Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
The difference between the headline and the first line is pretty vast, although the headline is clearly trying to hint at the truth rather than mislead, by using the word "a" intead of "the."
What the first line says is that a theory about how certain events played out after the big bang had been "confirmed." What the headline sounds like is "the Big Bang has finally been proved!" But note that it says "a Big Bang theory." Here's the writer of the headline trying to give himself an out. I cut him some slack; I'm sure he's working with a limited 80 column field or so. In other words, technically what he said was that "a theory about the Big Bang has been confirmed," but he made it just a little too sensationalistic, which is probably going to lead to a whole string of, "See? NASA has confirmed the creationists are _wrong_!" posts that have nothing to do with this. But since everyone likes to see a good tussle between the creationists and the more evolutionary-minded here on slashdot, I'm not even sure that's a bad thing.
Incidentally, I'm a fundamentalist, and I lean toward a literal understanding of Genesis and a 6000-year earth (although I'm not adamant about it and easily accept that I might be misunderstanding things), and even I accept that the "Big Bang" is probably a pretty good model for what happened. (I just think the timescale may be way off, and that we have a long way to go before we truly understand.) So for anyone who did misread the headline and thought you finally had complete triumph over all the creationist wackos, I hate to burst your bubble. :)
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But- what's really exciting about this isn't confirmation of the big bang, but rather evidence of the cosmic inflation idea of the big bang. This is the one that theistic evolutionists (that is, those who believe God plays pool with the universe and set it all up to run just as it has) point to and say "There is an injection of energy, and better yet ordered energy, that proves God's existance". Up until now, though, there's been nothing other than mathematical proof for cosmic inflation itself- only theories that seemed impossible (matter moving at several million times the speed of light?!?!?). This gets us a step closer to a GUFTE- a grand unified field theory of everything that would be as close as science could come to describing God.
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There's an ironic post. George Bush upset because these scientists are using science rather than religion?
How do we gaze back to the infant universe? The cosmic microwave background is a fossilized record of what occurred way back when. Embedded in this light are subtle patterns that point to very specific conditions about the early universe.
So...subtle patterns from something that happened long ago that may or may not have been affected by external forces on the way towards us. Patterns for which we are extrapolating initial conditions on the basis of what is equivalent to a very, very small number of observations in the grand timeline, and for which we only have a single location (this solar system) to sample from.
All this to describe an event whose happening we don't really understand and which we have no way to either predict or test. What can we really do now that we couldn't before?
We can see into space with a higher degree of accuracy, and finally, perhaps, test a few of the theories that we couldn't before (which are based on other theories that we still can't yet test). Don't get it wrong, though:
Deciding that the universe is a particular age is still taking a leap of faith, no matter what age you think it is.
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Which timescale? The astronomers', or the Bibles? I think this new data is actually a beautiful confirmation of the Big Bang. The theory makes some very specifc predictions about what one should see when using a partuclar kind of microwave receiver - predictions that have now been confirmed. At this point, the idea of the Big Bang is as solidly supported by real-world evidence as almost any other theory - including gravity, relativity, QED, or even the theory of evolution. That theory makes very specific claims about the age of the Universe. Pretty cool, eh? What supporting evidence does the Genesis story have? What predictions does it make - and can they be falsified?
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Why is it so difficult to believe that the universe just always was in existance?
Well, there's Obler's Paradox for one.
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?
There's lots more. All it takes is a little reading and thinking to find lots more problems with a universe that's always been here.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
The problem is that non-technical language doesn't distinguish between "theory" and "hypothesis," nor between "sufficient evidence to accept" and "proof."
:-)
I agree completely. However, if you're going to take things down to laymans terms, you need to explain what you're talking about. Saying "the theory is proven" is not correct, even in laymans terms. Saying "the theory is effectively proven, with a vanishing small chance for error" better conveys the reality.
In any case, most people have pointed out that the story is misleading anyway. While this is evidence for a big bang type event, it is more interesting because it provides evidence for an inflationary universe; something that has had far less evidence to back it before now.
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When Big Bang theory was new, many didn't like it due to the harmony it had with theistic assumptions and arguments over the years. The universe had a beginning and that was bad news.
But people got over it.
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