bulletproof alternate universe

You still don't get this; but you are showing some signs of assimilating a couple of points, so it may be worth trying again.First point. The big bang model (or family of models) for cosmology is an empirical model; not a metaphysical one. It models physical reality; and stands or falls by how well it describes the physical world.The metaphysical issues about who (if anyone) created the universe, or design and meaning in the universe, etc, are not addressed by the big bang. The big bang -- like any other proposed empirical model for aspects of the physical world -- is used equally by theists, atheists, deists, agnostics, or folks who don't care about metaphysics.To call the big bang metaphysical is just wrong. It may be correct, or incorrect, in various aspects; but this is established only by physical correspondences to processes and events; not by any metaphysics. Metaphysics may try to become informed by and integrate what we know of the physical universe, but that applies for any empirical model.Second; it is really misleading to speak of the big bang as a little speck. We've gone over this, but it never seems to sink in. Let's try again.If the big bang model is correct, then very early stages of the universe were extremely hot and dense, to such an exceptional degree that many amateurs who read about it just cannot accept that scientists are serious with such a model. But actually, there is no intrinsic physical problem with such states. The questions are simply to do with trying to evaluate the evidence which might tell us more about the early universe.The big bang model does not, repeat does not, imply anything about a total size of the universe in this state. The big bang model admits an infinite universe, or a finite universe of any sufficiently large size. The notion of "small size" which is frequently expressed is not speaking of any "speck" or "particle"; but only of the size of the region which corresponds to the now visible universe, given the effects of relativistic expansion of space.According to big bang cosmology, if we could take an instantaneous snapshot of the very early universe, at the stages we are speaking of, we would have a seething dense soup of elementary particles; even more elementary than protons or neutrons. This is called "quark-gluon" soup. This would be a continuous soup, with no identifiable edge or particle or speck or primeval atom or anything like that which corresponds to the now visible universe. What cosmologists do is draw an imaginary sphere inside this soup, to contain all the matter and energy that will become what we now see, 13.7 billion years later.Third point. Attempts to match up some 6200 creationist model with what we know of the universe descend into the absurd long before we run into any issues with big bang or the origins of the universe. The galaxy itself is some 70,000 light years across. The wealth of available evidence absolutely rules out any possibilty of detectable changes to the speed of light over those time spans. Either the universe is old, or light was created in transit ... which would mean that the detailed measurements we make of many stars within our own galaxy are not even looing at stars; that are just looking at light which somehow got formed in regions close to Earth to look like it comes from distant stars.Cheers -- Sylas

You are indeed bullet proof; such determined and resolute stupidity is proof against any amount of learning. S'okay by me. I suspect you are not quite as confident as you sound, and that deep down you may have this nagging concern that perhaps there might even be good reasons why modern cosmology is the way it is, and good reason why nobody at all seems at all moved by your intuitions. But I could be wrong about that. Shug.Your "model" is not an alternative to anything. It is a confused attempt to put an articifical boundary around your 6200 year time line, and call that an origin of some incoherently described bafflegab about spirit universes or whatever else. It is not based on anything in the bible, or any empirical evidence. Since it tries to include the possibility of an old universe, it isn't even an alternative to the big bang. It's bullet proof like fog is bullet proof.You still don't understand the orange analogy, or why your comments about specks fail to accurately describe the big bang model. But I think that explanations of this point have helped others understand modern cosmology a bit better.Cheers -- Sylas

