Category: Big Bang
Must Christians believe in the Big Bang theory?
| September 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, theistic evolution |
J. R. Miller offers a reasonable discussion of varieties of Biblical creationism: Maybe you have heard the accusation that biblical creationists are blinded by their ancient theology which forces them to reject the modern “scientific fact” of evolution. But what do people mean by this accusation? What is evolution? Is biblical creation a de facto […]
The world naturalism prevents us from seeing
| September 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Culture, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Biola physics prof John Bloom offers some thoughts: For example, since the 1930s we have a growing body of data which show that the universe is expanding in a way which implies that everything in it came from a single point and an enormous burst of energy. Thus, it convincingly looks like our universe had […]
Actually, “dark photons” probably don’t exist
| September 8, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
Yesterday, we noted the hunt for a mysterious fifth force of the universe involving dark photons. Here’s an item from last April that suggests the hunt may prove a disappointment: But the most precise measurement yet of the fine structure constant — which determines how strongly electrons and photons interact, or “couple” — has eliminated […]
How to talk yourself into believing in a multiverse
| August 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Multiverse |
It’s becoming obvious that post-modern science will have its multiverse irrespective of evidence from nature and will prefer it and its component beliefs to evidence from nature. That is why some of us think that the multiverse is science’s assisted suicide.
Why does anyone care what Buddhist or Hindu philosophy says about the Big Bang?
| August 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Intelligent Design |
If they are not Buddhist or Hindu. From Zeeya Merali at Aeon: The discussion has gone on ever since. I partook in 2014, while researching my book, A Big Bang in a Little Room (2017), about experiments on recreating the origins of the Universe in the lab. Not only did I meet with Ashtekar at […]
Researcher: The search for dark matter has become a “quagmire of confirmation bias”
| July 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From science writer Bruce Dorminey at Forbes: Time may be running out on the search for the cosmos’ exotic dark matter. Decades after the first searches for dark matter’s hypothetical exotic particle counterparts, researchers are mostly at a loss to explain why there still has been no direct detection. That is, one that could explain […]
Is the Standard Model of physics a tyrant?
| July 11, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From physicist Jonathan Link (Director of the Center for Neutrino Physics) at Scientific American: To be fair, the Standard Model of particle physics is a remarkable scientific achievement; the crown jewel of the physics revolution that dominated the 20th century, but in the 21st century its apparent infallibility saps the vitality of the field. That’s […]
Does the beginning of the universe require a cause?
| May 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics |
A philosophical question to wake you up. A reader directs our attention to a 2015 piece by cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin at Inference Review (2015): THE ANSWER to the question, “Did the universe have a beginning?” is, “It probably did.” We have no viable models of an eternal universe. The BGV theorem gives us reason to […]
Stars born only 250 million years after the Big Bang?
| May 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design |
The universe is currently estimated to be about 13.8 billion years old. From Laurel Hamer at ScienceNews: That’s earlier than the 550 million years ago suggested in a previous estimate that also measured starlight from the early universe (SN Online: 2/9/2015). But it’s in the same ballpark as observations reported in March (SN: 3/31/18, p. […]
At RealClearScience: Anti-religious feelings hindered acceptance of the Big Bang
| May 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Big Bang, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Religion |
From science writer Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience, addressing a point raised in astrophysicist Brian Keating’s Losing the Nobel Prize: … anti-religious sentiments provided underlying motivation to debunk Lemaître’s theory. Many atheist scientists were repulsed by the Big Bang’s creationist overtones. According to Hoyle, it was cosmic chutzpah of the worst kind: “The reason why scientists […]
“Complete surprise”: Stars are not necessarily born in the way we thought. Also, galaxies can form much faster than thought
| May 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Astronomy, Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From Cardiff University at Eurekalert: The birth of stars from dense clouds of gas and dust may be happening in a completely unexpected way in our own galaxy and beyond. This is according to an international team of researchers, including scientists from Cardiff University, who have found that long-held assumptions about the relationship between the […]
Admitted? We may never know for sure how everything began?
| March 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design |
From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience, on understanding the Big Bang: “It certainly looks like the universe that we observe around us… definitely had a beginning,” MIT cosmologist Alan Guth, the originator of the theory of cosmic inflation, said in an interview for the PBS show Closer to Truth. “That doesn’t mean that that beginning was […]
New Scientist wants us to know why the Big Bang was not the beginning
| March 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Intelligent Design |
From Jon Cartwright at New Scientist, Although everyone has heard of the big bang, no one can say confidently what it was like. After all, recounting the beginning of time is about finding not just the right words, but the right physics – and ever since the big bang entered the popular lexicon, that physics […]
Stephen Hawking continues to talk widely celebrated nonsense about the Big Bang
| March 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Philosophy |
From Meghan Bartels at MSN: Hawking approaches the problem by offering a detailed analogy, comparing space-time to any other continuous, curved surface, like the surface of the Earth. “There is nothing south of the South Pole,” Hawking says. The same principle holds with the universe: “There was nothing around before the Big Bang.”More. “Nothing” is […]
Fun with the hyperreal numbers (and with the idea of an infinite actual past)
The hyperreals are an extension of the real number line that brings to bear a reciprocal relationship between the very large and the very small. By so introducing extensions to the real number continuum, it forms a base for an infinitesimals approach to the calculus and makes sense of a lot of the tricks used […]
Cosmologist Sean Carroll on why there is something rather than nothing: No “sensible answer”
| February 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Sean Carroll, discussing his arXiv paper (a chapter in an upcoming book, Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Physics) at Preposterous Universe: It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or […]
The Big Bounce challenges the Big Bang, Round 50 – updated
| February 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Comments from Kirk Durston and Rob Sheldon added. From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta: But in the past few years, a growing number of cosmologists have cautiously revisited the alternative. They say the Big Bang might instead have been a Big Bounce. Some cosmologists favor a picture in which the universe expands and contracts cyclically like […]
“Alien Megastructure Is Not The Cause Of The Dimming Of Tabby’s Star ” (Design Inference filter in action; Sci Fi Fans disappointed)
According to SciTech Daily in a January 3, 2018 article, Tabby’s star, aka KIC 8462852, has had a mysterious brightening and dimming cycle. (Such a cycle, of course raises the interesting thought of the erection of a Dyson Sphere or a similar megastructure.) As the article reports: >>A team of more than 200 researchers, including […]
Lack of a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) leaves physicists frustrated
| January 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From The Economist: Persistence in the face of adversity is a virtue, of course. And, as all this effort shows, physicists have been nothing if not persistent. Yet it is an uncomfortable fact that the relentless pursuit of ever bigger and better experiments in their field is driven as much by belief as by evidence. […]
Researchers at CERN: The universe should not exist
| December 22, 2017 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
You shouldn’t exist either. But the people saying so in this case are not population bombers or jihadis. From Philip Perry at BigThink: What CERN scientists say as a result of their latest experiment is: the universe itself is a miracle, as it shouldn’t exist at all. This is of course taken in reference to […]
