Harvard astronomer: But maybe planets and life got started shortly after the Big Bang?
| December 10, 2013 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Fine tuning, Origin Of Life |
Why? Because that would make humans’ existence “less special.”
From New Scientist
Today, the CMB’s temperature is just a few degrees above absolute zero. But Loeb calculates that about 15 million years after the big bang, the radiation would have been warm enough to make the whole universe one large habitable zone. This life-friendly epoch would have lasted a few million years, enough time for microbes to emerge but not complex life, says Loeb.
…
As wacky as the idea of such ancient life seems, Loeb thinks it is worth exploring if it puts a dent in the anthropic principle. This hotly debated idea in cosmology says that the fundamental constants in the universe are tuned in just the right way for us to be around to observe them.
As usual, the moralizing kicks in:
“The anthropic argument gives us an excuse for not seeking a more fundamental understanding,” says Loeb. That makes the notion of “big bang life” appealing. The denser regions of matter needed for it to arise would have also required a cosmological constant a million times larger than ours. That would mean life existed in our universe even at a time when the value of the cosmological constant would not have favoured humans, making our existence less special.
It is possible that life evolved during Loeb’s habitable epoch, agrees Alexander Vilenkin at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. However, he reckons the odds of it happening are very low, and that most life in our universe should instead be suited to today’s conditions, so from a statistical view the anthropic principle lives on.
The fact that the statistics point in the direction of the anthropic principle does not count in the long run as evidence in the principle’s favor, of course. The need for humans to be “less special” stands in for evidence. As a result,
… , evidence is now superfluous. Methodological naturalism produced the Copernican Principle, which is an axiom. It axiomatically accounts for our universe’s apparent fine tuning by postulating — without the need for evidence — an infinity of flops. And cosmologists’ acceptance makes the multiverse orthodoxy.
And compared to speculating that infinity of universes into existence, speculating a few strange exoplanets and microbes at the Big Bang is small change.
Note: Only fifteen million years? Instead of more like fifteen billion? Look, would it help if we brought it down to fifteen thousand? That is, would this guy embrace an atheistic form of young Earth creationism if he could thereby dispense with fine-tuning? One has to wonder.
30 Responses to Harvard astronomer: But maybe planets and life got started shortly after the Big Bang?
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as to this comment:
His definition of ‘habitable zone’ for ‘simple’ life seems a bit too generous to put it mildly:
I have a sneaking hunch they may have overlooked a few minor technical details in their calculation for bacterial life having a truly ‘habitable zone’ in the early universe:
supplemental notes:
Music:
Requirements to sustain bacteria for 90 days or less – Hugh Ross and team
Excerpt pg. 16:
Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters
approx.=10^-614
dependency factors estimate
approx.=10^303
longevity requirements estimate
approx.=10^-22
Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters
approx.=10^-333
Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe
approx.=10^22
Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^311 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles.
http://www.reasons.org/files/c.....3_ver2.pdf
The Big Bang hypothesis itself is pure speculation. It’s got holes in it so big that you could fit entire galaxies in them. Here are a few I can think of, off the top of my head.
1. One of the biggest problems for cosmologists like Loeb is that the Big Bang puts the earth right at the center of the universe because the redshift is the same in every direction from the earth. This is precisely what the Copernican principle was trying to avoid.
2. In an expanding universe, the CMB should have shadow areas caused by massive bodies and this is not observed.
3. If accelerated expansion is happening as indicated by the redshift, the farthest galaxies from us are moving at speeds greater than the speed of light, which is forbidden.
4. It is easy to show that light arriving from distant sources are red shifted by the gases and dust that exist in interstellar and intergalactic space. Some call it tired light. This would explain why the amount of redshift is the same in every direction and why the farther light sources undergo more redshift than the ones that are nearer to us.
5. If the expansion is accelerating, we are forced to speculate the existence of dark energy to explain the acceleration. Dark energy is nowhere to be found.
I’ll add more to the list if I can think of them. I realize that the Christian supporters behind the ID movement are enamored with the Big Bang because they see it as evidence for a beginning but they are mistaken, in my opinion. Wishful thinking is not a good idea in science. Leave that for the other guys to stumble on. Besides, I have seen no scriptural evidence for any Big Bang. In fact, I have seen the exact opposite but that’s another story for another time.
Mapou, some of us like the Big Bang in part because it places a backward limit on silliness. It is, at least in principle, science as we understand it. “The universe is a giant sim created by space aliens travelling backward in time” strikes us as belonging to an enterprise other than science. Loeb seems balanced between the two. In principle, he seems to want to make sense, but it is not at all clear that his dates can work.
News:
I think we should withhold forming an opinion because the the Big Bang hypothesis will likely become sillier than most of us suspect. I some of my biggest objections out of the list above because they are rather unorthodox, to say the least.
Big Bangers would have us believe that space and time are physical entities that were somehow created with the Big Bang. The idea that space and time can be created is about as pseudoscientific as it can get, no better than the Big Foot hypothesis or multiple universes. One problem is that nobody has ever proven the existence of either space or time. In fact, a number of informed people believe they cannot exist at all if only because they are illogical to begin with.
I got another objection that kills Big Bang dead before it can even begin to exist but I’ll keep it to myself for the time being.
=>News, bornagain77, Mapou,
I agree that the article/paper is absurd. How did it get approved by the peer review system and how did he get into Harvard in the first place?
Mapou as to,
Okie Dokie, but do you think the existence of entropy has ever been proven?