There is no such space or time in modern cosmological models. Yes, you are correct. The "soup" had "parts" in the sense that space was filled with a seething mass of very elementary particles.Before that, we just don't know. However, when you speak of "before" there are some tricky issues to get past, which are really really hard to understand.Our conventional understanding of time is that it is a kind of backdrop against which things occur. We intuitively think you can always assume more time into the past.That turns out not to be the case in relativistic physics.Interestingly, St Ausgustine was one of the very early church fathers, and he has a perspective on God and time which is in some ways similar to that of many modern Christians who are aware of the physics of relativity. He regards time itself as a creation of God, so that you can't just speak of God in time who creates at some identifiable moment in time. His ideas on creation were not, of course, an anticipation of modern relativistic cosmology, but he did grasp that time itself is a thing for which we need to give an account; rather than an inevitable backdrop.In relativistic cosmology, space and time are aspects of one spacetime continuum; and that continuum may be bounded in the past. That is, there is a limit beyond which not even time exists; so you can't speak of "before". There is no "before".Relativistic models involve an initial instant; and there is no "before" that instant. That instant is the "singularity"; which is just a word that means at that time all our descriptions make one great big division by zero, and become undefined.Of course, because modern physics actually breaks down before you get to this instant, the correct answer is that we just don't know what comes before the quark-gluon soup. However, that does not mean you can assume that there was such a time as one second before the quark gluon soup. We can't assume that; in fact it is almost certainly invalid. If we ever to come up with a more complete picture of events prior to quark gluon soup, it is mostly unlikely to simply recover older simpler intuitions about the flow of time. It will be something we don't know. What observable evidence would be neccessary to disprove or discard the notion of matter being made up of atoms?One thing that people have a trouble grasping is that big bang cosmology is not just a weird assumption. It is solidly grounded in empirical evidence and observation, and it is accepted precisely because nothing else makes sense.But we could certainly imagine some observational evidence which would throw a huge spanner in the works.For example; if it could be found that there were two galaxies in orbit around one another, but that had very different red shifts. This would mean that redshift is not a distance indicator, and would blow apart the major evidence for expansion of space. Halton Arp is famous for proposing physical links between high red shift quasars and low red shift galaxies. Few astronomers are persuaded by his evidence on this.If the background radiation suddenly changed frequency to match a blackbody of 2.9K (rather than 2.7K), that would be inexplicable in big bang cosmology.Cheers -- Sylas

In a fit of masochism; I'll continue this farce.The phrasing above is bad. (Actually, given recent history, arkathon is just being deliberately stupid.)But if we ignore that, we can consider the evidence for the big bang; the expansion of space from early stages of extreme density. Here is the evidence in the order of importance as I percieve it.

• Microwave background radiation. This was predicted in advance of its discovery, on the basis of big bang cosmology. The initial theoretical calculation of blackbody radiation in an expanding universe was performed in 1934. The explicit prediction of a cosmic background, based on big bang cosmology, was made in 1948. Confirmation of the predicted background was made in 1965. From the 1990s onwards, COBE and other measurements have probed the radiation in detail, leading to considerable gains in understanding of the cosmological history of the universe. In particular, detection of a predicted polarity in the CMB is further empirical confirmation. I expect that the next five years will bring the first direct tests of the inflationary epoch in the big bang; already stongly indicated by available evidence. But the universe is a surprising place; if inflation is disconfirmed things could get really interesting.
• Cosmological red shift. This is the first evidence found for the big bang. Red shifts in galaxies were first detected around 1914, and then related to distance by Hubble in around 1929. This showed that the universe was expanding. Combined with the implications of relativity, this was the start of modern big bang cosmology. Since then, further tests on such things as supernova light curves have confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that red shift is caused by the expansion of space.
• Abundences of light isotopes in the universe. The relative proportions of isotopes of Hydrogen, Helium, Beryllium and Lithium are a good match to predictions of big bang nucleosynthesis. For example, Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) occurs in quantities corresponding to cooling of a spuerheated mass of protons and neutrons; but is not produced by any other known natural process; and it is destroyed by fusion processes in stars.
• The age of oldest stars and galaxies. This is the weakest line of evidence, and indeed it is still sometimes cited as an example of a problem for the theory. Basically, big bang cosmology implies that the oldest stares and galaxies and clusters should be nearly as old as the universe, but certainly not older. About ten years ago there was an issue with estimates of the age of the universe that were a bit too small, and ages for some stars that were a bit too big. That problem is now pretty much resolved. The link is a good discussion. The end result is that the oldest stars and clusters turn out to be of the expected age to match big bang cosmology.
• Relativity. This is not the same as a line of evidence, but it has an important role for our confidence in the big bang. When we see a new planetoid, like Sedna, we can discover its orbit around the Sun, even though we have limited observations, and each orbit takes 10,500 years. From limited motions, we just apply basic physics to get the whole orbit, without any basis for doubt. General relativity gives the same kind of process for space itself. In the solutions of Einstein's equations, space is unstable; it will either expand or contract (depending on parameters, much like an orbit depends on parameters). A difference is that solutions to the relativistic equations give a finite origin in time, called the singularity, and enormous densities of objects in compressed space shortly after the singularity. The expansion of the universe is not just an ad hoc explanation for red shift; it involves changes to spacetime structure that fit closely to relativitistic models. Relativity is also confirmed by a host of observations I have not listed. It implies that the universe has come from a condition of enormous heat and density and compression of space. Either this is true, or else relativity itself is all wet. Now we actually know a bit about why we expect relativity to break down before the singularity; but physics as we have tested it allows us to extend back with great confidence to states of extraordinary density, especially given the good fit with other lines of evidence. See the Cambridge Cosmology site.

Cheers -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 03-31-2004]

I have liberally reformatted arkathon's post in this quote. The text is unchanged; the reformatting makes it more readable, but no more sensible. Text in yellow added by me. On the radiation; the extract indicates that all alternative explanations of the CMB are discredited. That means, for the glacially slow amongst us, that there have been extensive observations and measurements and tests to consider any possible alternatives for the CMB. All (and I do mean all) the alternatives are disproved.Arkathon's "allowance" of a few thousand years is bizarre; innocent of the faintest comprehension of what is involved. CMB radiation is from outside the galaxy, so it is already more than several thousand years old before you even get started. The measured expansion -- and I do mean measured, in such things as super nova light curves from distant galaxies -- can only possibly have taken billions of years at observed expansion rates. The directly observed expansion in galactic red shifts is for objects up to about ten billion light years away.Right now direct observation is looking ten billion light years into the past. The only extrapolation involved takes a directly observed 10 billion years of expansion and extends it 30% or so to the singularity at 13.7 billion years ago. If the CMB is evidence for expansion — and it most certainly is — then the CMB is a greatly stretched view of the big bang from about 13.4 billion years ago, a mere 300,000 years after the singularity.It is as if an archaeologist studied the remains of ancient civilizations, and formed a theory about political or social trends from that data. Arkathon's response corresponds to conceding the force of the data, but only allowing it to be extrapolated back over last week.On the abundances of light isotopes, and the question of what else it might be a match for, the answer is "nothing". There is no process known which can produce the isotopes in question, other than the thick soup of compressed protons and neutrons in the early universe. One can, of course, make up fantasies from nothing; like the Deuterium fairy. But scientifically speaking, there simply is no alternative method on the table, and no credible prospect for surprising unknown processes which might make Deuterium.The final two comments from arkathon, on ages of stars and on relativity, are merely gibberish. He just does not understand what he is talking about here. That is not an insult; no one should be expected to understand new and complicated areas of science right off the bat. Where arkathon is different from a normal student learning about such things is where he claims to be "batting 100", or the implication that he has made any coherent criticism at all of the big bang -- still incorrectly described as a "speck". The only criticism has been that arkathon won't believe it. There is not even at attempt to make any actual criticism or objection. He just doesn't believe it, and in his mind that somehow "out guns" all the rest of the information he's been given.I know this is pointless and frustrating to other people who don't think arkathon is worth engaging. I don't mind; it is clear arkathon is, in his correct condition, quite incapable of making any progress on understanding these things. And there is no great issue of refuting him; he could only possibly be persuasive to folks already in the same stake of ignorance and denial. But if you sit back and relax, it is all a rather mind blowing psychological spectacle.Cheers — Sylas Edited to refine comments on CBE and expansion.[This message has been edited by Sylas, 03-31-2004]

