Exit Big Bang, Enter 5th Dimension?

The Fun Guy points to this snippet of this "story from the Philadelphia Inquirer: 'the new picture of creation does away with the notion -- now almost scientific gospel -- that all the billions of galaxies making up our universe sprang from a point smaller than an atom. Instead, the scientists say, the big bang stemmed from a collision of two universes that had been separated by a "fifth dimension."'"

Comments

Let's see...

[jd]

First, are these the same scientists who also predict that galaxies are filled with totally undetectable dark matter that makes up 99.9% of the matter of the Universe, and that the space between galaxies is filled with totally undetectable dark matter with negative mass that makes up the other 99.9% of the matter of the Universe?

Second, have these scientists read "Brief History of Time", which does away with the whole notion that our Universe needed a point to be created in?

Re:Let's see...

[jd]

Theories are designed for the sole purpose of having people throw rocks at them, to see what bits stay up and what bits fall over.

If a theory can't even survive one tiny snowball on a weblog, THAT is proof enough that the theory is wrong. Alternatives aren't necessary.

Remember, science is about falsification, but it is ALSO about Occam's Razor. The more elements there are to a theory, the more likely it is to be wrong. Having dark matter (that can't be detected and therefore can't be falsified) that has either positive or negative gravity, depending on where it is and how many pints of beer the researcher drank, violates Occam's Razor and the requirements of a sound theory so badly that it hardly deserves further examination.

An alternative explanation: Superstrings. These =DO= have negative gravity, and could easily account for all this supposed "missing matter". It's been published in so many reputable science journals that it can rightly treat your counter with the contempt it deserves.

Another alternative explanation: The models people are using of galaxies are over-simplified. You simply can't solve the 3-body problem, except by doing the experiment. A galaxy is an 11 BILLION body problem, if you consider the stars alone, and possibly 111 billion, if you include planetary systems, asteroid belts, etc, which do affect the star's motion.

You've also got to consider "shepherd stars/galaxies". In the same way that shepherd moons stabilize the rings of Saturn and Jupiter, it is entirely plausable that unstable galaxies can acquire the semblance of stability through the proximity of other large bodies in the vicinity. Again, shepherding is a well-known and well-established and (more to the point!) OBSERVED phenomina.

Then, you have to consider that gravity itself is not exactly well-understood. There is NO quantum model for gravity, for example. Gravitational waves, from n-ary systems are also a complicating factor, as they will exist within the galaxy AND between galaxies. It is extremely unlikely that models of galaxy formation and galaxy stability, even if the sheer computing power existed to solve these problems accurately, could even remotely include the quirks of gravity.

Last, but not least, relativity throws another spanner in the works. Each body (star, planet, asteroid, etc) has it's own time-frame, because each body will have a unique relative velocity. This makes any kind of simulation positively HORRIBLE! It's bad enough to have to solve by numerical methods an approximate model of an 111 billion body problem. To then have to solve each equation with respect to ALL other bodies means you have FACTORIAL 111 BILLION equations, PER ITERATION!

Now, you're going to tell me that a bunch of punk science wannabies, who have devised a bunch of media buzzwords, can resolve a problem of this magnitude on their home PC?

Dark Matter/Dark Energy is the physics version of the Cold Fusion fiasco. The onus is on the scientists to show why their model meets all challanges, NOT on the challengers to disprove it.

If we lived in your world, we'd still be using Plato's model of the solar system. After all, it DOES work. It meets all predictions, just fine, and contradicts no other theory. (Relativity allows you to pick ANY body as the point of reference, so an Earth-centered solar system is certainly valid. It's even useful, sometimes.)

The requirement that the simplest theory wins is what overthrew Plato, and replaced his model with a sun-centered system which was later extended by Kepler to have elliptical orbits.

IMHO, the idea that the scientists have botched the calculations is MUCH simpler than believing in exotic, undetectable matter. And the idea of Superstrings (which is looking a healthy candidate for a Grand Unified Theory) explains any remaining phenomina just fine.

