No Big Bang--Just gentle whisper

Dr Adequate quoted the portion of your post he was inquiring about, here it is again: Wasn't your appellation of ridiculous applied to the notion of the red shift as a Doppler effect? To me, and to Dr Adequate, too, that's what you appear to be saying, and I believe Dr Adequate was inquiring about the criteria you were using to judge it ridiculous.The shift of spectrum toward the red can be caused by Doppler effects, but the cosmological red shift observed for distant galaxies is primarily due to the expansion of space and is not a Doppler effect at all. In other words, distant galaxies are not receding from us because of inherent motion, which would result in a Doppler type shift toward the red, but because of the expansion of the intervening space, which causes the wavelengths of photons to become stretched out during the journey.--Percy

The phrase that Baloney used was "fall off the edge of your universe". Unless this is just a euphemistic way of referring to regions of the universe too distant to affect our own region due to the expansion of intervening space, this is not a current cosmological view. I do find the view that distant galaxies would fall off the edge of the universe to be ridiculous, but that is not part of current theory.--Percy

I don't know if you owe Dr Adequate an apology, but if it makes you feel better...Where you go with this thread is largely up to you. Modern cosmological views are extremely well established and supported by a wealth of evidence. I think things would go best if you used current views as a point of departure rather than making up your own. The latter approach tends to bog down with one side trying to explain the evidential support for modern cosmology, and the other side digging in their heels while complaining that their own ideas are extremely insightful and deserve more serious consideration. In other words, an unproductive impasse. Ayuh! Can't reveal my location, it would threaten anonymity, but it's good to see New England gain representation here at EvC! God, no! I scan the proposed topics every day and noticed that your proposal had been sitting around unaddressed for a while, so I stepped in. After you split it into paragraphs it turned out to be a topic that interests me. I don't usually participate in many threads these days due to lack of time.--Percy

If your ideas developed in a vacuum uninfluenced by evidence or informed opinion, then a vacuum is where they probably belong. Are you interested in learning what modern cosmology believes about the universe, and what evidence causes it to think so? Or do you want to talk about your own personal ideas concerning cosmology?Relativity theory says, and the evidence appears to confirm, that neither matter nor photons can travel faster than the speed of light in any given reference frame, but the expansion of space itself is not governed by this speed limit. Space can expand faster than the speed of light, and if the universe is sufficiently large then inevitably there are portions of our universe receding from us faster than the speed of light.--Percy

The baloney emissions picked up by your baloney detector are coming from you. Please point your baloney detector at an actual science book and all should be well.There is so much scientifically wrong in your post, and so fundamentally wrong, that one almost doesn't know where to begin. I guess I'll just run down the litany of errors, and I'll skip the parts of your message that just make no sense.The attractive force between two objects is proportional to their mass and inversely proportion to the *square* of their distance. And Dr Adequate made no such statement as you claimed about gravity.Mass is an inherent property of matter. It is weight that varies according to the strength of a gravitational field, not mass. It's actually a bit more complicated than that because the measured mass will vary according to relative velocity, and so I believe it would be more accurate to say that it is rest mass or intrinsic mass (they're synonyms) that is an inherent property of matter.There is no evidence for a "center of the universe".If mass is relatively uniformly distributed throughout the universe, then even if there were a "center of the universe" the effect of gravity at that point would be nil, since gravity cancels out. There would be no "holding and securing".Whether or not the universe is expanding, it has no effect on the mass of objects. Once again, mass is an inherent property of matter.While gravity can extend its influence at only the speed of light, there is no evidence for any distance limit.Concerning your argument about degrees of freedom, I think everyone would agree that small objects can fit into many more places than large objects, but this doesn't have anything to do with the Big Bang.A question: Do you think there might be any benefit to learning what science actually says about mass, gravity and the Big Bang?--Percy

