Scientists crushed as ‘Big Bang’ evidence evaporates on further analysis

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Gravitational waves or not, I’m not aware of any major competing theories to the big bang.
 
Patti_M said:
Really?? How has the “Big Bang Theory” changed over time? Not being a science person I am curious to know.
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Well, as one non science person to another, my comments were related to this gravitational wave (or lack thereof) issue that has come up in the article that is the subject of this thread. A slight hiccup for the big bang theory but apparently non-essential according to our scientific friends on the thread (and I imagine pretty fierce defenders of big bang theory). I don’t know any more than that. I am just saying that, from afar, I see an awful lot of hiccups, for example, in evolution (in which I believe) and now we have this little stumble here in the big bang theory. May I please emphasize again, I still believe the theory is likely correct, I say likely correct. I am not a detractor just because I say that we don’t know EVERYTHING about these events.
 
FollowChrist34 said:
Well, as one non science person to another, my comments were related to this gravitational wave (or lack thereof) issue that has come up in the article that is the subject of this thread. A slight hiccup for the big bang theory but apparently non-essential according to our scientific friends on the thread (and I imagine pretty fierce defenders of big bang theory). I don’t know any more than that. I am just saying that, from afar, I see an awful lot of hiccups, for example, in evolution (in which I believe) and now we have this little stumble here in the big bang theory. May I please emphasize again, I still believe the theory is likely correct, I say likely correct. I am not a detractor just because I say that we don’t know EVERYTHING about these events.
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OK, but I am still curious to know if there have been any amendments or codicils to the original theroy. Maybe someone else on the forum can help?🤷
 
Al_Moritz said:
There is not a single shred of experimental and observational evidence for string theory. I don’t care about ‘mathematical developments’. Mathematics without observational evidence is useless to describe physical reality. Ptolemean epicycles were a beautiful mathematical model for the description of the movements of the sun and the planets around the Earth. Observation proved the model wrong. Wait another 50 years, when string theory will be seen as a giant useless joke that has led physics astray for decades. Fortunately, a number of physicists have already woken up to reality. Read Lee Smolin’s The Trouble with Physics, and you’ll see why string theory is bound to be an epic fail. And by the way, the mathematics of string theory are not even beautiful. My father, also a scientist, refers to it as ‘mathematical spaghetti’.

There is tons of observational evidence for the Big Bang.
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Al also said on the previous page ,“String theory in fact is speculation, nothing more. The term ‘theory’ in that case is a misnomer, it should rather be called ‘string hypothesis’. Big Bang theory on the other hand is well and firmly established by observational evidence according to the definition above – and so is evolution, by the way.”

Al, please stop insulting physics departments. Also, I’m also aware of George Smoot who works at LBNL.

***Welcome to the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics!**The Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics (BCTP) was founded at the turn of the millennium with the goal of bringing together the greatest minds in theoretical physics to collaborate on some of the most pressing scientific questions about the Universe. Housed atop Old LeConte Hall on the Berkeley campus and closely affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the BCTP is at the forefront of particle theory, string theory and cosmology. Furthering our understanding of matter, spacetime and the Universe, or more specifically quantum gravity, dark matter, neutrinos, the Higgs Boson, and even the multiverse, is at the heart of the BCTP’s work.

The Key to progress and discovery within the BCTP is its people. At the core are the faculty, whose careers are distinguished by revolutionary contributions to frontier research, and by the teaching and mentoring of students. Post-doctoral fellows and graduate students are key members of the Center because they play tremendously important roles in collaborations, both national and international.*
ctp.berkeley.edu/
bctp.berkeley.edu/history.html
 
Just the title of this thread made me as a scientist jump.

Scientists don’t get “crushed”, they don’t even feel depressed when a theory they support, or even a theory they proposed gets attacked or is proven wrong.

On the contrary, that’s exciting to them. It means new questions are coming up. We now have discovered something we didn’t know last week.

