What would it take to falsify the "big bang" model of cosmology?

[Truthseeker007]

I mean, yes, but I don't think most scientists are operating on the idea that if they just support this unsupportable model, they will make a ton of money. Most of them actually, truly believe the BB is the best model. Yet where in the literature (or on this forum, or anywhere) can you find a BB supporter designing tests to challenge his model, as opposed to setting up tests to confirm it?

This is backwards. It's not the scientific method I learned.

Again, I ask: what possible observation could be made that would fundamentally undermine the BB model and cause its adherents to seriously question its validity?

So can it be said that it is the system itself that is holding these scientist back? Those with the money and power to provide the funding are not funding new ideas that won't make them more money. I think if we were to look back from the future to this time. I think the future us would say back in the 2,000s they were stuck in a technocratic dark age. Before it was religion which caused the dark age. Now the Powers found a new way and new form of control to hold the humans back.

 

[IG2007]

So can it be said that it is the system itself that is holding these scientist back? Those with the money and power to provide the funding are not funding new ideas that won't make them more money. I think if we were to look back from the future to this time. I think the future us would say back in the 2,000s they were stuck in a technocratic dark age. Before it was religion which caused the dark age. Now the Powers found a new way and new form of control to hold the humans back.

Well, Truthseeker, I would say that money will soon start to divert to fund new ideas as it is becoming the trend, believe it or not. Thousands of trends follow one contemporary, but no contemporary follows a single thread. The BB theory was a contemporary idea that was followed by thousand of scissors and knives of physicists and that made it stuck in the mind of humans. And now, although we have got evidence to prove it wrong, it's human nature that is stopping us from garnering knowledge.

 

[Robotron]

Yeah, but we need a better model. And that problem is still not solved. Have one in mind?

I think a steady state model makes the most sense. In other words, the universe has always existed and is neither expanding nor contracting. It just IS. This model does away with the magical "breath of god" problem that the BB faces (or, more accurately, doesn't address at all). There is no requirement that everything just sprang into being from nothingness, as appealing as that may be from philosophical viewpoint.

However, to me that is irrelevant. If the BB is falsified and we have nothing to replace it with, so what? Science merely dictates that we rule out hypotheses, not rule them in. If a model is ruled out, it's invalid. The fact that we have no satisfactory replacement has no bearing on the validity of the BB. If it's wrong, it's wrong.

Now, again, I think it's wrong because I believe Halton Arp presented ample evidence that high redshift objects are physically connected to low redshift objects, implying that redshift is not a reliable indicator of distance. But this still isn't the point. The point is that BB proponents are unable or unwilling to design tests that invalidate the BB. Is this because the BB is so obviously correct that it's unchallengeable--or is it because cosmologists are so attached to it that they ignore observations that don't fit? Clearly, I believe it's the latter.

 

[IG2007]

No, I do not agree with you that the universe is in a steady state. There are much evidences that it is expanding. Sorry.

 

[Helio]

I think a steady state model makes the most sense....
... If the BB is falsified and we have nothing to replace it with, so what?

So are you saying or not saying the Steady State model, or the subsequent Qausi Steady State model should be favored?

Science merely dictates that we rule out hypotheses, not rule them in. If a model is ruled out, it's invalid.

Yes, if a model's prediction becomes falsified, or the premise was in error, then the model becomes invalid. But science loves this stuff and they soon take new discoveries to produce either new models or simply tweak the old one if appropriate. Any model that encompasses all of spacetime, energy and matter will necessarily need tweaking since we have such a long way to go in seeing into those more distant regions for evidence. It took SN (Type1a) to reveal likely acceleration, but even this requires greater scrutiny because of the difficulty in understanding SN and what we can see of them.

The fact that we have no satisfactory replacement has no bearing on the validity of the BB. If it's wrong, it's wrong.

That's true but the BB theory has enough to offer already that much of it will likely be very useful. Newton's laws became invalidated by Einstein, but you won't find GR taught much in engineering schools since his laws are still just as valid as always except in certain circumstances.

