Podcasts: Physicist John Bloom on the Big Bang, fine-tuning of the universe, and design-friendly views in physics

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 28, 2015

Big Bang, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

Medium john bloom 1 faculty John Bloom, Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering chair at Biola University, offers three podcasts on issues around the Big Bang, fine-tuning, and perspectives on the origin of our universe:

Cosmic Design and the Big Bang

Cosmic Design and fine tuning

The prevalence of design-friendly views in physics

The Big Bang and fine-tuning are not challenged as concepts due to lack of evidence. There is lots of evidence. They are challenged despite evidence because they are unpopular with naturalist atheists whose opinion matters more than facts.

See also:

Big Bang exterminator wanted, will train

Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how.

But who needs reality-based thinking anyway? Not the new cosmologists

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments

"“Who would’ve thunk?!”. Every professional cosmologist." Sad that people put so much faith in so called "professional" cosmologist; who's cosmological foundation is flawed from the get go, and as a result... are unable to accurately predict the outcome/result of any tested/testable event/phenomenon - Rosetta and the Heliospheric Boundary, to name just a couple. Gravity is Not the dominate driving force in our universe. By: sticking to..., believing, thinking, and/or claiming this, shows how those so called "professional" cosmologist choose to live in the 'Dark Ages' where ignorance (willful ignorance?) reigns supreme. There are those few who have managed to move away from that broken cosmological concept/theory, and are now beginning to see the light, as did Galileo did in his time. You can find those few at: thunderbolts.info/wp/ (who BTW, accurately predicted the outcome of Rosetta AND what they found at the Heliospheric Boundary, to name just a couple :P), and lyndonashmore.com.55rebel_{March 7, 2015
March
03
Mar
7
07
2015
11:18 AM
11
11
18
AM
PDT}

"What do you mean by clarity in a red-shifted object ?" Not completely out of focus, as in... not blurred (scattered)--"preference to preserve axis of original propagation" through the medium of electrons (plasma). The photon only being red-shifted. As a side note: As to whether a photon collides or not, with an electron, is down to probability. So they will not all experience the same number of collisions. Some will collide more often than the mean number of collisions, and some will collide less often. This causes the observed lines to broaden. Using this theory we can predict the amount of spread in the lines and they find that it agrees with observation.55rebel_{March 7, 2015
March
03
Mar
7
07
2015
06:34 AM
6
06
34
AM
PDT}

So, why can we see stars, galaxies and other objects, which are Billions and Billions of light years away, with such clarity?
What do you mean by clarity in a red-shifted object ?Me_Think_{March 6, 2015
March
03
Mar
6
06
2015
07:40 PM
7
07
40
PM
PDT}

It is a well known FACT that plasma permeates IG space. So, why can we see stars, galaxies and other objects, which are Billions and Billions.... of light years away, with such clarity? Could it be due to ultracold plasma (which is known to not act the same as hot plasma....still little understood), acting instead, like a transparent medium such as class? If what you were claiming were true, we could not observe much beyond our own galaxy, due to that scattering effect, which you speak of....no? I believe you both need to rethink your logic/understanding.55rebel_{March 6, 2015
March
03
Mar
6
06
2015
07:22 PM
7
07
22
PM
PDT}

LB, Great to see your comment. It may help to point out that such scattering will do just that, i.e. there is not a preference to preserve axis of original propagation. Wiki has a useful 101 summary:
In the low-energy limit, the electric field of the incident wave (photon) [--> electromagnetic radiation has crossed, oscillating electric and magnetic fields] accelerates the charged particle, causing it, in turn, to emit radiation at the same frequency as the incident wave [--> i.e. forced oscillations at the forcing freq], and thus the wave is scattered. Thomson scattering is an important phenomenon in plasma physics and was first explained by the physicist J. J. Thomson. As long as the motion of the particle is non-relativistic (i.e. its speed is much less than the speed of light), the main cause of the acceleration of the particle will be due to the electric field component of the incident wave, and the magnetic field can be neglected. The particle will move in the direction of the oscillating electric field, resulting in electromagnetic dipole radiation. The moving particle radiates most strongly in a direction perpendicular to its acceleration and that radiation will be polarized along the direction of its motion. Therefore, depending on where an observer is located, the light scattered from a small volume element may appear to be more or less polarized.
KF PS: I see a current exercise hoping to "get rid of" the big bang perhaps in favour of an infinite cosmos, headlined at Yahoo, and with a Phys Rev B article here. Arxiv paper, here.kairosfocus_{March 1, 2015
March
03
Mar
1
01
2015
02:53 AM
2
02
53
AM
PDT}

Light that scatters off electrons (Thomson scattering) is re-emitted in an essentially random direction. This plasma would not cause a redshift of distant objects. It would be a fog, obscuring our view of the distant universe entirely. "Who would’ve thunk?!". Every professional cosmologist.lukebarnes_{February 28, 2015
February
02
Feb
28
28
2015
09:10 PM
9
09
10
PM
PDT}

A slight correction to my above post... I said ions, but the described action/reaction is actually with the electrons in said plasma. ....my bad.55rebel_{February 28, 2015
February
02
Feb
28
28
2015
02:27 PM
2
02
27
PM
PDT}

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that empty space isn't actually empty (it actually isn't), but rather, filled with mostly plasma, which has actually been shown to be the case, BTW. And then imagine, a packet of light--a photon, from a light source--a star maybe, occasionally encountering one of these ions of this IG plasma. What would be the result/product of these encounters/interactions? Well, they have studied this in the lab, and have found that: 1) the photon is absorbed by the ion, and remitted at a slightly lower energy level, as in "red shifted", AND 2), in the resultant recoil of said ion, microwaves are emitted. ...Hmmm? So, there is a very high likelihood, that the red-shift that we observe, isn't due to the Doppler effect--an accelerating expansion of our universe, but rather these encounters that photons have with the IG plasma ....the greater the distance traveled, the getter the number of encounters. And the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation we observe, is actually do to that same event. .....Who would've thunk?! No Big bang. No fairy dust.....er, I mean dark mater/energy.55rebel_{February 28, 2015
February
02
Feb
28
28
2015
01:00 PM
1
01
00
PM
PDT}

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply