Thread: BBT question: What is there beyond CMBR and Redshift?

I always hear about the CMBR and the Hubble Redshift when discussing the likelihood of the Big Bang Theory. What other confirmations are there? I mean: if those two things don't convince me, is there more evidence that I should be aware of?

People who I discuss it with always seem to suggest that there's more, but often without exactly specifying what. Is this a bluff, or is there a lot more to the picture than I am aware of?

Radio astronomers have shown that the galaxies were closer in the past.
Gamow/Alpher showed that the amount of light elements in the universe equals the BBT prediction.
These elements could initially only have been made from the Big Bang.
General Relativity shows that the universe must contract or expand. It’s expanding.
Quite simply, the math. CMBR and redshift aren’t hand waiving. No one ever says, “I just don’t believe in arithmetic or those ‘eekwashuns’.”
As Alan Guth said, “Basically, if you doubt the Big Bang, then you are a crackpot.”

From a crackpot; Think that comment was made to Fred Hoyle who was anything but a crackpot...

kojax; Another primary reason given a need for a created Universe, is the distribution of elements. Their thought is that is the U was ageless, it should be showing signs or have died a freezing or heated death or have done so eons ago. To justify this non apparent ending or any real signs through the billions of years of seen history (telescope observations) the BBT, took on added life.

The consistency of reasonably clear observation (about 10BLY in all direction), indicates a rather consistent and orderly process for regeneration of matter.

Guth made that statement on the history channel's show "The Universe" and I think it was directed at all crackpots in general.
BTW, the universe does not regenerate matter.

I always wondered: Let's say a very large amount of matter was created in a relatively small volume through mechanisms suggested by self creation cosmology, i.e. Virtual particle pairs. The sheer amount of matter could then clump together under gravity and annihilate, creating a huge amount of photons that could create new particles, similar to as predicted by the early big bang universe. Would that be possible? I know that such large pair production events are extremely unlikey, but with an infinity to work with, it might have happened?

Well, a large amount of matter doesn’t “self create” in the existing universe. Virtual particle pairs take energy from space and then recombine and annihilate back into the original amount of energy. Also, the universe is finite, so you don’t have an infinity to work with. The early universe got a tremendous energy boost from the separation of the Superforce that changed the virtual particles into real particles. So, no, what you suggest wouldn’t be possible.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Well, a large amount of matter doesnt self create in the existing universe. Virtual particle pairs take energy from space and then recombine and annihilate back into the original amount of energy. Also, the universe is finite, so you dont have an infinity to work with. The early universe got a tremendous energy boost from the separation of the Superforce that changed the virtual particles into real particles. So, no, what you suggest wouldnt be possible.

I am trying to think of a way for the expanding of space to be compatible with an infinite universe, both in time and space. If I am not mistaken, SSU theory chalanges the explanations for CMBR redshift provided by BBU? Suppose that an alternate explanation for the expansion itself could be found ( I don't want to hijack the thread completely), would my premise be possible with an infinite time available for it to happen? There are quite a few theories, AFAIK, that could in principle at least statistically allow for such a mass creation event given enough time, no?

Fred Hoyle, tried to explain BBT's for an expanding U, by suggesting inflation as a cause. The inflation caused by slow but steady formation of hydrogen atoms over eons in time. The above mention Allen Guth, had his own ideas on inflation, but under BBT.

An expanding U, at the rates suggested almost requires a force and where 'Dark Matter/Energy is being given credit. Hoyle's idea would allow for increased expansion, as the U matter occupied more and more, increasing circumference, but illogical to suggested rates.

KALSTER; I may be wrong, but I think your trying to bring 'String Theory' into a mix of either BBT or SSU, neither of which could be....IMO.

Arch; The process after a stars formation to its death and the next generation of a star, under any principle, is regeneration. Under BBT our star is said by most a second or third generation. If your promoting BBT, which granted is the accepted theory, each generation should be less and less in size to a point where there is not enough hydrogen to produce the needed mass for ignition. As YOU have said, matter (elements) can break down, which should mean the availability of Hydrogen should never run out, or that hydrogen itself breaks down.

