NASA has said the big bang is a misnomer

NASA has said the big bang is a misnomer for the theory but goes along with its popular usage. It was called that by a scientist who perceived creationism in the idea of a beginning to the universe, while he proposed an alternate theory called steady state. This is a minor point but it escapes notice of people in the mainstream who interpret early-on cosmic inflation as an explosion, which is a different idea than expansion. The word for such an expanse was known in Hebrew as 'raqaya', the old language of the book of Genesis. I believe that doesn't exclude non-solids from its meaning of the dome. Reading the Biblical account of waters and the fluidity which, as astrophysicists explain, happened in less than a picoseconds time (a division of trillions in seconds) it makes one think of a fountain. I used to lean toward the anthropic principle; however, one question is whether the universe has been consistent in its fundamental properties for all time.

Originally posted by Of Ants and Imps
NASA has said the big bang is a misnomer for the theory but goes along with its popular usage. It was called that by a scientist who perceived creationism in the idea of a beginning to the universe, while he proposed an alternate theory called steady state. This is a minor point but it escapes notice of people in the mainstream who interpret early-o ...[text shortened]... question is whether the universe has been consistent in its fundamental properties for all time.

There have been many projects to determine if the rules of physics and chemistry have remained steady and so far the answer is yes, no change as of yet detected.

What do you mean by the term "Dome"?

Whatever happened would have made a picosecond look like an eon. It was a pico-pico second thing.

The reason NASA is calling it a misnomer is the latest ideas indicate there was never a time of infinite density, that the density reached a peak, kind of like a baby being born, passing through a dense volume and then expanding again.

More like a gas going through a tiny orifice and expanding on the other side into thin air, like what goes on in refrigerators which use an expanding gas to be able to move heat around.

The leading ideas on this postulates the idea of multiple universes, higher dimensions which would allow a dense state of 4 D spacetime.

There may be other universes all around us, probably outside the limits of ours and there is indications in the CMB of at least one other universe 'bumping' into ours leaving a calling card in the subtle temperature differences read by Mapp and all those probes.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The reason NASA is calling it a misnomer is the latest ideas indicate there was never a time of infinite density, that the density reached a peak, kind of like a baby being born, passing through a dense volume and then expanding again.

No, NASA correctly called it a misnomer because the big bang was not an explosion within space but rather the rapid expansion of space itself. It has nothing to do with whether or not there was a singularity at the start.
(and Of Ants and Imps correctly states this in his post.)

How can anyone know? It is not like we were there.

Originally posted by Metal Brain
How can anyone know? It is not like we were there.

Via indirect evidence, it is possible to know of events without anyone being at the events. If you come home and see your house is nothing but a smoldering black burned out cinder, you don't need witnesses of a fire to know that your house has been gutted by fire. And, if you dig up dinosaur bones, the fact that no person was their at the time of the dinosaur doesn't stop you knowing that the bones originated from a large living animal that once walked on the surface of the Earth. The big bang is no exception to this and no special reason to think it should be an exception to this.

If you see an avalanche in mid-progress but nobody saw its start and, hypothetically, nobody had ever yet seen any avalanche start in the whole of history, can you not know that there was an event of it starting? Or probably have started of with a relatively small movement of mass that rapidly got bigger?

Originally posted by Metal Brain
How can anyone know? It is not like we were there.

Since when is being somewhere a requirement for knowledge? Do you not know whether the sun exists, since you have never been there? Do you not know that World War I took place, because you weren't there? Do you think China might not exist because you have never been there?

Originally posted by Metal Brain
How can anyone know? It is not like we were there.

Don't ever serve on a jury!

Originally posted by humy
Via indirect evidence, it is possible to know of events without anyone being at the events. If you come home and see your house is nothing but a smoldering black burned out cinder, you don't need witnesses of a fire to know that your house has been gutted by fire. And, if you dig up dinosaur bones, the fact that no person was their at the time of the dinosaur d ...[text shortened]... ? Or probably have started of with a relatively small movement of mass that rapidly got bigger?

You are being misleading. All of your examples are not even similar to the big bang theory. That took place before life existed and even space/time. You cannot say it was not an explosion with certainty. You are being ridiculous.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Since when is being somewhere a requirement for knowledge? Do you not know whether the sun exists, since you have never been there? Do you not know that World War I took place, because you weren't there? Do you think China might not exist because you have never been there?

This was before all of your examples took place. Like Humy, you are just relying on opinions that have not been verified and probably cannot ever be.

How do you know for sure? Convince me.

Originally posted by Metal Brain
You are being misleading. All of your examples are not even similar to the big bang theory. That took place before life existed and even space/time. You cannot say it was not an explosion with certainty. You are being ridiculous.

All of your examples are not even similar to the big bang theory.

they are similar in the one way that counts; we can deduce from the data that the events happened without anyone being there at the event to witness the event thus debunking your claim we cannot know that an event occurred if nobody witnessed it.