Well, this was a short thread. I move that we proceed on to concluding remarks.There's nothing about Bob's claims worth commenting on. What's much more interesting is that here we have yet another example of a complete know-nothing, don't-want-to-know-nothing, coming here to make scientific declarations off the top of his head.Had Bob stuck around we know the course this thread would have taken. We'd try and try and try to explain the actual position of science concerning the Big Bang, including all the evidence behind the theory. We'd talk about red shifts and and cosmic background radiation and distance measurements and the expansion of space and relativity and so forth, and Bob would accept none of it and understand even less. The thread would never actually discuss the Big Bang, but would just become yet another contest of patience versus insatiable ignorance, which almost always ends in an impasse. As has been demonstrated here many times, you can lead a person to facts but you can't make him think.What do people think about threads like this? I was really on the fence about releasing this thread, but I thought Bob might reveal he had a better understanding of the issues than the opening post hinted. I had no idea Bob would reveal himself a nudnik and throw in the towel so quickly. Is it useful for EvC Forum to have discussion threads that are really nothing more than one side explaining and the other side blindly rejecting with no informed discussion actually taking place? The usual reason for endorsing such threads is that a lot of really useful information comes out of these efforts, and I really can't disagree, but wouldn't it be better if this information could instead emerge from a constructive discussion? Or am I asking too much?--Percy

I think it would provide a wonderful counterpoint to Bob's approach if you'd elaborate on this so as to provide an example of the proper way to skeptically approach accepted scientific views.--Percy

Hi Nwr,Thanks much!!! That was great!!! I'm going critique your questioning of BB theory for the benefit of creationists so that they have a rough idea of where I set the bar for challenging scientifically accepted theories. But tentative doesn't mean questionable, and that's your implication. All science is tentative, and some of it is questionable, but all that is tentative is not questionable. In other words, you can't call a scientific theory into question simply because it is tentative. All scientific theories are tentative. You can certainly challenge any scientific theory since none represent timeless truths, but you can only deem them questionable by pointing to incompatible data or contradictory predictions and so forth. This is just a terminology quibble since I think you actually intended to say galaxies, but anyway, while I think it is true that some stars in other galaxies are so bright as to be perceivable by us, for the most part it is entire galaxies for which we calculate red shift, not stars. We actually say much more than that the red shift is due to recessional velocity - we say that the recessional velocity is due to the expansion of space. Relativity tells us this is so. There is no evidential support for tired light. Sylas participated in an excellent discussion with Lyndon Ashmore on the subject a while back: Tired LightI confess to being as capable as anyone of screwing up the explanation of why Olber's paradox isn't an issue, but I'll give it a try anyway. Olber's paradox applies to an infinite universe. While the universe may indeed be infinite, because of the expansion of space there is only a limited portion of it that we can actually perceive, since the rest of the universe is receding from us at speeds greater than that of light. Somewhere in the Tired Light thread it is described in detail by Sylas and Eta (a cosmologist) why the spectrum from tired light theory does not come close to resembling CMBR. Let's see, you have the simple Hubble red shift theory that fails in some circumstances. Then you have the "more complex BB theory" that accurately addresses the same phenomena that the simpler theory fails, but because it makes predictions that we can't yet verify, indeed may in some cases never be able to verify, that's the theory you question. I don't think you need to read any scientific journals to find evidence independent of the red shift, and you already mentioned one in the CMBR. The correspondences between variations in the CMBR and theories of how galaxies form is another independent confirmation. The proportion of elements in the universe as would have been produced in the BB is another confirmation.I'd say your questioning of BB theory reads like one of the better creationist efforts, but as science it is lacking. You've questioned the theory without raising a single anomalous experimental result or failed prediction, and without offering any replacement.I know I must seem ungracious and I apologize for that, because after all I did request that you do this and you came through wonderfully and in short order. But I have to cast the same critical eye at posts from friends as well as foes or have my objectivity questioned.--Percy

Yes, much appreciated! If you're up for it we could go at it on this topic, and maybe it'll turn out to be a positive example of good debate. Yes, exactly. All theories are tentative, so calling BB theory tentative does nothing to distinguish it, in terms of being dubious, from other theories. You have to identify what is deficient about BB theory that leads you to conclude that it is more deserving of challenge than other theories which are all also tentative. All theories could be wrong and can be questioned - the theory of gravity is not special in this regard.I already explained why the objections you listed before are inadequate, you didn't really say anything specific in reply, so bottom line: if you find BB theory dubious, why?--Percy

