Big Bang objections

[Diggo23]

Wanting some common opinions on the BB. I believe the BB is factual and well supported. Wanted to hear what the common objections to the BB are. Particularly from AiG's standpoint. I am a RTB representative myself and want to here the other perspective.

- Diggo

[Amazing Rando]

What's RTB stand for? This is a good place to ask your question, because there are several intelligent and prolific YEC posters on these forums. You'll get an answer pretty soon!

[Diggo23]

RTB = Reasons to Believe

[CobraA1]

I always wonder about the causation question - if the Big Bang is true, then what caused it?

I'm also wondering about whether "dark matter" is real, or if it's because of a bad model. Perhaps there is a better model that describes the creation of our universe better, without the need to insert "dark matter" in order to make the current model work? The fact that we have to invent some sort of "dark matter" to account for discrepancies in our equations bothers me.

AiG's view is here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/astronomy.asp

I think that they've been sticking with Humphreys' explanation (old universe / young earth) so far. ICR has a paper outlining what's been hapenning with creationist astronomy also:
http://www.icr.org/research/df/

[Socrates]

I've already pointed out the Horizon Problem. I.e., although the CMB shows that the universe's temperature is uniform to within 1 part in 105. But the big bang would have produced huge fluctuations. The only way the temperature could have become uniform is for energy to have been transferred from hot to cold regions. The fastest this could have happened is at the speed of light -- radiation exchange.

However, some of these regions are too distant for light to have traversed between them, even in the assumed time since the alleged big bang. The finite speed of light is a ‘horizon’ which can’t be crossed, hence the term ‘horizon problem’. The CMB is supposedly a remnant from discrete atoms formed from the plasma ~300,000 after the big bang -- but even back then, the universe would (according to theory) have been 10 times too big for light to have been able to equilibrate the temperature.

Supposedly this has been solved by the inflationary hypothesis, positing superluminal expansion of space. But there is no plausible way to start this inflation or to stop it (the ‘graceful exit’ problem).

This is also a useful counter when long-age compromisers throw the distant starlight problem at YECs -- point out that they have a light-travel-time problem of their own!

[Diggo23]

Okay thanks for the response.

1) First of all i think they have gravitational effects caused by dark matter that is evidence for it's existence eg the rotation of galaxies that can't be explained with out dark matter and gravitationale lensing

2) Socrates is the horizon problem basically the inability for everything to smooth out over such a vast distance? kind of like when you rock a bath tub, it takes a while for the atoms to bounce off each other and cause uniform motion?

3) I thought the transition to kick off the inflationary period is begun by the seperation of gravity from the other fundamental forces at 1 x 10^-43? This would cause the departure from adiabatic expansion.

4) is it really plausable to assume that this problem is enough to throw the whole model into question? How do we explain the fact that the Hubble constant is yielding
consistant dates for the beginning of the universe? Also the dates of radiometric elements in stars is yeilding a similar date?

5) What model would you propose has more explanatory power Socrates?

6) Last question. Would your explanation of the BB be indicative of AiG on the whole?

Thanks

[Avatar_of_evil]

I've already pointed out the Horizon Problem. I.e., although the CMB shows that the universe's temperature is uniform to within 1 part in 105. But the big bang would have produced huge fluctuations. The only way the temperature could have become uniform is for energy to have been transferred from hot to cold regions. The fastest this could have happened is at the speed of light -- radiation exchange.

However, some of these regions are too distant for light to have traversed between them, even in the assumed time since the alleged big bang. The finite speed of light is a ‘horizon’ which can’t be crossed, hence the term ‘horizon problem’. The CMB is supposedly a remnant from discrete atoms formed from the plasma ~300,000 after the big bang -- but even back then, the universe would (according to theory) have been 10 times too big for light to have been able to equilibrate the temperature.

Supposedly this has been solved by the inflationary hypothesis, positing superluminal expansion of space. But there is no plausible way to start this inflation or to stop it (the ‘graceful exit’ problem).

