So many people believe the Hot Big Bang hypothesis (HBB) because there is an overwhelming amount of incontestable evidence in its favor. There will be Nobel Prizes for some investigators who were most responsible for its discovery and proof.
Those who disbelieve and diss the work that has already lead to its acceptance by the vast majority of physical scientists continually demonstrate, they truly prove well beyond any reasonable doubt, nothing more than their own ignorance!
There are at least three utterly independent lines of logic that support the Hot Big Bang hypothesis of cosmogenesis. The first is measurements of cosmic distances by redshifts, by relativistic redshifts, no less, by the way. The second is measurement of cosmological distances by means of luminosity.
If the speed of light is not constant, the only plausible objection to the redshift conclusion put forth so far, then the luminosity data acts to back the same argument. If luminosity somehow gets disqualified, the redshifts take up the burden. One has to debunk BOTH simultaneously to have a hope of knocking the HBB off its pedestal.
But wait! There is the data from at least three separate probes of the cosmic microwave background. This huge data set also suppports the HBB hypothesis. Furthermore, the very existence of the cosmic microwave background is near perfect proof of the HBB hypothesis all by itself!
There is not the chance of a snow storm in Hades to cross-off all three lines of reasoning without self-contradiction.
Specially designed spectrometers are used to measure redshifts. They may use electronics or photographic film and involve the use of prisms or diffraction gratings. They depend on measurements of wavelength.
But, on the other hand, light intensity for photometric luminosity measurements can be done with a simple photocell or it may use photographic film or light sensitive transistor sensors. The latter are arrays of a particular kind of light sensitive
Charge
Coupled transistor logic gate assembled as a single
Device on a small silicon crystal wafer or "chip" - CCDs. The relative brightness of identifiably defined bright stars or galaxies is used to calibrate the method. It is completely independent of wavelength.
These three approaches each have interferences and weaknesses that have to be accounted for. But, they result in measurements that have been subjected to mathematical, rigorous statistical error analysis which tells the investigator how good her data is and how reliable her conclusions from it may be. This depends on an accurate assessment of where there may be certain kinds of error or inaccuracy in the data. Taken one step at a time, however, this is not so very difficult to do.
In the physical sciences, measurements that are within 95% confidence limits are the norm. This means that all subsequent measurements done in the same way will be likely to give results that deviate very far from the average only 5% of the time. Confidence limits of 98% are common.
But outright interferences are another matter. These much degrade the reliability of many astrophysical measurements. But, investigators are certain that they have identified all potential killer interferences. It would be the near impossible task of detractors to somehow reinstate them for all three lines of argument. This too must be done without self-contradiction.
But, of course, they do not do this. Instead, they rely on specious and hairbrained substitute hypotheses of their own. They prove nothing at all except the naysayers' total ignorance of the true nature and proper practical application of the scientific method.
Either kind of distance measurement results in descriptions of both nearby and very distant galaxies as receding from one another at a rather constant rate. Edwin Hubble was the first to reason that one may extrapolate from this apparently constant recession rate, called H naught or H subscript zero, to earlier times when the galaxies must have been much closer together.
But, Fred Hoyle hypothesized that this could be happening in a universe that constantly renews itself by the steady formation of new stars and galaxies through quantum fluctuations that produce new hydrogen atoms. This is called the Steady State Hypothesis (SSH).
The only real alternative, so far, to the SSH, is the HBB. This hypothesizes that by extrapolating backward in time far enough, the galaxies would have had to spring from an apparently infinitely dense, infinitely hot, single point, a singularity. We cannot comprehend what this means so, philosophically it is undesirable.
The sudden appearance of the universe as a single, ultradense point of some kind of quantum hybrid between matter and light (which would have had to be more like light) resulted in what is the misnomer of the "Hot Big Bang". This hypothetical HBB is
NOT an explosion. It is the appearance of a bubble of matter/energy in a pure vacuum of spacetime somewhat similar to the phase change that occurs when water boils to form bubbles of steam.
It is quite well established that a "pure" vacuum is anything but empty. Quantum mechanics is the best, most fully validated principle or set of principles in all of science. Experiments are going on all the time in hundreds of laboratories all around the world that have yet to find any discrepancy. We are constantly learning new things about it, however.
Because of the spectacular success of quantum mechanics, it is quite plausible that the universe resulted from a quantum fluctuation in an otherwise empty vacuum of spacetime. This notion has further implications too. For instance, formation of a long lived virtual particle means production by a high energy state vacuum called a "false vacuum". Virtual particles are ordinarily produced in particle/antiparticle pairs that self-annihilate almost immediately. The main way that virtual particles produce real particles that last a substantially long time is by means of their location very very near the event horizon of a black hole. This implies that the observable universe may be part of a much larger polydimensional surface of an even larger black hole that is undergoing expansion.
The potential observation of some sort of direct evidence for this could help solve the problem of missing mass without invoking dark energy. The data seem to imply that the total mass inventory of the full universe may be many times the experimentally verified mass inventory for the observable universe.
By the way, Fred Hoyle's SSH has been shown to be false. For one thing, the power law or energy distribution that the CMB would have to follow would be all wrong.
There is a much higher probability that a "particle" or matter/energy bubble will appear by quantum fluctuation in a very very high energy state than at a lower one by mere statistical chance. So, it is plausible that the universe began in such an extremely energetic condition that it enclosed the stupendous quantity of matter/energy that we see today.
Quantum particles are often characterizable as single points whose exact location cannot be well known. Still, they are describable as points. Statistically, this is not a problem. But, we have only one universe to study. It is mathematically incorrect to apply probabilistic principles to individual events. So, we have a subtle philosophical problem here.
Nonetheless, I think that the HBB has a lot going for it and Alan Guth has solved the most serious objections to the idea with his inflationary universe scenario. Philosophically, the inflationary HBB is now the most tenable scenario of cosmogenesis.
The universe did not have to arise from an infinitely dense and energetic origin, only from an exceedingly high and intense one. There is no objection from a religious perspective either.
Cosmogony and cosmogenesis cannot be discussed adequately and our brothers' question cannot be answered fully unless we include a word about philosophy and the religious perspective on this question. Only an intolerant atheist would disagree.
This thread cannot and should not be restricted to atheists!
God said (it was written into the nature of spacetime) "Let there be light!". And there was light. Or a light-like "stuff" that begat the whole rest of creation. It is written that God spoke. His Word was His Son and vice versa, as St. John declared. We share in the nature of the Son of God, therefore in the nature of God Himself.
We are Responsible, as God is Responsible for the existence of spacetime and for the existence of existence itself. Some philosophical concepts can indeed be referred to themselves, after all.
This is the real metaphorical significance of Jesus' whole message! You can indeed believe in theistic evolution of both life and the universe itself. Christians have nothing to fear from modern science as long as they keep an open mind.
http://neocosmology.blogspot.com/http://neochristianity.blogspot.com/http://hometown.aol.com/nuchristianrabbi/http://www.luckyboyproductions.org/ Available May, 2007.
I hope that it may be judged that this comment has enough "redeeming social and intellectual importance" that these citations to my websites may be forgiven. They are not advertisements. I do not sell anything.
Gary Kent
