Further Thoughts on the Big Bang
Since my recent article expressing doubts about Big Bang theory, by coincidence Michael Puleo has published an article detailing the compelling evidence to believe in it. He does not say why he feels the need to do this at the present time, whether he is responding to anything in particular — it is very unlikely to be my article — for his merely seems to be repeating familiar material.
He does say early in the article that “though a scientific theory can never be ‘proven’ it can, however, be tested through observation and research. Overwhelmingly, the discoveries of astrophysicists and cosmologists over the past couple of decades have been remarkably consistent with the Hot Big Bang model”. He repeats that idea at his conclusion, then adds that “we live in an age of empirical supremacy, where ‘follow the science’ is repeated ad nauseam, to the point of approaching platitude. While science is not static and is certainly not perfect, we must embrace the pragmatic route of accepting the limits of our knowledge and following the best evidence where it leads. For those who are not astrophysicists or trained in calculus or quantum mechanics, we must be able to lean on the work of scholars and experts in their respective fields. While the book is certainly not closed on the universe’s origins, the big bang model has been the most well-evidenced and widely accepted model for decades”.
This is a very reasonable position, and shows that Puleo is not by any means a fanatic. It is very similar to mine. I have no scientific training and am therefore willing to take very seriously the work and conclusions of experts. I still think that it is possible to indicate possible flaws in the arguments, thus keeping the debate alive. It is hard to disagree that the Big Bang model is the most widely accepted. The question remains whether it is the most well-evidenced, especially when those advocating it are either not aware of, or ignore, relevant information. I’ve found a couple of examples of this in Puleo’s article. (What follows is a brief summary of the main points. For more details see this article.)
I’ll begin with the redshift phenomenon; the suggestion that it implies an expanding universe is not the only possible explanation — it is merely the most obvious. The conventional story, as you find it in Big Bang literature, in simplified language is as follows: Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift phenomenon; this means that distant galaxies are moving away from us, therefore that the universe is expanding; this means that they were once closer together; this suggests that all energy and what later became matter originally expanded from a single point, hence the term Big Bang.
In Puleo’s article, that account appears as follows: “Edwin Hubble provided the first observational evidence of that very same expansion in 1929 with now famous experiments measuring the rate at which galaxies move away from our own. Further, Hubble’s team was able to measure this expansion, after accounting for the slowing effect of gravity and estimating the distance of neighboring galaxies, they determined that the universe had a finite beginning some several billion years ago”.
Note that according to this account Hubble and his team provided evidence for an expanding universe, and by implication believed in the Big Bang. This is not what Hubble believed, however, for in 1935 he suggested that some mechanism other than expansion might be responsible for producing the cosmological redshifts¹. He later said that “the expanding models are a forced interpretation of the observational results” ².
Hubble actually favoured a model known as ‘tired-light’, an unknown effect which caused photons to lose energy as they travelled through space. This was in agreement with the ideas of physicists Walther Nernst, Fritz Zwicky, and Erich Regener. In 1938 Nernst praised Hubble’s conclusions, noting that his own hypothesis had anticipated the redshift discovery as early as 1921. He said: “It is highly significant that Hubble, one of the discoverers of redshifts, should consider the model of the expanding universe to be unreliable”³.
Now it’s quite possible that Hubble and these other physicists were completely wrong, that their ideas have since been discredited. However, it is simply not true to say that Hubble’s findings suggested an expanding universe, thus offered evidence confirming the Big Bang, since he did not believe that himself. This material and related debate should be included in any history of Big Bang theory.
The second example is the phenomenon of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR). This is believed to be conclusive evidence for the Big Bang. In Puleo’s article this appears as follows in a section entitled ‘Big Bang Cosmology Predicts CMBR’: “in 1948, George Gamow’s Research team calculated the expected temperature necessary to develop the current abundance of elements in the universe. They predicted that a faint glow measuring only 5° Kelvin (-455°F) should be found everywhere throughout the universe. In 1965 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson confirmed this prediction when they detected cosmic background radiation and determined it was 3 centigrade above absolute zero. (-457°)”.
What this account fails to mention is that in 1933, earlier than other CMBR theorists, Erich Regener (him again) had predicted the existence of a microwave background produced from the warming of interstellar dust particles by high-energy cosmic rays, thus not a product of a Big Bang⁴. So, if CMBR is predicted by Big Bang theory, and also by a non-Big Bang theory, then surely its discovery says nothing whatsoever about the truth or otherwise of the Big Bang. Scientists then have to decide which is the better theory. According to the scientific method, a good theory makes accurate and testable predictions. On that score Regener’s theory was better; he was not only the first to predict the existence of the CMBR, but also the one who predicted it with the greater accuracy.
Again, Regener may have been wrong, and Big Bang theory is indeed correct, but why is this material never included in accounts of Big Bang history? Instead, the CMBR was claimed to be proof of the correctness of the Big Bang hypothesis despite this alternative, possibly better, theory — and despite further emerging contradictory evidence. This is not how proper science should be conducted.
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Footnotes:
- E. Hubble and R. C. Tolman, ‘Two methods of investigating the nature of the nebular red-shift’, Astrophysical Journal 82 (1935): 302–37
2. ‘Effects of red shifts on the distribution of nebulae’, Astrophysical Journal 84 (1936): p554
3. “Additional test of the assumption of a stationary state in the universe”, Zeitschrift für Physik 106, pp. 639–40
4. ‘Der Energiestrom der Ultrastrahlung’, Zeitschrift für Physik 80, 1933, pp666–69
