Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> asked:
>...the big bang theory describes how our
>universe is evolving, not how it began."
>(http://www.sciam.com/2001/0101issue/0101peebles.html)
>
>Come again?
That article points it out pretty well. This should also address some of
Chad's unspecified objections to the Big Bang (I was thinking of him as I
read it).
One of the problems with science is that it's being conducted by people. :)
Popularized science is even worse. I can understand how someone without a
science background can look at two seemingly contradictory statements like
that and decide that something is fishy.
The essense of "The Big Bang theory", simply put, is: we observe that all
matter in the universe appears to be moving away from us; the farther away,
the faster it is receeding. The first hypothesis to come from this
observation is that this recession is caused by space itself expanding
uniformly. (The alternatives are "tired light" or that everyone hates us.)
Further, if we imagine "playing the film backwards" we see all matter
getting closer together. The second hypothesis is that when the universe was
much younger it was much smaller and denser. One prediction we can make from
that hypothesis is that at some density radiation couldn't get very far; if
the universe expanded past that density level, there would be a background
raditation detectable everywhere in the sky. That's been bourne out by
observation.
Anything else is fluff - all that stuff about inflation, or an initial
singularity, or vacuum fluctuations, or what have you. It's akin to gravity
- the Big Bang theory is like Kepler's concept, and everything else is the
tweaking that Newton and Einstein did.
That's one reason the Big Bang is a pretty robust theory - it's really,
really simple and not saying much.
Joshua
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