That took place before life existed...

how is that relevant?
How is the fact that it happened before life existed relevant to whether we can deduce from the data how it happened?
Would evidence for an event occurring just after the first life be somehow be easier to observe than evidence for an event occurring well before the first life and, if so, how would it coming after the first life help in that way in particular?

That took place before ... and even space/time

no, there was no 'before' space/time and we are not claiming that there was and that is not part of the big bang theory because there being a before time is a logical contradiction. Can't you see that? Your above statement makes no logical sense whatsoever.

You cannot say it was not an explosion with certainty.

we are not saying it was an explosion. We are saying and claiming and have been all along that it was NOT an explosion. Please pay attention! And we can say with an extremely reasonable level of certainty that it was not an explosion because there is no evidence nor reason to believe that it was but rather the data can be by far best explained if it is space itself expanding that makes the universe expand, not an explosion (Occam's razor applies here ) . The big bang theory doesn't say there was an explosion although it is very often misquoted as saying it does and by many flawed websites.

Originally posted by sonhouse
There have been many projects to determine if the rules of physics and chemistry have remained steady and so far the answer is yes, no change as of yet detected.

What do you mean by the term "Dome"?

Whatever happened would have made a picosecond look like an eon. It was a pico-pico second thing.

The reason NASA is calling it a misnomer is the late ...[text shortened]... leaving a calling card in the subtle temperature differences read by Mapp and all those probes.

"Dome" looks like a typo, possibly "tome" since he's referring to Genesis.

Originally posted by humy

All of your examples are not even similar to the big bang theory.

they are similar in the one way that counts; we can deduce from the data that the events happened without anyone being there at the event to witness the event thus debunking your claim we cannot know that an event occurred if nobody witnessed it.

[quote] That took plac ...[text shortened]... an explosion although it is very often misquoted as saying it does and by many flawed websites.

"How is the fact that it happened before life existed relevant to whether we can deduce from the data how it happened?"

What data? Enlighten me.

"no, there was no 'before' space/time and we are not claiming that there was and that is not part of the big bang theory because there being a before time is a logical contradiction. Can't you see that? Your above statement makes no logical sense whatsoever."

You are wrong. Space cannot expand without time expanding. They are linked. Your statement makes no logical sense.

"We are saying and claiming and have been all along that it was NOT an explosion. Please pay attention! And we can say with an extremely reasonable level of certainty that it was not an explosion because there is no evidence nor reason to believe that it was but rather the data can be by far best explained if it is space itself expanding that makes the universe expand, not an explosion"

You are saying lots of things but not proving any of it. Again, what data? Here is where you claim space is expanding but you previously claimed space/time is not expanding. You are contradicting yourself. You can't have space without time and vice versa.

"The big bang theory doesn't say there was an explosion although it is very often misquoted as saying it does and by many flawed websites."

The big bang theory doesn't say anything, people do. Theories are flawed just like you. You have no idea whether it was an explosion or not. You are just putting faith in another person's opinion and nothing more. Try thinking for yourself instead of letting others do your thinking.

Originally posted by Metal Brain
How can anyone know? It is not like we were there.

According to Wikipedia, the oldest known star is SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 [1]. The star is one of the first population II stars and it tells us that the laws of physics around the time of its formation cannot have been so different that star formation was not possible 100 million years after the big bang.

The furthest known galaxy is Z8_GND_5296 [2] at a redshift of 7.5. We are seeing it as it was 700 million years after the big bang. We can therefore observe conditions as they were 13 billion years ago. Galaxies could form and so we know that the laws of physics then produced structures that look pretty much like the structures we have now.

The most distant thing ever observed was GRB_090423 [3] a 10 second gamma ray burst with a redshift of 8.2 which occurred when the universe was 630 million years old. This is believed to be the death of an early massive star in a supernova explosion. This is evidence that stellar evolution then was like stellar evolution now and that the laws of physics were therefore sufficiently similar then that it could happen.

There is some evidence that the laws of physics haven't changed for 13 billion years. Up to things like electro-weak symmetry breaking we have no reason to believe that the laws of physics have changed since the beginning of time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_star
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z8_GND_5296
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRB_090423

Originally posted by DeepThought
According to Wikipedia, the oldest known star is SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 [1]. The star is one of the first population II stars and it tells us that the laws of physics around the time of its formation cannot have been so different that star formation was not possible 100 million years after the big bang.

The furthest known galaxy is Z8_GND_5296 [2] ...[text shortened]... _star
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z8_GND_5296
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRB_090423

You have proven nothing. I refer you to Steven Hawking.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

Originally posted by Metal Brain
You have proven nothing. I refer you to Steven Hawking.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

I have demonstrated that there is evidence that the laws of physics have not changed in the last 13.7 billion years. I have proved my case beyond any sane doubt. If you read the article you posted properly you will see that Hawking says that the laws of physics break down at the beginning of time. He does not say that they break down or change at any other time in the universes history.