Eskimo North

The universe fascinates me because it is just so very big and the older I get the bigger it gets. I think the estimates are now up to around a trillion stars in the Milky Way and around a trillion galaxies. Carl Sagan was way off with "billions and billions", it's really "trillions and trillions", and I am sure those numbers will go up even farther as telescope technology continues to improve.

Mainstream science says that the entire universe came into existence out of nothing, in a "big bang". It's not a theory that I am comfortable with for many different reasons.

1) Conservation of energy, everything coming out of nothing is the ultimate violation of the law of conservation of energy (and mass).

2) Either conservation of angular momentum has to be violated, or general relativity has to be violated. The universe abounds with angular momentum, spin, which must be conserved. In the process of extrapolating backwards towards the big bang, a point would be reached where the matter would have to be rotating faster than the speed of light.

3) Quasars in some cases do not have the same red-shift as their host galaxies. This proves that some other mechanism besides Doppler shift exists for red-shift.

4) Inflation is required to make the numbers work in big-bang cosmology, but is no evidence that the laws of physics, anything that would explain inflation, no evidence that they have changed during the time frame of the observable universe. Some big bang cosmologists say that's because inflation happened before the first stars formed, but others use inflation to explain the fact that there are visible indications of faster-than-light events that are visible.

5) Depending upon whose numbers you believe, red-shift is quantized. This is still being debated, one groups measurement says that it is, another group says no there were systematic errors made in the first set of measurements, still a third says no, there really is quantized red-shift.

6) If we look at the same type of stars from the same portions of galaxies, metalacy, that is the percentage of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, has not changed measurably from the earliest observable galaxies to modern galaxies. Some big bangers are claiming that that is because the bulk of the metals were made in extremely massive stars that are too far back to observe, but even if that were true, 12 billion subsequent years of stars fusing hydrogen should have produced more metals.

7) Conservation of angular momentum; if we extrapolate backwards, the rate of rotation of things would have to increase to accommodate their smaller movements in space, at some point as we go back in time they would have to exceed the speed of light in order to conserve angular momentum. Ultimately however, it came from nothing so angular momentum conservation is unavoidably violated.i

The beginning of time is logically inconsistent. The event that began the universe had to happen in time, but it couldn't happen in time before the event happened, a chicken-and-egg type of paradox. Paradox is only an indication that our understanding is incorrect.

There are other things but these are just a few. I think the big bangs support comes from several psychological factors. People tend to externalize things that they are uncomfortable with, like physical death. That's one reason we keep having the end of the world scenarios. Scientists just take it to a more grandiose scale. Physicists like to be able to express things mathematically but infinities are inconvenient and make messes out of otherwise clean formula.

This video is a good example of the type of bad science that I think Big Bang religion being passed off as science is. It makes far too many assumptions. Now, those assumptions may or may not be valid; but the simple fact of the matter is that they are assumptions none the less and assuming doesn't make for good science.

For example, it states that all the galaxies, aside from some local nudging, are moving away from each other. We don't know this. We know that aside from local galaxies, all of the red-shifts of distant galaxies are red-shifts and not blue-shifts. We also know that the red-shifts increase with increasing distance. It is assumed by people who believe that big bang cosmology is correct, that all the shift in frequency of light from distant galaxies is Doppler, however, we do not know this.

Then in this video they make the point that scientists assume that we're not at the center of the universe, that there is no center, no special place, and yet, when you extrapolate back to the big bang, you're going back ultimately to a point that is at some place, "the center". The video also suggests that there is no special place if everywhere else would observe the same thing, but we have no way of knowing that, we've never observed our universe from outside our own solar system, and now the substantial detail from outside of low Earth orbit.

The video then goes on to say that big bang Cosmology makes several predictions with respect to the light, the size, and the brightness of galaxies, all of which turn out to be true. Well for starters, those weren't predictions, they were an attempt, using half a dozen fudge factors, to fit existing observations into the big bang model. Predictions are something made by a theory in advance, before the measurements are made, that are confirmed by those measurements, this is not the case for big bang cosmology.

But it's even worse than that, because the after the fact predictions regarding the size of galaxies only agreed with observational data because there was an error in how that data was collected and interpreted. Specifically, the predictions were that galaxies would start small and irregular, and through aggregation later go on to form the more common and familiar spiral, barred spiral, or elliptical galaxies.

When we saw the first deep field Hubble images, what they saw at the distant reaches of the universe was small irregular galaxies and a dearth of spiral and elliptical galaxies. This they said was proof of the big bang and the evolution of the universe.

The research was unfortunately severely flawed. What they failed to account for was the extreme red-shift of the light reaching the Hubble from those distant reaches of the universe and the fact that the Hubble could only see into the near infrared, thus, after the red shift, it could only see light originating as extreme UV from those distant galaxies. Extreme-UV only is emitted from active star forming regions of Galaxies. Elliptical galaxies are galaxies that have had no active star formation in the last ten billion years, so by extension, they have no significant light output in the extreme UV, and thus are invisible to Hubble when they are at distances that impart significant red-shift.

