The expanding Universe.

[uppi]

Yes I understand the theory is redshift is a doppler effect, I disagree with that conclusion. Redshift can also be a gravitational effect, but I think the redshift is infact just reddening.

Reddening due to the expansion of space, which is exactly the point of the Big Bang theory. If you think of it as reddening because of other means you have to give a mechanism for it, that we can test. Otherwise it is just wild speculation.

Dogma, not the first time scientists have refused to change because of that, nor will it be the last.

Yeah, scientists have that pesky habit of demanding evidence for new theories.

Big Bang Theory is a theory, not a fact. May prove out in the end, but I dont think it will stand the test of time... heh CIV pun

Did you take a lesson from the creationists or what? The Big Bang is a theory like evolution is a theory. We have evidence for it, and that's why it is a scientific theory. Other things, where we do not even have a way to test it, are wild speculation.

 

[deanej]

Infinitely superior? Not a chance. It is wild speculation, nothing more.

And that speculation does contain the Big Bang, it just tries to find some sort of cause for it.

The Big Bang theory is science, this is not.

You might want to check your facts first. I linked to a major science magazine. The people who came up with the new theory are scientists. Did you actually read the article at all? Even though it contains what can be described as a big bang, it only passingly resembles the big bang model. And it doesn't require untestable magic like dark energy.

And why should the old theory take priority just because it's older? The new theory should only need to meet the same burden of proof as the old one... which in this case it does do better, because it doesn't require the magic that is dark energy.

 

[Souron]

Are you even aware of the alternatives? IMO this one is infinitely superior to the big bang model: http://discovermagazine.com/2004/feb/cover

I always love how science claims to be accepting of new ideas and then immediately tells anyone who contradicts established scientific doctrine that they are wrong.

I have no need to know the alternatives, I trust the established theory. I'm not a scientist. But you don't trust the established theory. If you insist on this then you need to learn the motivations behind it. You effectively need to be a qualified scientist yourself. Then you will be qualified to challenge established scientific doctrine. Of course even then, scientist will not expect the established doctrine to be wrong, so you better back your claims up.

A discovery magazine article does not of course go into near enough depth to evaluate the merit of a scientific finding. It just provides a general layman overview that attempts to describe the idea. Sometimes it fails even in this. It is written by people who are not scientists.

Anyway, yes I am aware of ideas wherein the big bang is just a part of some regular cosmic pattern. I don't see it as simpler because it requires a unknown mechanism for leaping the singularity. Where as the big bang model is the extrapolation of the current state of the universe back in time. But I'm just a hobbyist.

 

[uppi]

You might want to check your facts first. I linked to a major science magazine.

Exactly. "Major science magazine" does not give any credibility. Science journalism is usually abysmal and this seems to be no exception. Overhyping a random idea from a theorist as a new theory is exactly the kind of stuff I expect from such a magazine.

The people who came up with the new theory are scientists.

Yes and scientist come up with new ideas all the time. That does not mean that every idea they come up with is a valid theory. Science is the refinement of such an idea into a testable hypothesis and if it stands multiple tests, into a theory. So an idea might be interesting, but until it can be tested, it is just that. A scientific theory is something else.

Did you actually read the article at all? Even though it contains what can be described as a big bang, it only passingly resembles the big bang model. And it doesn't require untestable magic like dark energy.

And why should the old theory take priority just because it's older? The new theory should only need to meet the same burden of proof as the old one... which in this case it does do better, because it doesn't require the magic that is dark energy.

Yes, I read the article and instead of requiring untestable magic called dark energy it requires untestable magic called superstring theory. Same difference. String theory has failed in its mission to build a unified theory of everything and has entered the realm of "wild speculation". So anything based on that cannot be more than wild speculation.

And the old theory does not take priority because it is older, but because there is evidence in favor of it. New theories require new evidence. And even if we fail to detect evidence of inflation and thus falsify the current model, this is no evidence for alternative models. At best it would tell us that the current model is false, but not which alternative is right. Thus a new model requires evidence of its own.

 

[deanej]

Exactly. "Major science magazine" does not give any credibility. Science journalism is usually abysmal and this seems to be no exception. Overhyping a random idea from a theorist as a new theory is exactly the kind of stuff I expect from such a magazine.

I love how you're equating Discover Magazine with the tabloid reporting that the mainstream media does. They employ people like Phil Plait, so they actually know what they're talking about.

Yes, I read the article and instead of requiring untestable magic called dark energy it requires untestable magic called superstring theory. Same difference. String theory has failed in its mission to build a unified theory of everything and has entered the realm of "wild speculation". So anything based on that cannot be more than wild speculation.

Many scientists consider string theory to be a perfectly valid theory. Of course, they must be all crackpots because they don't agree with you.

New theories require new evidence.

What's wrong with them using the same evidence as the old theory, if it works with both?

Using your logic, the geocentric theory of the solar system is the correct one. It was the established theory when the heliocentric model was proposed, and is only better because it's simpler, and as you said, simpler =/= better.

And yet somehow the heliocentric model overthrew the geocentric one, even in an era before space probes! Gee, I wonder how that happened.

 

[uppi]

I love how you're equating Discover Magazine with the tabloid reporting that the mainstream media does. They employ people like Phil Plait, so they actually know what they're talking about.

They might be better than most (but not all) mainstream media reporting, but they are doing popular science "journalism" with all the usual mistakes. They do not even give references for anything they write.

Many scientists consider string theory to be a perfectly valid theory. Of course, they must be all crackpots because they don't agree with you.

