How did it all begin?
24 Nov '05 19:391 editTo Starman: Sorry pal, my ID thing will have to wait to while. In the mean time I have been busy working on the Big Bang Theory:
THIS IS NOT A CUT AND PASTE JOB! (So you might want to take the effort to read it cos it took me hours to put it together)😉
Here we go: Fasten your seatbelt.
The "Big Bang Theory" states that in the beginning there was a "cosmic egg". Opinions differ among experts on just how big the egg was, most say smaller than the head of a pin, some say millions of kilometres in diameter, others make no statement at all of an actual size but just state that it was extremely dense. However, they all seem to agree that fifteen billion years it exploded and produced a gas called hydrogen. Some of the atoms of hydrogen collided and formed another gas, helium. The hydrogen and helium, together with little packets of energy called 'photons', came shooting out of the explosion with great speed. As the ball of hot gas expanded it cooled. As it cooled it clumped together into clouds, which contracted, heated up and formed stars. Nuclear reactions in the stars produced "heavy" elements like oxygen iron and gold. Stars exploded scattering these heavy elements throughout the universe. Clouds of gas, enriched by these heavy elements contracted and formed, among other things, the sun, the planets and the earth.
The process continues with atoms, molecules and photons of energy combining by chance random processes to form plants, animals, ...man.
Although this is known as the "Big Bang Theory", it does not actually merit the title "theory" on the scheme that science usually claims to follow. Rather, since there does not appear to be any way to test even one really significant point about this theory by experiment, it ranks as a ‘hypothesis’. This remarkable story seems to run counter to everyday experience. Experience tells us that any system left to itself runs down, becomes more random, less orderly, more chaotic. Yet here we see the order and complexity of the entire universe resulting from the total disorder of two gasses shooting out of an explosion. For science to have accepted an idea which runs completely counter to all experience we would presume that there is powerful evidence to support the idea, and a very good reason why it was put forward in the first place.
Scientists discovered that each element has a characteristic pattern of lines in its spectrum. Calcium for example has three closely spaced red lines, one orange, one green and six blue lines in its visible spectrum. Astronomers examine the light coming from stars, and by finding the tell-tale patterns of lines, deduce which elements there may be in the outermost regions of the stars. About a hundred years ago it was discovered that the patterns of lines were not always in the expected positions. The pattern was occasionally moved, or “shifted” slightly towards the blue part of the spectrum, or, more often, towards the red end of the spectrum. The only explanation that anyone seems to have been able to think of at that time was that a star with a blue shift must be moving towards the earth, one with a red shift must be moving away. This is called the “Doppler Effect”.
Besides stars, the astronomers discovered fuzzy patches of light, which they deduced to be huge groups of stars. They were given the name “galaxies”. Galaxies were usually found to have red shifts in their spectra. An astronomer called Edwin Hubble noticed a puzzling relationship. The fainter the galaxy (and therefore presumably further away), the bigger the red shift in its spectrum (and therefore, presumably, the faster it must be moving away from the earth). An intriguing part about the observation was that it appeared no matter where one looked. In every direction the distant galaxies seemed to be rushing away from the earth at a great speed. The entire universe seemed to be dilating from an expansion centre, which to all appearances seemed to be the earth.
If the universe is expanding, then it must have been smaller in the past. If that is so, reasoned the scientists, there must have been a time when all the material of the universe was at one point. The Big Bang was born.
The idea is however plagued with problems.
The cosmic egg is believed to have been denser than a “black hole”, from which (those who believe in black holes tell us) nothing can escape, not even light. But everything in the universe escaped from this black hole.
Material shooting out of an explosion spreads out and disperses. The cloud of gas would simply get thinner and cooler. As Fred Hoyle pointed out, the big bang leads to “a dull-as-ditch-water expansion, which degrades itself adiabatically (without the addition of heat) until it, is incapable of doing anything at all.” (Fred Hoyle, NEW SCIENTIST, Nov.19, 1981 p.523.) And yet the theory requires that this expanding gas clumps together into clouds, which contract to form galaxies, stars, planets and people. The originator of the theory, Lemaitre, speculated that the expansion must have stopped for long enough to allow the gas to clump together in clouds. The clouds must have then started rushing on their way again. Most scientists have not been impressed with that idea. Where did the energy come from to stop the initial expansion? And where did the energy come from to set it all in motion again after the clumping together in clouds? So most accept no pause in the headlong rush from the explosion centre. How then did the material clump together instead of spreading out? Since no credible explanations have been put forward it has become necessary to believe that there were very special conditions for the explosion itself. Such theories give rise to the “anthropic principle”, which states in effect, that the explosion must have been extremely carefully designed specifically to make the eventual existence of man possible.
A cloud of gas at a high temperature tends to fly apart. The theory requires that gravitational attraction between the molecules of gas pulls them together and makes the cloud contract. Calculations show that unless the temperature is less than five degrees absolute (minus two hundred and sixty-eight degrees Celsius) the thermal energy of the gas molecules tending to make the cloud disperse is greater than the gravitational energy tending to make it contract. So in order to start contracting, a cloud would have to be colder than five degrees absolute. Today there are clouds of gas in the universe from which the astronomers believe that clouds are forming. The temperatures of these clouds have been measured. The temperatures are far too high, about a hundred degrees absolute, so they cannot be contracting (or forming stars) today. But the big bag tells us that in the past the temperature was higher. It would have been more impossible for them to have contracted in the past than today. To get over this impossibility “add hocs” have been brought in. A favourite is to assume that a could explodes near a cloud of gas and dust. Such an exploding star is called a ‘nova’ or if bright enough, a ‘supernova’. The explosion is supposed to make the cloud of gas and dust contract; but there seems to be no convincing reason why …such an explosion would logically make the nearby cloud disperse, not consolidate. There is a paradox in this theory. The star, which exploded, had to form long ago, when the expanding gas was hotter than today, It would therefore be more difficult for the star which became the nova to form that for the explosion-generated successor.
The material shooting out of the Big Bang must have had enormous linear momentum, but the laws of mechanics show that it could not have had angular momentum, in other words this material would be flying straight out of the explosion centre. Yet the astronomers all agreed that the universe is full of bodies which are rotating and also moving in circles (or rather ellipses). They have a great deal of angular momentum. Where did the angular momentum come from? This difficulty could be overcome by having several “Little Big Bangs” interacting with each other. Commenting on the possibility of little big bangs Hoyle noted:-“…the mathematics of little big bangs are more difficult to cope with than the mathematics of a single simple big bang”. (Fred Hoyle, THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE, Michael Joseph, London,1983,p.179.) He suggests that the scientists would prefer to stick to theories who mathematics they can handle, even if those theories are logically not very convincing.
The Big Bang is thought to have produced hydrogen and helium. The exact proportion can be juggled somewhat, a little under twenty percent helium is normally accepted. But once a figure has been chosen it must be taken as constant for the entire explosion. All the gas coming out of the Big Bang has the same proportion of helium. All the clouds have the same proportion, all the stars which form from these clouds have the same proportion. Now the theory goes on to say that nuclear reactions inside stars convert hydrogen to helium, so it would be quite possible to find stars with more helium than the assumed starting value, but there seems to be no way for the proportion to become less. Yet there is a class of “B-type” stars (bright, blue stars, which the astronomers believe to be “young&rdquo😉 which have only about one percent of the required helium. (D.W. Sciama, MODERN COSMOLOGY, pp.150-153.) This would appear to be another contradiction to the theory.
Continued...
THIS IS NOT A CUT AND PASTE JOB! (So you might want to take the effort to read it cos it took me hours to put it together)😉
Here we go: Fasten your seatbelt.
The "Big Bang Theory" states that in the beginning there was a "cosmic egg". Opinions differ among experts on just how big the egg was, most say smaller than the head of a pin, some say millions of kilometres in diameter, others make no statement at all of an actual size but just state that it was extremely dense. However, they all seem to agree that fifteen billion years it exploded and produced a gas called hydrogen. Some of the atoms of hydrogen collided and formed another gas, helium. The hydrogen and helium, together with little packets of energy called 'photons', came shooting out of the explosion with great speed. As the ball of hot gas expanded it cooled. As it cooled it clumped together into clouds, which contracted, heated up and formed stars. Nuclear reactions in the stars produced "heavy" elements like oxygen iron and gold. Stars exploded scattering these heavy elements throughout the universe. Clouds of gas, enriched by these heavy elements contracted and formed, among other things, the sun, the planets and the earth.
The process continues with atoms, molecules and photons of energy combining by chance random processes to form plants, animals, ...man.
Although this is known as the "Big Bang Theory", it does not actually merit the title "theory" on the scheme that science usually claims to follow. Rather, since there does not appear to be any way to test even one really significant point about this theory by experiment, it ranks as a ‘hypothesis’. This remarkable story seems to run counter to everyday experience. Experience tells us that any system left to itself runs down, becomes more random, less orderly, more chaotic. Yet here we see the order and complexity of the entire universe resulting from the total disorder of two gasses shooting out of an explosion. For science to have accepted an idea which runs completely counter to all experience we would presume that there is powerful evidence to support the idea, and a very good reason why it was put forward in the first place.
Scientists discovered that each element has a characteristic pattern of lines in its spectrum. Calcium for example has three closely spaced red lines, one orange, one green and six blue lines in its visible spectrum. Astronomers examine the light coming from stars, and by finding the tell-tale patterns of lines, deduce which elements there may be in the outermost regions of the stars. About a hundred years ago it was discovered that the patterns of lines were not always in the expected positions. The pattern was occasionally moved, or “shifted” slightly towards the blue part of the spectrum, or, more often, towards the red end of the spectrum. The only explanation that anyone seems to have been able to think of at that time was that a star with a blue shift must be moving towards the earth, one with a red shift must be moving away. This is called the “Doppler Effect”.
