Big Bang...How Did it Happen?

I just think for myself instead of having others think for me. I do believe I even mentioned the possibility I was wrong, therefore it would be improbably that I hold my thinking in so high esteem. Any of that mountain of evidence show up yet?Joe

Calculus is valid and important mathematics. The 2+2=5 stuff is humour - maths is well capable of proving that 2+2=4 (under the usual meanings of 2, 4, + and =).I don't understand we've told you a whole bunch of experiments that prove that Einstein is correct. I can tell you another - radioactive particles accelerated around a ring show a longer half-life than stationary ones. It won't convince you because you've apparently deciced that no experiment is good enough to convince you of something you don't already believe in. I cannot imagine a better shield of invicible ignorance. This is false - Science has never believed the earth was the center of everything. Science didn't exist until long after we'd progressed to heliocentrism. It isn't Science until your basing it on experiment and observation and requiring that your models match it.

Do you do your own plumbing instead of having others do it for you?Do you do your own surgery instead of having others do it for you?Do you do your own computer programming instead of having others do it for you?What's different about constructing cosmological models that you believe makes all humans born with the qualifications to do it?

"Do you do your own plumbing instead of having others do it for you?"Yes. While as a young (younger?) squirt, my family and I actualy built our own house. The only thing we didn't do was pour the concrete. Electrical, plumbing, roofing, drywalling, septic, we did it all. A freaking 5000 sq. ft. house. I know all to much about plumbing and the rest."Do you do your own surgery instead of having others do it for you?"Well, I did do a minor opporation on myself because I didn't have insurance at the time. Never actually had any surgury besides that, I'm a healthy young buck."Do you do your own computer programming instead of having others do it for you?"Thats actually part of my job in the Navy.
This is fun...there's things I havn't done, like make my own clothes. But everything you've asked me, I've done at one time or another. I also worked with my dad, at his job doing factory automation.But to the point of your post:
I want to know why you think people shouldn't think for themselves and just blindly follow the "experts". Or, maybe not all humans are "born with the qualifications" for thinking for themselves. I realize you might one of those who call Fruit of the Loom when putting on a pair of underware, but that doesn't mean I need to exsist at a level of that much dependence on others. I have a brain, such as it is, and I use it (occasionally). So go on following your scientist with religious fervor. I mean, you're not qualified to think any more then I am. Be a robot, be happy and good luck.

Way to misunderstand, Navy.The point is that you, by your own admission, are both ignorant about most of science and don't understand the science you know about. Given that you don't know about it and don't understand it - how can you possibly judge it? Science is hard. Understanding science is hard. It takes years of dedicated study and effort, and yet you think you are equally placed to judge at nineteen with very little knowledge or education?How can you be using your brain to understand, while you're so profoundly ignorant of the facts? How can you use your brain while you refuse to accept anything that contradicts what you already think? What makes you think your going to get closer to the truth by ignoring the hard work, diligance and intelligence of others, working using the world's single, most successful means of acquiring working, useful and reliable knowledge?

If a weather expert told you it was going to be 700 degrees on sunday, would you believe him?
But he has spent his life in hard work and preporation for that job, I mean, he has a degree.
My thing is I see a pattern of experts saying stuff that doesn't make sense like that.
AND, even if ALL of Einstein's theorys are right, would that prove the Big Bang?Joe

That's not an accurate analogy. It's like the weather man predicting it will be 700 degrees last sunday on the tuesday, it actually being 700 degrees last sunday and you still not believing him. No, it doesn't - the two are seperate things with seperate evidence. And, incidently, Einstein's theories are believed to be a tiny bit out anyway (in particular there is a problem reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics).

So what evidence am I ignoring?[This message has been edited by Navy10E, 03-19-2004]

To answer this it would help to better understand what you're questioning. Are you asking:

• What came before the Big Bang? (we don't know, by the way)
• Was there a Big Bang?
• Is the universe expanding?
• What is the evidence for Einsteinian relativity?
• What is the evidence for antimatter?
• Other questions?

You've stated several times that you believe people are blindly accepting what scientists say. I think you'll find this isn't the case. First, theories in science become accepted because scientists become convinced, and it's evidence that does the convincing. If Eddington had found light wasn't bent by gravity in 1919 then when you said "Einstein" people would answer, "Who?" Einstein wasn't born into the great and respected scientist job. He earned this position because his theories were supported by evidence and revolutionized science in the early 20th century.It is possible you're looking at things the wrong way around. You don't just declare yourself a great scientist and then make sweeping pronouncments. Rather, you first do the hard work and establish a record of accomplishment recognized by other scientists, and only then might you become recognized as a great scientist.Crash's plumbing example might help a little. Do you call a plumber who declares that he's a great plumber? Or do you call a plumber who has a reputation in your community for being a great plumber? The latter, right? And how did he get the reputation for being a great plumber? He didn't just say, "Hey, I'm a great plumber, hire me." No, he worked on job after job after job for year after year after year and established a record of quality work.In general, that's how scientists do it, too.--Percy

About Einstein? See posts #78, #79, #80 and #80 as well as my post #92. Clear experimental evidence that Einstein is right.