Re:Let's see...

[jd]

The currently-accepted scientific method is to always accept the simpler of any two explanations, provided it is no simpler than necessary.

In this case, you have two candidate theories:

a) The Universe was formed from the collision of two other Universes, through an additional dimension.

b) Space/Time is parabolic. Therefore there is no "beginning of time", no creation, and no need of a theory to explain one.

IMHO, theory (b) is the simpler, meets the requirements, and is even verifiable. Theory (a) multiplies the entities involved, is extremely complex, cannot be tested, and cannot even be modelled.

Theory (a), then, is "convenient", as it is impossible to disprove, by any known means, and also gets to transfer the question of origin in the bargain! As theories go, this one deseves to be exiled to Pluto. It answers nothing, predicts nothing, and (therefore) is worth nothing.

Re:Let's see...

[krlynch]

You seem to have a pretty poor understanding of dark matter and dark energy for someone who is attacking the ideas with such gusto.

First, dark matter/energy is NOT undetectable. Dark matter is any of a class of possible particles that does not interact via electromagnetism. Hence they can' emit or absorb light (or radio or microwaves, etc...). Since we use telescopes that gather light (EM radiation), we can't directly see these particles. If they exist, however, we could detect them in their, for example, gravitational effects. They may also interact via other forces, such as the Weak force (again, depending on the exact model). So, to say they are undetectable is ridiculous. Dark energy is any contribution to a cosmological constant, something permitted (and in fact hard to theoretically eliminate!) by general relativity. It does not have negative mass, but negative energy density (not the same), and this causes a "repulsion" on cosmic distance scales.

As for the speculation that they make up the bulk of the matter in the universe, the suggestion comes from many lines of evidence: we believe in general relativity (because of the many predictions it makes that are experimentally verified, such as the perihelion precession of the planets, stellar structure, redshift of energy climbing out of a gravitational well, elapsed time differences of clocks at different altitudes, pulsar timings, etc..). Because of that, we can make a prediction about the rotation curves of spiral galaxies, and those predictions do not agree with the measured curves. But, we have independent reason to believe that the amount of visible matter in the universe is reasonably well known (since the visible matter matches the predictions of big bang nucleosynthesis via, for example, measurements of the abundances of light nuclei).

So, there is something that is wrong with our theoretical understanding. But it is unlikely to be with general relativity, or with the big bang/expanding universe model (since these models get so many other things right). Thus, there is strong reason to believe, from many independent lines of evidence, that there is an additional component to the energy density of the universe. There is a need both for something to flatten the rotation curves of galaxies and something to flatten the universe (something I didn't mention here, but which is an additional unexplained problem). Dark matter and dark energy in their various forms are some ways of doing just those things.

As for your question about "A Brief History of Time": you must be kidding. I hope. Many of these scientists you deride for not reading the book are the ones that came up with the ideas Hawking writes about in the book. Furthermore, "A Brief History of Time", like all science books written for consumption by non-scientists, has to take some short cuts and make less-than-rigorous statements. The book was NOT written to present new work to the world; it WAS written to translate science done by scientists for a lay audience. The people actually doing work in this field are certainly much better prepared to do the work than are people who have just read one pop-sci book on the topic.....

Re:Let's see...

[krlynch]

IMHO, theory (b) is the simpler, meets the requirements, and is even verifiable. Theory (a) multiplies the entities involved, is extremely complex, cannot be tested, and cannot even be modelled.

Unfortunately, your humble opinion is wrong. Theory 'a' DOES make testable predictions, is NOT more complicated when stated with the technical rigor necessary to ask detailed questions, and can easily be modelled (although I don't know why you would want to model it if you can directly ask it questions). That's why a number of theorists are taking the time to subject it to tests.

As just one example, both theories make a prediction about the spectrum of relic background radiation of photons: theory 'a' predicts a nearly blackbody spectrum, and with deviations from that spectrum that have a specific form; static universes predict no such background, without supplementing them with additional, ad hoc, assumptions.