All. Arkathon's stuff does not address CMB. His material is not something you could look for, and it apparently allows for the normal universe studied by science to exist for billions of years (with an apparent proviso that for reasons unknown and causes unexplained there might be something ill-defined which might have been different in some way or other which might make everything we know wrong and hey you can't prove me wrong so I'm batting 100 and making unassailable criticisms of conventional science.)Arkathon's spirit universe does not even attempt to be a model for empirical data. I'm explaining the empirical basis for conventional cosmology, which relates to the physical universe we see and touch. Deuterium is part of the physical universe. We know a lot about it, and we study it directly. It gets destroyed in the nuclear processes taking place in stars. It is unaffected by the chemical processes taking place on Earth. And it is formed if you have a very dense soup of free protons and neutrons. Free neutrons are unstable; they have a half life of about 15 minutes, from memory.There are no other processes which give a match for observed isotope distributions, other than the big bang. The Deuterium fairy, or a supernatural pop into existence of a universe complete with isotopes already in existence in observed distributions, is not a match, because it gives no basis at all for predicting anything about observation. Yes, I do know what I am talking about, and these posts are already explaining at considerable length, with plenty of references for those who want to explore further. Many folks have found them useful. There are some here who understand it even better than I do; I'm just the disturbed individual who can be bothered for some unfathomable reason explaining in these absurd threads. If you have a specific question, ask away. I'll answer if I can, or tell you if I can't. But I won't write a whole textbook. Vague questioners who demand an explanation of every jot and titel should go away, find a library, and read a book. I've also given a heap of references which people can use to explore further. The problem is with the term "something". The visible universe is not an identifiable thing; it is just the portion of things we are able to see. The phrase "speck" is misleading, because it fails to capture this distinction. Cosmology is tough to explain to a novice, and there are many terms used that are really misleading. Terms like "speck", and "explosion", and "primeval atom" are evocative... but wrong.The term "soup" is intended to convey the idea of dense mixture of materials. The identifiable things in the "quark-gluon soup" are just particles -- quarks, photons, gluons, and others even more exotic. No "universes". No "speck" that will become a universe. Just a very very hot and dense mix of elementary particles.That dense mix expanded and cooled over time. Right now the universe is filled with very cool microwave radiation. There are also occasional clumps of particles held together by gravity. We call those clumps "galaxies". This is true as far as we can see, with no indication or reason to think it gets substantially different as you move past the horizon of our visibility.Cheers -- Sylas

Yes, there is something wrong with this, actually.I sympathize; this is not easy stuff. But it will help if you try to co-operate a bit. I mean it when I say there is something wrong with speaking of a little speck. That notion does not correspond to what is actually proposed in modern cosmology.I will try, again, to explain the matter. Try to keep in mind; I am not trying to undermine your faith in God, or to say God is uninvolved in creation. I am purely and simply trying to help you understand the scientific model, now effectively universal amongst all cosmologists, of what the universe was like roughly 13.7 billion years ago.Even if you don't believe the universe is that old, if you are going to talk about the scientific models you disagree with, it would be wise to try and understand those models a bit better.What I have consistently pointed out as an error, right from the start, is to speak of the universe being a certain size at a certain time. Likewise, it is an error to speak of a particle, speck, primeval atom, or identifiable thing of any kind which was a certain size and then grew into the present universe.The plain fact is that we don't know the total size of the universe, either now or at any other time. The size of the universe is not established by big bang cosmology. In fact, we don't even know if the universe is finite, or infinite. And if it is infinite, then it has always been infinite, now and at any moment you pick in the past.Different individual scientists have different philosophical perspectives on this, but so far no way to test those ideas as science. There are many speculative cosmological models proposed which would answer this question, but we are unable to test any of them at present. One of the models mentioned in this forum in several contexts is the ekpyrosis theory. This is a really interesting idea; but it is not an alternative to the big bang. It is a new way for the bang to get started, and in such a way that there is no need for an inflationary epoch to explain the horizon problem, and no initial singularity. This is deep waters; but a starting point to even grasp the issues is to comprehend the basic underlying details of big bang expansion, which the ekpyrosis theory includes and endeavours to explain.So back to the big bang.When I say "soup", I am NOT saying that the "speck" was soupy. I am saying that there was no speck. As long as you keep thinking about "specks" there are still aspects of cosmological expansion as used in science that you have not yet understood.When I speak of "soup" I speak of a substance; not a thing. It makes no sense to ask how big "soup" is, or what is the size of "water". What we are saying is that at this early stage, the universe was not (as it is now) mostly empty space, with isolated clumps of matter. It was thick... very thick, and filled with a strange kind of soup.Imagine that everything you can see is filled with this soup. If you were to see it, you'd be in the soup yourself, there is no outside of the soup. The whole universe is filled with it. This would be difficult, because the soup is far more violent than the center of the Sun. Imagine the whole universe as far as the best of our telescopes could reach being all something like the center of our Sun, but far hotter and more dense and more violent. No edge. No boundaries. No specks.Got that in your mind's eye? You don't have to believe it; you may never believe it. That's up to you. I just want to help you get a slightly better understanding of what cosmologists believe, so exercise that imagination and give it a try. It is about to get worse. Now we add the expansion of space. To grasp this, think of a universe filled with bread dough; and the dough is rising. Again, there is no edge or boundary; everything is filled with dough. But it still rises... this is a bit like the expansion of space. As dough rises, it gets a bit less dense. If you take any little region inside the rising loaf, and watch it rise, the same amount of dough now fills a larger region.In the conditions of extreme density in the early universe, this expansion is rapid. (If we consider inflationary models, expansion is fantastically rapid; but we don't really need to worry about that at this stage.)If you have a little ray of light in this thick soup, it does not get far. For the first 300,000 years or so, the universe was too thick for light to pass through; it was opaque. But if light could move at the speed of light through the soup, distant regions would be carried by the expansion of space so fast that the light can't even catch up! This has nothing to do with travelling faster than light. Travel refers to movement through space, and the speed of light is a limit on travel through space. It is no limit at all on general expansion of space.A consequence of this expansion is that we can define within this thick soup a region, sufficiently large that light cannot ever get from one side to the other, because the expansion increases the required distances too rapidly for light to keep up. That region is not a speck. It is like a portion of a vast ocean that you are able to see from a ship. What you see is not a speck, and the boundary of your vision is not a real edge. The ocean carries on regardless far beyond what you can see.How large is this region? It depends on when you ask, because it depends on how fast the expansion is proceeding.Modern cosmology proposes that a small fraction of a second after the big bang, the size of this "horizon of visibility" was very small. This is not the size of any speck; it is simply an indication of how far away in the space are points that can see each other after 13.7 billion years.Since nothing travels faster than light, this means that everything we now see was once compressed within a small region of this small size... just like very thick dough before it has risen to become light and fluffy. But this small region would not look like a speck; because all you have is a universe of unknown size, filled with quark-gluon soup. Yes, but he tried to do that with incoherent and inconsistent gibberish; not with any material you could look for in empirical evidence. In fact, his first post in the thread includes phrases such as "it really is billions of our light years away" and "It leaves science pretty well intact!".Cheers -- Sylas (Edit replaced million with billion and fixed some spelling)[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-01-2004]

Excellent idea, but you can go much further. If all of this is new to you, then you can't even be sure that others here are not all in the same asylum as myself. Anything written in an on-line discussion forum like this is necessarily written comparatively quickly and without any review process. It should never be your final guide. You should check not only with a few other people on-line; you should also try reading a few books on the subject; and you should not feel obliged to do all that overnight.Books come in a great range of levels; and some popular books will repeat some of the common errors. But there are also a number of excellent books by prominent scientists who take time from their research to be involved also in the important task of making science accessible to the rest of us. Check out the background of the authors as far as you can (not always easy). Look for books which are actually by people who are cited in other books as leading researchers in their own right. Hawking, Guth, Linde, Weinberg (now dated), Davies, etc. John Gribbin is, I think, a good guide at a comparatively accessible level, and Gribbin also has a deeper understanding that helps anticipate and avoid common misunderstandings by a reader. I'll bet Eta would have some better suggestions for writers as well.On-line sources are easy to obtain, but harder to check for quality control. They can be at too technical a level for the regular readers, or else they can be nonsense from people who don't really know what they are talking about. To get at the models used in conventional science, focus on web sites at major universities and well known research organizations; but use this as a supplement to reading.You'll find that the terms I use; such as "soup" and "rising bread" and "horizons" are very common analogies of things from normal experience which are used to help explain this material. I've deliberately avoided the "balloon" analogy, which is very common but often causes more confusion because of subtleties with higher dimensions that are hard to grasp at first.You can use Google just to see who else uses these analogies. For example, search for "rising bread" and "relativity" together, or "rising dough" with "big bang", or other such combinations.Try a google for "quark-gluon soup" and just see how many hits you get. This search will turn up some fascinating research being conducted at major accelerators like CERN; and the research will invariably indicate that this is a state of matter which existed early in the universe. At such early stages there is a heap of room for a lot of new information and discovery to refine our models; so the CERN research is pretty exciting stuff.I'm not an expert in this; just a well read amateur. The analogies I use just are ones which I have taken from others who are experts.The ultimate description of the model is its mathematical representation; not the analogies we use to try and describe it. My maths is good, but not expert; in particular I struggle with general relativity, and really need a good textbook beside me. But I think I know the underlying models in sufficient detail to make a rough evaluation of different analogies, to identify places where they work and where they fall down.I don't require a reply to anything, though of course you are welcome as you wish. I recommend you focus on checking my sanity thoroughly.If any of this has been of use or interest, or even if not, then you are most welcome.Cheers -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-01-2004]

