Big Bang: The Origin Of The Universe
by Simon Singh
Fourth Estate (HarperCollins Publishers), 2005" data-pin-do="buttonBookmark">
Big Bang: The Origin Of The Universe
by Simon Singh
Fourth Estate (HarperCollins Publishers), 2005
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When I started teaching college in 1964, the required reading for my general studies science course included two articles by two prominent physicists published in Scientific American eight years previously. George Gamow, a principal architect of the big bang theory, made the case for a universe that began billions of years ago as an explosion from an infinitely dense and infinitely small seed of energy. Fred Hoyle, stalwart champion of the steady state theory, took the stand for an infinite universe with no beginning and no end, in which matter is continuously created in the space between the galaxies.
Both theories explained the outward rush of the galaxies discovered by Vesto Slipher, Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason in the first decades of the century. Both theories had strengths and weaknesses. For example, the big bang successfully accounted for the known abundances of hydrogen and helium in the universe but posited an embarrassing beginning that could not be explained. The steady state theory avoided the stumbling block of a universe that seemed to come from nowhere but replaced it with many little unexplained beginnings (those particles of matter appearing continuously from nothing). Yet the big bang theory made one prediction that was testable: if the universe began in a blaze of luminosity, a degraded remnant of that radiation should still permeate the cosmos, and the precise spectral distribution of this microwave-frequency background could be calculated.
This article was originally published with the title Big Bang vs. Steady State.
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8 Comments
Add CommentI have no doubt that an event occurred in our detectable region of the universe that is called the Big Bang. But to speak of it as a beginning of everything makes no sense. This theory is simply one that makes the math work. We have abandoned Occam's razor in favor of theoretical mathematics. We are now constantly modifying the universe to make the math work. What ever happened to observation proving the theory? Two things are ignored by all the theories...forever (time) and infinity (distance). If you start from Occam and reason, there is only one explanation...it is simply a matter of scale. There are an infinite number of smaller and larger universes, and the scale is so large that we will never be able to detect any others. The math in all the competing theories points to other dimensions/universes, but can't fully explain them. My degrees may be in business and law, but I AM qualified to analyze and think with logic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi have trouble accepting the Big Bang theory too and i am not sure why.....one is the area of math where mathematics takes us and versus the scientific method...i also think we will still be struggling with these question long after i am gone
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisto notslic: I was wondering what prediction would you give base on your theory? And can it explain the known facts about the universe?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2nd, the big bang can be proven as a consequence of the following:
1.) that spacetime is a paracompact, hausdorff and connected manifold
2.)it is orientable and has a Lorentz signature
3.)it obeys Einsteins field equations
4.)reasonable energy conditions are obeyed i.e. null energy condition, weak energy condition etc.
You can found the proof in the classic text by hawking and ellis "large scale structure of spacetime"
That is, general relativity has survived experimental battering rams, and that big bang can be shown mathematically to be a consequence of it, thats why I believe in big bang.
My last point is that there ARE predictions of the big bang theory that fits with the experimental data. The most beautiful example I can give is the CMB distribution at a blackbody of approx. 3 K. If you see the fit and you know physics, you know its difficult to dismiss big bang.
The farther we look out into space, the further back in time we see.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Big Bang" holds that the universe began (inexplicably) from an infinitely small point.
Therefore, the further we see back in time, the closer objects are to us.
The further we see back in time, however, the farther the objects are from us, headed the wrong way and with an acceleration in the wrong direction.
I'll continue to believe in the "Stretch-Apart" theory in which many objects could have come into existence, very distant from each other, simultaneously as a result of the same "Stretch-Apart."
The farther we look out into space, the further back in time we see.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Big Bang" holds that the universe began (inexplicably) from an infinitely small point.
Therefore, the further we see back in time, the closer objects are to us.
The further we see back in time, however, the farther the objects are from us, headed the wrong way and with an acceleration in the wrong direction.
I'll continue to believe in the "Stretch-Apart" theory in which many objects could have come into existence, very distant from each other, simultaneously as a result of the same "Stretch-Apart."
You wrote: "George Gamow, a principal architect of the big bang theory, made the case for a universe that began billions of years ago as an explosion from an infinitely dense and infinitely small seed of energy. Fred Hoyle, stalwart champion of the steady state theory, took the stand for an infinite universe with no beginning and no end, in which matter is continuously created in the space between the galaxies."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt suggests that there are only two conflicting points of view. You ignored the third: Einstein's who said that the metric tensor of spacetime must be non symmetric ("On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation", Sc. Am., April 1950).
It turned out that Einstein was right and both George Gamow and Fred Hoyle were wrong since the universe is not expanding at all and we just live in Einstein's universe in which Einstein's gravitation combined with the impossibility of making energy out of nothing produces a relativistic illusion of accelerating expansion.
It turns out that it is enough to assume that the principle of conservation of energy is valid to get a result that in a homogeneous space (d/dr)(dT/dt)+1/R=0, where r is coordinate distance from an observer to an observed point in deep space, T is proper time at the point in deep space, t is coordinate time of the observer, and R is radius of curvature of space (a.k.a. "Einstein's radius of universe"). It is easy to notice that if one assumes that the redshift in light of galaxies comes from their velocity instead of, as it happens to be in the real universe, impossibility to make enrgy out of nothing, the above relativistic effect produces an illusion of accelerating expansion with Hubble constant H=c/R and acceleration dH/dt=(-H^2)/2 which is observed in nature.
Einstein, as a patent office clerk might have finally noticed that energy must be conserved and has given up symmetric Riemannian metric tensor if spacetime and explain in the spacetime geometry by the non symmetric metric tensor.
Such tensor, by complying with conservation of energy, falsifies both theories that you mentioned, and makes the universe as Carl Sagan ones proposed, without neither beginning nor end. Which is also much more boring universe than Einstein's and possibly for that reason you would never agree with Einstein and my comment will never be published. As it happened already in grownoup science journals since 1985 as "Nature", "Physical Review Letters", "Science", "The Astrophysical Journal", and even "Nuovo Cimento" while it was still around, despite passing through the referees.
The big bang and solid state theory are both wrong. Please have a look a my theory and tell be where "I" am wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" universe-reh.info "
Thank you,
Robert Evan Howard
aclepd.com
aclepd@aclepd.com
Big Bang = Creationism. I really hope the BB Model is wrong
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