When I said inadequate I didn't mean inadequate for me to be persuaded. I meant inadequate to qualify as legitimate scientific criticism. You said you were questioning it because it was tentative. I pointed out that all science is tentative, leaving me with no choice but to assume you found something in the theory that caused you to doubt it more than other theories. Pick your own word if you don't like dubious, but you can't say, "I pick this theory to question and not others, but I don't have any scientific justification."Now you've changed your answer from an argument about tentativity and Olber's paradox and are saying it is because it is an extrapolation. But when did extrapolation become questionable? You cite the singularity as a reason, but why not doubt electricity since half of electrical engineering is imaginary numbers. Quantum theory, which has been verified out the kazoo, is awash in infinities and has to go through a renormalization step that can't be justified other than to just say, "It works."So what is it about the extrapolation of the BB that differs from extrapolations in other fields whose theories you find acceptable? If you can't name anything then this, too, is inadequate criticism.So far your approach sounds a lot like the personal incredulity we see from creationists: lots of reasons and complaining, but no evidence. Not a single conflicting data point or failed prediction. What makes you think your personal incredulity is different from theirs?--Percy

Son Goku has save me the trouble of an explanation in his Message 51. You're approaching BB theory just like a creationist would. You are a priori skeptical of the theory due to personal incredulity, and now you're flailing about looking for reasons. As is all science. Look, this is very simple. What is it about BB theory that is *different* from other theories that leads you to have more reservations about it than you do for the other theories? Criticizing BB theory for things that are true of all theories is silly.It looks to me like you're not doing your homework. The likelihood is tiny that you're going to come up with meaningful criticisms of BB theory just sitting there in your armchair. You might at least start investigating the weaknesses that cosmologists themselves see in BB theory. Uh, no.If the discrepancy is too small to measure, then it could have no meaningful effect on our current measurements. Hubble's original measurements were off by a factor of at least two because our information about the brightness of certain star types wasn't as good back then, but even this factor of two revealed an expanding universe. Always possible that I've "jumbled up everything," but if you don't want me drawing my own conclusions about what you're thinking, then the next time I rebut your use of Olber's paradox I suggest you respond instead of ignoring for a message or two. This is just like the creationist approach, general complaining about why they don't like something and no evidential support. Why don't you criticize something specific. This is from the Wikipedia article on the Cosmic Distance Ladder: "The cosmic distance ladder refers to the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects." Read the rest of the article and criticize that! Or something specific from somewhere at least. Oh, get off it. You can misuse any method, including extrapolation. There's nothing inherently wrong with extrapolation. Creationists use recent sun data, extrapolate it, and claim the sun is shrinking at an extreme rate that would mean it was the size of the earth's orbit at the time of the dinosaurs. This extrapolation is as silly as making a couple measurements as the tide is coming in at La Jolla and calculating that within a few days the ocean will be lapping at the city limits of Phoenix.So tell us what, specifically, is wrong with the extrapolation used in BB theory. Not if you don't think about it, but infinitely dense matter isn't real, and neither are imaginary numbers. More unspecific criticism.Both QED and BB theory have extremely strong experimental *and* theoretical support. If there's some qualitative or quantitative flaw in BB theory that in character is not possessed by other theories like QED then please let us know what it is, but stop with all the unspecific disparagement. BB theory is tentative just like all theory. I'm not holding it up as an unchallengeable icon, but I am saying that if you're going to level criticism at it then at a minimum you must find criticism that possesses at least some semblance of the same scientific legitimacy as the supporting evidence. Yeah, and I believe it was evidence that caused the challenge to Newtonianism. What evidence is causing your challenge to the BB? What anomalous data can you point to? What theoretical conundrums indicate problems? Well, I see now I'm not only dealing with Ole Poor Buz, but also Ole Poor Nwr. I guess I have this effect on people. Seriously, do I need to point out the inaccuracies in that characterization of my position on tentativity? Or can we just forget that tripe and move on.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Hi Nwr,What we've seen is that the requests for evidence pushed you further and further from factual considerations and into philosophical arguments. The bottom line is that you have no evidential or theoretical basis for being personally skeptical of BB theory.You might find your philosophical arguments satisfying, but consider how you'd feel if a creationist used the same type of arguments to argue for flood theory. Radiometric dating requires extrapolation of decay rates over long periods of time, and how do we know that small unmeasurable differences don't become significant over a few thousand years. The geologists make both epistemic and metaphysical claims, and when they make claims about the way layers formed long ago, that's just a metaphysical claim with unsatisfying supporting evidence.A wise philosopher once said (it was Crash, actually, Message 14), "If you're being asked to defend a scientific proposal or model, and you're referencing Popper instead of evidence, then what you're doing is nonsense." Sylas's reply was, "Spot on!"Speaking of Sylas, he once said this about the Big Bang in Message 5: Cavediver had some excellent posts in the same thread, and maybe he'll spend some time on the issue here. I think my real problem is that your casual dismissal of BB theory as insufficiently supported is not made from a position of knowledge, and you conceded that at the outset. But it was a great opportunity to highlight the problems with challenging theory with only personal or philosophical skepticism, and I thank you for being an extremely challenging foil.--Percy

Hi Nwr,It sounds like you feel abused and purposefully misinterpreted, and that's probably because it was my intention to treat you the same as a creationist who, for the umpteenth time, was challenging science with no evidence. You don't feel you were doing that (the "challenging science with no evidence part", not the "umpteenth time" part, which of course you weren't doing) and you described differences between your approach and the creationist approach, but I'm not sure those distinctions loom as large to others as they do to you. For example, you said you would rebut with evidence a creationist who used your approach to argue for flood theory, but the same is true of your questioning of the Big Bang. That's why I quoted Sylas's characterization of Big Bang theory as a shortcut, since I don't have time to get into it in detail.In other words, I'm done. I know you entered this reluctantly, and I appreciate that you stuck with it. This would be fascinating to continue, but you raised no concrete evidence to focus on, so it would be a real tough row to find evidence that is an effective counter to the position that the evidence isn't sufficient for you personally. I'd effectively be in the position of doing a serial presentation to you: "Is this evidence good enough? No? How about this evidence over here? No? Well then, how about this evidence?" I'm sure there will be future opportunities to discuss this, which would be good, because I'm intrigued by your position. Anyway, I hope there are no hard feelings.--Percy

Well, just the same, thanks for participating. --Percy

M33 qualifies as local. It's recessional velocity has been measured using VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry), see for example M33 Distance and Motion. They found that it is moving relative to the Milky Way with a velocity vector of 190+/-59 km/sec, and reading on to page 12 you can find that it is receding from us at the rate of 39+/-9 km/sec. The Hubble constant is around 71 km/sec/Mpc, M33 is about .96 Mpc away, so it should be receding at around 70 km/sec, so it's receding at only about half the Hubble derived rate. The closer M31 galaxy, Andromeda, is .77 Mpc away and is approaching us at about 300 km/sec. As expected, local motions overwhelm the contributions from the expansion of the universe for relatively close objects.This highlights the difficulty of the problem that you and Nwr have briefly touched upon. You want distance and velocity measurements made by means other than measurements of electromagnetic frequency shifting effects, which includes VLBI, yet even local objects that are far too distant for any other methods display a range of recessional velocities that overwhelm any contribution from the expansion of the universe. So you need measurements of distance and motion that are independent of electromagnetic frequency effects for much more distant objects than M31 and M33.In other words, you're posing a question that is unlikely in the extreme to have an answer in any number of human lifetimes. It's fine to pose such questions, but one shouldn't invoke skepticism simply because unanswerable questions exist. If existing evidence is insufficient to justify confidence then the insufficiency should be identified and described. The evidential and theoretical foundations of the Big Bang are extremely strong. Pointing to an unanswerable question simply avoids focusing on an examination of the existing positive evidence. I'm not sure how one would equate skepticism about whether the Big Bang happened with other skeptical positions, such as that the extent in time of earth history has been overestimated by about 4.56 billion years, but they certainly seem much closer in skeptical degree to each other than to skepticism of, say, the precise position of Australopithecus afarensis in the hominid family tree.I was hoping the discussion between you and Nwr would develop into an examination of the evidence for the Big Bang and am disappointed that this unanswerable and irrelevant measurement question seems to have closed the discussion.--Percy