thrown at it with stunning accuracy, there's not currently a good reason to believe new laws are necessary.

Think about the discovery of Neptune. Newton's laws predicted that Uranus would behave in a particular way--and it wasn't. This surprised a lot of scientists at the time, because people pretty much thought Newton's laws were perfect. Rather than abandon the theory, however, scientists proposed that there was simply data they were missing: a new planet perturbing Uranus' orbit. Lo and behold, math was done, predictions were made, and Neptune was discovered.

Basically the same thing has happened with dark energy. An anomaly was discovered. Math was done, predictions were made, and everything discovered so far in the CMB and in cosmic structure has pointed to dark energy as the culprit. The only difference is that scientists haven't figured out exactly what dark energy is yet. But seriously, it's only been 16 years.

New laws are possible. And new laws do make their way into physics. After all, it turned out Newton's laws weren't perfect. They couldn't account for Mercury's precession, famously. At the time, just like with Uranus, astronomers predicted the presence of another planet. But it turned out they were wrong. What was needed was a modification to gravity. There's an important difference here, though. Einstein didn't invent general relativity to account for a simple astronomical anomaly. General relativity accounts for a gigantic amount of large-scale (and some small-scale) behavior.

The same will have to be true for any law that can explain the effect of dark energy. If you're going to modify gravity, it's going to have far-reaching consequences that make testable predictions. But the problem is that a century's worth of data has confirmed general relativity in essentially every regime but the quantum one. There's very little room for a new law of gravity that isn't quantum gravity. And if that's the case--well, you certainly can't claim scientists aren't working on that. Quantum gravity is an extremely active and vibrant field in theoretical physics.

So the braiding of Saturn's rings turned out to be an optical illusion, and the surprising orbit of Uranus turned out to be more of something we already know- a planet. 

That's the other reason why I was skeptical of dark energy. I presumed a red shift was either an optical illusion of some kind, or something out there that  we've found elsewhere in the universe.

If not matter, then something else must be affecting the light, such as a force.

But if not that could something else have been distorted in the Big Bang? Time, Space, or Energy?

Explosions have shock waves, atmosphere condensed to the hardness of steel.

Here in the middle of the continent, we still get earthquakes from the crust decompressing from the ice age.

Could something we know have been compressed to the point of becoming a lens?

Could a decompression account for the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe?

[Lorizael]

I wonder how the observed "background mass" of the Universe would look with a gazillion starships flitting between stars at near lightspeed...
I don't know if this has been refuted since I first read it, but the faster something goes in interstellar space, the more massive it appears to be.

It actually is more massive. So with a bunch of relativistic spaceships traveling around, the local gravity would be different, and we would be able to tell based on how the stars were moving and so on. (We probably wouldn't get that it was spaceships, but we'd know something was there.)

But here's the thing to remember--all of those spaceships were made from something, and all of the energy used to push them up to relativistic speeds existed in some other form before it got put into the spaceships. Mass-energy is conserved, so there isn't any "more" of it around when objects are moving quickly; it's just in a different configuration. And in general relativity, whether mass and energy curve space in identical ways.

[Lorizael]

I'm totally lost when it comes to the part about dark energy having negative pressure. What does that mean in this context? I assume they aren't comparing it to Earth's atmosphere.

I honestly can't help you here, unfortunately. I don't yet have the math or the physics knowledge to understand--let alone explain--why this is the case.

[Lorizael]

So the braiding of Saturn's rings turned out to be an optical illusion, and the surprising orbit of Uranus turned out to be more of something we already know- a planet. 

That's the other reason why I was skeptical of dark energy. I presumed a red shift was either an optical illusion of some kind, or something out there that  we've found elsewhere in the universe.

If not matter, then something else must be affecting the light, such as a force.

But if not that could something else have been distorted in the Big Bang? Time, Space, or Energy?

Explosions have shock waves, atmosphere condensed to the hardness of steel.

Here in the middle of the continent, we still get earthquakes from the crust decompressing from the ice age.

Could something we know have been compressed to the point of becoming a lens?

Could a decompression account for the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe?

As far as cosmologists are able to tell, the most profound distortions of the Big Bang are the local "clumps" of matter that formed--galaxies, stars, planets, you, me.

(BU, is there a multi-quote function somewhere I'm missing?)

[Rusty Edge]

As far as cosmologists are able to tell, the most profound distortions of the Big Bang are the local "clumps" of matter that formed--galaxies, stars, planets, you, me.

