Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 7/11/2008

Question
QUESTION: hi again Jayendra,

I read there are 4 big bang theories. The one that puts the universe at 13.7 billion years old, seems to be the one People believe in. What I want to know is how did all the Mass and energy that makes up the Universe (billions of Stars etc.) come out of nothing (or 1 atom, or 1 singularity)?

ANSWER: Hi,
Robert that is a highly philosophical question.
We may have to wait a long time to get all the answers! (refer end of my answer).

And that brings me back to the question i think i asked you before.
Are you one of the closet bible guys?
Dont be angry! I am asing this in a clinical sort of way. I say that because you seem to be asking un-answerable questions. (by science that is). And when that happens, one suspects the motives! like any class-teacher will tell you. :)

Strangely, i have yet to come across a "serious" christian guy come up and say.."But how could god have made the cosmos in 7 days"?

or "But how could god have made eve out of Adam's rib"?

All i get is rather people hammering away at science with un-answerable questions (and there are always aplenty), as though by merely asking them they might be notching up some anti-science score somewhere!

I am wrting so much on this one cheifly because i am gravely concerned of anti-science taking root in the west. (traces of a downfall coming sooner than anticipated, and like nature, i abhor a vacuuum).

I have come across many such cases.
But though it is easy to frame such questions, it is quite courageous on the part of science to acknowledge that it does not know all the answers.

Whereas religion always gets away by "bluffing" its way thru using the "article of faith" part.

Dont you find that rather unfair and strange?

No. Science does not know anything about THAT 'how' yet.
(How the matter got into the singularity).

And that takes us into the realm of intuition and philosophy.
Kant and Laplace were indeed doing that (intuiting / philosophising) when thinking about nebular hypothesis etc.

In such situations one uses structured linear thinking, (one idea following the other, based on known laws of science. It is rather like the author of a novel building his storyline. He has always to be credible and plausible. And to do that, he has to limit himself within the framework of the laws of human interaction. (like the 3 laws of robotics, indeed humans have discernable laws sharp people can see. We had the famous victorian values!)

Now you know my point of view.
Basically you have asked an un-answerable question. such as:
1 - why does gravity always attract?
2 - what causes gravity? (space time curvature is only a method of explaining it. it does not tell us the why).
3 - why does mass cause space time to curve?
4 - why does light travel only at C in absolute space?
5 - why cant matter travel faster than light? (again einstein's rest-mass concept is an explanation, it does not tell us why!).
6 - why doe we percieve only 3 dimensions?
7 - why does all "life" have to "die"?
8 - What exactly is consciousness?
9 - Why is there NOT a collective consciousness in place of individual entities?
10 - what exactly happens when we think?

And lastly, the asimovian question!
WHY CANT WE REVERSE ENTROPY! (Asimov's beautiful story, "the last question". read it on the web for free)
Many questions! Insufficent data for any meaningful answer!

regards
Jayen


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Jayendra,
It's OK thinking I'm  a bible guy. I'm not. But I realise to ask serious questions about big bang means people think you are anti science.
Big Bang makes a huge claim that the infinite Universe is in fact finite (13.7 billion years old)and came out of nothing. It requires mass distribution to be isotropic, actually it's fractal. The Laws of physics break down at the moment of Big Bang. I do not see why this model is accepted as fact by everyone in science. It seems like a very poor scientific model. What backs it up? I feel it is no better than a creation myth.

ANSWER: Hi Robert,
"asking serious question about the big bang"?
Robert, dont get me wrong, but as i enumerated before, The question you asked earlier is far from serious.
It was like asking observing an old man and asking "But why did he age in the first place"?.
An un-answerable question.
All one could answer would be "It has been observed that people do age with time!!".
And now this statement "it is a very poor scientefic model" is rather a very sweeping statement from you who himself demands scientefic things!

Have you asked similar questions about "other" points of view?

Which other theory of cosmology has stood the test of concerted and serious scientefic questioning over decades?

Mind you before we seriously debunk anything, we must be absolutely sure other "stuff" is atleast better.

Do you have any such "stuff" to reveal?
Or have you come across a better point of view that does not require "faith" anywhere & which offers more convincing explanations to observed facts?

Else it all reduces to debunk debunk debunk with no end in sight and nothing gained in the end.