The point is that BB proponents are unable or unwilling to design tests that invalidate the BB. Is this because the BB is so obviously correct that it's unchallengeable--or is it because cosmologists are so attached to it that they ignore observations that don't fit? Clearly, I believe it's the latter.

People are reluctant to reject models they are comfortable with, especially those that are more involved with them. But scientists do like to be leaders and they also seem to like Nobel Prizes, and anyone who can debunk BBT will likely obtain both honors.

Science isn't too stuck on consensus, and "consensus science" needs to be taken with a large grain of salt. When Einstein was faced with 100 scientists and prominent others signing notice that his Relativity theory was wrong, his response was to question why 100 when only 1 is needed.

 

[Robotron]

No, I do not agree with you that the universe is in a steady state. There are much evidences that it is expanding. Sorry.

See this summary of the Big Bang's Top 30 Problems:

(1) Static universe models fit observational data better than expanding universe models.

Static universe models match most observations with no adjustable parameters. The Big Bang can match each of the critical observations, but only with adjustable parameters, one of which (the cosmic deceleration parameter) requires mutually exclusive values to match different tests. [2],[3] Without ad hoc theorizing, this point alone falsifies the Big Bang. Even if the discrepancy could be explained, Occam’s razor favors the model with fewer adjustable parameters – the static universe model.

 

[Robotron]

But scientists do like to be leaders and they also seem to like Nobel Prizes, and anyone who can debunk BBT will likely obtain both honors.

That's my point in all of this. There IS no way to debunk the BB model. It is so full of adjustable parameters that it can accommodate ANY observation! WHAT POSSIBLY COULD BE OBSERVED OR DISCOVERED THAT WOULD ALLOW IT TO BE DEBUNKED? Or even parts of it?

 

[Helio]

That's my point in all of this. There IS no way to debunk the BB model. It is so full of adjustable parameters that it can accommodate ANY observation! WHAT POSSIBLY COULD BE OBSERVED OR DISCOVERED THAT WOULD ALLOW IT TO BE DEBUNKED? Or even parts of it?

No one thought, after 2000 years, that the Aristotle/Ptolemy/Thomist model would be debunked but it only took a small telescope to do it. So, sure, BBT could fail. I don't think any scientist would say otherwise, but the probability of failure (i.e. opinions) will be very low.

Another example is the Titius-Boyde Law, where a simple math scheme not only fit the known planets but helped us find more. Once one was found that didn't fit the scheme, it was dismissed, though exoplanets may help revive it perhaps, though this is very unlikely. But, they still call it a law, I suppose out of historical respect or because that's what it was known as in the day it was respected.

If, using your example, redshifts were found to not correlate with the Hubble Flow (e.g. Tired Light theory), then that's all it might take to force science to find something besides the BBT as it would seem to me only something ad hoc would fix it. The alternative models, however, have been debunked with hard objective evidence, IIRC.

 

[Robotron]

If, using your example, redshifts were found to not correlate with the Hubble Flow (e.g. Tired Light theory), then that's all it might take to force science to find something besides the BBT as it would seem to me only something ad hoc would fix it. The alternative models, however, have been debunked with hard objective evidence, IIRC.

Arp showed that objects with redshifts of widely varying values coexist in the same region. He suggested objects have intrinsic redshift. The BB model forbids that. It's a great test of the BB's fundamental tenet. The BB fails. Next model, please.

I don't think alternate models have been debunked, I think the BB has merely had more adjustable parameters added to it in order to retain its "supremacy" over alternatives.

Anybody who's taken a basic stats class knows that you can make anything correlate with anything else as long as you include enough adjustable variables. You can "prove" anything that way. What you lose in that exercise, however, is the ability to predict. The BB has lost its ability to predict anything, assuming it ever had that capability in the first place. A model that doesn't predict is useless to science.

Again, what could possibly be observed that would require the BB's fundamental premise (an expanding universe) to be discarded? We've got two pages of posts now and not a single offered answer. Why is this so difficult?

 

[rod]

Robotron commented, "Arp showed that objects with redshifts of widely varying values coexist in the same region." FYI I have read reports about Arp and quasar-galaxy pairs. Here is an example, https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006astro.ph..5453A/abstract

The arxiv paper is attached and the editors had this to say "We have read attentively your paper ”Quasars and Galaxy Clusters Paired Across NGC 4410” and conclude unfortunately that we cannot accept it on the grounds that its scientific content is not sufficient to warrant publication in A&A. Indeed, the heart of the paper is to investigate all alignment effects around a precise location on the sky, around a precise galaxy. This is not original, since your group has claimed alignment for many objects in the past, so there is nothing new. In addition, it is quite easy to find such alignments in the sky, given the spatial distribution of galaxies, distributed in a fractal
structure of filaments, great walls, and non-uniform structure, that has now been even better revealed and precised by large surveys such the SDSS. So many remarks of alignment could be noticed like that, and this would be purely by chance, as can be simulated in numerical simulations of cosmic filaments. No new observations are reported here, no new physics is involved either, and this short note only emphasizes some more numbers and coincidences, that can appear purely by chance. We regret to inform you that we shall be unable to give any further consideration to this paper. We are sorry to disappoint you on this occasion. Yours sincerely, The Editors", ref - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0605453.pdf

I have seen nothing further on such reports or quasar-galaxy physical connections, each with a very different redshift, at least according to Arp et al.

 

[Helio]

Arp argued that quasars, with high redshifts, were positioned near more local galaxies, which seems to be the basis for an intrinsic redshift hypothesis of his. But with the HST and other great observations, it became obvious that they were extremely distant, in accord with the what one would expect with the Hubble-Lemaitre expansion relationship.

Tired Light is also an intrinsic answer to redshift. It was introduced by Zwicky in 1929, and it was eventually found wanting.

I suspect the more recent studies of Type 1a supernovae that have not only great redshift but their movement away from us is correlated with their time dilation curves, did a lot to also put intrinsic redshifts in the vault. Because they are moving more rapidly away from us, we will observe a slower time for their light to diminish along a normal curve.

 

[Robotron]

Robotron commented, "Arp showed that objects with redshifts of widely varying values coexist in the same region." FYI I have read reports about Arp and quasar-galaxy pairs. Here is an example, https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006astro.ph..5453A/abstract

The arxiv paper is attached and the editors had this to say "We have read attentively your paper ”Quasars and Galaxy Clusters Paired Across NGC 4410” and conclude unfortunately that we cannot accept it on the grounds that its scientific content is not sufficient to warrant publication in A&A. Indeed, the heart of the paper is to investigate all alignment effects around a precise location on the sky, around a precise galaxy. This is not original, since your group has claimed alignment for many objects in the past, so there is nothing new. In addition, it is quite easy to find such alignments in the sky, given the spatial distribution of galaxies, distributed in a fractal
structure of filaments, great walls, and non-uniform structure, that has now been even better revealed and precised by large surveys such the SDSS. So many remarks of alignment could be noticed like that, and this would be purely by chance, as can be simulated in numerical simulations of cosmic filaments. No new observations are reported here, no new physics is involved either, and this short note only emphasizes some more numbers and coincidences, that can appear purely by chance. We regret to inform you that we shall be unable to give any further consideration to this paper. We are sorry to disappoint you on this occasion. Yours sincerely, The Editors", ref - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0605453.pdf

I have seen nothing further on such reports or quasar-galaxy physical connections, each with a very different redshift, at least according to Arp et al.

I suggest anyone interested in this saga read Arp's "Seeing Red". There are dozens of examples which clearly suggest connected objects. Naturally, the mainstream rebuttal is that "it's just coincidence." The reason for rejection given above--that the paper's "scientific content is not sufficient to warrant publication" and that "your group has claimed alignment for many objects in the past, so there is nothing new"--is rather comical. Since when is an observation that supports prior observations unworthy of publication? Only when the conclusion is unsavory, apparently.

This is especially ironic given that the infamous Einstein Cross, for example, clearly shows a quasar connected to a local central galaxy of vastly different redshift. Instead of accepting the obvious, however, astronomers relied on "coincidence" to claim that the four quasars surrounding the local galaxy were the *same* quasar split into four separate images by gravitational lensing. As Arp points out in Seeing Red, the alleged lensing looks nothing like lensing is supposed to, assuming the phenomenon even exists in the first place. But that was the only possible conclusion astronomers hoping to preserve the redshift-always-indicates distance "law" could accept: sheer, bizarre, unexpected, unpredicted coincidence.

And yet they reject Arp's papers based on the argument that "it could be coincidence"?

Unfortunately, Arp and Van Flandern are dead and can no longer rebut the rebuttals.

 

[Robotron]

Arp argued that quasars, with high redshifts, were positioned near more local galaxies, which seems to be the basis for an intrinsic redshift hypothesis of his. But with the HST and other great observations, it became obvious that they were extremely distant, in accord with the what one would expect with the Hubble-Lemaitre expansion relationship.

This is interesting. Do you have any specific examples of Arp quasars that were subsequently shown to be "obviously" extremely distant? My understanding is that Arp had great difficulty even getting the telescopes pointed toward most of his anomalous galaxies. Given that Arp is dead and that mainstream astronomers have no incentive to disprove the BB, I find it highly unlikely that scientists are acquiring images of Arp objects and subsequently disproving his model.

 

[Robotron]

Pictures are always more interesting than words. Skip to the "Redshift battles " section of this site to read why some of us find Arp's contentions to be important in the BB discussion. In particular, note the the images of NGC 4319 and Markarian 205, which even the most vociferous skeptics can agree appears to show physical connections between galaxies of vastly different redshift values. NGC 1097 and NGC 7603 show similar physical connections.

Naturally, skeptics insist the connecting spectra are "noise" or "instrument defects." They have to. There is no other choice when the goal is to dismiss evidence against the BB's most fundamental assumption. I don't know of any analysis or evidence supporting the noise/defects claim. Maybe somebody else can explain where that criticism comes from and if it has any basis in fact.

 

[Robotron]

One more note. According to Arp, writing in 1998:

[T]here are already 38 known cases of high excess redshift companions....They range from +4,000 to +36,000 km/sec higher redshift than their parent galaxy. Anyone who looks at the examples in Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies or the original papers, Astrophysical Journal 239, 469 (1980) and 256, 54 (1982), anyone who just looks carefully at the interactions and connections between these high and low-redshift galaxies knows they are physically associated. [Arp, "Seeing Red", p. 113]

In other words, there are dozens of cases (and who knows how many more since Arp wrote), which makes it very difficult to suggest that the galaxies are coincidentally superimposed on filaments that just happen to make it look like the galaxies are connected. Look again at Markarian 205 in my previous post. Who can honestly say that the X-ray filaments neatly encapsulating the galaxies are merely a background phenomenon (or instrument error) that *happened* to make it look like the galaxies are connected?

Well, I guess lots of astronomers can say that. But would they be right? Or would they simply be grasping at the only straws available to avoid acknowledging that redshift is not always a distance indicator?

 

[Truthseeker007]

Well, Truthseeker, I would say that money will soon start to divert to fund new ideas as it is becoming the trend, believe it or not. Thousands of trends follow one contemporary, but no contemporary follows a single thread. The BB theory was a contemporary idea that was followed by thousand of scissors and knives of physicists and that made it stuck in the mind of humans. And now, although we have got evidence to prove it wrong, it's human nature that is stopping us from garnering knowledge.

That is good news. Although I suppose they will also be quite pissed they will have to change all the schools and universities books about the BB.