Spiral galaxies have some ongoing star formation in their spiral arms and thus are somewhat visible to the Hubble at these distances but ONLY those regions with active star formation are visible and hence they appear to be irregular galaxies when viewed in the visible or near infrared from a great distance.

Thus in the Hubble deep field images, elliptical galaxies are not seen at all, large spiral galaxies appear as small irregular galaxies, and so all that we see are small irregular galaxies.

When Chandra went up and imaged nearby galaxies, I recognized something, the nearby galaxies imaged in the extreme UV or X-rays appeared identical to the distant galaxies in the Hubble deep field images. It became clear to me then what was going on. Later, the Spitzer telescope, which was capable of seeing the distant galaxies in far infrared, confirmed my suspicions, for when the same region, that Hubble had imaged, was imaged by Spitzer, now we see large Spiral Galaxies, some in fact up to 3x larger than our own Milky Way which is large galaxy as spiral galaxies go.

So in fact what was predicted by big bang cosmology, and initially thought to be in agreement with observation, turned out in fact to be in complete disagreement with observation.

And then predictions about the light also turned out to be problematic. Because of the difficulty in collecting enough light, detailed spectrography of these very distant galaxies is impossible, but initial crude analysis of the light captured from distant galaxies, suggested that they were metal poor, as predicted by big bang cosmology. Big bang cosmology says the universe was initially only hydrogen and helium with just trace amounts of lithium thrown in. But initial data was comparing light from the active star forming regions of distant galaxies, with light from the core areas of modern galaxies, and that comparison is not valid because in nearby galaxies, the older stars in the core are metal rich, the newer stars in active star forming regions are relatively metal poor. So we'd see the same trend even comparing too adjacent galaxies here and yet they haven't evolved relative to one another.

Again, with the Spitzer, more data became available and we find that when we compare the same regions, the active star forming regions or the galactic cores, then we don't see a significant increase in metal content over the last 12.5 billion years. So now that's two of three predictions that are dead wrong.

Now back to the initial assumption, that all red-shift is caused by Doppler shift, well that's flawed on at least two accounts. First, some quasars have significantly different red-shifts than their host galaxies. At one time this was attributed to them not really being with their host galaxy, that what we were seeing was just a chance alignment of a galaxy and a more distant, and hence more red-shifted, quasar. However, a statistical analysis has since proven that there are far too many of such occurrences for it to be attributable to chance alignment. So something is causing significant red-shift that is not Doppler in origin.

Second, bit of evidence is that red-shift appears to be quantized, suggesting that over Cosmic distances, some mechanism saps energy from light photons that is quantized in nature. Again, more evidence of non-Doppler red-shift.

If you throw out all of the invalid assumptions, then big bang cosmology looks far less attractive. The problem that we have is the lack of a completely credible theory to replace it. Steady state theories are mostly not without some problems of their own but I think they pale by contrast to those of big bang cosmology. Physicists are often uncomfortable with them however because you can not have a steady state universe without having infinities, and infinity is difficult to deal with mathematically.

Some of the problems you are having with cosmologists are because you are, I think, ignoring gravitational energy. You should take a trip out to Hanford and visit our observatory (LIGO). Please let me know before you go and I will try to arrange for you to get a VIP tour.

Have there actually been some results from LIGO, actual detection of gravitational waves correlated with anything? But I assure you my problems with cosmologists go far beyond that, and actually they are my problems with most mainstream scientists; people think they already know everything about everything precludes them from learning anything new about anything.

Ouch. I hope that isn't true. It certainly isn't true for cosmologists, most of whom have their heads in the stars, so to speak.

LIGO hasn't detected anything yet, because the sensitivity of the instrument isn't good enough yet. We have achieved the level of sensitivity that the interferometer was designed for (~10^-23m), and we have retrofit specifications that will bring us down to 10^-25, at which point we expect to see an essentially continuous series of events. An amazing amount of fundamental science has been done in the areas of seismic isolation, laser signal stabilisation, and signal processing (including numerical relativity - a desperately difficult field). All of this work has relevance to other terrestrial sciences, and practical engineering value. One easily conceivable application would be to seismology, where the instrumentation and analytic techniques developed within LIGO can be applied to the monitoring and modeling of the dynamic geology of The Earth.

I have known scientists who not only believed in extra-terrestrial visitation, but who believed that they had personally been visited (they all claimed that their singular good fortune could be attibuted to their devout belief in Jesus Christ - Make of that what you will).

The variety of character and personality of scientists is as varied as that of any other group of people. Just as you would not pick a doctor out of the phone book and follow all of his advice until doomsday (or your own personal doomsday) if he wasn't helping you, you're not obliged to believe the theories or even the experimental results of any given scientist. I know close to 150 cosmologists, and I can state with assurance that they are a mixed bag of nuts, not all to be tarred together with even the broadest brush.

