Scientists Say They've Come Up With a Way to Test Once And For All Whether The Big Bang Actually Happened

[phands]

I'm cautiously cynical, but.....

According to the Big Bang cosmological model, our Universe began 13.8 billion years ago when all the matter and energy in the cosmos began expanding.


This period of "cosmic inflation" is believed to be what accounts for the large-scale structure of the Universe and why space and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) appear to be largely uniform in all directions.


However, to date, no evidence has been discovered that can definitely prove the cosmic inflation scenario or rule out alternative theories.


But thanks to a new study by a team of astronomers from Harvard University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), scientists may have a new means of testing one of the key parts of the Big Bang cosmological model.


Their paper, titled "Unique Fingerprints of Alternatives to Inflation in the Primordial Power Spectrum", recently appeared online and is being considered for publication in the Physical Review Letters.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...or-all-whether-the-big-bang-actually-happened

 

[skepticalbip]

The continuing universal expansion, named the "Big Bang", by detractors is obvious. Only an understanding of doppler shift is required to verify the expansion. The problem that modelers had was that the age of the universe (determined by uniformity and ratios of elements) was much too young to have reached the size it now appears with its observed expansion velocity.

Guth offered the modified "Big Bang" model with his "Big Bang plus inflation" model (adding the "epicycle" of inflation) to account for the size. This inflation has not been accepted by many cosmologists because it seems to add more problems than it solves. There would need to be some modeling to explain how c did not apply during the inflationary period. The universe would need to pause early in its inflation long enough for everything to equilibrate before continuing on with the inflation (sorta difficult to model). Among other problems like what caused inflation to start and what caused it to stop, there is no explanation of how parts of the universe 13 billion LY from other parts of the universe "knew" when to stop inflation simultaneously. This last is close to the problem that inflation was supposed to solve of how the temperature of different parts of the universe is the same 13 billion LY apart.

 

[steve_bank]

Good model given 100 years of observation in an estimated 13 billion years...extreme extrapolation past data endpoints.
Proof is experiment.

 

[skepticalbip]

Good model given 100 years of observation in an estimated 13 billion years...extreme extrapolation past data endpoints.
Proof is experiment.

That 13 billion years only applies if the "Big Bang plus Inflation" model is assumed to be correct. The "Big Bang" without inflation models a much, much older universe. If it is assumed that an "Oscillating Universe" model, us being in an expansion phase of the oscillation, is correct then the universe could be much, much older than the "Big Bang" without inflation model - it could even be eternal. What is no longer arguable is the "Steady State" model since that conflicts with current observations although there are a few cosmologists that hang onto a "Modified Steady State" model that has universal expansion with matter continually being created to keep the mass density of space constant (requiring only a few subatomic particles/cubic parsec/year).

 

[steve_bank]

Good model given 100 years of observation in an estimated 13 billion years...extreme extrapolation past data endpoints.
Proof is experiment.

That 13 billion years only applies if the "Big Bang plus Inflation" model is assumed to be correct. The "Big Bang" without inflation models a much, much older universe. If it is assumed that an "Oscillating Universe" model, us being in an expansion phase of the oscillation, is correct then the universe could be much, much older than the "Big Bang" without inflation model - it could even be eternal. What is no longer arguable is the "Steady State" model since that conflicts with current observations although there are a few cosmologists that hang onto a "Modified Steady State" model that has universal expansion with matter continually being created to keep the mass density of space constant (requiring only a few subatomic particles/cubic parsec/year).

I understand. The BB does not address what created the intial condions, the initial conditions are a theretical extrapolation back in time which can never be proven directly.

I watched a show about a BB simulation. It yielded galaxy like structures with low resolution.

Good model, just do not tale it as fact. I take as fact that Newton's Laws work predictively within bounds of the model. It can be tested. As I have stead before my main criticism is that the bounds of the universe is taken to be our observational ability to detect photons. What would the universe look like close to that limit if we were there.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So the article isn't really dealing with whether the BB occurred but rather the inflation. Okay. That's interesting enough.

 

[Peez]

Just ask the Big G, he was there.

Peez