NASA Reaffirms Big Bang Theory

Peretz writes "NASA has found evidence reinforcing a theory of what took place post-Big Bang and time expansion. They claim: 'Over the course of millions of years, gravity exploited the density differences to create the structure of the universe---stars and galaxies separated by vast voids.' Thereby creating a 'structure' to the universe -- a kiddush cup. '...finds that the first stars---the forebears of all subsequent generations of stars and of life itself---were fully formed remarkably early, only about 400 million years after inflation. This is called the era of reionization, the point when the light from the first stars ionized hydrogen atoms, liberating electrons from the protons.'"

Comments

Misleading Headline

[AKAImBatman]

NASA Confrms a Big Bang Theory

NASA has a confirmed a theory of what took place post-Big Bang and time expansion.

Please don't use sensationalist and misleading headlines. Confirmation of a theory is tantamount to saying that it is proven. Given that this is scientific theory we're referring to, I don't think that's what you want to say. What you probably want to say is, "New evidence supports a Big Bang Theory".

What NASA actually says in their article is:

The WMAP team is announcing two major results: evidence for cosmic inflation, and confirmation of when stars first turned on. Both results depended on a combination of temperature and polarization data.

To put that into laymans terms, they have new data that agrees with old data and theories. That can be a good thing for the status of a theory. But let's be somewhat scientific here and not throw around statements that imply proven theories. This is, after all, supposed to be "News for Nerds". :-)

Re:Misleading Headline

[quest(answer)ion]

you've probably already flamed to death on this one, but i thought i'd weigh in soberly. what your take on this neatly leaves out is that what genesis mostly conflicts with is theories of how the earth itself (not to mention the life on it) has formed. the 6000 year inference is in direct conflict with the scientific (i.e. geological and archaelogical) evidence as to how long the earth has been around. granted there are lots of disagreements about how accurate our best scientific dating methods are, but the discrepancies are hardly enough to account for a several billion year overestimate.

don't mean to be rude, but i'll trust systematic observation of the actual earth and the geological processes shaping it over literal analysis of a book--history or not--anyday.

side note: genesis doesn't really start with the earth *already* created. it begins with the word, then light, etc. y_w_h did a fair amount of creatin' before the earth was actually "there." so saying that "god left out the creation of the universe" isn't terribly accurate anyway.

even assuming that the literality of the bible picks up at a fairly late chapter in human evolution--with Adam and Eve happening say, around the time of the emergence of language and sophisticated culture with H. Sapiens leaving Africa, that makes for a discrepancy in time-table in the ballpark of a hundred-thousand years, which is WAY beyond the error margins of our dating techniques.

i'm sorry, i just can't see any reasonable way to justify a literal reading of the bible as world history, except as a kind of mythologized history of one particular people in the middle east area. seen in that way, it makes a great deal of historical, cultural, etc sense and is pretty damn important to understanding humanity as it has developed in that part of the world.

i'm not trying to step on any religious toes here--you can get as literal as you want with the moral/cultural stuff in the bible if you want; if you want to read, say, leviticus as the literal law of a vengeful and nitpicky god, go for it, that's your business, but to equivocate and try to wiggle into a literal interpretation of the historical accuracy of it is--again, sorry if i offend--a little weak and kinda does an injustice to your faith.

How?

[JDSalinger]

How can the past be truly confirmed? -C

Re:I sure agree

[MightyMartian]

Have you ever heard the word "inference"? You know, the same kind of process as you would use if you find a man lying on the ground with a pool of blood around his head and a bloodied hammer lying beside him.

Big Bang cosmology is based upon three key lines of evidence:
1. The red shift of distant galaxies demonstrates that the observable universe is expanding.
2. Nucleosynthesis demonstrates that the large majority of the very lightest elements; hydrogen, helium and lithium are not the products of stars, but rather from some period when the universe was much hotter and denser than it was today.
3. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, seen in *every* direction you care to look, is the clearest earmark that the Universe was much hotter and denser.

So even if Big Bang cosmology is replaced, the replacement theory is going to have to explain these observations and the inference gained from them that the universe was much denser and hotter early in its history.

Re:Lets not forget.

[MightyMartian]

Plenty of observations could falsify the Big Bang. If the CMBR were localized in one direction, then it would knock down a key pillar of the theory. If we could demonstrate some other means by which the vast amounts of hydrogen needed for the earliest stars to form other than by primitive nucleosynthesis, that would certainly cause severe problems.