You dishonest little turd... don't you DARE try to thank me for putting effort into these posts, and claim to be looking into the matter, when you deliberately play the moron with stuff like this.The "it" in that quote you extracted from another thread is plainly and clearly identified in the original post, and it DOES NOT refer to the universe. You propose an inconsistency by ignoring everything I was actually saying in the posts, ripping two disconnected sentences out of their context, and impling the pronoun "it" in the first extract is a reference to "the universe" in the second.What a revolting display of a bankrupt intellect! Even one preceding sentence of context would be sufficient to clarify what I mean... but the last thing a fraud like you wants is honest engagement with anyone else's point of view.You seem to think you are defending a biblical view of creation. And yet in doing so you ride roughshed over basic decency and integrity and truth. What a screwed up system of values! People like you are the reason that Christians are increasing regarded with contempt as untrustworthy frauds willing to promulgate calculated distortions of other people's views as a debating tactic. You are a profoundly ugly example of how faith goes rotten when unconstrained by concerns for honesty.A better link for the quoted extract is Message 228. Abbreviated but with essential context retained so as to truthly follow the use of pronouns, it reads as follows: Snip the rest of the inane refusal to even try and deal honestly with this material. What is contemptible is not the misunderstandings of science, or the inability to accept conventaionl science. I have no problem with that. The contempt is strictly for the deliberate distortions of the views of others, and the lack of integrity in responding to views he does not share.PS. I know that arkathon is not representative. My scorn and contempt for his childish behaviour is not extended to Christians in general.

Horsefeathers. The existing posts explain it just fine for anyone capable of reading with a minimum of integrity. That rules you right out.No, "it" does not contain basically everything; the extract quoted explains what "it" contains just fine.

I've reformatted the above for readability, and added in yellow omitted context establishing plainly that "it" refers to a small region within the universe. It is not the whole universe, and it does not contain all the matter in the universe.You do this repeatedly, arkathon. You take a sentence using the pronoun "it", remove the immediately preceding context which plainly states what "it" means, and then comment as if "it" means the universe, and as if I am saying that the universe was small.I don't mind such a mistake from someone who is honestly confused and trying to understand. But you do it post after post after post, no matter how often we correct the matter; and then have the gall to make insulting remarks about inconsistency or a need for subtitles.I have never said that the universe is a certain size; I have said plainly and repeatedly that we don't know the size of the universe, either now or at any other time.The "it" in the bit you quoted is explicit in the words you always omit. "It" is a region within the universe. Not a speck. Not a particle. Not the whole universe. And most definitely not containing all matter in the universe.We can't even see the entire universe; just like a sailor on a ship cannot see the entire ocean. On the ocean, and also in the universe, the limit of what we can see is not a plainly identifiable "thing"; but a region of space out to a certain distance... the distance to a horizon of visibility.All the stuff in the universe -- including what we see and also what is too far away to be seen -- used to be much closer together. The universe used to be very compressed, rather than as spread out as it is now. In fact, the universe (of unknown size, possibly even infinite size) used to be so compressed that everything we currently see could fit into a small region.To imagine that small region, do not think of a speck. That is wrong, and leads to some common errors in understanding of cosmology. Think of an entire universe (of unknown size) filled everywhere with extremely dense matter. The region is just a small slice of the whole universe, with nothing to make that region distinguished from the rest. You have again crossed the basic lines of elementary decency.You may refuse to accept modern cosmology; that is your choice. But to call it a "lie" is another matter entirely. Such judgements, given without the slightest justification, are ugly and contemptible.You are wrong that this rules out God's creation. Christians believe that God is creator of the entire natural world; so learning about how it works is not removing God. It may conflict with your notion of how God managed the creation, but it does not conflict with the notion that God is creator of the entire natural universe.A couple of interesting sources on this matter are the physicists Paul Davies, and John Polkinghorne.Davies is at the cutting edge of modern cosmology. He is also something of a philosopher. He is not a conventional theist; but he does see in the workings of the natural world -- especially the fundamental forces which show up in this early universe I have been discussing -- indications of a some kind of grand design. His considerations of this matter lead to him winning the 1995 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.Polkinghorne is prestigious particle physicist, and a theologically traditional Christian. His scientific work, amongst other things, contributed to the discovery of the quark. He left professional science to become an Anglican priest, and continues to write extensively on the interaction of science and religion. He won the Templeton Prize in 2002.Like the Nobel Prize, the Templeton Prize is established by a wealthy philanthropist. It was set up specifically because the founder, John Marks Templeton, felt that the Nobel prizes overlooked religion.Both Polkinghorne and Davies, like every other professional scientist working in cosmology, recognize the basic details I have been trying to explain. Don't take my word for it; check it out. That will require you to seek out a few books and actually learn something. You are not obligated to believe what you read; but if you are going to call scientists liars and madmen, you are ethically obligated to make a much more serious effort to understand what they are saying. You don't like the accusations? That's just too bad... you've earned them in spades in the last couple of posts. I treated you with total courtesy before you started being an ass. If you can behave like a decent human being, I'll give full courtesy again in a heartbeat.I don't expect you to buy the whole story; you are welcome to your own view of the universe.A couple of posts ago you showed some indications of willingness to try and understand the views used in science -- even if you could not accept it. You have apparently slammed the door on that possibility again. Suit yourself.The model I am describing was not invented out of thin air and imagination. It was discovered. The amazement that you express by rejecting the models as insane, is an amazement shared by scientists who made the discoveries and continue to push the boundaries of our knowledge of this amazing universe.SylasPS. AbbyLeever... could you consider writing fewer posts, but more carefully? Endless sequences of back to back posts are not very helpful. I've also made this a suggestion for including in forum guidelines, Message 1

Almost. The basic underlying model is not of many soup specks all over.It is just soup. There are no specks. It is not divided up in any way. It is just a universe, filled with quark-gluon soup; and it was expanding.Over time, the universe has continued to expand and thin out, until we now have a universe mostly filled with empty space and background radiation; with occasional clumps of matter we call galaxies.The universe looks the same in every direction, though as we look at the most distant galaxies we are looking back in time; so in fact (surprising as it may seem) we see expansion over billions of years by direct observation.This results in one of the puzzles of modern cosmology, called the "horizon problem". The most distant galaxies we see by looking in opposite directions are so far apart that they cannot ever have been in contact with each other according to simplest extrapolations of expanding space. Suppose we see galaxy "A" ten billion light years away in the northern sky, and galaxy "B" ten billion years away in the southern sky. Both these galaxies are in the region of the universe which is visible to us. We are also in the region of the universe visible to "A", and also in the region of the universe visible to "B". But "A" is not in the region that is visible to "B".This illustrates the nature of a horizon. There is no edge marking a horizon; it is just an indication of how far you can see.It is the same in the very early universe. What we can see was once contained in a small region; and what "A" can see was also contained in a small region. These regions overlap. That is why it is misleading to call them "specks" of soup.The following picture tries to illustrate the wording above. On the left is a picture of a very dense "soupy" universe of unknown size. In the middle, and on the right, the same universe is shown after it has expanded, and then expanded some more. On the right, the three red circles show what is visible from three different galaxies. On the left, the smaller circles contain everything which has subsequently expanded into the larger circles on the right.Note that we don't know the total size of the universe, and we can't be sure about what it is like far beyond our particular horizon of visibility. This is indicated by the question marks in the diagram.Parsimony and the so-called "horizon problem" are excellent indications that the universe continues far beyond the range of our vision in much the same form as we can see; but that extrapolation cannot be applied indefinitely. In the end, we just don't know what we lies beyond our vision.Note that this model is not proposing a primeval atom, or an initial speck. It proposes a thick quark-gluon soup which is expanding. This simple picture omits many more complex details, but it is a good initial guide to how scientists see the early universe.Bear in mind that although you are welcome to believe or not believe what you like, any model you come up with that is intended to be an explanation for any observed phenomena; and in particular the observed phenomena which lead to the discoveries of cosmology, is not going to work, because you don't know enough about the data. Neither do I, for that matter; but then I'm not trying to invent new models to explain evidence before I've made the effort required to understand the evidence. Developing a scientific theory capable of matching all the pertinent observations is not easy.I'll leave it at that for now... Cheers -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-03-2004]

