🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3rqcr9$a4g@dingo.cc.uq.oz.au>, shelter@peg.apc.org (Madhudvisah dasa Swami) writes:
>The strongest "evidence" for the big bang is the observed red-shift of the
>stars. They say this proves the universe is expanding, which is what you
>would expect if it all started with a "big bang". But the same "evidence"
>can be interpreted in many ways. The red-shift evidence also seems to
>prove the earth is at the center of the universe... Not something we here
>very much of from the "big bang" cosmologists is it?
>
>So despite the fact their theory can't explain the the observed universe
>they still are still "preaching" it... It's incredible. It's not science
>at all. It's blind faith in a dogma which has been clearly and
>scientifically  disproven by scientists who have broken away from this
>blind faith in the "big bang".

1) There are many pieces of evidence that support the big bang models including

	i)   The correlation between red shift and distance.

	ii)  The relative abundancies of hydrogen and helium.

        iii) The 3 Kelvin background radiation and its black-body
             characteristic.

2) The red shift-distance relation does not imply that the Earth is at the
   centre of the Universe.  That the universe is expanding implies that
   every point in the universe is receding from every other point so that
   you will see a correlation between redshift and distance at every
   point in the universe.

3) Big bang theories (there are actually a whole family of big bang theories that
   differ in the details of what happened in the very early universe) are most
   definitely not disproven.  The standard cosmological models account for the
   observed characteristics of the universe far better than any proposed 
   alternative;  this holds even if a cosmological constant is required to
   adjust the age of the universe to be consistent with independently derived
   measurements of age (it is still uncertain as to whether such an adjustment
   is necessary).

The last point must be emphasised.  I don't understand why some people
display such blind antipathy towards the standard cosmological models.
The bottom line is that they are not dogma.  There is no scientific
priesthood promoting the big bang as a kind of scientific Nicene creed
to which every cosmologist must subscribe on pain of excommunication.
The big bang survives as a scientific model because of its success in
accounting for what we observe.

-- 
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Chris Flatters						cflatter@nrao.edu
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Well, our problem stems from the fact that we, basically, allow every planet
and moon-base this side of Alpha Centauri to make their own version of Spam.
							"Mystery Meat"
							Man... or Astroman?