Actually, the Steady State universe challenged the Big Bang universe model. The CMBR was evidence for the BB and it, along with other evidence, closed the door on the SS.
When something is found to be impossible (the self creation of matter from nothing in the existing universe), then it is infinitely impossible. When we prove that 1+1=2 and not something else, then there isn’t a point in an infinite future where an alternate explanation suddenly makes 1+1=3.
A theory is something that has evidence that it is correct. A hypothesis is a statement that has no evidence. Many hypotheses exist for the creation of the universe, but there is only one theory.

Jackson-Hydrogen is running out. Its being fused into bigger elements. Something that runs out, is not regenerating. The protons in everything will also 'run out' and not regenerate.

Long before Hoyle, an 'eternal U', basic SST, was the accepted view of the Universe. BBT a 'spontaneous beginning' for the U, was first mentioned probably in Hindu Mythology 1500 BC or so and then in the 16th century by both Catholic and Muslim teachings. Both existed as possible and neither was universally accepted. For the sake of argument, I have acknowledged the acceptance of BB, but do not agree that SSU is toast.

We do NOT know exactly how a star is formed, what process happens for ignition or how elements react under those conditions. Under BBT and Nucleosynthysis we can surmise, elements did form from other than natural cause, even using the word 'plasma'. I prefer to think of the U as having a finite supply of atoms or what makes up an atom, so have to think regeneration. To me its illogical to think anything that forms (fuse), regardless of conditions could never break down or the decay process ends at some level above the atom. Helium freezes at under 3K and Hydrogen above 4K (not exact), but what happens below...or what happens to other elements fused when temperatures go below there freezing levels in a vacuum in the process of decay over a billion years, two or a trillion years...

Then you must produce real evidence that what you prefer to think isn't toast.

I like Arch2008's responses, because he's been raising some interesting points. Some are more convincing than others.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Radio astronomers have shown that the galaxies were closer in the past.

Now that is very interesting. I have often wondered about this. If it can be shown by observation that galaxies many light years away are appreciably closer together (on average) than galaxies nearer to us, that might prove something.

On the other hand, if they're orbiting one another in some sense, we might expect the expansion of space to have no effect on the distances.

Gamow/Alpher showed that the amount of light elements in the universe equals the BBT prediction.

You mean the number of elements on average per a given area? I rather doubt we can't see all the way to the edge of the universe to confirm how many there are in total.

These elements could initially only have been made from the Big Bang.

That's a very bold statement. It assumes there will only ever be found to exist one means of skinning the cat.

General Relativity shows that the universe must contract or expand. It’s expanding.
Quite simply, the math. CMBR and redshift aren’t hand waiving. No one ever says, “I just don’t believe in arithmetic or those ‘eekwashuns’.”
As Alan Guth said, “Basically, if you doubt the Big Bang, then you are a crackpot.”

I'm not sure GR *only* has the potential to be interpreted that way. What about a tapered universe? Maybe distances get greater and greater the larger the body of matter we look at.

Matter density in a solar system is a lot less than matter density on a planet. Matter density throughout a galaxy is a lot less than matter density throughout a solar system. I'm sure the same could be said of galaxy clusters, or clusters of clusters, or clusters of clusters of clusters.

If the concentration of matter were uniform throughout any infinitely sized universe, then GR requires that it would collapse in on itself, but it's clearly not uniform. The larger the scale you look at, the smaller the ratio of matter to area in your system.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Jackson-Hydrogen is running out. Its being fused into bigger elements. Something that runs out, is not regenerating. The protons in everything will also 'run out' and not regenerate.

Only if we assume that hydrogen formation requires a fission process to create.

Any free proton traveling through space is basically a positively charged hydrogen ion in search of an electron. A neutron is just a proton and and electron waiting to separate into an atom.

How many nuclear processes do you know of that don't throw out huge numbers of free protons and/or neutrons?

the self creation of matter from nothing in the existing universe

Is this not possible through processes described by quantum mechanics, i.e. Quantum foam theory?

Interesting conjecture, but others have asked these questions without success. The obvious test for an infinitely big, infinitely old universe is that at night you should be bathed by the light of an infinite number of bright stars. Everywhere in the sky you looked, you should see an incredible starshine as bright as the surface of the Sun. But you don't.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Interesting conjecture, but others have asked these questions without success. The obvious test for an infinitely big, infinitely old universe is that at night you should be bathed by the light of an infinite number of bright stars. Everywhere in the sky you looked, you should see an incredible starshine as bright as the surface of the Sun. But you don't.

