Expert: Philip Stahl - 5/13/2004

Question
we have a discussian at my church about a big bang theory and i just wondered if there is any scientific evidence that does not match with big bang theory. Also where can i find some basic information about big bang theory and whose idea was it.  I looked up some sources and they are tooooo complicated. i need some simple proofs that my friends, mostly teenagers, would understand.   

thank you very much for any help

Answer
Hello.

So far as I am aware, there's no scientific evidence that can't be incorporated into at least one version of the Big Bang (the version that the 'Bang' occurs ONCE - not numerous times- and goes on until the cosmos is totally diluted of mass-energy).

The Big Bang as a concept, requires also understanding of a number of physics principles, including the basic laws of thermodynamics, and also general relativity (since it's postulated as an "explosion" of space AND time). This means that understandable texts are often hard to locate. Particularly containing the most current information.

Having said that, I think that there are at least two books, which if used togather, can provide a good insight at as basic a level as possible - without being so basic that one misses the physical underpinnings of the Big Bang.

The first is Steven Weinberg's, "The First Three Minutes" - published in 1977, I believe. It goes through every point of the process including who first originated it (George Gamow) and how the first evidence for the Big Bang was found (using a radiotelescope at Bell Labs, in 1965 - which detected a uniformly directional microwave signal)

The book also contains an Appendix that is excellent, and takes the reader through the basic physics, showing exactly how and why observations point to the cosmos' originating in a Big Bang.

The second and more recent book (which includes the COBE 1992 discovery of "ripples" and how they relate to the Big Bang), is Michael Rowan-Robinson's "Ripples in the Cosmos", 1993, W.H. Freeman Publishers.

Another book, which can be used profitably with these, is Alan Lightman's (1991) effort, "Ancient Light - Our Changing View of the Universe", Harvard Univ. Press, which takes a survey approach - but still at the basic, understandable level.

The simple "proofs" for your friends, are best found in Weinberg's book, in his Appendix. Since he shows by precise calculations how we can work back and arrive at an enormously hot temperature for the origin of the universe.

Alas, most "proofs" that are simpler than this miss the boat, in that what they end up proving is not really the universe's origin in a Big Bang, but something totally different. (Usally because the "proof" focuses on an explosion of space alone, which totally misses the four dimensional aspect)

Hope this material helps.