The Big Bang is falsifiable, though by this point, and with the vast number of observations done in the last three decades, it's hard to imagine any evidence now coming to light that would overthrow it. If it is replaced at all, then the new theory is still going to have explain the evidence, and that means that the new theory is still going to have to deal with a universe that was once incredibly hotter and denser than it is now.

Re:You heard it here first...

[Tony]

Why is it so difficult to believe that the universe just always was in existance?

The dame walked into my office with a sneer on her pretty pasty-white face. "You sure you know what you're talking about?" I sneered back.

"Yeah," she said. She had the kind of teeth made for clenching, white and pearly and pressed firmly together. "Yeah, the way I see it, the Universe got a bum rap. They say it all exploded, but I don't believe it. Not my Universe, the big handsome lug." She went on like that for a while. It coulda been the whiskey, but I think she was just dumb in love with her own voice. She went on about how the Universe had to've always been, and nobody had no evidence to the contrary.

She wound down after sixty minutes or so.

"Look, Lady," I snapped. "I get paid by the hour. You owe me big. But I'll forget to send the bill if you just answer me one question."

She squinted at me like her eyeballs got a taste of something sour. "What?" She spat the word out in a short blast of noise, like a bird honking for attention.

"You ever break the second law of thermodynamics?"

The question must've smacked her right between the eyes. "What're you implying?" She was suddenly, strangely coy.

I pressed my advantage. "Your lovely little thing with the Universe. You ever break the second law of thermodynamics? Did you ever see the Universe break the second law of thermodynamics?"

She shook her head like she had a boiled egg stuck in her ear. She admitted, "I have never done any such thing. It's impossible for a lady of my fine upbringing. I don't even understand what you are driving at, Mister Entropy."

"Yeah, I know." I pointed toward the door. She took the hint, and left my office like a hot, wet squal in the middle of the Pacific. "That's the problem, " told the blank and empty space where she had been. "If you don't get it now, you'll probably never understand."

Witnesses at the time are not required.

[Beltway Prophet]

Suppose I'm sitting by a pond one day, busy coding on my laptop, when I hear a lound splash. I look up and see a couple of kids picking up rocks and a circular wave having a diameter that indicates it was formed about 5s ago. Well, I wasn't a witness to the event, but I could hypothesize that one of the kids threw a rock into the water. To confirm, I could roll up my pant legs and feel around in the soft muddy floor of the pond for a rock. Now I've got a supported theory. The rock turns out to be the same imported blue granite used to grit the path around the pond but not found natively in the area? Even more confirmation...

Infinity solves its own problems

[Pfhorrest]

Saying the universe was always in existence implies an actual infinity, and the problems this brings up are, well, practically infinite! Like for example, if the universe has always been here, and it's increasing in entropy, how come it hasn't completely run down already?

The second law of thermodynamics is no longer considered a law per se, since we discovered that thermodynamic systems such as gasses are composed of atoms which collide with one another according to time-symmetric laws, not some continuous 'gas' stuff which obeys the 2nd law the way particles obey the law of gravity, say. The fact that entropy always seems to go up is merely a statistical law, namely, that the chances of it going back down are EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY unlikely, because of all possible arrangements of (for example) the atoms in a cloud of gas, most of them are in thermal equilibrium, and a vanishingly small number of possible states of that cloud of gas have all of them on one side, or some similarly low-entropy state.

But such states are still possible. And given infinite time, anything possible will occur. So while a massive amount of energy suddenly conspiring to come together to form the super hot and dense 'initial state' of the Big Bang is vanishingly unlikely, in an eternity, it will eventually occur. An infinite number of times, in fact. So the 'universe' as we conceive it (or at least the part of it which we call 'the universe', that part which we have any hope of ever observing) is currently winding down from an extremely unlikely lapse of entropy, and an inconceivably long amount of time in the future, something just like that will happen again.

And if you take infinite space for granted too, then something just like the Big Bang is happening right now, most likely somewhere so far away that everything we consider 'the universe' will be radiation and black holes (or possibly even just radiation, once the black holes all evaporate) by the time any effects of it can reach us. In fact, if space is infinite, then it's happening an infinite number of times *right now*.

The apparent problems of physical infinities only arise if you fail to completely grasp the sheer, literally unimaginably large scale of 'infinity', and all of the implications that it brings with it. Infinity solves its own problems.

Besides, the law of thermodynamics only states that entropy never goes UP. It could remain static over the entire universe, and just shift where the particular concentrations of energy are at a given time (changing local entropy). If you assume the law of conservation of information (which is the reciprocal or inverse of entropy) is true, then that seems like it's got to be the case, anyway, since an increase in universal entropy would mean a loss of information.