Christ, dude, of course I don't think that.What I'm saying is that there's a reason we call them "experts". Cosmologists have training in the construction of theory and analysis of data that you do not. Inflationary models of the universe are the results of this expertise.What I'm saying is that a reasonable layman, when confronted with a scientific model that all the experts support but doesn't make sense to him, concludes that the most likely explanation is that his understanding is in error, not that he's somehow smarter than an entire community of experts in a field he's never even studied.I just don't understand how you conclude from your own ignorance that modern cosmology is in error.I mean, we know that you don't understand the theories in question. Why isn't your response "I want to learn, tell me more?" like an intelligent person? Why do you respond "I don't understand it so it can't be right?" So what's stopping you now?

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Before I end this, I want to say, that Einstien, Newton, Faraday, Kepler, etc. These men were amazingly brilliant. I would wet my pants if were to talk to any one of them. But when it comes down to it, where the proverbial rubber meets the road, I have to side with what makes sense. Not with a list of numbers. Not with the papers. Not even with people who are so much smarter then me, that they would have trouble stooping low enought to read what I'm writting here.

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Are you saying that as soon as you don't understand something, or it doesn't make sense to YOU, that it has to be wrong? Am I understanding you correctly? The fact of the matter is that the numbers do make sense to those trained in the field.If you were alive 5,000 years ago and somebody told you the earth was a sphere, would you say "But it looks flat, a round earth makes no sense to me."If you were alive 3,000 years ago and somebody said that the Earth goes around the sun, would you say "But I can see the Sun moving around the Earth, this makes no sense to me, you have to be wrong. Besides, the Bible says that the Earth is fixed in the sky."If you were alive 200 years ago, would you have said "Disease isn't caused by microscopic organisms, it is caused by bad humors. Germs make no sense to me, you have to be wrong."As you can see, what makes sense to people is often wrong. You have to dig a little deeper than a cursory investigation, you have to dig deep into the facts and numbers. You then have to test your theories. Simple observation does not always work.To answer your question on why scientists trust the work of other scientists in a separate field, the answer is simple. We know how competition in science is set up. If you have a ground breaking theory, and you can support it and none of the data falsifies it, you are guaranteed a well fulfilled career. There is strong competition within each field of science, and it is the competition that creates strong, well supported theories.Cold fusion was mentioned earlier. This discovery is the holy grail of physics, and may well be impossible. When a group of investigators claimed that they had produced cold fusion, the scientific community was hot on their tails. They did not want their competition to be right, they wanted to be the first to discover it, or feel content in saying that it was nearly impossible. What did they do? They tried to replicate their results, as well as forcing the original investigators to replicate their own work. It has yet to be repeated after numerous trials. If it can't be repeated, it isn't reliable, and that is where cold fusion stands today. It is the competition within science that has lead to the discovery of many frauds and misrepresentations, and keeps scientific theories strong and healthy. Until you actually practice science as a profession you will not fully understand this aspect, but trust me it exists.[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 03-19-2004]

I am disappointed. I have yet to have even one person, in a logical manner, lay out for me the scientific proof for the Big Bang. What I have received is evidence for theories and ideas that could easily be accepted by both the Big Bang and the Creation hypothesis'.Still calling them how I see them-
Joe[This message has been edited by Navy10E, 03-21-2004]

1) All galaxies are moving away from each other in a way consistent with expanding space.2) The Big Bang theory predicted the following observations to a precise degree:3) No matter which direction you look in space, you see the same microwave radiation coming towards you.4) Experiments with high-energy particle accelerators confirm that at high enough energies the fundamental forces start to combine.None of the above makes sense in a universe created by God just as it is now, unless God is a liar. God may very well have started the universe. That would still be consistent with the Big Bang, which does not make reference to any gods.That's all the evidence that I know about. I'm sure there's more but that's all I have the ability to explain. Any questions?

The chain of evidence has been brought up before, but I can summarize it as this. If you want specific information on a point, and google doesn't turn anything up, please ask about that specific bit.Observation: Almost all galaxies are red-shifted, which means they are moving away from us. Their red-shift is directly proportional to the distance from us.Conclution: The space-time expands continously. (Insert baloon allegory).Logical derivation: If the space-time expands as time passes, it must have been smaller the further back in time you go. However, since the universe can't have a negative volume, there must be a limit to how far back you can go.Prediction: At one point, slightly after the limit, all mass and energy should have been compressed together, hence hot and more or less evenly spread out. We should see this as a background radiation, no matter which direction we look in.Experiment: This was confirmed in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.Additional test: If there is a backward limit on how far back we can go before space is too small to sustain stellar objects, we should never get correct measurements which shows objects to be older than this limit. Hence, if someone shows that a certain process in our universe takes, say, 25 billion years and never any shorter, but we still see the results of it, we need to think things over.