Every argument challenging BB is along the lines of one or the other:
- You weren't there so you don't know
- If I can't understand it, thus it can't possibly be true
- BB is only an assumption
- BB is only a theory
- As an anonymous source on the internet, surely my version, which is contrary to the entire scientific community over the last 120 years, is better.
And no one ever gives a convincing alternative. If you have one, I'd like to hear it. And remember, BB theory starts at 10^-43 s, so any talk of the singularity or "dividing by zero" is outside the scope of the BB theory. Prior to that we don't know and never will.
billslugg,
I do respect your position on the BB, but there is much more to the question than you suggest. I believe that the idea arose from Lemaitre, but we cannot discuss the possible source of his idea, because of his profession, so I will leave that aside, and get onto more interesting matters.
As we know, the name was coined by Hoyle, and that may part of the trouble. As a species, we have had a scientific background scarcely worth mentioning - for just a few score years. We leapt to adopt this ridiculous name, perhaps thinking that it was like a puny firework that we thought we understood. IMHO we are, comparatively speaking, still approaching 'flat earth' levels, in that this worked reasonably for hundreds of years, until we attempted a westerly route to the Asian 'indies'.
The idea contradicted all sanity at the time, causing the abandonment of ideas including "you can't make something out of nothing", especially when endowing this beginning with infinite temperatures and infinite density.
I would say that some ideas of cyclic systems are nearly as ridiculous (cheers from certain quarters
), but with the caveat that, in exchange for initial infinite temperatures and densities, one might just think about a reversal of entropy in a contraction phase.
Unlike some, I am not saying that we actually know anything about the early Universe. Scientific opinion would require examination which is not open to us. Even the most ardent adherents have to separate t = 0 and fall back on metaphysics. As I quoted recently, invocation of infinities usually (if not always) indicates that there is something very wrong with the model.
The regression towards t = 0 requires these 'infinite' properties, so BBT must be involved.
In olden times we just invented explanations for what we did not understand. I am just suggesting that, as honest scientists, we admit our circumstances and seriously discuss serious alternatives. Correcting failed hypotheses can still lead us forward.
We know so much more now, that we can give up magic wands, replacing them with ideas such as analogy with the Moebius Strip and Klein Bottle.
We can only progress by opening our minds. Progress will be more successful by modifying less than perfect notions, rather than clinging on to the fixed ideas of former times. All success to
real science.
Cat