The Big Bang Vs. the Big Rumble

WBUR radio in Boston hosts a talk with two physicists, Alan Guth and Neil Turok, who represent, respectively, the consensus theory of the inflationary Big Bang and an upstart theory of the initiation of the universe in the collision of two three-dimensional "branes." Turok and Paul Steinhardt developed their "Ekpyrotic proposal" out of the mathematics behind string theory. In the audio the two physicists are perhaps more respectful of one another's views than the host wishes them to be. If you ignore the "let's you and him fight" framing of the debate, you will hear some interesting physics elucidated.

Comments

You are academically retarded

[dangitman]

This is total nonsense. Every intelligent person knows that the universe was created in a TimeCube, not a bang or a rumble, however big deluded people may think they are. You were educated stupid.

Re:You are academically retarded

[eebra82]

"You maybe academically retarded."

Check.

Spaghetti

[Swizec]

Everybody knows the spaghetti monster create the universe, all this nonsense of bangs and rumbles is what happened in the postgenesis spaghetti fart.

Link to MP3

[Anonymous Coward]

For the lazy

Neil Turok

[Anonymous Coward]

He looks a little wimpy to be a dinosaur hunter.. And "Neil" is a little improbable as a first name, too.

Listen to it!

[massivefoot]

To anyone who's got this far without having downloaded the mp3, go listen to it! It is actually quite interesting. And to anyone who's ever been lectured by Turok, don't worry, he isn't that bad when he's actually interested in what he's talking about...

Re:Obviously

[MortimerV]

initiation of the universe in the collision of two thee-dimensional "branes."

I'm more interested in this. Could we have been misunderstanding zombies all this time?

Pyrothechnic vs. Ekpyrotic

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole "Ekpyrotic" idea was well and thoroughly proven wrong by Andrei Linde in his work entitled "Pyrotechnic Universe".
Ever since that happened (2001) Mr. Steinhardt cannot accept that he's wrong and he still tries to make the pig fly. Since he cannot convince anybody in the academic community that the pig does fly he tries to get around that with press releases and radio shows. Good way to do science for a Princeton professor.

Re:Pyrothechnic vs. Ekpyrotic

[dreamchaser]

Actually nothing has been 'proven' with regards to the beginning of the Universe. Everything is still theory, and while significant holes have been blown in the ekpyrotic model, I've no doubt that the 'real truth' if ever found will probably look significantly different from either the Big Bang or the Ekpyrotic model.

Re:Pyrothechnic vs. Ekpyrotic

[Anonymous Coward]

What I mean by "proven wrong" is the prediction of a very well measured quantity, the spectral index of perturbations of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The WMAP satellite has taken data for about 6 years (and is still taking data) and the spectral index has been measured to be 0.951 + 0.015 - 0.019 : http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/pub_papers/threeyear .html

The Ekpyrotic model makes an actual prediction for the spectral index; the value is -3. Initially the authors of the ekpyrotic model have calculated a value of 1 for the spectral index, but their calculation was just plain wrong.

Spock's Brane

[jpatters]

"Brane and brane, what is brane?

Re:Spock's Brane

[drgonzo59]

brane comes from membrane. You got your 1-branes which are the "classic" cosmic strings. But of course they say that there are n-branes (0-branes, 2-branes etc.)

You see theoretical scientists (you know the ones that have been working on stuff for decades and still don't have a single experimental piece of evidence) like to make up terminology and throw around big scary formulas to justify wasting time and money working on stuff that cannot even be proven experimentally. Sorry for the bitterness, but I wouldn't even call these people scientists. They might as well say that a giant spaghetti monster flies around and his noodly appendages form tiny knots and those knots are the elementary particles....BUT...OMG! the appendages are so thin that we cannot experimentally detect their presence...but they are there, trust us, here is a big hairy formula (don't worry about the solutions for know) it proves everything -- Give us another PhD!

Re:Spock's Brane

[drgonzo59]

I was merely speaking 'the language' of the grandparent post. They used an ad-hominem attack because I wrote 'know' instead of 'now' => I am a not a credible source and not a good scientists or not ... (insert whatever). So assuming that ad-hominem attacks work great in arguments, I mentioned that English is my third language to make myself look better. But I have miserably failed as it turns out they speak Dutch and German. (Don't you like the ad nauseam details?) I was just hoping they would be an American and only speak English. What did we learn today kids? -- We learned that ad hominem attacks do not work and are silly.

the host of this show needs to STFU

[Adult film producer]

just for a second and let these guys talk.. stop injecting himself into the conversation and stop trying to cast doubt on science with the stupid comments like, "Oh look, scientists are flip-flopping on the big bang.. are you freaked out? is science supposed to work this way? some folk in the heartland will be skeptical of this."

They should've had the Uni of Kansas...

[jez9999]

They didn't represent all sides of the debate! This is totally biased. Where is the theory of Intelligent Design represented?

String theory...

[jeffasselin]

I used to like the ideas of string theory, but after what, 15-20 years of work, not a single observable prediction has been made by the theory. Heck, we don't even have a theory has such yet, more like a plethora of them, and a few that suggest they're all correct!

Anyone making suggestions opposing the current cosmological framework using string theory had better have something more than vague mathematical foundations if they want to convince anyone. They sure won't convince me anytime soon.

Re:Inside/outside

[TapeCutter]

"Much of science is becoming mere entertainment. Strings and branes. hahah. Good."

Until someone thinks of a way to test for the existence of strings and/or branes they are not part of science, they are at best mathematical curiosities.

Re:A Steady State Universe, Instead

[boot_img]

Halton Arp's idea that "many high-energy, high-redshift quasars appear to be located in close proximity to, and interacting with, low-redshift, low-energy galaxies" has been proven incorrect.

1) Its impossible to explain quasar absorption lines, which must be due to foreground objects

2) Magification due to gravitational lensing by foreground galaxies neatly explains any excess of quasars near galaxies as seen on the sky and requires them to be at high redshift. See e.g. Detection of Cosmic Magnification with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Unfortunately, Arp and few others conveniently ignore the irrefutable evidence against their ideas. Luckily the rest of the astrophysical community understands scientific evidence. That's the reason that no one pays attention to Arp and colleagues.

Equally unfortunately there is always a group of people (especially on Slashdot) quick to embrace the romantic notion of the outsider "kicked off the telescope for his heretical views". After all, in the movies that's the guy that turns out to be right in the end ...