The Big Bang May Never Have Happened

[Whitestar]

Recently, scientists have been searching for shadows of cosmic Background radiation, but failed to detect any. Which leads to one possible conclusion, that is, the big bang may have never happened. Check out the link for more details:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060905104549.htm

And here is the following article below:

The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic background.


A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies.

"These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial.


"If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not."


Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background. Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background.


If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background.

These findings are scheduled to be published in the Sept. 1, 2006, edition of the "Astrophysical Journal".


Taken together, the data shows a shadow effect about one-fourth of what was predicted - an amount roughly equal in strength to natural variations previously seen in the microwave background across the entire sky.

"Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment.

"Based on all that we know about radiation sources and halos around clusters, however, you wouldn't expect to see this kind of emission. And it would be implausible to suggest that several clusters could all emit microwaves at just the right frequency and intensity to match the cosmic background radiation."


Predicted as early as 1948 and discovered in 1965, the cosmic microwave background is a faint glow of weak radiation that apparently permeates the universe. Because it is seen coming from every direction in nearly uniform power and frequency, cosmologists theorized that the microwave background is afterglow radiation left over by the Big Bang that created the universe.

If that were the case, the background microwave radiation reaching Earth today would have traveled billions of light years through space from the furthest edges of the universe. Galaxy clusters are the largest organized structures in the universe. Each cluster can contain hundreds of galaxies like the Milky Way, each with billions of stars. The gravity created at the center of some clusters traps gas that is hot enough to emit X-rays.


This gas is also hot enough to lose its electrons (or ionize), filling millions of cubic light years of space inside the galactic clusters with swarming clouds of free electrons. It is these free electrons which bump into and interact with individual photons of microwave radiation, deflecting them away from their original paths and creating the shadowing effect. This shadowing effect was first predicted in 1969 by the Russian scientists Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zel'dovich.


Like shadow puppets on a wall, however, these shadows would only form if all three ingredients (light, object and observer) are in the correct order. If an object casts no shadow, it might be because the light source is closer to the observer than the object. That might mean that the cosmic microwave background didn't originate at the far edges of the universe, although there are no obvious or popular alternative sources.


The WMAP dataset is available to the public and other scientists are already testing the UAH group's results, Lieu said, although no one has yet reported finding any flaws in their analysis.


Just over a year ago Lieu and Dr. Jonathan Mittaz, a UAH research associate, published results of a study using WMAP data to look for evidence of "lensing" effects which should have been seen (but weren't) if the microwave background was a Big Bang remnant.


Reference: Lieu, Mittaz and Shuang-Nan Zhang, UAH, "The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in a sample of 31 clusters: A comparison between the X-ray predicted and WMAP observed decrement," Astrophysical Journal, Sept. 1, 2006, Vol. 648, No. 1, p. 176


I know this sounds too early to say this, but we may have to rethink what we initially accepted as fact. Time will tell.

Whitestar

 

[dustinzgirl]

I never accepted the big bang theory as fact. Its a theory. All of this is a theory.

 

[chrispenycate]

It never claimed to be anything but a theory. If you want Absolute Truth go to a theologian. Still, if the theory collapses, and red shift turns out to be because of a massive, universe permiating gravitational field or something (the decay of physical constants over time, for example) then a lot of distances and time scales become suspect. Wouldn't that be fun? And loads of books explaining exactly what happened in the first five micoseconds of creation would be as useful as volumes on phlogiston theory.

 

[carrie221]

This sounds interesting but I do not think that we will ever really know

 

[j d worthington]

I'm afraid that I remain highly sceptical at this stage... not of the results of the research, but of some factor which has not been taken into account. So far, so many varying types of evidence have come up in support of the Big Bang that this aspect not matching up may well have a different explanation; after all, it wasn't that long ago that Dark Energy came to be a part of our model, and that seems to have evidence mounting in favor it it. So there may be some other aspect we've just not considered, or even conceived of, as yet. And Chris is right... since the fall of Nineteenth-Century positivism, science doesn't deal in "truth"; it deals in evidence, and theories supported by that evidence... when the evidence is either lacking or refutes the theory, a new one must be constructed to cover those facts; hence the rise of Big Bang over the earlier accepted models. We deal in probabilities... certainties are, indeed, for theologians.

 

[dustinzgirl]

It never claimed to be anything but a theory. If you want Absolute Truth go to a theologian. Still, if the theory collapses, and red shift turns out to be because of a massive, universe permiating gravitational field or something (the decay of physical constants over time, for example) then a lot of distances and time scales become suspect. Wouldn't that be fun? And loads of books explaining exactly what happened in the first five micoseconds of creation would be as useful as volumes on phlogiston theory.

Ah the quest for absolute truth.

The universe was sneezed out. I asked a theologian with funny eyes.

In all seriousness though folks, anyone besides me think its a little impossible to prove how the universe began? I mean, big bang theory alwasy seems too comical, for one, and for two, it doesn't actually tell us how the universe began, because nobody knows how the actual first materials began. I mean, if the universe began, then the components of it had to begin....so they began as a giant ball of mass or whatever and then boom---but how did that ball begin? and the particles that made that ball? and the atoms of those particles and so on.

Was there nothing before something or something before nothing?

Prove that and then we will know how the universe began.

 

[carrie221]

Ah the quest for absolute truth.

The universe was sneezed out. I asked a theologian with funny eyes.

In all seriousness though folks, anyone besides me think its a little impossible to prove how the universe began? I mean, big bang theory alwasy seems too comical, for one, and for two, it doesn't actually tell us how the universe began, because nobody knows how the actual first materials began. I mean, if the universe began, then the components of it had to begin....so they began as a giant ball of mass or whatever and then boom---but how did that ball begin? and the particles that made that ball? and the atoms of those particles and so on.

Was there nothing before something or something before nothing?

Prove that and then we will know how the universe began.

Okay that just hurts my head trying to figure that out... it is like the chicken or the egg question

 

[j d worthington]

Problem is, Dustie, that it become a question of infinite regression... where did that come from? ... okay, where did that come from? ... and so on... which is (though I don't wish to get into a theological dispute here) an argument that also applies to the theological ideas of cosmology involving a deity, as well. The fact may well be that things just existed... there was no beginning; it's a part of our mental makeup to create beginnings and endings, because of our own limited viewpoint or cycle of existence... but even that isn't really the case, as each individual is a part of the larger life around it, which has neither beginning nor ending that we can perceive, yet we force such a structure on our views of it. This may just be something we, with our limited sense perceptions and understanding, cannot (at least at this stage of our evolution) grasp.

Edit: Actually, I suppose this structure is more one that's been imposed by Western Civilization, in some ways. Cyclicity is something we have trouble with, anyway (though it's all around us in the seasons, day/night, etc.); and yet, from my limited knowledge, I'd say there are some Eastern philosophies that grasp the concept of something having always existed, even before Time (which is a function of space -- or consciousness -- really), whereas we of the West, at least since very early history, have tended to make discrete divisions that may not exist.