This is also a useful counter when long-age compromisers throw the distant starlight problem at YECs -- point out that they have a light-travel-time problem of their own!
Socrates,

I don't know how much theoretical physics you know but there are plausible theoretical reasons for the inflation epoch to begin and to end. This doesn't make them fact but certainly plausible from a theoretical physics perspective.

Either you do not know enough physics to state them OR you are not telling the whole story to leave readers here with a false impression of inflationary cosmology.

As for your 'light travel time problem' comment then if you believe this you truly are without a clue on Big Bang cosmology and should brush up on the subject. Methinks you know darn well the times associated with the inflationary epoch and as such know there is no travel time problem in any way shape or form.

Note: This section (Cosmogony) is for creationist-only posting. Unless you are a creationist don't post here. Rather, post in the Natural Sciences, Biology, or Archaeology sections.
Thanks.

[TheFiveSolas]

6) Last question. Would your explanation of the BB be indicative of AiG on the whole?

Thanks

Since Socrates is a supporter of AiG and therefore isn't speaking on their behalf I would suggest that if you want to find out what AiG believes on a certain subject you should contact them directly or visit their website.

[CobraA1]

1) First of all i think they have gravitational effects caused by dark matter that is evidence for it's existence eg the rotation of galaxies that can't be explained with out dark matter and gravitationale lensing


Thanks for the info. I'm not saying I don't believe in the existence dark matter, I just have some doubts. It seems a bit ad-hoc.

Umm, where can I get information about the "horizon problem"? I'm not familiar with it.

[Diggo23]

www.astro.virginia.edu/~jh8h/Foundations/links.htm there should be some info on the Horizon Problem in there. As far as i know there aren't any cosmologists that see this as being such a difficult problem that the whole paradigm need throwing out

[Socrates]

The horizon problem is still a huge difficulty. Christians should not be so ready to reinterpret the bible to fit an atheistic model. What happens when this model is turfed out -- they will have to reinterpret their reinterpretations.

Yes, the inflation hypothesis was proposed to solve this huge problem. But Guth's original idea was wrong, and there is far from any consensus on what inflation model should replace it. Some evolutionists are resorting to alternatives such as the ekpyrotic cyclic model [Steinhardt, P. and Turok, N., A cyclic model of the universe, Science 296(5572):1436–1439, 2002].

There is no mechanism that has been observed to cause superluminal space expansion, just speculations about what phase changes would do. And astronomers don't know what mechanism turns off the inflation once it starts—the ‘graceful exit’ problem [Kraniotis, G.V., String cosmology, International Journal of Modern Physics A 15(12):1707–1756, 2000].

[Diggo23]

The horizon problem is still a huge difficulty. Christians should not be so ready to reinterpret the bible to fit an atheistic model. What happens when this model is turfed out -- they will have to reinterpret their reinterpretations.

Yes, the inflation hypothesis was proposed to solve this huge problem. But Guth's original idea was wrong, and there is far from any consensus on what inflation model should replace it. Some evolutionists are resorting to alternatives such as the ekpyrotic cyclic model [Steinhardt, P. and Turok, N., A cyclic model of the universe, Science 296(5572):1436–1439, 2002].

There is no mechanism that has been observed to cause superluminal space expansion, just speculations about what phase changes would do. And astronomers don't know what mechanism turns off the inflation once it starts—the ‘graceful exit’ problem [Kraniotis, G.V., String cosmology, International Journal of Modern Physics A 15(12):1707–1756, 2000].

1) Recent discoveries giving detailed maps of the background radiation (Boomerang) have actually revealed that the angular peaks in the differences of the temp are exactly what have been predicted by the inflationary BB. Namely the effects of the gravity waves that come from the inflationary period.

2) You might want to check your reference on the ekpyrotic model point because i don't think it is accurate. The proposal of Steinhardt and Turok was that negative pressure would reverse the positive pressure that is expanding the universe. This would cause a contraction and hence bounce. Problem is that they have NO evidence for this neg pressure, it is a purely metaphysical assertion. This model is by no means held by many cosmologists at all.

3) The points about the inflationary period i need to do a bit more research on.

4) Just wandering how you would explain the multiple independent lines
of evidence for the standard BB model.
i) The temp of the background radiation coming out at 2.7 degrees from predictions by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman who were remarkably on target predicting it to be 5 degrees. It was also remarkably uniform (measuring the same in all directions)
ii) the background radiation resembling a perfect blackbody radiator measured over a whole plethora of wavelengths
iii) Using the Keck, the further back in time that astronomers look (because light's travel time is finite) the higher the temp of the background radiation in sync with the BB model
iv) ration of photons to baryons which resembles an extremely entropic system. Again being evidence for the universe cooling down from a hot big bang beginning.
v) The helium abundances being the same as what George Gamow in the 60's predicted: 75% Hydrogen and 25% helium
vi) The picture album which resembles galaxies being closer to each other the further back in time the astronomers look. These are baby pictures of the universe where galaxies are ripping spiral arms off each other
vii) The fact that the hubble constant (a value derived from the redshift measurements of distant stars and galaxies) is now giving multiple measurements that give an age for the universe at 14.5 b yrs + - 1 b yrs
viii) dates derived for some of the oldest globular clusters are coming in at 13.5b yrs, again consistent with the BB date
ix) The fact that we don't see elements with short half lives between 1-10 million yrs in stars testifies to a universe that is atleast millions of years old

[Socratism]

You might try this site:

http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/top10BBproblems.asp

[wildbrumby]

One thing that I can't agree with AiG on is their intimation that redshift is the result of localized movement in the universe instead of the entire universe expanding. As Timothy Ferris points out, there is such a thing as "pure hubble flow" which is expansion without localised motion. Astronomers know how to seperate the two.

[Socrates]

One thing that I can't agree with AiG on is their intimation that redshift is the result of localized movement in the universe instead of the entire universe expanding. As Timothy Ferris points out, there is such a thing as "pure hubble flow" which is expansion without localised motion. Astronomers know how to seperate the two.

One thing I can't agree with AiG's critics is how they criticise without bothering to read what AiG actually says! Here is an AiG article that makes it clear that most of the redshifts are due to the expansion of the universe as a whole -- Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ red shifts show (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v16n2_centre.asp).

3. Expansion redshifts, not Doppler shifts

Hubble, following the lead of Slipher and others, interpreted the wavelength shifts as Doppler shifts, produced entirely by the velocity v of the light source with respect to the Earth. In that case, for v much less than c, the wavelength shift would be approximately

δλ/λ ∝ H/cr (2)

Then, according to equation (1), the trend line in Figure 3 would correspond to galaxies moving away from us with velocity v proportional to their distance r:

v ∝ Hr (3)

But other things can cause redshifts. For example, Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that in an expanding space, the lengths of light waves should be stretched out right along with the stretching-out of the medium they are moving through. Light coming from distant objects would have experienced more such stretching than light from nearby objects, so such redshifts would increase with distance.

Today, most cosmologists think that the trend line in Figures 3 and 4 represents such an expansion redshift, not a Doppler shift. However, astronomers still find it convenient to describe redshifts with ‘equivalent velocities’, as if they were caused by a Doppler shift. Unfortunately, that practice has confused the public, the media, and even undergraduate astronomy students into thinking of the redshifts as being caused mainly by velocities.

Through the years, theorists have offered other explanations for the cosmological redshift trend. For several decades, I explored such theories, trying without success to find one that satisfied me. But I lost interest in alternative redshift models after I noticed verses in the Bible that appear to support the idea that space has been expanded. Isaiah 40:22 is one example:

‘It is he … that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.’

There are seventeen such verses in the Old Testament,15 and they use four different Hebrew verbs to convey the idea of ‘stretching out’ or ‘spreading out’. As I clarify in Starlight and Time, in Scripture ‘the heavens’ appear to refer to space itself, not necessarily to the bodies occupying that space, namely the Sun, Moon and stars. So if we take these verses straightforwardly, then God is saying that He has stretched out or spread out the ‘fabric’ of space itself. That corresponds very closely to the general relativistic idea of expanding space. With a few small steps of logic, textbooks show that such an expansion produces redshifts. That is why I think expansion is the main cause.

