Big Bang a Big Loser

[shaw-n]

The following is the first paragraph from this website:
Big Bang a Big Loser in 2005

You’d never know it from official news releases, but the Big Bang is broken and can’t be fixed.

A concession speech may be unlikely in 2005, but the progressive decline of one of the twentieth century’s most popular theories now seems inescapable. The Big Bang has lost its theoretical foundation, which was the Doppler interpretation of redshift (linking redshift to the stretching of light wavelengths as objects move away from us). It is now known that, while almost all observed galaxies are redshifted, the Doppler interpretation of this shift does not provide a reliable measure of velocity or (indirectly) of distance. Quasars and galaxies of different redshift stand in physical proximity to each other and are observed to be connected by filaments of matter. Quasars, whose high redshift would place them at the outer edges of the visible universe, are in fact physically and energetically linked to nearby low-redshift active galaxies.

For those who have a lot of confidence in the Big Bang theory please watch their video (which is 1 hr long) or at least read through some of their material before you try to shoot it down.

[Rolling_Stone]

Fascinating stuff. Thank you.

[metis]

Well, I simply cannot say I'm impressed, which includes the fact that they appear to be very much a commercial enterprise.

The Big Bang is alive and well and, as a matter of fact, recent observations have continued to verify that the cosmologists appear to be on the right track. However, we're far from knowing exactly what caused the Big Bang or even whether it might actually be a Big Bounce, as the most recent article about it in Scientific American discusses. IOW, did our universe become "created" when our previous universe contracted and then re-expanded? There are some cosmologists who think we may be able to know that answer within the next ten years. Oh, if I only live long enough!

[shaw-n]

Here is some more about this matter from this source:
cosmologystatement.org

An Open Letter to the Scientific Community

(Published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004)

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that "science is the culture of doubt", in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry.

Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method -- the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.

[shaw-n]

You see now why some of these groups have to be a commercial enterprise as they receive no funding.
I thought the dark ages were over, but they seem to be quite alive and well in many parts of our world.

[ad_iudicium]

"The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples....In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory."

I'd disagree with that statement, Mendel's works on plants showing hereditary traits wasn't known to Darwin but a big part of this Theory was the passing of hereditary traits through the generations, which we now know as the field of genetics. Both of them relied on hypothetical entities, at the time no one was able to demonstrate the existence of DNA and RNA but now this knowledge has bridged the gap between what these two people observed and the hypothesises and theories generated as a result.

I think they are using a logical fallacy, which is to point at gaps in our knowledge and claim this makes it all false. Really, pointing to the gaps in our knowledge isn't enough - what the writers really need to do is not claim the Big Bang theory is false but come up with a better theory that explains what we observe. It would be a very difficult thing to do given there are other competing theories out there (meaning there is robust debate by physicists on this) and the Big Bang theory is still the one at this stage that explains the data best but that's the challenge facing all scientists in the field.

If they can do this, there's a Nobel Prize waiting for them.

[metis]

There is both mathematical evidence and evidence obtained from various space probes that indicate that there almost undoubtedly was a big bang or big bounce roughly 13.7 b. years ago, so it does indeed qualify as a scientific theory at this time.

[shaw-n]

Maybe a big event of some kind, but we cannot take the red-shift and use that as proof of anything as there are discovered and logged anomalies regarding that being used as any kind of measuring stick.
Really, the point of this thread was not to be argumentative, but to bring up the fact that there are problems with the existing dominant theory and show that there are other ideas out there which are getting squashed by the ones in authority who say that, look, we have a theory already, now quit trying to derail it, support it or shut up.
This is indeed going on in so many fields.

Look at the climate change debate for example, there are differing points of view, but instead of being rational and open-minded, many are becoming quite hostile to those they are labeling as dissenters.
How is that rational?
It is political and is not rational whatsoever.

There are many scientists who are very rational who say that the sun is the driver of climate change, but how can you gain any political ground from that?
You can't, and so the debate becomes a circus and a mudslinging match as those who are blaming climate change on humans have a political agenda which hinges on that theory being dominant.

The same with the evolution vs. intelligent design, allopathic vs. wholistic medicine and many others.
All I see is political battles being fought here and scientists and scholars are the soldiers being manipulated with propaganda and coercion (ya want to keep your tenure, then toe the line)

Surely we learned the folly of that from studying science history and seeing all the authoritarian fools who tried to use their position of authority to squash the dissenting voices, which were later vindicated as being correct????
We are not so modern or progressive that we have overcome this fault as it is there in so many arenas.

[metis]

Red-shift is only one tool that's been used to determine the BB theory.

Also, scientists are far less likely to be conformists than to criticize the concepts of those who they disagree with, as reading the letters to the editor shows in Scientific American or in scientific journals indicates. The groups of scientists who tend to feel the most pressure to conform are those who work for specific businesses and corporations, but the researchers who work through universities especially have a much freer hand.