You might get angry or upset for a short while when your pet idea is proven wrong, especially if somebody else comes along and points out what you have overlooked. But you never throw up your arms in the air and feel “crushed”.
 
Hans_W said:
You’ll find anything you want on the internet, end of the world from planet X, flat earth proven, Pope is Antichrist, …
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Seriously?
I’m glad I look at the Internet. I’m learning all sorts of cool stuff today. I’ll have to post this stuff on FB…😃
 
To Al Moritz, 😃
  1. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences:

    Juan Maldacena
    Field: Physics
    Title: Professor

    [snip]
    Summary of scientific research
    Professor Maldacena has worked on quantum gravity and string theory, searching for a consistent quantum mechanical description of spacetime. He studied quantum aspects of black holes according to string theory. He proposed an equivalence between quantum hyperbolic spacetimes and quantum field theories living on their boundaries. This has provided a complete quantum description of black holes as seen from the outside. In addition, this relation has been used by various groups to model strongly interacting systems of quantum particles. He has also worked on some aspects of cosmological perturbations in the theory of inflation.
[snip]
casinapioiv.va/content/accademia/en/academicians/ordinary/maldacena.html
  1. Superstring Theorist at University of Florida Wins 2015 Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics
Washington D.C., October 23, 2014 --The American Physical Society (APS) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today, on behalf of the Heineman Foundation for Research, Educational, Charitable, and Scientific Purposes, that theoretical physicist Pierre Ramond, director of the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the University of Florida, has won the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics – one of the highest honors for scientific investigators in that field.

In recognizing Ramond, the two organizations cited his “pioneering foundational discoveries in supersymmetry and superstring theory, in particular the dual model of fermions and the theory of the Kalb-Ramond field.”

“Since the days of ancient Democritus, philosophers and scientists who pondered what makes up the fundamental building blocks of matter have thought about point-like particles – first atoms then subatomic particles like electrons or quarks,” said H. Frederick Dylla, executive director and CEO of AIP. “But by initiating superstring theory in the early 1970s, Pierre Ramond generalized to all particles the notion that the basic building blocks are not point particles at all, but tiny string-like objects that vibrate to form the particles.”

The prize consists of a certificate and a $10,000 award, which will be presented at a special ceremony during the April 2015 APS meeting in Baltimore, Md.
aip.org/news/2014/superstring-theorist-university-florida-wins-2015-heineman-prize-mathematical-physics
 
LogisticsBranch said:
To Al Moritz, 😃
  1. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences:

    Juan Maldacena
    Field: Physics
    Title: Professor

    [snip]
    Summary of scientific research
    Professor Maldacena has worked on quantum gravity and string theory, searching for a consistent quantum mechanical description of spacetime. He studied quantum aspects of black holes according to string theory. He proposed an equivalence between quantum hyperbolic spacetimes and quantum field theories living on their boundaries. This has provided a complete quantum description of black holes as seen from the outside. In addition, this relation has been used by various groups to model strongly interacting systems of quantum particles. He has also worked on some aspects of cosmological perturbations in the theory of inflation.
[snip]
casinapioiv.va/content/accademia/en/academicians/ordinary/maldacena.html
  1. Superstring Theorist at University of Florida Wins 2015 Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics
Washington D.C., October 23, 2014 --The American Physical Society (APS) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today, on behalf of the Heineman Foundation for Research, Educational, Charitable, and Scientific Purposes, that theoretical physicist Pierre Ramond, director of the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the University of Florida, has won the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics – one of the highest honors for scientific investigators in that field.

In recognizing Ramond, the two organizations cited his “pioneering foundational discoveries in supersymmetry and superstring theory, in particular the dual model of fermions and the theory of the Kalb-Ramond field.”

“Since the days of ancient Democritus, philosophers and scientists who pondered what makes up the fundamental building blocks of matter have thought about point-like particles – first atoms then subatomic particles like electrons or quarks,” said H. Frederick Dylla, executive director and CEO of AIP. “But by initiating superstring theory in the early 1970s, Pierre Ramond generalized to all particles the notion that the basic building blocks are not point particles at all, but tiny string-like objects that vibrate to form the particles.”