I'm much denser than you are. 

Once again, thank you for all of the explanations. I've learned more science than ... well, if you don't count medical science that I had a personal interest in... I've learned more science from this thread and it's links than I have in the last decade.

[Buster's Uncle]

(BU, is there a multi-quote function somewhere I'm missing?)

When you hit Quote, it shows up in the Quick-Reply, right?  You can just do that over and over before you post.

[Impaler]

It's a little misleading to say that 2 out of 3 tests are coming back negative. Astronomers have looked for time dilation in a lot of supernovae but not a lot of GRBs or quasars. The reason for this is the accepted reliability of 1a supernovae as standard candles. They're not perfectly reliable, no, which is why the studies done on them have a wide variety of criteria researchers can use to rule out a supernova as a good candidate. For example, there are anomalous super-Chandrasekhar mass supernovae with much greater than expected luminosities, but far lower kinetic energies. This difference is kinetic energy is a red flag that lets researchers toss out particular candidates.

I don't find it misleading, it is a valid test, perhaps not a test of the same quality as the SNIa as you claim but doesn't mean it can be ignored.  While I agree that GRBs are very new phenomena the Quasar is quite old and their should be no shortage of study on them, granted Quasars are not believed to be standard candles, but this isn't required because they pulsate and we can simply look at the average pulsation rate vs Redshift and the time-dilation would readily pop-out of a large sample size if it was really their, we should have more faith in that large data set then the vastly smaller and perhaps overly pruned set of SNIa's?

Quasars and GRBs, however, have far more problems in the reliability of their light curves, so they haven't been looked at as often for use as standard candles or confirmation of time dilation. That they don't exhibit the expected level of time dilation suggests either that time dilation isn't occurring or that we simply don't have good data on GRBs and quasars. Cosmologists accept the latter interpretation because it is not time dilation alone that lends support to the theory expansion and the Big Bang. In fact, there is a wealth of evidence that supports the reality of the Big Bang and the metric expansion of space.

To begin with, general relativity itself suggests the Big Bang. The problem that originally led Einstein to introduce a cosmological constant is easily solved by assuming an expanding universe. That the universe is cold now and was once hot (as exhibited by the CMB) is evidence of the Big Bang. That distant galaxies are progressively redshifted is evidence of the Big Bang. That space is virtually flat on cosmic scales is evidence of the Big Bang. That the energy density of the universe was much greater in the past is evidence of the Big Bang. That hydrogen and helium are the most abundant elements is evidence of the Big Bang. That galaxies are clustered the way they are is evidence of the Big Bang.

Essentially every piece of cosmological data suggests the Big Bang. Some pieces also suggest other theories, but when taken as a whole, it is the Big Bang that has the most solid observational foundation. So an anomaly in unreliable sets of data is not really trouble for the theory. It's a question that needs to be further examined, studied, and answered, but by itself it cannot tear down all the support that the Big Bang theory has.

I would argue that we have a lot of observations that do not disagree with the BB theory, but I see very little if anything (outside SNIa which I'm doubtful of) that actually constitutes a successful TEST of the BB.  I will admit that it is "the best theory" which has the most agreement with observation but it is perfectly normal to have a theory which we KNOW is dead wrong while still acknowledging that it is the best we have right now, GR is such a theory.  I'd argue that BB theory fails too many key tests to be considered anything other then a vague place-holder right now.

Outside of time-dilation their is another property of expanding space geometry which is very simple and direct, distant objects should appear to have their angular size stretched and the surface brightness diminished in proportion to the spacial expansion.  This is call the Tolman surface-brightness.  When galaxies are examined we also fails to get the effect BB theory requires, and the defense offered that galaxies were brighter and smaller in the past it just the right amount to cancel out the expected effects is quite a stretch.



To run down some of the other big piece of evidence and show that they aren't really as strong as described.

Redshift - Light could easily be stretched by another phenomenon in empty space, this is called 'Tired Light' and while we have no theoretical model for WHY such a thing might happen we can test between them by looking for time-dilation which would occur in BB but not in a Tired Light model.  But the existence of Redshift in and of itself simply rules out any model which lacks one of the two mechanisms that could produce it.

