If It Was A " Big Bang" That Started The Universe And Us, What Went " Bang"?

[annieigma]

I doubt if anyone can give a definite answer, but why do scientists think it was the start of the universe? could it be the aftermath of an enormous exploding star that they are seeing? I realise that many scientists seem to have the same opinion about the big bang, but why?

[Khandro]

jake; //You hear a bang, see shards flying away - I think that there was an explosion would stand up in court as being beyond reasonable doubt//
Not at all, there could always be another explanation.
You are using your ability to think, to back up an opinion, instead of examining more possibilities; the bang could be a car back-firing, and the shards could emanate from a completely unconnected accidental breaking of a window on the 7th floor above you.

[DaisyNonna]

Reminds me of a quotation. "Nothing comes of nothing".

[jim360]

IN answer to Khandro, while there may be equally complicated alternatives that become gradually more and more contrived but still manage to fit the data - this goes against the general tendency for Scientists to seek an explanation that is as simple as possible. Besides which a car backfiring and a good old-fashioned proper explosion may sound similar to the human ear but will look completely different when you analyse their traces closer. A backfiring car won't leave quite so violent a trace behind on the ground, for example, and the acoustics will anyway be different. At any rate the point is that there are usually ways of distinguishing alternative possibilities. And of all the current alternatives, the Big Bang comes out on top by some distance. Lots to sort out still, but the point is that all other explanations currently don't fit the data nearly as well.

@Daisy, all these sort and simple posts aren't really clear. Are you saying that you don't agree with the Big Bang Theory. If so why and what is your alternative?

Also, for that matter, what is nothing? I've worked enough with the relevant physics that there is no such thing as "nothing" in the sense of not anything anywhere at all ever. While the beginning is confusing to me that's partly because I imagine "before the universe" as being a blank nothingness when "in fact" it didn't even exist so you couldn't look at it. As soon as you get even the merest hint, though, of space and time, then lots of stuff naturally emerges and you never have "nothing". "Nothing" just isn't the case, the vacuum actually full of activity.

[jake-the-peg]

I think you're getting desperate now Khandro

It was an analogy and you're stretching it a bit too far but let's persue it - in this case the shards are not on the ground - they are flying out , we can track them back

This is why I use the 'reasonable doubt'/stand up in court analogy.

But it's complex because different parts of what we know have different confidences associated with them right now

At the core we know the Universe expanded from a very small to very large state - we can see the movement we can 'hear' the echo - it's way beyond reasonable doubt.

Some parts of the theory have less confidence associated with them - inflation for example, the super-rapid phase of expansion early on. I don't think anybody's really happy with this because there's no real mechanism for it and we do like a mechanism but it answers so many questions so neatly that it's grudgingly accepted.

If you want to take issue with that part and have a better suggestion that answers the questions - be my guest we'd love to know I'm not sure anyone would claim that was beyond reasonable doubt - balance of probabilities.

Then you come to things like string theory and that's IMHO little more than self-consistant speculation.

Another reason I dislike the term 'big bang' it encompasses a number of ideas of which there are different levels of certainty

[Khandro]

jake; My response was to your statement "YOU hear a bang, see shards flying away" etc. which I take to mean this is an event on the street. I'm not offering an alternative to The Big Bang, I'm simply suggesting that there can always be an alternative explanation to perceived phenomena.

[Mosaic]

You're all denying the obvious. it wasn't a bang, it was god sneezing.

[Old_Geezer]

Even where evidence is destroyed one can always consider the possible ways a thing/event could occur, and if only one way can be suggested, then that's "knowing" as well as one can know anything, as far as I am concerned. Even if one gets a group of possibilities there may still be a greater likelihood of one, which again IMO should be considered as something known.

[scowie]

We do not "know" that the universe has expanded/is expanding at all. The idea that it does comes from the interpretation of galactic redshifts as being the result of the doppler effect. There are other causes of redshift though and there is evidence that suggests the doppler interpretation may be wrong. See: http://phys.org/news190027752.html

The talk of time dilation in that article may make this sound more complicated than it really is...

Consider how the doppler effect applies to the sound of a police car's siren as the car comes past you. The pitch of the sound goes from high to low as the car drives past, but there is a secondary frequency shift that often gets missed here too. The frequency of any oscillation in the sound, e.g. the number of nee-norrs per second, is also reduced as the police car comes past (not that they go nee-norr these days but anyway...)

The astronomical equivalent would be for some luminous object with a light curve (an oscillation in luminance) to have a slower oscillation the faster it is moving away from us. Quasars have such a light curve but we find that it's frequency bears no relation to it's redshift.

Cosmological redshifts may in fact be the result of photons losing energy from their interaction with the particles of the intergalactic medium. See: http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/hubble/

Here's a good documentary that highlights other evidence that suggests the big bang theory may be wrong...

[jim360]

Thanks for providing those links, scowie. If I get time I'll have a proper look at them!