Everyone thinks that this theory is based on evidence, but that's not true. How loud all scientists talking about it's just still a theory, nothing more. I am sure there are more theories about the beginning of the universe, but the people just picked up this theory more than other theories.
@MercuryTrismegistus said in #10:
> Its probably the most ridiculous and wrong theory in modern astronomy. Probably even in physics. Maybe even in metaphysics. Future generations are gonna look back at us and think we're complete morons subconsciously obsessed with explosions.
That's true! :D
@MercuryTrismegistus
The reason for that is it's understood that almost everything that happens in the universe is based upon some type of explosion. Our sun (and other stars) is basically one gigantic non-stop nuclear explosion. Everything seems to involve big ka-booms...
You are probably right that it's mostly nonsense, but down through history there have been some pretty sharp people who had some very forward thinking ideas. Whether there are any more alive today is up for debate. I'd say knowledge and understanding is not encouraged much nowadays. When younger, even Einstein couldn't get a job teaching because he wasn't considered qualified enough. That gives us some insight into the thought process of people in higher education. I'd say it's worse today by a longshot. People are very intimidated by intelligence, and there's an old saying, "A's" hire "A's", but "B's" hire "C's"... In other words, only very confident people are comfortable working with people who are their equals or better.
The Big Bang Theory is strikingly similar to the overall structure of Kabbalah. I'm not saying that I believe or disbelieve in the "Big Bang Theory" as I wasn't there so I don't really know. Having said that, considering in the very first part of Genesis about "the Light" followed by creation, if anyone happens to be religious the "Big Bang Theory" is somewhat fascinating to consider especially if one believes that God reveals himself in two distinct ways: in His Word, and in His Creation.
@MercuryTrismegistus said in #10:
> Its probably the most ridiculous and wrong theory in modern astronomy. Probably even in physics. Maybe even in metaphysics. Future generations are gonna look back at us and think we're complete morons subconsciously obsessed with explosions.
yes :)
@Art_Fil said in #11:
> Everyone thinks that this theory is based on evidence, but that's not true.
Quite the opposite, it *is* based on evidence. And quite a lot of evidence actually. Otherwise it wouldn't be called a scientific theory. Theory means something very different in science than it does in everyday language. It's **not** just "a hunch" or "a wild guess".
A scientific theory is an explanatory model which makes (quantitative) falsifiable predictions and insofar as they can be and have been tested these predictions should be borne out by observation and experiment. It is especially useful and impressive if it can make predictions about *future* observations.
That is to say, a scientific theory is the very best science has to offer at any given point in time in the sense that it has not yet been falsified. No theory can ever be fully verified (in a philosophical sense of Truth), but make just *one* observation or perform just *one* experiment that significantly differs from the theoretical prediction and you will have falsified this prediction and potentially – depending on the severity of the discrepancy between theory and experiment – some aspect of the theory or the theory as a whole. Often this means that you will have found the *range of applicability* of said theory.
Whenever that happens scientists are *very* happy because that means there's more work to be done! They can come up with a new and better theory which can explain/correctly predict all phenomena the previous theory could account for **AND** then some, including the phenomenon which falsified the outdated theory. That's how science progresses! One theory supersedes the previous ones. But all theories are based on a lot of evidence, namely all the evidence available at the time of their conception (and then some as scientists try desperately to poke holes into the prevailing theory, to find evidence to test and to falsify it, usually failing to do so if it's a good theory).
**Example:** Newtonian gravity was falsified by the rate of the perihelion precession of Mercury (it predicted Mercury's orbit to wobble slightly slower than it actually does). That means that while newtonian gravity remains a very useful approximation for the case of weak gravitational fields (e.g. nearly everywhere we send spacecraft in the solar system) its predictions deviate from actual observations for stronger gravitational field strengths, e.g. near the sun where Mercury is located or near even more massive objects.
Eventually newtonian gravity was superseded by Einstein's theory of general relativity which makes *all* the same ("correct") predictions as newtonian gravity for weak gravitational fields (newtonian gravity is actually the low spacetime curvature limit of general relativity) **AND** then some more which include the correct (within measurement uncertainty) perihelion precession rate of Mercury, gravitational lensing, gravitational redshift, gravitational time dilation and many more, all of which have been tested in experiments which failed to falsify any of the predictions of general relativity. By "correct" I here mean predictions which have not been falsified by experiment or observation.
> How loud all scientists talking about it's just still a theory, nothing more.
Being a scientific theory is like the gold standard. There's nothing better than a theory in science as I have tried to explain above. So of course the big bang theory is "just" a theory and nothing more. There is nothing more in science.
> I am sure there are more theories about the beginning of the universe, but the people just picked up this theory more than other theories.
And why might that be? Why might scientists begrudgingly accept one candidate theory over other candidate theories? Do you seriously believe that scientists just decide something like that on a whim?! They don't.
The actual answer is evidence. And in particular evidence which can be explained/predicted by one candidate theory and not by the others. Ever wonder why the big bang theory has such a whimsical name? Because it was coined by one of the theory's staunchest opponents, astronomer Fred Hoyle. Hoyle didn't believe in Lemaître's hypothesis of the primeval "atom". And so he mocked it and came up with the name "big bang" to underscore how ridiculous he found it. Hoyle – and many other astronomers and physicists at the time – believed in a steady-state model of an eternal Universe.
