Talk:Big Bang/Archive 10

message: Joke137 is gone for now, and the plasma-ists are at least weary of further explanation to Joshuaschroeder (at least on reverting this article). So maybe they’ll argue with a bean-counting capitalist like me instead. I have no opinion on plasma cosmology, a phrase I first heard a couple weeks ago, but I do prefer the big-bangist version of this article, although I haven’t edit-warred for it.
So why don’t I edit the article to say that Art LaPella hasn’t decided between plasma cosmology and the Big Bang? Readers don’t care about the opinion of Art LaPella or any other Wikipedian. They want to know what the consensus is. . Wikipedia:Neutral point of view doesn’t protect all minority views, or the Earth article would say “According to round-earthers…”.The decision of how much recognition to give plasma cosmology depends only on how popular it is, not on whether we believe it ourselves, not even a little bit. All of you seem familiar with Wikipedia policy, but it’s easier to look important by debating the science than by debating the relative popularity of plasma cosmology The policy doesn’t specify how popular a minority view has to be before it must be included, but the only objective answer has to include determining how relatively popular plasma cosmology really is.
So just how popular is it? Googling plasma and cosmology separately is a better idea than I thought it was a few days ago, because most plasma cosmology articles never use the actual phrase “plasma cosmology”. “Plasma cosmology” as a phrase gets only 34 hits on Google Scholar. Despite populist rhetoric, Google Scholar is the right Google because plasma-ists cite academics like Alfven for authority. But when I asked for articles with the words plasma and cosmology, excluding the phrase “plasma cosmology”, I got 7350 hits. I then checked each entry on Google pages 10 thru 19, and determined/guessed that 7 of them were really about plasma cosmology (the rest were about plasma and about cosmology.)  So I estimate plasma cosmology hits at 34+.07*7350=548.5. Dividing into 30,500 “Big Bang” hits gives a ratio of 56. I am open-minded about ways to make that calculation more scientific. I am closed-minded about fiery declarations from either side that plasma cosmology is or isn’t significant enough to be on Wikipedia, without any objective measure of plasma cosmology’s relative popularity. You guys are scientists, right? Which sounds more scientific, Choice A: “The Magellanic Clouds are not galaxies.” “Yes they are.” “No they aren’t.” “YES THEY ARE!”? Or Choice B: estimate the size?
Does the Big Bang article give enough recognition to a 56 to 1 minority? Compare it to how Boolean logic treats intuitionism. Google Scholar gives 342,000 hits for “Boolean”, 2780 hits for “intuitionsm” and 1770 hits for “intuitionist” (although intuitionist sometimes means something else.) But if I simply divide 342,000/(2780+1770) I get 75. Even 75 is more than 56,  intuitionism is more than logic, the Big Bang article is longer than Boolean logic, and there are some phrases like “in any Boolean operation”. But even so, the Boolean article doesn’t really even hint at other logics. The Big Bang article links directly to non-standard cosmology, and includes three supporting sentences before debunking them. Why isn’t that enough? Please get a scientific consensus first, and then Wikipedia can report plasma cosmology to the public as comparable to Big Bang theory. Wikipedia is too democratic to pick scientific winners and losers by itself.
The plasma-ists say counting papers is a skewed statistic because plasma articles don’t survive peer review, and apparent Big Bangists are often closet plasma cosmologists. Inefficiency in any tax-supported project fits my preconceptions (see Milton Friedman) but I see no reason to assume that the bias favors the Big Bang. Cosmologically significant electric fields are interesting and fun to think about. The thought attracts scientists for the same reason most people study science fiction more than science. Besides, it’s easier to look important by challenging science wholesale than by contributing constructively, as Pjacobi pointed out at Time Cube, or as I encountered in simpler form at Talk:Big Bang#this article is highly unscientific or at Talk:Mathematical analysis#Mathematical/Real Analysis. If we allow plasma-ists to circumvent WP:NPOV by assuming their opponents secretly agree with them, then any POV pusher can say the same and we can pitch the NPOV policy out the window. So if plasma-ists want me to take their word for it that Big Bangists are closet plasma-ists, they will need to maintain a very high level of credibility when discussing things I have experience with.