Nope, they cannot. There is not one "string theory" but at least 10^500. So without any means to tell which one is the right one, they are useless because you can predict anything and nothing with them. There are still some theorists (mainly those who are working on it) who think that the string theory approach will lead to a valid theory someday, but until now they have failed. In the last years there has been a movement away from string theory. It is not dead yet, but unless they make a major breakthrough it will be in 20 years.

What's wrong with them using the same evidence as the old theory, if it works with both?

Using your logic, the geocentric theory of the solar system is the correct one. It was the established theory when the heliocentric model was proposed, and is only better because it's simpler, and as you said, simpler =/= better.

And yet somehow the heliocentric model overthrew the geocentric one, even in an era before space probes! Gee, I wonder how that happened.

Simple: If the evidence was found after the formation of the older theory but before the formation of the newer theory and fits both of them, this has much more convincing power for the older theory. The newer could have (and actually should have) taken all that evidence already into account, so it is not exactly surprising that it fits the experimental data.

Evidence found after the formation of a theory is much more convincing than any evidence before that.

That said, being simpler does have its merits and can lead to the preference of one of two equivalent theories (but to actually decide between them, new evidence is needed anyway). However in this case, the new model is in no way simpler than the old one. We can describe the Big Bang theory with the current universally accepted theories when we introduce dark energy. This new model requires a huge collision of things we have no evidence of and has a description so complex that we cannot even do any concrete calculations with it. At least mathematically, the current description is much simpler.

For the record: I am not too satisfied with the concept of dark energy either and a better description is certainly desirable. But that does not mean we should just accept any random new idea without any evidence.

 

[Bluemofia]

I love how you're equating Discover Magazine with the tabloid reporting that the mainstream media does. They employ people like Phil Plait, so they actually know what they're talking about.

Ugh, I have read many popular science magazines, and many of them don't actually explain special relativity's Twins Paradox correctly. They always leave it off as one is older than the other, and that is a paradox.

It isn't. The paradox is the fact that in both of their point of views, they are the one stationary. Then why is one older than the other? The paradox is resolved by the fact that one is accelerated when returning.

I have never seen a popular science magazine properly describe this. You must read the journal paper itself, not just a simplified version of it (which may even be completely wrong) on a science magazine.

What's wrong with them using the same evidence as the old theory, if it works with both?

Because if the old one works just fine, there's no need to replace it with something else just because it is simpler.

The simplest explanation of a lot of things is can often be reduced to a variation of the anthropic principle. Take g for example.

The current theory is that g is determined by Mass of Earth over Radius of Earth squared times G.

A simpler theory is that, if g were any different, it would have affected our evolution, bone, and muscle structure. But since our bone and muscle structure are the way they are, we just happen to live in a world with g being 9.8 m/s^2. (the point is that it is not correlated mass, but rather it itself is a constant)

Sort of like every possibility exists, but we just happened to be living in a possibility that worked out this way.

Does that explain things better? No (nor worse. It just says that every body has its own value of g. It fits all of the data). Is it simpler? Yes.

Only if it works better do we replace it. If there is absolutely no distinguishing difference between the predictions of A and B, we adopt the one that was developed first as mainstream, and maybe mention the second one as an aside of a different interpretation. (see Many Worlds vs Copenhagen interpretation of QM. Copenhagen was developed first, that is why it is kept, rather than the many worlds which I myself favor on again, philosophical grounds, which mean nothing in the science realm)

Since the cyclic model has distinguishing differences, we hold onto the old model which has withstood its own tests already, rather than adopt a new one which was fine tuned to fit the existing data, until appropriate data comes in to test it.

What if your new model is wrong? Do we go "Just Kidding! Go back to the old model while we think up of a new one to test." The only people who will benefit from this is the text book companies. We keep the old one until it is definitively defeated with a better model, not replace it with a simpler one that makes the same predictions, or has a more detailed prediction that has yet to be verified.

Using your logic, the geocentric theory of the solar system is the correct one. It was the established theory when the heliocentric model was proposed, and is only better because it's simpler, and as you said, simpler =/= better.

And yet somehow the heliocentric model overthrew the geocentric one, even in an era before space probes! Gee, I wonder how that happened.

No. Initially the Heliocentric model actually required epicycles just like the Geocentric model. They just presented it as an alternative to simplify the math. It didn't predict it better, it was just simpler, and they kept both ideas around, but primarily used Geocentrism. It was only after the model was refined a bit (confusing ellipses instead of circles, which are arguably more complicated), and made predictions that differed from the Geocentricism model, and it was verified did they change it up.

Geocentricism does not correctly explain things like phases of Venus (Galileo), the fact that moons orbit around other planets (Galileo), and that Gravity is observed to behave as GMm/R^2 in non-relativistic scales (Newton).

Heliocentrism explains it better. It just happened to be simpler. It didn't replace it because it was simpler, but rather better.

 

[mdwh]

Personally I think the whole expanding universe theory is going to end up being a flat earth theory, total bunk. Everytime new data goes against the big bang instead of dumping the theory they invent something to change the parameters, just another case of dogma. I lean more towards some form of tired light to explain red shift.

There was never a scientific theory of a flat earth.

 

[peter grimes]

If you sincerely want to have a better understanding of why astronomers and cosmologists think the Big Bang is the right horse, just start following Ethan Siegel's blog Starts With a Bang.

For starters, here's a link to one of his recent posts that discusses several converging lines of evidence for the existence of Dark Matter:
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/11/the_simplest_argument_for_dark.php