I believe some SSU proponents advance the concept of so-called “tired light” as an explanation for this, although it has never been demonstrated to my knowledge. However, I am thinking of a possible way for a sort of combination SSU-BBT theory to be possible. An infinite, both in time and space, universe wherein the unlikely, but statistically possible, creation event took place where a very large amount of matter was created in a relatively small volume and where the sheer amount of matter could then clump together under gravity and annihilate, creating a huge amount of photons that could create new particles, similar to as predicted by the early big bang universe. It would only require, according to my limited knowledge, a mechanism for expansion to occur, as this has been observed as still ongoing and indeed accelerating. This would take care of all the unanswered “what happened before/caused the big bang” questions. IMHO

You've got to drive it or park it, you can't do both. Adding SS to BBT is like putting biplane wings on a jetliner.
It just won't work.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

You've got to drive it or park it, you can't do both. Adding SS to BBT is like putting biplane wings on a jetliner.
It just won't work.

Ok, why? Obviously the different elements of each theory that contradict each other can't co-exist, but not all of them fall in this category.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Interesting conjecture, but others have asked these questions without success. The obvious test for an infinitely big, infinitely old universe is that at night you should be bathed by the light of an infinite number of bright stars. Everywhere in the sky you looked, you should see an incredible starshine as bright as the surface of the Sun. But you don't.

Energy from any source or any frequency is emitted/dispersed in all directions, for the time of its existence. The tiny sliver of waves (photons) which reach the earth from distant objects represents what was in a tiny fraction of time. The light of any object ceases with that objects demise, with a time interval between the old and new, and by the time the new is received, the light from the old long past earth...Example; If every star in Andromeda burned out today, reformed next week, we would nor could never see the both nor could any such observation be made any place else in the U, whether finite or infinite.

We are limited in perception as a species. We see only a few thousand of the estimated billions of stars in our own galaxy and see Andromeda as a star, not the double size of out Milky Way.

Kalster, things that don’t work (SS) don’t get just stuck onto things that do work (BBT). Continuous self creation just doesn’t work in the present universe and there is no need for it.

Jackson-We don’t see the other stars in the Milky Way because of stellar dust between us and them. Infinite light from infinite stars (even tired light) would super heat the dust until it glowed like a star and this light would fill the night (and day). These arguments have already been made and refuted.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Kalster, things that don’t work (SS) don’t get just stuck onto things that do work (BBT). Continuous self creation just doesn’t work in the present universe and there is no need for it.
.

Oh, ok, I see the problem now. The self creation I am talking about is just at the moment surrounding the big bang and need not continue (as you rightly IMO put, it doesn't). Under the scenario I am talking about there might (or should, infinitely) even exist other "universes" who underwent their own big bang, with some of them even expanding into each other.

Infinite light from infinite stars (even tired light) would super heat the dust until it glowed like a star and this light would fill the night (and day).

If the dust glow, they emit photons. You are suggesting they would emit more photons than those hitting them? When we look out at the stars with a telescope, would we not eventually achieve a maximum resolution where we are looking at a minimum sized sector of the sky? It would represent a sphere, where, even if the universe gets old enough for photons emitted from there to reach us, we would never be able to observe or be affected by it? Photons beyond this point would have to interfere with each other before reaching us.

That's the problem with infinity. A speck of dust can get pinged by an infinite number of photons and then reflect a tiny subset of this which is also infinite. A google is a 1 with a hundred zero's after it. This sum is greater than the total number of atomic particles in the universe, yet it is no closer to infinity than the number one is.

What about what i said here?:

"When we look out at the stars with a telescope, would we not eventually achieve a maximum resolution where we are looking at a minimum sized sector of the sky? It would represent a sphere, where, even if the universe gets old enough for photons emitted from there to reach us, we would never be able to observe or be affected by it? Photons beyond this point would have to interfere with each other before reaching us."

A scientist named Lineweaver I believe, says no. With an expanding universe it is possible for parts of the universe to be moving away from us faster than the speed of light. However, light from objects in those areas would eventually catch up to a part of the universe not moving away at the speed of light and thus eventually catch up to us. So we would interact with them.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

A scientist named Lineweaver I believe, says no. With an expanding universe it is possible for parts of the universe to be moving away from us faster than the speed of light. However, light from objects in those areas would eventually catch up to a part of the universe not moving away at the speed of light and thus eventually catch up to us. So we would interact with them.

