Thanks for the space to post these thoughts but seeing as it was me who asked for a big bsng section i guess I'm overdue in posting. Yes, it's true! Just before astronomy.net went awol for a while I asked if we could have a separate thread for the big bang, because most of the posters in the god and astronomy section were getting their childhood religious experiences confused with science.
In fact the god and astronomy section was hijacked by religious zealots who, unable to see their hand in front of their face, could not or would not see an infinite universe in front of them, despite all the observational data. For example, in all the models the attempt was made to push omega up to one, which it clearly isn't. Yaniru also made an attempt to explain the absence of anti matter as a result of some strange clash, totally ignoring the scientific data which states that the clash of anti matter and matter result in annihilation. Annihilation means exactly that, and no subsequent conversations are possible.
The trouble in the forum was that if the infinite universe was a reality (infinite in time and space) then obviously there wasn't a creator, This ruffled a lot of feathers as well as challenging people who have built their careers around the concept of the bb. It's very hard to admit one is wrong after a life-time's adherance to a theory. But let us look at the facts.
From our best observations it would appear that the current expansion is between 10 and 15 billion years old. But no serious attempt has been made to see if this is merely a local expansion, mainly because telescopes aren't powerful enough. And it would appear that red shift has other explanations otheer than doppler.We can't say for sure whether the red shift is doppler or not and any attempt to slot redshift into the doppler application is premature to say the least.
The superclusters are too big, even allowing for the fact that the universe may have been smaller in the past. The Great Wall, for example, has not had time to coalese in the time frame allowed for by bb. (See Tully's maps) It is interesting at this point to recall Hoyle's poignant comment that uniform motion is inert, hence any expansion from a singularity should be dead by now and "fizzled out." In fact the very premise of a singularity is frought with danger because it smacks of the book of genesis and is not supported by observation. The mathematics of many "little bangs" may be a lot harder to work with but that should not obscure the issue.
Dark matter is the elusive bride of the cosmos, and so the quest for dark matter may in centuries to come appear like a twenty first century search for the holy grail. Has the Higgs been found? Do neutrinos have mass, especially the taun? And if so, can the desperate creationists push omega up to one, or more precisely, 9.9999999 recurring?
paul |