They haven’t. I have read several times that Big Bangists (presumably excluding the anonymous Joke137) are only protecting their jobs. Anybody who understands that much doesn’t need me to explain that small changes in plasma funding will affect a plasma cosmology career 56 times more than a Big Bang career. Although Joshuaschroeder’s youthful venom (like my middle-aged venom) is debatable, I have explained it can’t possibly be vandalism as defined by Wikipedia:Vandalism#What vandalism is not, but that accusation has been repeated without addressing my objection. Similarly, harsh criticism of editing behavior isn’t defined as a personal attack. The simplest credibility issue is at plasma cosmology, where the plasma-ists keep reverting my undisputed proofreading along with the Big Bangism, even though I pointed out a version they could revert to instead, that matched their own plasma-ist text (at that time) except for incorporating my proofreading. If we can’t agree on anything else, can we start by agreeing on how to spell “typically”? Art LaPella
: Thankyou Art - I stepped back from all this when it started getting really bizarre a couple of weeks ago. Alfven and Peratt have tended to use the term "plasma universe" when talking about plasma cosmology. This quite simple point should perhaps go somewhere in the PC page. I've run out of time now, but I wonder if that helps in numbers? I'm staying out of any discussion of conspiracy, whether in funding, publishing or otherwise, due to lack of experience/interest. The point is that there are anomalies in astrophysics at the moment, and whether you support Big Bang, Plasma models or giant turtles, this fact persists. Coverage in an NPOV article should at least describe the nature of these discrepancies - even call them "current areas of research."  Jon 08:24, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Art’s turn 

message: User:Iantresman wants to see the mechanisms for redshift include such things as tired light, scattering, and resonance effects. Please comment here Talk:Redshift. --ScienceApologist 14:56, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I want to see it acknowledged that scientists in peer-reviewed journals, use the term redshift in a slightly different form to that currently described. I do not expect equality of material for minority usage, but I expect an article to conform to a Neutral point of view: "... representing all majority and significant-minority views fairly and without bias"... "NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable" --Iantresman 18:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redshift RfC 

message: This problem isn't directly related to Wikipedia's article on the Big Bang, but was based on one I had read on another medium.
Essentially, I read that the Big Bang CREATED time, space, matter and energy.  However, I am confused about this statement.
My problem is this:- How could the Big Bang "happen" if time didn't exist already?  If time (correctively spacetime) doesn't exist then nothing can happen.
Can you see what I'm trying to dig at?
Sulligogs 22:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Big Bang created time, space, matter and energy - PROBLEM 

message: The last sentence in the introduction reads:
*The CMB was discovered in the 1960s and served as a confirmation of the Big Bang theory...
Surely the discovery is evidence that is consistent with the theory, and is NOT a confirmation? Or perhaps "served as a confirmation" (which is an absolute) should be changed to "taken as a confirmation", which is not the same thing? --Iantresman 23:20, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, scientific theories can never be confirmed in the sense that you mean. How about "...1960s and validated the Big Bang theory..." –Joke 16:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The sense that I read from the article is an absolute. "Served as confirmation..." and the suggested "validated..." both read as such. It might be conclusive, and the Big Bang might be as good as proven, but the CMB by itself does not "served as a confirmation". I'd be happy with "adds further support for", or "is consistent with"? --Iantresman 17:09, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As a side note, I suggest "further validated", since it shows how it helped to support it yet is not an absolute (I hope), any comments? Ian13 19:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm going to change it "further validated" since I think that's absolutely what it does.  Iantresman is right in that "served as a confirmation" is probably too strong a phrase since it did effectively eliminate the alternate theory but also introduced a few unanswered questions when scrutinized by the WMAP. By no means major problems, I don't think the Big Bang is in the business of being 'confirmed'.  We can discuss these findings further if there are objections.Duke nemmerle 12:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Confirmation" vs "consistent evidence" 

message: Is there any empirical evidence that the big bang was the very beginning of the universe before which there was nothing, as often claimed by big bang theory adherents? It seems neither Friedman nor Lemaitre believed it was, the latter reportedly believing there was previously a primeval atom for eternity. Who first introduced the idea into the big bang theory that it was the very origin or 'creation' of the universe, rather than merely the origin of its current expansion, thereby legitimating talk about the very beginning of the explosion as 'the first few seconds of the universe' ? Certainly Hoyle's 1950 BBC Radio broadcast presumed what he dubbed 'the big bang theory' claimed the bang was the beginning of the universe, whereas earlier on it seems to have been treated as just an expanding universe theory as opposed to also being a theory about the very beginning of the universe. --80.6.94.131 18:52, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me that such a thing could be considered to be beyond the scope of the theory or science in general.  Since, if the big bang theory is accurate, before the big bang, the universe was a singularity; spacetime did not exist in the current sense before that.  For all intents and purposes, there really wasn't a before in any very meaningful sense. More direct to the question in the heading, "don't know" and probably "can't know". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.153.117.118 (talk • contribs) on 20:01, 19 February 2006.
Dear 66.153.117.118
Thanks for this response to my first question. So do you claim Lemaitre just did not understand relativity physics or the Big Bang Theory (BBT)in positing the universe consisted of some kind of atom before it exploded in the big bang ? And do you also claim that eternal oscillatory universe models that posit an endless 'Big Bang - Big Crunch' series BEFORE the last big bang (See Section 7), and which therefore deny the Big Bang theory that the universe began with the big bang of 13.7 billion years ago, are ruled out as meaningless or unknowable or refuted by general relativity ?
If you are right that the origin of the universe is scientifically unknowable, and such as the Wikipedia article and Simon Singh's book 'Big Bang' are also both right that the contemporary BBT claims the big bang was the origin of the universe, then it follows that the theory is itself partly based on a non-empirical extra-scientific faith that the universe had a beginning or creation and that the big bang was it, contrary to Wikipedia's and Singh's claims that is an empirical scientific theory. In that case the Wikipedia account and many others need rewriting so as not to confuse the logically minded rational reader trying to learn about modern physics and cosmology and to make it clear that this component of the theory is an extra-scientific faith, contrary to the current Section 8 of the Wikipedia article that claims the theory is scientific, or else that this is not a component of the theory, but rather only an extra-scientific interpretation of it to be lumped together with the other religious interpretations of Section 8. 
My first question raises the issue of what empirical evidence can possibly justify such locutions as 'the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years' just because this is thought to be when its current expansion began, and such as events within a few seconds after the big bang being referred to as 'in the first few seconds of the universe', such as publicly used by scientists such as the current Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, whose proper business is presumably astronomical observation and determining what hypotheses are supported by observation.
But my question was prompted by what seems to be the radical ambivalence and logical confusion in the Wikipedia article and in other characterisations of the Big Bang Theory such as Singh's bestselling 2004 book 'Big Bang' cited in the Wikipedia references, and possibly even amongst cosmologists themselves, about whether it specifically claims the Big Bang was the origin of the universe or not, in addition to claiming the universe is currently expanding after an explosion some time ago. This is surely an important issue about which clarity is important both for popular science education and also for religious education. 
So perhaps the more basic question that should be raised is 'Does the Big Bang Theory claim the big bang was the origin of the universe or not ?', with the auxiliary question that if it does, as Wikipedia tends to claim, what is its observational evidence for this, if any, or is it an untested hypothesis ?
The current Wikipedia article's apparent ambivalence and confusion over this core issue is surely illustrated by the following problems for the logically minded reader on its introductory first page:
* At the article's very outset, whereas the first sentence only claims "the universe EMERGED from an enormously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago", the text of the accompanying diagram makes the far stronger claim that "the universe ORIGINATED in an extremely dense and hot state", and which it labels "singularity" without explaining what a 'singularity' is.
* The third sentence claims "Extrapolated into the past, [the Hubble] observations show that the universe has expanded from a PRIMEVAL state, in which all matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density." But what observations can possibly show this state was PRIMEVAL, meaning 'of the first age of the world', as opposed to having occurred, for example, at the equivalent of the last stroke of midnight in the history of the universe ?  
* The fourth sentence claims "Physicists do not widely agree on what happened BEFORE THIS [primeval/original dense and hot state ?], although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity."  But this apparently conflicts with the Wikipedia claim that the Big Bang Theory (BBT) has been well established and widely accepted at least since 1965. This seems unlikely if its cardinal component is that BEFORE THIS the bang was the origin of the universe, as Wikipedia seems to claim, but on the other hand physicists do widely disagree on what happened before the dense and hot state, as Wikipedia also claims. Moreover, it is unclear whether the last clause of this Wikipedia sentence is also implicitly claiming as some do that general relativity theory itself implies a creation because the gravitational singularity it allegedly predicts is equated with such, which raises the question of why neither Einstein, nor even Friedmann and Lemaitre who both set the cosmological constant to zero, thought GR itself implied a creation. 
* In the second paragraph on the one hand the term 'Big Bang' is said to refer to when the observed EXPANSION of the universe began, without claiming this was also the beginning of the universe. But on the other hand this same term is then said "in a more general sense to refer to the prevailing cosmological paradigm explaining THE ORIGIN AND expansion of the universe, as well as...". This again illustrates Wikipedia's ambivalence about whether the beginning of the current expansion of the universe was also the beginning of the universe, for nowhere does the following article provide any explanation whatever of the origin of the universe when its origin is equated with the Big Bang. And in its Section 8 on 'Philosophical and religious interpretations' the Wikipedia article even claims "science cannot possibly show a first cause" and that explanations of the cause of the Big Bang itself are "extra-scientific". This implies either that the prevailing Big Bang cosmological paradigm is extra-scientific if Wikipedia is right in claiming that it explains the origin of the universe or else that Wikipedia is wrong in claiming it does so. Nor to the best of my knowledge did Lemaitre even say why the previously eternal massive atom exploded, to explain the origin of the current expansion of a far more ancient atomic universe.