This does make sense, but it does not really address what I am saying though. What I mean is similar to if you try to focus a beam of light to a smaller and smaller dot. Eventually the individual photons would want to occupy the same space and would necessarily interfere with each other. This is analogous to two photons from each side of a sufficiently distant star on their way to earth. The angle of motion between them would be so acute, that they would necessarily have to interfere. Is this possible, or did I miss something?

Isn't this the Heisenberg principle? If so, you're right!

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Isn't this the Heisenberg principle? If so, you're right!

Ok cool . So I am guessing that any and all light from stars beyond a certain distance would be undiscernable by us. Photons that interfere with each other can form a new partice with an energy equal to the sum of both photons, no?

The obvious test for an infinitely big, infinitely old universe is that at night you should be bathed by the light of an infinite number of bright stars.

I should have thought of this sooner, but when something is far enough removed from us, would the light not be infinitely red-shifted as the effective receding velocity surpasses C?

Originally Posted by Arch2008

That's the problem with infinity. A speck of dust can get pinged by an infinite number of photons and then reflect a tiny subset of this which is also infinite. A google is a 1 with a hundred zero's after it. This sum is greater than the total number of atomic particles in the universe, yet it is no closer to infinity than the number one is.

The number is actually spelled Googol, Google, the search engine, used the common misspelling of this word on purpose since it could be copyrighted, unlike proper names for numbers such as Billion, trillion, googol, etc...

"GooglePlex" is a play on words combining the popular misspelling of Googolplex and complex, A googolplex is the number one followed by one googol zeroes, or ten raised to the power of one googol, which is such a huge number, that there will probably not be anything that can be measured by such a huge number. I don't think even the spaces between all the atomic particles in the Universe combined are even that big yet, but I could be wrong, and in all likeliness the universe will expand to that size eventually.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

Interesting conjecture, but others have asked these questions without success. The obvious test for an infinitely big, infinitely old universe is that at night you should be bathed by the light of an infinite number of bright stars. Everywhere in the sky you looked, you should see an incredible starshine as bright as the surface of the Sun. But you don't.

What I was suggesting is very similar to the reasoning behind the concept of escape velocity.

If an object moving at escape velocity away from a star never encounters any other gravitational wells, it would seem intuitively that it must inevitably slow down to a point where it would begin to be pulled back toward the object it departed from, and return.

But, this is not the case. The pull of gravity reduces its speed by diminishing fractions that allow it to get smaller forever without reaching zero.

In a tapered universe, where the overall ratio of matter to area is getting smaller and smaller the further out you look, the amount of overall brightness would be increasing by a similar kind of diminishing fraction.

I'll lay out the principle again:

The overall matter density in a solar system is greater than in a galaxy.

The overall matter density in a galaxy is greater than in a cluster of galaxies.

The overall matter density in a cluster of galaxies is greater than in a cluster of clusters of galaxies.

The overall matter density in a cluster of clusters of galaxies is greater than in a cluster of clusters of clusters of galaxies.

.... etc.

Arch2008. To answer a few of your posts:

Radio astronomers have shown that the galaxies were closer in the past.

Could you provide a link to this? I couldn't find any evidence.

The initial creation of solid matter in a BB would be similar to a super-nova where light elements become ever heavier elements as very densely packed particles are smashed together, and particles are smashed into already created atoms at the maximum possible temperature for matter. Hydrogen and helium would only be created in a very low density medium, which was not the case.

Actually the steady state theory is coming back into vogue again as the BB faces ever more troubles.

CMBR and redshifts have alternate explanations and only an intolerant crackpot like Alan Guff would fail to see that.

Singularities are mathsworld nonsense. Probably black holes have fundamental particles in them, like electrons and quarks. SM BH's spin at near light speed so it is possible that they have a maximum size after which they might literally fall apart and spray "new particles" into a surrounding galaxy.

1+1 does = 3.

1.4 could be rounded down to 1. So 1.4 + 1.4 = 2.8 rounded up to 3.

There is no real evidence of the BB. Only effects which point in that direction. Effects which have alternate explanations.

Originally Posted by Arch2008

A scientist named Lineweaver I believe, says no. With an expanding universe it is possible for parts of the universe to be moving away from us faster than the speed of light.

Only where we are moving away from each other with a combined speed faster than light.