It's not universally true for any science but it seems the people who are the most likely to take the position that they know everything also happen to be the most vocal. But yes, I've run into people who are very open to alternative ideas, but I've also run into quite a few that are totally locked into mainstream accepted theories even when those theories don't agree with observational data. Personally, I prefer the position that Feynman took, if a theory doesn't agree with the data, it's wrong, no matter how mathematically elegant it might be, if it doesn't agree with the data it's wrong. Big-bang cosmology doesn't agree with observational data in many many areas. The problem is nobody that I am aware of has devised an alternative that does agree with all the data.


See this is where you and my views depart. You are assuming it is just because it wasn't sensitive enough. Me, I'll wait and see. When and if it detects something I'll be interested, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I'll accept a theory as being at least a useful model when a prediction that theory makes is confirmed. I won't just assume the theory is right and that the instruments aren't sensitive enough.


This is an area of interest for me as I've had such an encounter personally when I was ten. A waking encounter, an invitation not an abduction, by beings that don't quite match the description of anything I've ever heard or read but they definitely weren't from Kansas. In 38 years since, it's not repeated, though now I've photographed anomalous aerial phenomena on several occasions, nothing resembling what I boarded. But that one experience makes it a non-question for me; something from somewhere gets here. I saw the technology involved but do not understand it. I don't know where they are from. I don't attribute it to a devout belief in anything other that some form of intelligent life capable of travel from somewhere got here and I they I was of interest to them for reasons I do not understand even 38 years later.

As for Jesus Christ, I do believe a person who is personified as Jesus Christ existed; lived; did many things described in the Bible; and I believe was reasonably accurately quoted in the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I don't know what the proper pronunciation of his name is given that I've never studied Greek or Hebrew. I believe the hell-and-heaven judgment and condemnation message are the products of politics, that the council of nicea removed two thirds of the Bible because it didn't fit well with their political agenda, and that to this date, the Bible and peoples religious beliefs are still being used to manipulate people in very negative and detrimental ways.

I believe that churches that teach that Christ came to absolve us of our sins really aren't getting the message of Christ. Jesus says time and time again, judge not lest ye be judged and that if you do not judge you will not be judged, if you forgive you will be forgiven. Jesus also said that of all the commandments, loving God and our fellow man were the most important. I believe Christ is a savior in the sense that he provided instructions for our salvation, not simply by grace, it involves taking personal responsibility for how we relate to everyone else.

I count myself as a Christian, in as much as I believe Jesus was real and I believe his message was valid; but I don't buy that the Bible is the unadulterated word of God. Save for those four books, the bulk of the Bible is modified Greek stories (change the names and change from polytheism to monotheism) which are modified Egyptian stories, which are modified Sumerian or Mesopotamian stories; and they in turn are probably derived from even prior civilizations of which we are mostly unaware. In those stories, there are truths to be found but they are of a metaphoric nature, not a literal one.

Well now I imagine that I've pissed off pretty much everyone, the atheists, Christians, and probably the members of most other religions, not my intent, but neither do I care to be shy about what I do believe, and my beliefs are not set in stone but open to modifications which is another reason I express them.


On that note we do not disagree, but I've met more than a few who have the "my way or the highway" approach, if you're not willing to buy into what they believe then there is no basis for discussion.

The issue of sensitivity of the instrument is not a one-dimensional issue of the absolute sensitivity of the instrument. The unpredictability of the frequency of events within "local space" (our galaxy) is an equally important factor. The current implementation, which, as I said achieves design sensitivity, is capable of detecting signals unambiguously from cataclysmic events occurring within the Milky Way, and, I think, Andromeda. But these events are now estimated to occur once in 30 years within this small part of space. The retrofit will expand the range of detection sufficiently to detect an event every few days. The frequency of these events can be predicted much more certaintly now than 15 years ago. The scientists responsible for these predictions are among the most conservative, and they have good track records of predicting phenomena that have since been detected unambiguously by space-based detectors. They are probably right.

Cosmologists work long hours for trifling pay, and out of hundreds only one or two achieve any sort of "fame" from their work. Their satisfaction derives from their ability to predict and validate the mechanical behaviour of the cosmos. It is inimical to them to falsify or exaggerate, and their peers are capable of smacking them down if they do.

Please don't confuse the fireworks of a few grandstanding media whores with the meat and potatoes work of hundreds.

The offer of the personal tour of the observatory still stands. I can't do it myself since I'm at Caltech, and since I'm not an astronomer I would be a poor guide anyway.

I would enjoy that, right now though my time is already overly committed.

The Universe is defined as everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. However, the term universe may be used in slightly different contextual senses, denoting such concepts as the cosmos, the world or Nature.

Well, before people started to look at "parallel universes", it was. Now it seems you have to use "multi-verse" to truly be all-inclusive.