No, not speck sized soup. This has been explained time and time and time again, and you are still failing to describe the model correctly. How can you possibly make a coherent criticism or response to stuff that you refuse to learn about?The size of the soup is not known. It might even be infinite in size.The thing that has small size is a region within the soup. Not the soup itself. Not a speck in the soup; the quark-gluon soup is very smooth and homogenous. The soup itself is the universe; and we don't know how big that is. About 13 billion years for the most distant galaxies. There has been tremendous progress in observational cosmology in the last decade, particularly with the use of space based observatories. This is likely to continue for some time to come; with a number of new instruments coming on-line.There has been a rush of new observations of very distant objects in the last year or two. These have given further solid confirmation to the predictions of big bang cosmology, and also contribute to finer details of our understanding of the universe.Here is a fabulous image from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, from Astronomy Picture of the Day on March 9 this year. The image required an exposure time of about a million seconds. The link gives more details of the new developments in this area, now confirmed by a number of observatories. That is indeed a possibility; but it does not answer the real question why are they so alike? It is a good question, but at this stage you don't need to worry about it.It is usual in science that as you answer research questions, new areas of investigation and question show up. To a novice, there seems nothing surprising about galaxies looking much the same in different directions. That's fine; don't worry about it then. If you don't care about the details, that's fine. Just don't pretend that you will be able to make a credible criticism or alternative of a model you don't care to understand.I realise you don't believe in any of this. I've also noted that your only objection or basis for disbelief is that you think it is insane. That is, you don't have a reason as such for rejecting modern physics, other than personal incredulity.That's fine too. your choice.But if we are breaking bad news gently to each other, you might want to note that most people are willing to relax about things they don't fully understand, and are willing to accept that just maybe if every working scientist is agreed on a basic underlying model, then just maybe there is a good reason for that; even if we don't understand it as yet. And further bad news if you think you can figure out a new alternative model which is more sensible than the foundations used by the whole active scientific community, even while persistently disclaiming any interest in making an effort to get your descriptions of the scientific models accurate, then you're going to have to get used to people calling you an imbecile.Cheers -- SylasComing up to the magic 300...[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-03-2004]

Concluding remark from me. Arkathon still does not understand why speck is wrong. The difference between a speck and a region is that a speck is an identificable thing -- a common mistake in understanding cosmology. A region does not "look" like a speck because when you look you see is one great expanse, with nothing making the chosen region stand out from the whole.Arkathon's theological views will never mean anything as long as they are so plainly predicated on material he does not and will not understand, and which are trivially in plain conflict with all the evidence. The conclusions of science that arkathon does not like are not assumptions, but genuine and surprising discoveries based on a wealth of empirical data and obsrevation. The spirit universe gibberish is a shallow mockery of the concept of spirit used in the bible and in theology; and the refusal to let faith be informed by observation results in a brittle faith that is of interest only as a psychological curiosity, rather than a source of genuine spiritual or moral challenge.Cheers -- Sylas