He that created the heavens,
and stretched them out;'
Isaiah 42:5
"‘In the twentieth century, the first version of the ‘big bang’ as the explosion of a ‘primeval atom’ was put forward by Abbé Georges-.jpeg)
Henri Lemaître in 1931.3 Lemaître already knew of Edwin Hubble’s work on the redshift of light from distant stars (which Hubble interpreted to mean that the universe is expanding) and, by extrapolating backwards in time, he postulated that the universe originated as a single particle of vast energy but near-zero radius. He argued (erroneously) that cosmic rays must have come from such an explosion.
In 1946, one of the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb) scientists, George Gamow, postulated that a universal explosion lasting a few seconds could have produced all the elements we see today. This lost favor after about a decade, when calculations suggested that certain elements could form in stars.
In 1965, a third version of the ‘big bang’ was put forward by Robert Dicke, P.J.E. Peebles and others, which appeared to receive some confirmation by the accidental discovery by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson that the universe seemed to be uniformly filled with very even heat at a temperature of about 3 K.6 (K is the symbol for kelvin, the base unit of thermodynamic temperature.) This was interpreted as being the after-glow in the form of microwave radiation left over from a huge initial explosion.
"‘In the twentieth century, the first version of the ‘big bang’ as the explosion of a ‘primeval atom’ was put forward by Abbé Georges-
.jpeg)
In 1946, one of the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb) scientists, George Gamow, postulated that a universal explosion lasting a few seconds could have produced all the elements we see today. This lost favor after about a decade, when calculations suggested that certain elements could form in stars.
In 1965, a third version of the ‘big bang’ was put forward by Robert Dicke, P.J.E. Peebles and others, which appeared to receive some confirmation by the accidental discovery by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson that the universe seemed to be uniformly filled with very even heat at a temperature of about 3 K.6 (K is the symbol for kelvin, the base unit of thermodynamic temperature.) This was interpreted as being the after-glow in the form of microwave radiation left over from a huge initial explosion.
When Sir Fred Hoyle calculated that a ‘big bang’ would produce only light elements (notably helium, deuterium, and lithium), it seemed established as the origin of the universe. In the next 20 years, thousands of papers supporting the ‘big bang’ were produced and virtually no papers challenging it were accepted. It became inconceivable that the ‘big bang’ theory could be wrong, and entire careers in cosmology have been built on the presumption that the ‘big bang’ was fact.
One of the predictions of the ‘big bang’ is that it would produce large amounts of helium, and, in fact, the galaxies contain about 24 per cent of helium.
One of the predictions of the ‘big bang’ is that it would produce large amounts of helium, and, in fact, the galaxies contain about 24 per cent of helium.
--However, calculations have shown that the detected matter in the universe is only about 1 per cent of the amount required to produce.jpeg)
the gravitational attraction needed to form all the galaxies and clumps of galaxies, even within the vast time span of a hypothetical 15 billion years.
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This problem was solved with a stroke of the pen. In the early 1980s, cosmological theoreticians decided that the universe was now made up of nearly 99 per cent of ‘cold dark matter’ (CDM)—necessarily ‘dark’ because no one has ever seen it or detected it, and up to 99 times the amount of the visible matter in the universe. This CDM could not be composed of detectable elements like hydrogen and helium, so hypothetical particles were said to exist, with names like ‘WIMPS’ (weakly interacting massive particles) and ‘axions’.
Another problem was the very smoothness of the so-called background radiation. Large-scale surveys of space have shown that matter is not evenly distributed at all, but exists in the form of huge clusters of galaxies, and even larger-scale clumping including some huge structures which have been given names like the Great Wall, while there are vast empty reaches, one called the Great Void.
Another problem was the very smoothness of the so-called background radiation. Large-scale surveys of space have shown that matter is not evenly distributed at all, but exists in the form of huge clusters of galaxies, and even larger-scale clumping including some huge structures which have been given names like the Great Wall, while there are vast empty reaches, one called the Great Void.
‘Big bang’ theorists decided that if they could find some variation or ripples in the pervasive 3 K radiation, this would be an adequate explanation of the origin of the large-scale galaxy structures.
In 1989, NASA launched a space satellite named Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) to try to detect the needed tiny variations or ‘bumps’ in the radiation from above earth’s atmosphere.
--By 1991, no variation had been detected and the ‘big bang’ theorists were beginning to panic. Then, in April 1992, a computer program was used to analyse the data, and at last something was detected—hot and cold spots differing in temperature by up to about three one-hundred-thousandths of a degree Celsius.
‘Big Bang Proved!’ trumpeted the headlines.
‘Big Bang Proved!’ trumpeted the headlines.
Q: But is it?
A: This background radiation cannot be invoked as conclusive proof of the ‘big bang’, as there are a number of other explanations for it.
Russell Ruthen, writing in Scientific American, October 1992, says,
‘But controversy has arisen as to whether the COBE measurements have any relation at all to the structure of the universe billions of years ago. Lawrence M. Krauss and Martin White of Yale University argue that the variations in the cosmic microwave background … could be distortions caused by gravitational waves.’
Russell Ruthen, writing in Scientific American, October 1992, says,
And more than two decades ago two Soviet scientists, R.A. Sunyaev and Yakov B. Zeldovich, pointed out that as the background radiation passes through large clouds of intergalactic gas, the resultant change in intensity could cause these ‘lumps’."
CMI