Regardless of the cause, however, all that matters for this paper is that galaxy redshifts are approximately proportional to distance, as the Hubble law asserts in equation (1).

[wildbrumby]

One thing I can't agree with AiG's critics is how they criticise without bothering to read what AiG actually says! Here is an AiG article that makes it clear that most of the redshifts are due to the expansion of the universe as a whole -- Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ red shifts show (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v16n2_centre.asp).

3. Expansion redshifts, not Doppler shifts

Hubble, following the lead of Slipher and others, interpreted the wavelength shifts as Doppler shifts, produced entirely by the velocity v of the light source with respect to the Earth. In that case, for v much less than c, the wavelength shift would be approximately

δλ/λ ∝ H/cr (2)

Then, according to equation (1), the trend line in Figure 3 would correspond to galaxies moving away from us with velocity v proportional to their distance r:

v ∝ Hr (3)

But other things can cause redshifts. For example, Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that in an expanding space, the lengths of light waves should be stretched out right along with the stretching-out of the medium they are moving through. Light coming from distant objects would have experienced more such stretching than light from nearby objects, so such redshifts would increase with distance.

Today, most cosmologists think that the trend line in Figures 3 and 4 represents such an expansion redshift, not a Doppler shift. However, astronomers still find it convenient to describe redshifts with ‘equivalent velocities’, as if they were caused by a Doppler shift. Unfortunately, that practice has confused the public, the media, and even undergraduate astronomy students into thinking of the redshifts as being caused mainly by velocities.

Through the years, theorists have offered other explanations for the cosmological redshift trend. For several decades, I explored such theories, trying without success to find one that satisfied me. But I lost interest in alternative redshift models after I noticed verses in the Bible that appear to support the idea that space has been expanded. Isaiah 40:22 is one example:

‘It is he … that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.’

There are seventeen such verses in the Old Testament,15 and they use four different Hebrew verbs to convey the idea of ‘stretching out’ or ‘spreading out’. As I clarify in Starlight and Time, in Scripture ‘the heavens’ appear to refer to space itself, not necessarily to the bodies occupying that space, namely the Sun, Moon and stars. So if we take these verses straightforwardly, then God is saying that He has stretched out or spread out the ‘fabric’ of space itself. That corresponds very closely to the general relativistic idea of expanding space. With a few small steps of logic, textbooks show that such an expansion produces redshifts. That is why I think expansion is the main cause.

Regardless of the cause, however, all that matters for this paper is that galaxy redshifts are approximately proportional to distance, as the Hubble law asserts in equation (1).


Ah, forgive me. Hadn't seen that article yet. I received my impression that AiG was against red shift due to an expanding universe by an article by Dr. Carl Wieland in an old TJ. Also, Humphries indicates that the universe isn't expanding at the present time.

God Stops the Expansion before the evening of the second day (page 38 of Starlight and Time).

Also at http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/487.asp Snelling quotes Kaufmann as saying


‘If Arp is correct [about red-shifts not being distance indicators], if his observations are confirmed, he will have single-handedly shaken all modern astronomy to its very foundations. If he is right, one of the pillars of modern astronomy and cosmology will come crashing down in a turmoil unparalleled since Copernicus dared to suggest that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the solar system.’4


It does seem that AiG views redshift being an evidence of distance as shakey to say the least. I'm not being a critic. I support and am really behind AiG, but I can't accept everything that they say.

[jason]

Christians should not be so ready to reinterpret the bible to fit an atheistic model.They don't depart from the bible it is compatible with BB cosmology, and it is not an atheistic model.

Don't you know what is the obvious conclusion to draw from a transcendant creation event socrates.

Jason

[wildbrumby]

Another quote from AiG about their view on red shift being a distance indicator.


Ignoring this cosmological ‘anomaly’ won’t make it go away! Perhaps red-shifts may not be connected with recession velocities and so may not be a reliable index to distances in an expanding universe after all.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/487.asp

So here's we're questioning if red shifts are connected with recession velocities at all. This is what I don't quite agree with.