 

[Truthseeker007]

That's my point in all of this. There IS no way to debunk the BB model. It is so full of adjustable parameters that it can accommodate ANY observation! WHAT POSSIBLY COULD BE OBSERVED OR DISCOVERED THAT WOULD ALLOW IT TO BE DEBUNKED? Or even parts of it?

Anything can be debunked depending on what the people believe. The MSM propaganda networks do it all the time.

 

[wingedhippo]

Yeah, but we need a better model. And that problem is still not solved. Have one in mind?

The Big Bang idea is irrational for at least two reasons:
1. What caused the squeeze of matter in such a microscopic "point"
2. What happened before the Big Bang
I have my hypotheses and I can repeat them again.

--
I had a dream that was over the moon, but when I woke up, I was still down to earth

 

[IG2007]

The Big Bang idea is irrational for at least two reasons:
1. What caused the squeeze of matter in such a microscopic "point"
2. What happened before the Big Bang
I have my hypotheses and I can repeat them again.

--
I had a dream that was over the moon, but when I woke up, I was still down to earth

Well, the scientists say that there was nothing before the big bang. And, I don't have answer to your first question. But, the problem is not overcame. And, we don't yet know that what caused the Cosmic Microwave Background if there was no big bang. We need something better, if we want to rephrase the words in everyone's Science book.

 

[Helio]

The Big Bang idea is irrational for at least two reasons:
1. What caused the squeeze of matter in such a microscopic "point"

That's not part of the BB theory itself since physics can't deal with things such as energy densities at t=o. That is a great philosophical or religious question.

2. What happened before the Big Bang
I have my hypotheses and I can repeat them again.

This is the next step beyond (further away from hard science) than the first question.

You may want to start another thread, however, as this one is about falsification ideas for BBT.

 

[Arctic Frost]

This may be overly simplistic as my knowledge of these things is embarrassingly lacking; however, wouldn’t the observation of a “membrane” or wall encompassing the universe shoot down the BB argument?

I may be misunderstanding you’re request as we obviously have not observed any such ”space sized cellular structure” but I’m uncertain by what you mean if “new” information wouldn’t qualify to thwart the accepted BB theories.

 

[Arctic Frost]

That's not part of the BB theory itself since physics can't deal with things such as energy densities at t=o. That is a great philosophical or religious question.

. . . or quantum mechanics question yet to be asked

 

[Robotron]

This may be overly simplistic as my knowledge of these things is embarrassingly lacking; however, wouldn’t the observation of a “membrane” or wall encompassing the universe shoot down the BB argument?

I would think that discovery of the "end" of the universe would actually provide support for the BB!

More problematic for the BB is the discovery of large walls and voids (see #4 on Van Flandern's list, for example: https://www.spaceandmotion.com/cosmology/top-30-problems-big-bang-theory.htm). He suggests that there just isn't enough time for structures that large to have formed in 14 billion years. Likewise, scientists have discovered objects that are either 1) older than the universe itself, or 2) too evolved to have formed in such a short time. How do BB supporters reconcile such obvious (and huge) problems? Much of the time they don't. The anomaly just hangs out there painfully. It should bother them a lot more than it does, in my opinion.

 

[Arctic Frost]

I would think that discovery of the "end" of the universe would actually provide support for the BB!

More problematic for the BB is the discovery of large walls and voids (see #4 on Van Flandern's list, for example: https://www.spaceandmotion.com/cosmology/top-30-problems-big-bang-theory.htm). He suggests that there just isn't enough time for structures . . .

I must say I’ve been here less than a morning and I am experiencing exquisite delight with you people. I’m off to delve through your link and fill this brain. I find this conversation not only interesting but what an opportunity to learn new things! Thank you so much!

 

[Helio]

. . . or quantum mechanics question yet to be asked

Welcome aboard Arctic Frost.

Neither QM nor GR can address the events at t=0. What's remarkable is just how close physicists can get to it.