We know that there is relic background, and we know that it is nearly blackbody, and we even know roughly where the first accoustic peak appears. We also have ongoing experiments that will shortly give us even more information on the details of that peak, and perhaps even the second peak.

Occam's Razor is a principle that says: given two theories that make the same predictions, and those predictions agree with experiment, you should accept the simpler one until such time as it is falsified. It does not mean that you accept the simplest (pseudo-) theory that comes along, even if it explains the data ... you have to confront the theory with the data. As an example, suppose I have the following "theory" of the universe: It is the way it is because it is the way it is. Certainly simpler than quantum field theory and general relativity, but hardly a "better" theory, since it makes no predictions, and can not be tested.

Re:Let's see...

[caffeinated_bunsen]

I can see why dark matter and dark energy seem a bit incredible. They go completely against common sense. But so does relativity, and nearly all of quantum mechanics. Those theories were developed to explain observations, and they happened to make some odd predictions as well. Early on, the public generally scoffed at those theories because their predictions were contradictory to common sense.

The ideas of dark energy and matter were also invented to explain observations. So for all you people who keep saying "Dark matter/dark energy/[insert theory here] MUST be wrong because my high-school physics education says so, and I read one book that Hawking dumbed down enough that I thought I understood it, so those people who've spent half their lives studying this stuff must have their heads in their asses," I have a challenge:

Come up with a better explanation.
Come up with a mathematically consistent model to represent your explanation.
Get it published in a moderately well-known scientific journal (New Scientist does NOT count).
Get it past the first hour of peer review semi-intact.

Then you can tell everybody that the other theory is wrong. Until then, your words are no more valid than those of the preacher telling you why evolution MUST be wrong.

Re:In other news.

[jd]

Nah. It can't possibly be -that- strong. I think they've distilled something from a nearby chemical warfare lab.

In other news.

[SpanishInquisition]

A recent study show a dramatic increase of crack consumption in the scientific community.
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Actually, 10 dimensions

[Nohea]

I recently read Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku, and he says many current physicists studying superstring theory postulate 10 dimensions.

I know at first it sounds like they are smoking something, but Einstein's theory of the fourth dimension (time) was also not obvious when he proposed it.

The basic idea is that complicated physical phenomenon can be analyzed more simply using more dimensions. To use the Einstein example, trying to account for variations in distance and time the closer you get to the speed of light would be screwed up calulating in 3 dimensions, but easy adding a 4th one. You just have to accept that space and time can be interchanged, just like the 3 dimensions we see physically.

http://www.mkaku.org/hyper_toe.htm

And we have learned another lesson...

[glebite]

Friends shouldn't let friends drive drunk - even if they are an entire universe... Sigh...

What I think is fascinating is that we get to look at the whole thing from a different perspective again. If the universe was already "large" to begin with, then was that first burst or explosion super dense plasma? Or, was our universe just a splinter of that explosion?

Oh well, it's just another reason for my worry-wart friend to ponder:

death by universe ultimately condensing again;

death by a forever expanding universe;

AND NOW! death by collision from something we can't even see coming our way!

Fifth dimension?

[Vuarnet]

So what they're saying is, this Universe came out of one of MXYZPTLK's pranks?


Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

Better contact the Banzai Institute!

[gabriel_aristos]

Sounds like Buckaroo Banzai & crew were really on to something when they fired up their oscillation overthruster and drove through that mountain in the desert. I suppose the Fifth Dimension is full of Red Lectroids, too?

Scientific gospel

[Hilary Rosen]

There is no scientific gospel. Maybe there is, in a third-century "let's chuck out all the bits we don't agree with" way, but not in the sense the author implies.

The Big Bang theory has survived because it is better at explaining the observed universe than any other theory. It is very challengable, particularly if you have a better explanation of galaxy formation. I'm not sure that this theory is it, although I'm not particularly competent to judge. Where does the energy in the 'branes come from? Is it "'branes all the way down"?
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