Besides stars, the astronomers discovered fuzzy patches of light, which they deduced to be huge groups of stars. They were given the name “galaxies”. Galaxies were usually found to have red shifts in their spectra. An astronomer called Edwin Hubble noticed a puzzling relationship. The fainter the galaxy (and therefore presumably further away), the bigger the red shift in its spectrum (and therefore, presumably, the faster it must be moving away from the earth). An intriguing part about the observation was that it appeared no matter where one looked. In every direction the distant galaxies seemed to be rushing away from the earth at a great speed. The entire universe seemed to be dilating from an expansion centre, which to all appearances seemed to be the earth.
If the universe is expanding, then it must have been smaller in the past. If that is so, reasoned the scientists, there must have been a time when all the material of the universe was at one point. The Big Bang was born.
The idea is however plagued with problems.
The cosmic egg is believed to have been denser than a “black hole”, from which (those who believe in black holes tell us) nothing can escape, not even light. But everything in the universe escaped from this black hole.
Material shooting out of an explosion spreads out and disperses. The cloud of gas would simply get thinner and cooler. As Fred Hoyle pointed out, the big bang leads to “a dull-as-ditch-water expansion, which degrades itself adiabatically (without the addition of heat) until it, is incapable of doing anything at all.” (Fred Hoyle, NEW SCIENTIST, Nov.19, 1981 p.523.) And yet the theory requires that this expanding gas clumps together into clouds, which contract to form galaxies, stars, planets and people. The originator of the theory, Lemaitre, speculated that the expansion must have stopped for long enough to allow the gas to clump together in clouds. The clouds must have then started rushing on their way again. Most scientists have not been impressed with that idea. Where did the energy come from to stop the initial expansion? And where did the energy come from to set it all in motion again after the clumping together in clouds? So most accept no pause in the headlong rush from the explosion centre. How then did the material clump together instead of spreading out? Since no credible explanations have been put forward it has become necessary to believe that there were very special conditions for the explosion itself. Such theories give rise to the “anthropic principle”, which states in effect, that the explosion must have been extremely carefully designed specifically to make the eventual existence of man possible.
A cloud of gas at a high temperature tends to fly apart. The theory requires that gravitational attraction between the molecules of gas pulls them together and makes the cloud contract. Calculations show that unless the temperature is less than five degrees absolute (minus two hundred and sixty-eight degrees Celsius) the thermal energy of the gas molecules tending to make the cloud disperse is greater than the gravitational energy tending to make it contract. So in order to start contracting, a cloud would have to be colder than five degrees absolute. Today there are clouds of gas in the universe from which the astronomers believe that clouds are forming. The temperatures of these clouds have been measured. The temperatures are far too high, about a hundred degrees absolute, so they cannot be contracting (or forming stars) today. But the big bag tells us that in the past the temperature was higher. It would have been more impossible for them to have contracted in the past than today. To get over this impossibility “add hocs” have been brought in. A favourite is to assume that a could explodes near a cloud of gas and dust. Such an exploding star is called a ‘nova’ or if bright enough, a ‘supernova’. The explosion is supposed to make the cloud of gas and dust contract; but there seems to be no convincing reason why …such an explosion would logically make the nearby cloud disperse, not consolidate. There is a paradox in this theory. The star, which exploded, had to form long ago, when the expanding gas was hotter than today, It would therefore be more difficult for the star which became the nova to form that for the explosion-generated successor.
The material shooting out of the Big Bang must have had enormous linear momentum, but the laws of mechanics show that it could not have had angular momentum, in other words this material would be flying straight out of the explosion centre. Yet the astronomers all agreed that the universe is full of bodies which are rotating and also moving in circles (or rather ellipses). They have a great deal of angular momentum. Where did the angular momentum come from? This difficulty could be overcome by having several “Little Big Bangs” interacting with each other. Commenting on the possibility of little big bangs Hoyle noted:-“…the mathematics of little big bangs are more difficult to cope with than the mathematics of a single simple big bang”. (Fred Hoyle, THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE, Michael Joseph, London,1983,p.179.) He suggests that the scientists would prefer to stick to theories who mathematics they can handle, even if those theories are logically not very convincing.
The Big Bang is thought to have produced hydrogen and helium. The exact proportion can be juggled somewhat, a little under twenty percent helium is normally accepted. But once a figure has been chosen it must be taken as constant for the entire explosion. All the gas coming out of the Big Bang has the same proportion of helium. All the clouds have the same proportion, all the stars which form from these clouds have the same proportion. Now the theory goes on to say that nuclear reactions inside stars convert hydrogen to helium, so it would be quite possible to find stars with more helium than the assumed starting value, but there seems to be no way for the proportion to become less. Yet there is a class of “B-type” stars (bright, blue stars, which the astronomers believe to be “young&rdquo😉 which have only about one percent of the required helium. (D.W. Sciama, MODERN COSMOLOGY, pp.150-153.) This would appear to be another contradiction to the theory.
Continued...
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