Big Shock for Big Bang

[Jussi]

'According to astronomers a recently discovered group of quasars exceeds in size anything previously believed possible, requiring a fundamental revision of cosmological theory.

But perhaps the real mystery is how the scientific media failed to acknowledge that discoveries of this sort were predicted by one of the 20th century's leading astronomers, Halton Arp.

Many years ago, Arp observed that astronomers were misinterpreting quasar redshift, placing these objects at the boundaries of observable space. Quasars, he said, are much closer than assumed and nothing like the size required by the standard interpretation of redshift.'

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Its amazing to think about how much we THINK we know about the universe, when in reality, we know precious little. But that being said, things that were once theory, are now known to exist, another amazing feat.

[JulianO]

The sixty symbols team on the discovery - interesting - but lets not get too excited just yet.

[JB80]

Many years ago, Arp observed that astronomers were misinterpreting quasar redshift, placing these objects at the boundaries of observable space. Quasars, he said, are much closer than assumed and nothing like the size required by the standard interpretation of redshift.'

Only it was Arp who was wrong.

[Jussi]

Only it was Arp who was wrong.

& don't forget to read down to the comments to that particular blogger..

[Tiki]

The Big Bang has had a few shocks over the years. I dare say that there are a good few more lurking in the furure. Sixty years ago the 'best' BB model put the age of The Universe one billion years less than the age of Earth .

[Andymac79]

Remember when the earth was flat? That was a sound proof also, until is was found wrong.

Take all your M theory, strings, entanglement, tunneling, All good scientific progress but none of it is completely sound. BB theory is the best we have but it WILL be wrong.

The more progress we make the further away from truth we get.

[JulianO]

I don't believe that - we're getting closer to the truth, and just refining our models. The BB theory will be mostly right, there may well be changes to parts of it, but there are so many different facts that point the same way, its very very unlikely to be wrong in major details.

Asimov said it best:

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

[Treeden]

... The more progress we make the further away from truth we get.

If that was true then we might as well pack up now and find something else to do with our time.

Yes, we make mistakes and we sometimes jump the gun or come to the wrong conclusions about the meaning or significance of our studies and research, but that in itself is progress towards the truth because we learn from these mistakes. We learn our lessons and we move forward. It's a slow process but I believe we're on the right track.

[ollypenrice]

Remember when the earth was flat? That was a sound proof also, until is was found wrong.

I think this is a bit of a straw man. So far as I know the Earth was never found to be flat, nor has any serious proof ever been offered. The ancients knew that it was spherical. It is often said that 'we used to think the Earth was flat' though who 'we' were is never specified. The evidence was very obvious for various reasons; you can see the Earth's shadow on the moon. As you travel north or south constellations set behind you but new ones appear before you. Masts on ships appear before ships, and so on. Thinking people have always known the Earth was roughly spherical.

The first documantary is a slave to the tired old formula of telly documentaries, eh? 'Conventional wisdom has always held that ..... but now we can reveal that one derided hero was right all along and that the whole of science can be flung in the dustbin and where did you hear it first?' Yawn. Next week, the pyramids...

Firstly, calling the BB conventional is utterly nuts. It requires an astounding leap of mind even to consider the idea and it was the product of the most unfettered and radical thinkers. It has always been thoroughly controversial.

Secondly Halton Arp (a superb and challenging thinker) got a very good hearing but didn't carry the day. If we need to think again, then great, very exciting, but please, a cover up on Halton Arp? He's been a headline debating point in astronomy for years. These documentaries do this all the time. They pretend that 'no one listened to Halton Arp' or the bloke who thinks the pyramids predate the Pharoahs etc etc etc. Of course they listened. They just didn't buy it. If they should have bought it then it will be really exciting. I just can't believe that this flogged-to-death documentary formula still goes on, though.

I say again, I like Halton Arp, I like challenges to the BB but I don't like hackneyed documentary scripts that follow the same routine every time.

Olly

[Andymac79]

If that was true then we might as well pack up now and find something else to do with our time.

Yes, we make mistakes and we sometimes jump the gun or come to the wrong conclusions about the meaning or significance of our studies and research, but that in itself is progress towards the truth because we learn from these mistakes. We learn our lessons and we move forward. It's a slow process but I believe we're on the right track.

What I mean by this is for every scientific experiment there are another vast number of hypothesis thrown up, we can never test them all. Years ago when we knew less 'facts' life was simple, the sun gods made the corn grow etc but as our knowledge grows, as does the confusion.

We dont have enough time on this rock to figure it all out

[Treeden]

What I mean by this is for every scientific experiment there are another vast number of hypothesis thrown up, we can never test them all. Years ago when we knew less 'facts' life was simple, the sun gods made the corn grow etc but as our knowledge grows, as does the confusion.

Somewhere in the universe there may well be a race of beings far more advanced than we are, who would look upon us as a very primitive and simple species. They in turn may be regarded as being in an early stage of development by yet another species from somewhere else. The thing is we're on a journey, a journey of discovery. We're naturally curious and we like to explore and discover new things. We question everything, we write papers on what we have learned, and (because we are merely human) we make mistakes and get things wrong.

Confusion is fine if it leads us to re-examine our methods and to re-evaluate our findings and conclusions. As I said earlier, that is progress.

We dont have enough time on this rock to figure it all out

There are never enough hours in the day, and there are always more things still to do than we have already done. It's not a race though, it's more to do with the quality of the journey.

[Ronnie67]

The Flat Earth model is an archaic belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. It was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americans, and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies. The Jewish conception of a flat earth is found in biblical and post biblical times.

The paradigm of a spherical Earth was developed in Greek astronomy, beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.The misconception that educated Europeans at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth, and that his voyages refuted that belief, has been referred to as the Myth of the Flat Earth. In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.

[Andymac79]

Somewhere in the universe there may well be a race of beings far more advanced than we are, who would look upon us as a very primitive and simple species. They in turn may be regarded as being in an early stage of development by yet another species from somewhere else. The thing is we're on a journey, a journey of discovery. We're naturally curious and we like to explore and discover new things. We question everything, we write papers on what we have learned, and (because we are merely human) we make mistakes and get things wrong.

Confusion is fine if it leads us to re-examine our methods and to re-evaluate our findings and conclusions. As I said earlier, that is progress.

There are never enough hours in the day, and there are always more things still to do than we have already done. It's not a race though, it's more to do with the quality of the journey.

Straight out of a Brian Cox text book is that. With all our discovery and journeying are we any more enlightened or closer to the truth of reality than we were 2000 years ago?

Who is more absurd, Heraclitus who could never step in the same river twice or Schrodinger with his dead and alive cat?

[Treeden]

Straight out of a Brian Cox text book is that. With all our discovery and journeying are we any more enlightened or closer to the truth of reality than we were 2000 years ago?

Who is more absurd, Heraclitus who could never step in the same river twice or Schrodinger with his dead and alive cat?

It sounds to me like you are angry or disappointed that we don’t have definitive answers to all of life’s questions? Maybe you believe that by now we should have learned how to do away with “confusion” altogether?

Why bother to search for answers when they only raise more questions? If that is your philosophy for a happy life then maybe we should thank the Sun gods for our corn?

[BargeGazer]

I hope we never find the answer to The Ultimate Question (unless it is 42 of course) as then there will be no point in doing any more Science and our work will be just for Art's sake!

[Cath]

At the end of the day Andymac, it really doesn't make any real difference as to whether we know something about the universe et all or not.

Some people will have times in their lives where certain things will happen that will immediately remind them about what really matters in life, and those moments often come without any warning what so ever and nothing and nobody can prepare you for what you experience/go through when those moments do happen.

But in the mean time, I think any deep thinking being will always want some of lifes basic answers answering, such as why we are here, or how we are here, or where we really are, etc. It's normal to ask those questions, it's normal to want the answers, even if those questions have no meaning or can never be answered, we still ask them.

And their is much suffering in the world, and science/technology can help enormously to relieve that suffering, even though it will never eliminate it we live in hope, we keep looking and hoping for answers, we keep looking for solutions, science can help fill in some of the gaps and help us cope with it and maybe help us cope with the normal every day needs in our lives, and just maybe (though unlikely) at some point within our future evolution help us deal with the mortality problem (in more ways than one).

Their is however a very sad down side to our current science, and that is the terrible effect it is having on all other life forms on the planet. It's currently an area of our wrong doings/actions where we are very much burying our head in the sand about, I currently don't see this changing any time soon

It's never wise for a monkey to be given the power to change it's environment in any way it so wishes when said monkey has not got the required understanding to deal with said power!

[badgerchap]

Who is more absurd, Heraclitus who could never step in the same river twice or Schrodinger with his dead and alive cat?

Neither, they both have a point?

In seriousness though, it was more the steady state theory that was discredited, and the Big Bang (as the initial rank outsider) that turned out to be the unlikely winner. I think it's also important to note that the Big Bang ISN'T touted as the beginning of the universe, rather it is what came immediately after it. There is still no definitive (or even commonly hypothesised) idea for the actual instant of "creation".

[ollypenrice]

To be fair to Schroedinger it was he who argued the the dead and alive cat was absurd. That was his point.

I don't know if it's improved recently but science in school 'when I were a lad' tended to say 'we used to think this, but know we know that. Utter nonesense and totally unscientific.

Olly

[Andymac79]

It sounds to me like you are angry or disappointed that we don’t have definitive answers to all of life’s questions? Maybe you believe that by now we should have learned how to do away with “confusion” altogether?