The two known contenders were the steady state theory and the Big bang. The steady state required conctinouos creation of matter to explain the expanding universe. (Fred hoyle has discussed this at length in his book "the frontiers of astronomy").

What are your views on that?

The CMB discovered by Panzias made people accept the Bang, and The COBE did show CMB anisotropies sufficient to explain  the current large scale structure of the universe.

But I feel one decides for oneself in the end.

regards
Jayen
The CMB


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Jayendra, I know you may not think so but I really do appreciate your expertise. This is why I am asking you questions.
I am getting not asking these questions to be difficult. You see if Mass and Energy come out of nothing I think there must be some good reason to propose this. If there was infinite energy and from that came infinite mass then there is least the Equation E=mc^2, which proposes equivalence between mass and energy. You see, I think, if the Universe is infinite the beginning must be unknowable. I do not understand how the claim that it is 13.7billion years old can be made.
CMB at 3 degree above zero degrees Kelvin seems just what you would expect the temperature of outer space to be. Absolute Zero can only be obtained in a lab in isolation (forgive me if I'm describing this wrong). So I don't see what proof CMB is making.
The only other evidence for Big Bang as far as I can find is: If you measure the light from distant galaxies find that it is redshifted (so moving away) extrapolate this speed backwards you come to X (or 13.7)billion years old. This supposes we are looking at the edge of the Universe (it could be million times bigger than this).
Also the Universe was meant to be created to its current size in a (fraction of 1 sec) so mass was travelling millions of times faster than the speed of light. So from that the relation between Universe created in a second with redshifted light from distant galaxies suggesting its 13.7billion years old seems to have no connection. Hoping you can address some of these points.
P.S. I have suspicions of a new model but I am trying to get expert opinions on the current models (and their weaknesses) otherwise I won't be taken seriously.(Trojan Horse). Also religion truly bores me.

Answer
Robert!
It would be w help to know your qualifications!
Not to pip you or say "you dumb ignoramus" etc :)
Just to know if you have "firm grasp" of things, and the background for understanding certain things.

I know i appear to be quite pompous and presumptious when asking the above..but i need to know. That's all.

You see the farther away one sees (in any direction), the farther back in time we see.

The galaxies and stars we see in galaxies close to red shift 7 (abell cluster)..No we dont see individual stars, but we see spectroscopic info, and we notice these stars were remarkably poor in higher elements, as these were the first generation stars, mainly powered by hydrogen/helium, and having no "inherited ash" of higher elements, as the sun does.

All elements in our system higher than helium, are inherited from previous generation supernovas.

That tells us something, that the farther back we go in distance, and by inference time, we are actually seeing the first stars and galaxies being formed. (quasars).

These are some of the factors that help astronomers formulate their astro-physical hypotheses about the bang. (the inflationary model, and initial microscopic anisotropies in the CMB are all helpful in understanding todays universe.

The laws of thermodynamics are well understood, and so is quantum physics and relativity.
Please believe me when i say, the scientists are no fools. If you sitting somewhere can doubt so much, the scientists have the ability and the will to doubt and disprove much more.

Science progresses by doubting everything. The astro-physics of the times is so advanced, that predictions (of supernova nutrino flash) have been made much in advance before the actual event "as predicted" could be observed!
The case is super nova SN1987a (Sanduleak in the large magellanic cloud, was indeed detected by triangulating the neutrino flash deep down in subterranean mines, that were set up to study neutron decay)!

Subbramhaniyam Chandrashekhar had worked out the limit for maximum / critical mass of certain type of stars (type 1a supernova progenitors), in the 1930s!!

That limit still holds so much so that it is used in deciding when a star is about to go supernova in close orbiting pairs!

Scientists are the worst/best doubting thomases!
THAT IS WHY WHAT SURVIVES THEIR SCRUTINY TURNS OUT TO BE TRUE!!


Post script:-
One can nowhere (even in a lab) reach absolute zero as the coolest one can get is "as cold as" the CMB!!
Thanks to simple laws of thermodynamics! THAT is the temperature of absolute vacuum anywhere in the cosmos.(Blck body radiant energy of absolute space).

CMB is the BEST proof there is of the BANG.
regards
Jayen