Primordial Elements - The hydrogen/helium ratio along with other light elements can be arrived at by the BB theories hot dense plasma rapidly expanding plasma with fair accuracy only when Dark Matter was included.  But while BB plasma starts out as a ludicrously hot quark-gluon soup it is just the tail end of this process in which you have a proton/neutron plasma where the element mix is set and the temperature at that point is not beyond the range of what could be generated by know stellar phenomena.  So whole elemental abundance tells us the primordial elements derive from a hot plasma and the BB has in it a compatible plasma, it is not at all demonstrated that is the only possible plasma that could do the job.

Flat Space - Before Flatness was confirmed it was a very open question in cosmology what the curvature would be, but it was not at all felt to be a prediction of the BB theory for it to be one way or the other.  Indeed positive and negative curvatures were thought to be very probable and that the curvature would tell us the universes long-term fate (flatness gives an ever expanding but perpetually slowing expansion) but this future was then overturned with the Dark-Energy discover to give a future equivalent to a negative? curvature.  In any case flatness makes sense for a non-expanding universe too, so their is no Test of BB vs reasonable alternatives (non flatness would have actually supported the BB). 

CMB - This is probably the second best piece of evidence for the BB as the theory clearly would predict that kind of radiation.  Still it is just Black-body radiation (which is the most non-informative radiation we can receive) that is being red shifted, we can't even tell what it's temperature was at release because a shifted black-body spectrum remains a perfect black-body spectrum just with a lower temperature fingerprint.  It would take something rather weird to produce black-body radiation in a uniform non-expanding universe as their presumably isn't a surface at some finite distance to scatter off of and if it's coming from all of space the spectrum should overlap and no longer be a black-body.  So score 1 for BB here.

[Rusty Edge]

So "BB theory" always means "Black Body theory", rather than "Big Bang theory" ?

[Buster's Uncle]

4 in 10 Americans Believe God Created Earth 10,000 Years Ago
LiveScience.com
By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer  2 hours ago



Four in 10 Americans believe God created the Earth and anatomically modern humans, less than 10,000 years ago, according to a new Gallup poll.

About half of Americans believe humans evolved over millions of years, with most of those people saying that God guided the process. Religious, less educated, and older respondents were likelier to espouse a young Earth creationist view — that life was created some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago — according to the poll.

Though the percentage of people who believe in creationism has changed little over the decades, the percentage of people who believe humans evolved without God has more than doubled, and the percentage who believe in God-guided evolution has decreased.


Supernatural beliefs

Americans consistently report high levels of belief in the supernatural. About 80 percent of Americans believe in miracles and three-quarters believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, according to a 2013 Pew survey.

At the same time, while most Americans have a healthy respect for science, many could use a refresher course in the basics. For instance, a 2014 National Science Foundation study found that only three out of four Americans know that the Earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa, and a large percentage didn't know the Earth's core was hot. Large percentages didn't know that the father's sperm determines a baby's sex.


Evolving views?

As part of the Values and Beliefs Survey, Gallup called a random sample of 1,028 landline and cellphone users and asked them which of three descriptions most closely matched their beliefs: that humans have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process; that humans have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process; or that God created human beings pretty much in their present form sometime in the last 10,000 years or so. Gallup has asked people similar questions since 1982.

About 42 percent espoused the creationist view presented, whereas 31 percent said God guided the evolutionary process, and just 19 said they believe evolution operated without God involved.

Religion was positively tied to creationism beliefs, with more than two-thirds of those who attend weekly religious services espousing a belief in a young Earth, compared with just 23 percent of those who never go to church saying the same.

Just over a quarter of those with a college degree hold creationist beliefs, compared with 57 percent of people with such views who had at most a high-school education, the poll found.


Knowledge key

Most of the people who believed in evolution also said they were knowledgeable about the theory, whereas those who said they were not too familiar with the theory also were less likely to believe in it.

Americans' belief in creationism is at odds with scientific consensus. Almost all scientists who study human origins believe that we evolved from other life-forms over millions of years. In fact, humans, or individuals in the genus Homo, are said to have emerged on Earth some 2.5 million years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/4-10-americans-believe-god-created-earth-10-122212736.html

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Inept questions, if phrased as the article has them...

[Yitzi]

Inept questions, if phrased as the article has them...

Unfortunately, that seems to be the usual in most of the social sciences...

[Rusty Edge]

Variance in religious/ philosophical / prehistory  views disturb me far less than this-

At the same time, while most Americans have a healthy respect for science, many could use a refresher course in the basics. For instance, a 2014 National Science Foundation study found that only three out of four Americans know that the Earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa, and a large percentage didn't know the Earth's core was hot. Large percentages didn't know that the father's sperm determines a baby's sex.