Why bother to search for answers when they only raise more questions? If that is your philosophy for a happy life then maybe we should thank the Sun gods for our corn?

im not angry or disappointed. Im not sure you should judge my philosophy on a few of my words. Its as easy to a human mind to imagine sun gods as it is to imagine 11 or so dimensions of string theory, or 15 or 1001 if someone else needs a few more to make the maths add up. Science is at the moment in a period of tweeking constants in theories to make them fit observations.

A massive 4% of our universe can be accounted for. The other 96% cant be seen, or even comprehended. Im sure a similar statement can be said about the human brain. Black holes, light speed, Bird navigation, all a mystery. Im not saying this is poor progress, far from it, the progress made in the last 500 years has been astonishing. The fact that we can make these statements at all is proof of our progress.

And then theres consciousness its self. Even Schrodinger was 'forced' into saying that entangled electrons could think. We need another Schrodinger to kick things on a bit. Or another Heraclitus.

[kirkster501]

I take a lot of what scientists say about cosmological theory with a pinch of salt to be honest and, frankly FWIW I am get bored watching Coxy and the like bang on about "billion and billions" etc. All well meaning and clever folks but, seriously, as if in 100 or so years we can even begin to believe how the majesty of the wonderful universe works. We have not even scratched the surface and nearly everything we think we know now will be proved wrong in time.

[Treeden]

im not angry or disappointed. Im not sure you should judge my philosophy on a few of my words.

It wasn’t the quantity, it was the words themselves. I’m happy to read more and maybe change my mind though

Science is at the moment in a period of tweeking constants in theories to make them fit observations.

Surely there has never been a time when this wasn’t the case? We can read about the claims and counter-claims in science in great detail today. We can even take part in the arguments and discussions over the accuracy of this or that theory. The history books are not so full with this level of detail. They highlight the major discoveries and failures, the moments that changed the world or our understanding of it, but would you really want to read about all the argument and discussion that went with it? It is judgement from a non-historical perspective that leads us to think that today is different from yesterday. I’m sure that there have always been scientists that have tried to ‘tweak’ theories to fit their observations. Again, that is part of the way we move forward.

Im not saying this is poor progress, far from it, the progress made in the last 500 years has been astonishing.

That seems to be at odds with your earlier observations, but yes, I agree completely.

We need another Schrodinger to kick things on a bit. Or another Heraclitus.

I think there are plenty of scientists today that are ‘pushing the envelope’ while attracting praise and scorn in equal measure! They may not be as famous… yet, but that is a matter for those that write the history books.

[ollypenrice]

I take a lot of what scientists say about cosmological theory with a pinch of salt to be honest and, frankly FWIW I am get bored watching Coxy and the like bang on about "billion and billions" etc. All well meaning and clever folks but, seriously, as if in 100 or so years we can even begin to believe how the majesty of the wonderful universe works. We have not even scratched the surface and nearly everything we think we know now will be proved wrong in time.

I'm not so sure about this. There are scientific theories from the past which have been overturned but I think it is more accurate to say that older theories undergo generalization more often than overthrow. For example, General Relativity takes Newtonian Gravitation into areas where the older theory breaks down. This is true in many areas of science. To assume that all present science will end up in the dustbin is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I also think that we have scratched the surface pretty deeply. Deeply enough to know that it is exactly that, the surface. We know that the quantum world does not behave in ways which seem reasonable to us, so we know we are missing something fundamental. We know that we cannot assume that there is only one universe. We know that our idea of past-present-future is only a theory of time and probably incomplete and local. Knowing what you don't know is the biggest part of knowing.

Olly

[Moonshane]

my understanding as a definite layman and 'science reader' is that scientific theories are called theories for a reason. they are the best answer based on current knowledge (based on observation and experimentation) with extrapolation (also based on best current knowledge) where possible and some assumptions to take the theory forward. the theory can then be further tested where possible to see if the result matches the prediction based on the theory. science is about making assumptions, testing them and then developing theory based on results. you never actually get to the end of the path as there's another permanent horizon in the background that scientists have a desire to follow.

science will never have all the answers to all the questions but at least it continues to seek them despite this. surely that's part of the fun?

sometimes I suppose egos get in the way and people defend their pet theory despite evidence to the contrary but this is something that further development and experimentation will challenge too. as I see it, a theory's purpose is to be shot down with actual evidence so that advancement can be made. actual evidence though can of course be misinterpreted. and around we go again

[Stu]

It's tricky isn't it. When do you know whether the theory you passionately believe in or are arguing for is valid, or whether it is complete nonsense?! When do you know you should carry on trying to convince people because you are the only one who is right, or decide that weight of opinion is correct and give up? Very difficult.

I confess that things like string theory are beyond my ability to say whether I think they are crackpot or genius :-). My instinct says crackpot but I'm sure I'm wrong.

Stu