Does it seem that more and more scientists are jumping off the Big Bang 'theory'?
Here are a few zany ideas / beliefs aired recently on BBC...

Dr Andrei Linde,Professor of Physics at Stanford University wrote:

Just after matter first appeared, rather than a messy explosion, there was instead a massive and unprecedented growth in the size of the universe. This is called Inflation. If one assumes there was a period of exponential expansion of the universe in some energetic vacuum-like state, then you can explain why the universe is so large, why the universe is so small at a very large scale, why properties of the universe in different parts are so similar to each other. All these questions can be addressed if one uses inflation.

BBC comment “Inflation was a pre-existing condition that has been there, well, for ever. For Prof. Linde, the big bang wasn’t really a starting point at all; he thinks that it was simply the end of something else. The universe appeared out of what he calls eternal inflation. Out universe is not the only one. There are others, all co-existing. He has counted them. There are ten to the power 10 to the power 10 to the power 7. His ideas of a multi-verse, as odd as they seem, are now within the scientific mainstream. For many cosmologists eternal inflation is in itself a reasonable explanation of what existed before our universe. For others it’s utter nonsense.”

Dr Singh, Theoretical Physics wrote:

The principal mathematical objection [to the universe expanding from nothing] is that as the clock is wound back and Hubble’s zero hour is approached, all the stuff in the universe is crammed into a smaller and smaller space. Eventually that space will become infinitely small. And in mathematics, invoking infinity is the same as giving up, or cheating.....Instead of emerging from nothing, our universe owes its existence to a previous one that had the misfortune to collapse in on itself. Then, thanks to some clever maths, rebounded to what we see today. So the big bang was not a bang at all. It was rather a big bounce. … Of course it might all be nothing more than a fantasy world of maths and little else, and there’s always the nagging question of what started the infinite bouncing in the first place. It was certainly not the big bang. That is impossible.

BBC comment "No big bang at all; just the big bounce, again and again and again."

Dr Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physics wrote:

How can it be that everything comes from nothing? (as in the Big bang)If you think about it a while, you begin to realise it all depends on how you define ‘nothing’! I think there are two kinds of nothing. First there is something I call absolute nothing: no equations, no space, no time, no anything that the human mind can conceive of, just nothing. Then there is the vacuum which is nothing but the absence of matter....So for me the universe did not come from absolute nothing—that is a state of no equations, no empty space, no time; it came from a pre-existing state—also a state of nothing. Our universe did in fact come from an infinitesimally tiny little explosion that took place giving us the big bang, and giving us the galaxies and stars we have today.

BBC comment "For Prof. Kaku, the laws of physics did not arrive with the big bang. The appearance of matter did not start with the clock of time. His interpretation of nothing tells us there was, in short, a ‘before’."

Prof. Smolin, researcher wrote:

There is a bounce inside every black hole. Material contracts and contracts and contracts again, and then begins to expand again, and that is the big bang which initiates the new region of the universe...Before the big bang there was another universe much like our own. In that universe was a big cloud of gases. It collapsed to form a massive star. That star exploded. It left behind a black hole and in that black hole there was a region, if you were misfortunate enough to fall in, you would find it becoming denser and denser and denser. You wouldn’t survive this but imagine you did—then all of a sudden you would explode again and that would be our big bang.

BBC comment “Smolin’s natural selection idea proposes that for a universe to prosper it must reproduce and for that to happen it must contain black holes that, according to Smolin, spawn offspring universes.”

Dr Neil Turok, Executive Director of the Perimeter Institute wrote:

There are essentially two possibilities at the beginning. Either time did not exist before the beginning; somehow time sprang into existence. That’s a notion we have no grasp of and which may be a logical contradiction. The other possibility is that this event which initiated our universe was a violent event in a pre-existing universe....We live on an extended object called a brane (short for membrane). … You can’t have only one; there must be at least two, separated by a gap. These two branes collide. When they collide they remain extended; it’s not all of space shrinking to a point. … They fill with a density of plasma and matter, but it’s finite. Everything is a definite number which you can calculate, and which you can then describe using definite mathematical laws. That’s the essential picture of the big bang in our model.

BBC comment "For many cosmologists this is mathematical sleight of hand.”

Sir Roger Penrose,Mathematics prof at Oxford wrote:

(the)current picture of the universe is that it starts with a big bang and it ends with an exponentially expanding universe, where it eventually cools off with not much left except protons. … This very expanded universe is the equivalent to a big bang of another one. … This universe is one eon of a succession of eons. Each expanding universe accounts for the big bang of the next.