* There are many other such anomalies beyond the first page, but most notably Section 8 claims BBT does not conflict with Buddhism's denial of any creation "since there are ways to conceive an eternal universe within the paradigm." But apart from such questions as how a paradigm that claims the universe is only 13.7 billion years old is also compatible with claiming an eternal universe, Singh's Big Bang cited in the Wikipedia reference repeatedly characterises the Big Bang Theory as the twofold doctrine that the universe is not eternal and is expanding, which contradicts the Wikipedia claim that the paradigm can accomodate an eternal universe. Also the oscillating universe theory mentioned in Section 7 apparently posits an eternity of 'Big Bangs Big Crunches' before the last Big Bang, which thus contradicts the BBT claim that it was the origin of the universe. 
Given this apparent confusion, I propose the various Wikipedia claims that the Big Bang Theory claims the Big Bang was the origin of the universe be edited out until they can be substantiated. I suggest it should also cite the observational evidence for this hypothesis, if any, and explain when and why it first became part of the BBT, noting that neither its originators Friedmann and Lemaitre nor such as Sir James Jeans in his 1930 bestseller 'The Mysterious Universe', which accepted the expanding universe theory, claimed the beginning of the expansion was also the origin of the universe. When did the Big Bang cosmology first become a cosmogony as well, and why ?
--80.6.94.131 19:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text: While we're on unspoken assumptions about the unknown, ScienceApologist's comment applies only to the known universe. Art LaPella 20:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This is tiresome, and you've answered your own question. The big bang is the theory that the universe has emerged from a hot dense state sometime in the past, neither more nor less. It does not guess at what came before that. The oscillating universe, cosmic inflation etc postulate additional history for the universe, before the hot dense state. I will not bother to correct your mistaken understanding of general relativity and the cosmological principle, for the simple reason that this discussion has little to do with what to do with the Wikipedia article. –Joke 19:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I ought to explain the reason for my response. Frequently, people come on to this talk page and tell many of the regular editors of the big bang article that their theory is phisophically misguided, unfalsifiable, Ptolemaic, or already falsified. I can assure you that it is none of these things. The discussion on this page ought to be confined to specific ways to improve the article, because we have frequently had general conversations such as these before, they almost never improve the article, they consume much time, they are not the purpose of this talk page, and they quickly grow wearisome. So I encourage you to comment succinctly on specific things you think are wrong with the article and ways in which these problems could be resolved. –Joke 19:45, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have the time nor the inclination to analyze such a rambling, incoherent diatribe. All I can gather is that you want any reference to points in time before now to only refer to the present and not that which proceeded it, nor do you want anyone to establish a linguistic coordinate system in time with an origin that lies anywhere but right now. This is an unreasonable request. Terms such as "early universe", "origin", etc. have colloquial and technical uses that are easily clarified by context. Expansion of the universe implies a singularity with extrapolation. A singularity is a natural place to place an origin for a coordinate system. Events that happened closer on time-like curves to the origin are earlier than events that happened farther. No denotation issues are evident at all. --ScienceApologist 20:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, you don't have to be Peebles to know that the big bang implies expansion. I should have said "expanded" instead of "emerged", but expansion is problematic, because the expansion is in the sense of a homogeneous expansion of space itself, rather than an explosion from a point, as you mention. This is discussed in the introductory paragraph. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Did you bother to go on to the second sentence? –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Emerged from is fine in this context. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, I agree. They are a less than perfect product of balancing the need for technical accuracy with clarity. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Primeval, primordial and origin are completely standard usage in the big bang literature, misleading or not. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: The expansion of the universe is explained by general relativity. The big bang explains the origin of the structures in the universe (inflationary perturbations undergoing gravitational growth), light elements (BBN), etc, etc. It does not provide a first cause, however. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: No. It is almost always referred to as the age of the universe in the literature, and Wikipedia does not have cause to try to change the prevailing terminology. According to general relativity, this really is the age of the universe. Of course, GR isn't a complete theory and something had to come before, but it is still absolutely standard usage. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Live with it. The Early Universe is the title of probably the most well known cosmology textbook (Kolb and Turner) and is standard usage despite your hobby horse. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't see the argument for changing this. Of course these could be interpreted as unclear out of context, but earlier in the article these points are clarified. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: See all of the above points. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: See all of the above points. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: See all of the above points. –Joke 20:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Early universe is a term well-used in cosmology and should not be removed because it is non-controversial. This also applies to "primordial", "young", "primeval", and "emerge". --ScienceApologist 15:50, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was the big bang really the very beginning ?