51% of Americans don't accept the Big Bang theory

A time period as small as a million of years is already impossible for me to grasp. That's a dozen time longer than the human history, and my awareness of it goes back to 4-6 thousand at most. I know the important milestones that happened before that, but I cannot picture them on a time scale – it all fades into a couple of dudes sitting in a cave for what seems like an eternity, amidst which all major migrations happened in a blink of an eye. Multicellular life doesn't have a billion years yet. If someone bumped in me on the street and asked me was the universe billions of years old, and I didn't have an interest in the matter, I would not know how to answer as billions and millions would sound the same to me.

 

I've never lumped, say, early steady-state proponents or even folks who float articles like this one:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/05/problems-with-big-bang-expanding.html

As being down there in the mire as Young Earth Creationists.

They won't be getting any press from Next Big--you can count on that.

 

They didn't understand what concept was being referred to with the term? If instead the questioner had described the big bang (without using the term "big bang") would the respondents have given a different answer? Possibly.

I think for many people the "don't accept" comes less from a actual rejection of the theory, and more from a position that the theory is irrelevant and ultimately unimportant.

You have to admit, the big bang theory is really pretty esoteric.

There is also the on-going problem with the big bang theory in some peoples minds that there is no consensus at to where the matter and energy that composed it originally came from.

 

There was nothing and then BOOM! the Universe. See how I explained the Big Bang theory. Yes the details are esoteric but the details are only important to cosmologists.

But these same people have no problem with where God came from.

I can see how people are bothered by the fact that we don't live in a causal universe but that's the way it is.

 

I think for many people it's no more difficult to believe that God "just is" than it is to believe that the universe popped into existence from nothing.

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It seems to be, that's why God is always brought up. "Oh, the universe is so complex, God must have done it. Nature is so diverse, God must have created everything." - "So where did complex God come from, and where did he get his complex ideas from?" - "Oh, he always was and he knows everything." Err, brainfart.

 

If you were to say that the matter and energy was alway there (like God) and that the universe has expanded and contracted in a endless series of big bangs, that would one theory.

Or, that the matter and energy was (somehow) created in the big bang and never existed before, that would be another theory.

But there's no consensus at this time, and this is a hole in the theory. Come on science guys, take a position.

Monotheists hold that God was alway there and didn't "come from" somewhere. Also that the matter and energy that is the universe was created in a supernatural event.

That's what is called taking a position. Regardless if you agree with the position taken.

Your turn, where did the big bang "come from?"

 

Sometimes it's okay to say, we don't know. Cosmologists will take a more definitive stance when more evidence is uncovered!

 

I agree, only I'd say "all the time," not merely sometimes.

Mainstream cosmologists have already taken a definitive a stance, stubbornly wedded to their dogma in spite of overwhelming falsification of the Big Bang at all levels. "Believing is seeing."

 

And regardless if that position is right.


Religion guys can take positions all they want. Science guys don't do that.

 

Science doesn't pretend to know this because it may well be impossible to know. The laws of physics as we know them didn't take hold until sometime after the Big Bang. Is it possible matter was being created out of nothing? Sure. Is it possible our universe is only the latest iteration in an endless cycle of bang-crunch-bang-crunch? Maybe. Do we have any way of confirming either? Not currently, and possibly not ever.

What I find deeply fallacious is the implication that, because science doesn't have all the answers, religion must fill in the gaps. Substituting a lack of knowledge with nonsense isn't enlightened, it's foolish.

 

Another thing that I thought of when I saw the poll. When walking in the park, having my random thoughts, I've sometimes wondered, what if the universe began a few moments after the Big Bang, and the Big Bang itself never happened? That's just how these laws of physics in flux irk me, even though I know it's still the best possible explanation of what we know.

Obviously, I would reason against that as time passes, but if an interviewer bumped into me and asked me mid-thought, I'd say, dude, that Big Bang thing, don't I doubt it, I doubt it more than I've ever had!

 

I'm probably going to regret this but... what are you talking about?

 

Based on historic precedence I agree. Yet, I would like to see "science" to come up with a feasible theory regarding "dark" "matter".

IIRC, the astrophysic community started to look into the issue in the early 1970's but lately I haven't heard a lot of progress and apparently it's one of the issues Hawking doesn't really like to talk about.

Maybe Lucas was right when he had a Catholic actor state in 1976 that it's the Force that "holds the galaxy together"

Bob

 

What's "with" the random "quote" "marks".

 

Scare quotes, n: A rhetorical device used to "discredit" notions that are well-supported by evidence, overwhelmingly accepted, but the writer nonetheless feels they are wrong.

Example usage: The Midwest has a thing or two to say about "global warming" this year. But what would you expect from the same people that told us that smoking "kills" and that we have "landed" on the Moon? Remember, none of the "astronauts" who have been to the "Moon", no doubt situated somewhere in Hollywood, had been able to explain how there were no stars in the "sky".

 

What evidence, please enlighten me.

To my knowledge all that has been observed is an effect that somehow needed to be put in words.

Already and in Star Trek the "dark" has given birth to confusion (in one episode the writers misunderstood and thought that the "dark" was referring to gases and cosmic dust shielding the lights of stars on the other side).

"Dark" in this context refers to "invisible"

Whether it is some kind of "matter" is equally conjectural (is it matter or energy?), as it obviously has no characteristics of usual matter, antimatter or negative matter.

The latter one would be better suited to describe the effect of "dark energy" (i.e. "dark negative matter") with "dark energy" being a more suitable candidate for what we usually refer to as "dark matter", IMHO.

It currently remains rather enigmatic.

Bob

 

The smell of my socks is also very enigmatic, because nobody has lived after trying to smell them to tell about it, yet I fail to think of one person who took that as evidence they didn't smell. When you repeatedly observe something whose properties aren't that of the things you're familiar with, your conclusion is usually not "nah, it is not there, it is just not there", but rather "what is that?" Aside from being a very strong prediction by leading physical theories, dark matter clouds have been successfully mapped through gravitational lensing, which is significant enough confirmation, and a very good reason to stop wasting our time in arguing it's not there unless new strong evidence comes against what's presently known.

Having difficulty in ascertaining the physical nature of something doesn't make it go away. Being surrounded by enigmatic things we don't know the nature of? I think that's called "the story of the human civilization".

 

I thought I made it clear that I have issues with the lack of "evidence" that it is "dark" and "matter", not the actual phenomenon itself.

Bob