[wildbrumby]

They don't depart from the bible it is compatible with BB cosmology, and it is not an atheistic model.

Don't you know what is the obvious conclusion to draw from a transcendant creation event socrates.

Jason

I must agree with you there. I see nothing in the BB model that is atheistic.

[Socratism]

WHAT ELSE CAN CAUSE REDSHIFT?
If the redshift of galaxies is not due to expansion velocity, then what might cause the redshift? Over the years, a surprising number of proposals have been made. A recent summary article lists 20 non-velocity redshift mechanisms.14 Basically, anything that causes light to lose energy will cause it to redshift. The trick is to have an energy loss mechanism that doesn't scatter the light. The absence of observed scattering is the main objection to the so-called "tired light" theory, in which intergalactic matter is supposed to be responsible for the energy loss of light.
One of many possibilities (the one favored by this author) is that one day we will discover the particle or wave serving as the carrier of the gravitational force. If such entities, dubbed "gravitons", exist, they must necessarily be of a much finer scale than current quantum particles. It therefore seems likely that they would have negligible scattering effects on light over cosmological distances, although light traveling through such a resisting medium of gravitons would necessarily lose energy and be redshifted. In such a case, we would expect to see light from galaxies redshifted in proportion to their distances from us, just as observed; yet there would be no expansion of the universe. The perfect cosmological principle would be obeyed.
This particular notion of gravitons also answers the dilemma for general relativity faced by Einstein -- Why doesn't the universe collapse from its own gravity? If these hypothetical gravitons have a finite cross-sectional area, then they can only travel a finite distance, however great, before colliding with another graviton. So the range of the force of gravity would necessarily be limited in this way. Curiously, if the mean flight distance between collisions for gravitons was about 2 kiloparsecs (about the diameter of the core of many galaxies), then the limited range of the force of gravity would give rise to a change in the inverse square force law over distances larger than 2 kiloparsecs. The predicted form of this change happens to imitate just what we observe in the behavior of galaxies that has led big bang astronomers to hypothesize the existence of "dark matter" in ever greater quantities to account for the rotation and clustering of galaxies on these large scales. In other words, if this graviton conjecture is correct, there would be no need of invisible dark matter to explain large-scale behavior of dynamical systems. More details of this alternative model are published elsewhere by this author. 15

14. Ghosh, A. (1991), "Velocity-dependent inertial induction: a possible tired-light mechanism", Apeiron 9-10, 35-44.

15. Van Flandern, T. (1993), "Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets", North Atlantic Books, Berkeley. Also available from Meta Research.

[Socratism]

I apologize for two posts in a row, but I just discovered something quite odd about the big bang that I wished to share with others.

The oddity is that it is fairly well known in the cosmological community that an expansion of the coordinates of the universe violates the Law of Conservation of Energy, and that nobody thinks this is a problem. They simply believe that the "Law" may not be universal and hence does not function in that particular case!!!!

[jason]

The oddity is that it is fairly well known in the cosmological community that an expansion of the coordinates of the universe violates the Law of Conservation of Energy, and that nobody thinks this is a problem. They simply believe that the "Law" may not be universal and hence does not function in that particular case!!!!Could you be more specific ?

How exactly does it violate it and who is your source for this. I have never heard of this being a problem.

Jason

[Socratism]

Could you be more specific ?

How exactly does it violate it and who is your source for this. I have never heard of this being a problem.

Jason

Of course you wouldn't have heard of it. Gould called such things the "tradesecrets".

In 1936 Hubble expressed his concern about astronomical redshifts and energy conservation:“Obviously since the product [energy x wave-length ] remains constant, redshifts, by increasing wavelengths, must reduce the energy in the quanta. Any plausible interpretation of red-shifts must account for the loss of energy.”

The scientific community rightly expects that big-bang cosmology resolved this concern consistent with energy conservation. Surprisingly,this did not happen. .Instead, cosmologists exempted the big bang from energy conservation, but without saying how much was lost.