BBC comment “Because of this a nearly infinitely large universe could just as well be the infinitely small starting point for the next one. A simplistic system with a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. Quite a bold thrust for a man who was until five years ago a pre-big-bang denier.”

BBC analysis...They would be easier to dismiss as the half-baked musings of the lunatic fringe were it not for the fact that some of the very people who constructed the everything-from-nothing big bang model are themselves starting to dismantle it.

Perhaps we should add one more possibility into the mix of ideas....

Longloadr, truck driver wrote:

Perhaps the universe was created

[/b]

Longloadr,

You REALLY have no blinking clue what either of these statements are about or what is the Big Bang theory. NOT ONE of these statements is contradictory to the theory. What these people do is work to expand it by providing more detail, ideas of its mechanics, and the conditions pre Big Bang and within a few unknown split moments at its beginning.

Please please please stop embarrassing yourself by pretending to know what you are talking about. These people haven’t spent most of their life studying these subjects for some “quote brigade” to pick their work apart in order to swing crap at science and wedge their God in its place.

If you want to find faults with the theory, science or the people who do it, have a blinking courtesy to go out and actually study it and their work before jumping on a crap slinging band wagon because the stink is starting to follow you wherever you go now.

Trust me, you are a lot more credible as a proselytising, hymn posting, Verse quoting, all loving, Jesus worshipping, fundamentalist Christian when you are not trying to justify your beliefs by being scientifically ignorant. As Pags constantly keeps pointing out to you, take a leaf from the Islam and be honest about your faith and motivations, this way you won't have to justify it by misquoting scientists and scientific papers as it makes you come across as uncertain in your own faith.

Peace be with you, Longloadr.

I've, personally, never found the question about whether there was an act of creation that interesting. A first cause. We'll likely never know that, because like so much of Religious thinking it is beyond our means to test. We are however being, as ever, busy little bees and measuring and testing what we take to believe the initial processes involved any which way we can.

If some people are leaving a theory behind, others will be not, it's still all part and parcel of good science. But science does at least like to posit testable theories.

What interests me more, and it's something I might as well go and start a thread about on the RnP boards is, what was created. That the divine chose this existence to call into being as opposed to another. That has little to do with science, so won't pursue it here.

How. HOOOWWWW do you keep getting the things you are getting from the stuff you are posting?! How does one achieve this state of self delusion? How?

Dolorosa wrote:

Longloadr, You REALLY have no blinking clue what either of these statements are about or what is the Big Bang theory. NOT ONE of these statements is contradictory to the theory. What these people do is work to expand it by providing more detail, ideas of its mechanics, and the conditions pre Big Bang and within a few unknown split moments at its beginning. Please please please stop embarrassing yourself by pretending to know what you are talking about. These people haven’t spent most of their life studying these subjects for some “quote brigade” to pick their work apart in order to swing crap at science and wedge their God in its place. If you want to find faults with the theory, science or the people who do it, have a blinking courtesy to go out and actually study it and their work before jumping on a crap slinging band wagon because the stink is starting to follow you wherever you go now. Trust me, you are a lot more credible as a proselytising, hymn posting, Verse quoting, all loving, Jesus worshipping, fundamentalist Christian when you are not trying to justify your beliefs by being scientifically ignorant. As Pags constantly keeps pointing out to you, take a leaf from the Islam and be honest about your faith and motivations, this way you won't have to justify it by misquoting scientists and scientific papers as it makes you come across as uncertain in your own faith. Peace be with you, Longloadr.

Ditto everything with exception of the "peace be with you". I hope Alberta is engulfed in flame.

catnip wrote:

How. HOOOWWWW do you keep getting the things you are getting from the stuff you are posting?! How does one achieve this state of self delusion? How?

I think he already explained this one. It is caused by the mutations that arose as a result of Biblical incest

Sadly, since there is no gain of information in genetics, there is no help.

I can't see how anyone of the quotes either proves or disproves that the Universe was created.

Lysholm wrote:

I can't see how anyone of the quotes either proves or disproves that the Universe was created.

That's probably because you (like Longloadr) are looking for things which aren't there.

You are spreading information, that is over 30 years old. Nothing new, all is already known.
How about you learn some stuff about a subject you don't know anything about before jumping to the next subject you don't know anything about. Like in the thread about radiometric dating you started. Did you already understand what I wrote?

Sunny-Smile wrote:

Did you already understand what I wrote?

Do I get credit for trying to understand it?*
























*And failing.