The prize consists of a certificate and a $10,000 award, which will be presented at a special ceremony during the April 2015 APS meeting in Baltimore, Md.
aip.org/news/2014/superstring-theorist-university-florida-wins-2015-heineman-prize-mathematical-physics
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So? (Shrug.)

Stephen Barr, a Catholic physicist, has written an excellent book, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, and several articles for First Things, that have helped me prevent from falling into atheism at a crossroads a few years ago. I am very thankful to him.

He also believes that string theory may be the answer for the final theory (though he himself works on baryon physics). Do I have to agree with him on this one too? No.
By the way, if I remember correctly, Maldacena’s hypotheses are extensively discussed in Lee Smolin’s The Trouble with Physics, and not in a way that left me with any confidence in them.

Once Pierre Ramond wins the Nobel Prize, aand not just the Heineman Prize, then we’ll talk. But why has no Nobel Prize ever given for string theory in 40 years? Because the Nobel Prize in the natural sciences is only given for experimentally, observationally verifiable results.

No Nobel Prize for string theory in 40 years. Higgs Boson found in 2012. Nobel Prize for Higgs Boson given in 2013, one year later. Case closed.
 
Hans_W said:
Just the title of this thread made me as a scientist jump.

Scientists don’t get “crushed”, they don’t even feel depressed when a theory they support, or even a theory they proposed gets attacked or is proven wrong.

On the contrary, that’s exciting to them. It means new questions are coming up. We now have discovered something we didn’t know last week.

You might get angry or upset for a short while when your pet idea is proven wrong, especially if somebody else comes along and points out what you have overlooked. But you never throw up your arms in the air and feel “crushed”.
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Indeed. There are a few new papers to shine a light on this:

arxiv.org/abs/1502.00608

arxiv.org/abs/1502.00596

arxiv.org/abs/1502.00619

bicepkeck.org/BK-V_20150202.pdf

They have done a lot of work of characterizing instrument uncertainties, and also found that their dust models are not quite right. Good stuff.
 
Al_Moritz said:
So? (Shrug.)

Stephen Barr, a Catholic physicist, has written an excellent book, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, and several articles for First Things, that have helped me prevent from falling into atheism at a crossroads a few years ago. I am very thankful to him.

He also believes that string theory may be the answer for the final theory (though he himself works on baryon physics). Do I have to agree with him on this one too? No.
By the way, if I remember correctly, Maldacena’s hypotheses are extensively discussed in Lee Smolin’s The Trouble with Physics, and not in a way that left me with any confidence in them.

Once Pierre Ramond wins the Nobel Prize, aand not just the Heineman Prize, then we’ll talk. But why has no Nobel Prize ever given for string theory in 40 years? Because the Nobel Prize in the natural sciences is only given for experimentally, observationally verifiable results.

No Nobel Prize for string theory in 40 years. Higgs Boson found in 2012. Nobel Prize for Higgs Boson given in 2013, one year later. Case closed.
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Hi Al, 🙂

Well, I’ve contributed to the last two pages and I’m talking about science. I don’t care if a physist is religious or non-religious. It wasn’t science that brought me to God. I just love God (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). I’m not a creationist by the way, and I don’t find evidence of God in science though I realize some people think that way. I also attended public schools and a non-religious university. A Nobel Prize is great but there are many physists that are spectacular and could end up becoming a nobel prize winner. My dear mother and father always said to me, “Never say never.” 😃 My father was a brilliant scientist.🙂

I really stand behind what I wrote on the previous two pages.

It was interesting to read this article:

Catholic particle physicist Stephen Barr writes and lectures on how physics demonstrates evidence of god, yet he builds some of his own research on multiverse theory. “There are physics reasons why the multiverse has to be taken seriously as an idea. It absolutely is not kooky,” says Barr. When speaking at Christian universities and churches, he often fields questions on multiverse theory from a largely receptive audience. He says their questions tend to focus on the scientific details, not the religious consequences. Yet there are books by some Christian intellectuals, like Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt’s A Meaningful World, which Barr admits dismiss the multiverse too carelessly: “It seems to me very stupid for religious people to go around and attack ideas like the multiverse because they think it somehow hurts a religious argument. It may turn out someday demonstrable that it’s true, and it’ll backfire on them.”
seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_multiverse_problem/
 
Hans_W said:
Just the title of this thread made me as a scientist jump.

Scientists don’t get “crushed”, they don’t even feel depressed when a theory they support, or even a theory they proposed gets attacked or is proven wrong.

On the contrary, that’s exciting to them. It means new questions are coming up. We now have discovered something we didn’t know last week.

You might get angry or upset for a short while when your pet idea is proven wrong, especially if somebody else comes along and points out what you have overlooked. But you never throw up your arms in the air and feel “crushed”.
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Unless it’s your global warming models at which case you declare that even though they’re wrong they prove they are right and mock anybody that disputes your conclusions
 
*A new quantum equation suggests that the Universe has no beginning or end, and it could also account for dark matter and dark energy.
*
Some bleeding-edge theory here. Seems interesting!
 
Melchior said:
*A new quantum equation suggests that the Universe has no beginning or end, and it could also account for dark matter and dark energy.
*
Some bleeding-edge theory here. Seems interesting!
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Love it. (and this is why we need science and religion; ‘the void’ is called that for a reason… ;))
 
Yes. And how could the universe not have an end or beginning? (I am not a scientist, just speculating.) I do believe the universe had a beginning but then I believe in God…it is absolutely fascinating though - dark matter, black holes, parallel universes; 11 dimensions, strings, etc. Problem is you don’t know how much is useful fact, how much is fantasy (madness even). I don’t think the people who come up with this stuff even know for sure.
 
Time has no beginning and no end, but not so the universe…“In the Beginning” is indicative of the being of the cosmos…and the “Big Bang” which presupposes an ever expanding universe is not contradictory to scripture.

An explosion (or “bang”) releases a flash of light and a wave of energy, which expands as far as it can, based on the size of the explosion…think of a fire cracker under a tin can…we see the flash, and see the energy wave lift the can…only so far…now think of a nuclear explosion…we see a blinding flash before a massive wave of energy.

The “Big Bang” could simply have been the execution of God’s command, “Let there be light” an infinite flash of light from an explosion so large that the energy wave never decreases, resulting in the ever expanding universe.
 
St. Thomas teaches that the belief that the world has a beginning is an article of faith and not something that can be proven: “I answer that, By faith alone do we hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist” (Prima Pars Q.46 A.2).

St. Thomas would say that it is possible for God to have created the universe without it having a beginning, but that as Christians, through faith, we know this not to be true.

If the Big Bang never occurred, does this necessarily mean that the universe has no beginning? Or could it perhaps mean that the universe came about through a different means?

If there were absolutely conclusive proof that the universe has no beginning, then I think it would erode a tenet of our Christian faith, that of the creation in time of the world by God. The only way I could see around it would be to say that Genesis speaks of the creation of the earth in time, and that the universe could nonetheless have existed for an infinite amount of time into the past prior to God’s creation of the earth (and of course, God would have created the universe without a beginning in this case, since the universe didn’t come from nowhere).
 
I believe the Universe has a creator, who created space/time/energy/matter, that would be God. Exactly how or when he did it, I don’t know.

The one thing I cannot understand is when someone believes that the universe came from nothing. To me that is such a logical dead end and so contrary to human experience, religious or otherwise. I kind of feel the same way about the universe always existing - seems a bit odd. We forget we are simply a manifestation of matter staring back at it - as if we can see it through the eyes of God. We just cannot accept our limitations, that we are just a part of this thing, existence, of it. We don’t oversee it; we are not outside of it; we don’t know why it is.
 
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