So what was the evidence which over time wore astronomers and physicists down? What sort of evidence convinced them of the "big bang"?
First let's clarify some misconceptions about the big bang theory which are already apparent in multiple posts in this thread:
Misconception 1) The big bang theory is a theory about the very beginning of the universe. It's not.
Misconception 2) The big bang was a huge explosion from which the universe was born. It wasn't an explosion.
1) The big bang theory actually doesn't make any (testable or otherwise) predictions about the beginning of the universe – if it had a beginning (which is unknown). Instead the big bang theory suggests that the universe as we see it today has developed from a very hot and very dense state a few billion years ago. Whatever, if anything, came prior to this hot and dense state is not subject of the big bang theory (and actually unknown).
2) Explosions need chemistry. The big bang theory describes the state of the universe prior to the synthesis of atomic nuclei, let alone atoms necessary for chemistry. So obviously it was not an explosion. Instead what is described by the big bang theory is the time evolution of said hot and dense state into today's cold and very empty (much lower density) universe. Especially the metric expansion of spacetime, concordant with Einstein's general relativity. Spacetime everywhere is expanding, meaning that the distances between any two points in the universe is increasing (an observable fact, as can be seen from the redshift of light emitted by distant galaxies). This metric expansion of spacetime reduces the density of matter and radiation in the universe. It stands to reason that as one goes back in time the distances between any two points in the universe decrease. That means things become more closely packed, density increases. Lemaître took this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, namely that once there must have been an extremely hot and extremely dense state of the universe.
From this fairly simple central thought the big bang theory was gradually developed. As it turns out, the existence of such a hot and dense state in the past would leave traces according to the known laws of physics. Note that today's universe is transparent, light can pass through vast distances uninterrupted. This is due to the low (matter) density, space is relatively empty and light mainly interacts with matter, not so much with a mostly empty vacuum.
If the universe had been in an extremely dense state in the past, this would have meant that it must have been opaque at one point in time (as the density was too high for light to travel uninterrupted for an appreciable distance) and as the density decreased there must have come a point at which it became transparent.
If the universe had been in an extremely hot state in the past, this would have meant that it was absolutely filled up to the brim with electromagnetic radiation (e.g. light). Radiation, mind you that could not get very far due to being constantly absorbed and reemitted by the densely packed energy-matter content of the (nearly opaque) universe.
When the universe became transparent (and the mean free path of the radiation drastically increased) all of that radiation could now freely move through the universe. And it should have been absolutely everywhere in the universe because the universe was hot and dense everywhere. As such, the big bang theory predicts the existence of a sort of radiation that can be received from everywhere in the night sky. A constant background source of electromagnetic radiation uniformly coming from everywhere, probably.
As it turns out this radiation exists and its discovery came decades after its existence had been predicted by physicists developing the big bang theory. What's more is that it was discovered not by scientists who were looking to find it, the prediction was fairly unknown at the time, but rather by two radio technicians who were just trying to get rid of some annoying source of noise in their horn antenna. They stumbled about this background radiation by accident, first thought it was bird poop on their antenna's receiver, trying everything to get rid of it. Only to finally realise that it was really there, it wasn't terrestrial and it came from everywhere at roughly the same intensity, no matter where in the sky they looked. This marked the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).
Steady-state candidate theories have a hard time explaining its existence, let alone its properties. The big bang theory can explain much more than just its mere existence. It, for example in the form of the ΛCDM-model, can predict the multipole power spectrum of the CMB to an astonishing degree of accuracy. To explain what that is would take a lot longer, so for the moment I'll just leave this link here, if you're interested:
https://phys.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/Physics_156%3A_A_Cosmology_Workbook/01%3A_Workbook/1.27%3A_Cosmic_Microwave_Background_Anisotropies
There are many more falsifiable predictions made by the big bang theory and so far they check out. That's why it's still accepted as the current best theory.
@MercuryTrismegistus
First of all, LOVE your name!! As someone who academically delves into subjects like demonology and all sorts of esoteric aspects, I am always grateful that 'Hermes Trismegistus,' who I assume you based your name on, isn't lost to history.
I am promoting a similar conspiracy theory that you're jokingly accusing me of, but rather in the reverse order. If the Bible and If Kabballah is true, then it's not merely true by means of "opinion." They are true if and ONLY if creation (the observable world) supports (doesn't logically contradict) the propositions posed. I will say, however, that Einstein, who the Germans amusingly called "the Relativity Jew," has more than an alarming similarity between his theory of 'Relativity' and concepts of Kabballah and 'tohuwabohu' just to name a few.
Hence, I'm claiming that by exploring "the Big Bang Theory" you can actually enhance your faith-life as you're going to be encountering either "truth" or encountering something that may be dismissed by potentially greater evidence found in the Bible, for example, which for some has overwhelming proof of other aspects of life that when conflated as a unifying text and principle can thus displace and disprove 'hair-brained' so-called Science.
@water22 said in #3:
> some sort of explosion happened,
@MercuryTrismegistus said in #10:
> obsessed with explosions.
@V1g1yy said in #13:
> some type of explosion
The so-called Big Bang is possibly the most poorly named theory in the history of science, as what it describes has very little to do with an explosion. In a way it's maybe not so surprising, since the name was actually given by someone who misunderstood the theory and was trying to mock it.