The Hubble quotation cited above can be found in his 1936 book on cosmology which is available at Barnes & Noble used book sellers. I just might order a copy myself. The relationship he uses is quite basic and has not been questioned, but one will see a bit of a runaround when the subject comes up, because people like the Big Bang idea and won't give it up easily.

[Socrates]

I apologize for two posts in a row, but I just discovered something quite odd about the big bang that I wished to share with others.

The oddity is that it is fairly well known in the cosmological community that an expansion of the coordinates of the universe violates the Law of Conservation of Energy, and that nobody thinks this is a problem. They simply believe that the "Law" may not be universal and hence does not function in that particular case!!!!

Good point! Creationist physicist Dr Russell Humphreys is aware of this. He even points out that in his non-big-bang model of the expanding universe, the expansion would remove excess heat produced by accelerated nuclear decay.

[Socrates]

I must agree with you there. I see nothing in the BB model that is atheistic.
You many not, but the leading big-bangers see it as the ultimate in atheistic cosmogony. E.g. Guth claims that the universe is 'the ultimate free lunch'.

[Socrates]

It does seem that AiG views redshift being an evidence of distance as shakey to say the least.

Hang on. This is completely different from your accusation that AiG misunderstands the establishment claim that redshifts are mainly cosmological rather than doppler. Also, AiG has made if clear that they don't deny that many distances are far great than 6000 ly, or even that there is some relationship between redshift and distance.

But your quarrel here is with secular astronomers such as Arp who show that in many cases, the red shifts can't be due to huge distances, because of joined quasars and galaxies with hugely different redshift. That was the point of the AiG article you quoted, and Arp has adduced many such examples. So it is perfectly reasonable for AiG to question whether a blanket redshift-distance correlation should be accepted blindly.

[QUOTE=wildbrumby]I'm not being a critic. I support and am really behind AiG, but I can't accept everything that they say.

That's good to know. And nor should you have to accept everything they say, but also don't be too eager to pronounce them wrong.

[Augustine2004]

Any valid solution to the Einstein field equations has conservation of 4-momentum including angular momentum and energy. Please see Part IV of Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler Gravitation, particularly section 17.1. The Big Bang models that are generally accepted in science are, I believe, valid solutions, including the Friedmann - Leimatrie - Robinson - Walker models.

Advocation or dismissal of theories on energy conservation grounds in GR should be regarded with caution at the least.

[CobraA1]

They don't depart from the bible it is compatible with BB cosmology, and it is not an atheistic model.


The Big Bang took 6 days? I was under the impression that it took much longer. Yes, you can twist the Bible to fit your beliefs, but I'd rather twist my beliefs to fit the Bible :teeth:.

Yes, you can argue that a day can last longer, but that doesn't really prove that the day was longer.


The Big Bang models that are generally accepted in science are, I believe, valid solutions, including the Friedmann - Leimatrie - Robinson - Walker models.


Umm, I hate to break it to you, but that doesn't mean anything. Mathematically and logically, more than one model can exist for any particular solution :vulcan:.

[Socratism]

The Big Bang took 6 days? I was under the impression that it took much longer.

If you subscribe to any of the "inflationary" theories of the Big Bang in which there was an early super rapid expansion which then slowed down, you should consider the possibility that the super rapid expansion phase continued for just one picosecond longer, for this would have been sufficient to yield the universe we view today. Thus, when God "stretched out the heavens" it would be difficult for us mortals to say how long it took Him to do it. Any stretching of the heavens would yield similar results to what the Big Bang allegedly did, for the rate of expansion does not appear to enter into the physical equations.

Yes, you can argue that a day can last longer, but that doesn't really prove that the day was longer.

Quite correct.

Umm, I hate to break it to you, but that doesn't mean anything. Mathematically and logically, more than one model can exist for any particular solution :vulcan:.

Again quite correct.

[Augustine2004]

My post was in response to the canard that GR violates the Law of Conservation of Energy. It does not, at least not locally.

How can one have more than one model from a particular solution? I would have thought it was the other way around. One should certainly point out, as Dr. John G. Hartnett has, that the various BB models each has many adjustable parameters. It is easy to fit some of the models to the data, and so the tightness of the fit does not really mean anything.