Supplemental note:
I agree with you that temporal time and space, as we currently experience them, are a bit of a illusion compared to eternity,,,
This higher ‘eternal’ dimension has strong empirical support:
Here is Einstein’s original thought experiment for Special Relativity:
It is also very interesting to point out that the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, reported in many Near Death Experiences(NDEs), is also corroborated by Special Relativity when considering the optical effects for traveling at the speed of light. Please compare the similarity of the optical effect, noted at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape around the direction of travel as a ‘hypothetical’ observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light, with the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ reported in very many Near Death Experiences: (Of note: This following video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.)
And here is a video testimony of what it is like to be in that tunnel to that higher dimension:
Video, Verse and Poem:
The paper is fine theoretically. Of course , since abiogenesis is not proven yet , most of you will not agree to whatever else Abraham Loeb has to say.
News,
Yes Loeb does makes sense- at least theoretically. The temperature in habitable zone is around 300K. At about 15 million years after Big Bang, the CMB gave a temperature around 272.6K + (1 to 1.1), so there is no issue with habitable temperature.
Next Loeb tackles the issue of rocky planets and star formation. Stars with supernova explosions are necessary to create the heavy elements in the primordial gas. He calculates and shows that even in a Gaussian Hubble volume, the rocky planets could have formed at 1+redshift period of around 78. Since early universe was non-Gaussian, the rocky planets were formed in abundance.
He also tackles the question of how the radiation from primary radiation dominated stars will last for long. When massive stars shine at Eddington luminosity, the life of such stars is independent of their masses – the life is set by 0.7% efficiency of converting mass to radiation. Thus such stars can last up to 3 Million years.
I think this paper makes complete sense.
Just to remind all there is Bible evidence of the Big Bang. Look at “Genesis and the Big Bang” By Gerald Schroeder Ph.D. a particle physicist and Bible scholar.
Hi Mapou @ 3,
Earth is not the center of universe. Since we can’t see the entire universe, standing anywhere in observable universe will feel like standing in center from our field of view.
You are referring to doubts raised in 2006 1st WMAP data. It has been resolved by studying the Y3 WMAP and of course by Planck CMBR data. The thermal SZ effect (Sunyaev Zeldovich effect) is responsible for the ‘no shadow’ mystery. If we look at > 218 GHz picture of CMBR, this effect is seen as brighter spots. At 218 Ghz, the effect disappears.
It is the space that is expanding – not the galaxies which are fixed to the space and are being carried along by space. Space can travel at any speed.This doubt is so common that it has a ‘standard’ analogy . I will just reproduce it : Take raisin in dough. Put it in oven. As the dough rises and expands, the raisins start to move away from each other. The raisins closer to the edges of the dough move away from the center faster than the one that are closer to the center. Now imagine our galaxy cluster as one of the raisins near the center of the dough. The farther the other raisins are from us, the faster they are moving away from us.
Tired light is a 1929 concept. We have come a long way in terms of sensitivity of instruments, calculating galactic bodies permeability, refraction, photon scatterings and computing processing powers. Some of the evidences against Tired light include:
a)No blurring of images which would be expected if red shifting was due to stellar dust and galactic obstrucals.
b)The apparent surface area of the object is inversely proportional to square of distance. It is observed to be greater than what is expected at any redshift if Tired light was involved in redshift.
c)Time dilation would not exist. So a Super nova which takes 10 days will not appear to take 20 days to decay as observed.
d)The surface brightness tests, low density of galaxies in CMBR ,the dependence of light curve width of Supernova on z value (red shift value) all prove that Tired Light is wrong and universe is really expanding.
The expansion is accelerating, so we have no choice but to explain. In a radiation dominated universe, the expansion is
Square root[t], where ‘t’ is time. Under matter dominated universe the expansion is given byt^2/3In both cases, the expansion will slow down, but what we observe is an exponential acceleration of inflation. This expansion needs just 1/10,000 eV /cm3 of energy but the total calculated energy is 10^120times more than required, so the dark energy is there not just for expansion.The mystery of what it is and how it fits into the universe may be solved when the revamped in LHC in 2015 starts concentrating on Dark matter and Dark energy particles. Of course we do have direct cryogenic setups underground and NASA’s Fermi Gamma ray telescope studying the rays to detect new particles which could gives leads to solve the mystery.
Mapou:
I’m not sure I agree with your specific items, but your general conclusion I think is largely on point.
The Big Bang may or may not be correct. There is some evidence that is consistent with the idea; but there is evidence that challenges the idea.
Biblical-minded folks would do well to realize that it is neither central to nor required by a Biblical understanding. More important for me, are the difficulties scientifically. Most recently I can’t square the existence of particular large scale objects (planets, solar systems, galaxies) with a massive explosion of energy. There is no decent explanation I have ever found for how the latter leads to the former, other than falling back on the “explanation” our evolutionist friends are so fond of: Stuff Happens.
ID proponents certainly should not hang their hats on the existence of a Big Bang as an important part of anything having to do with ID or design generally.
Envisioning the ‘Big Bang’ as an ‘explosion’ is really a misnomer due to a disparaging remark made by Hoyle. Here’s a radio recording of Fred Hoyle, around 1950, disparagingly naming the creation event of the universe as ‘The Big Bang’:
History of the Big Bang – Simon Singh, PhD – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f.....2g#t=2340s
The ‘Big Bang’ is really a VERY wrong word picture for capturing what went on at the creation event of the universe, and is the source of endless confusion, for the creation of the universe was certainly not anything like we would normally envision an ordinary explosion to be like:
“The Big Bang represents an immensely powerful, yet carefully planned and controlled release of matter, energy, space and time. All this is accomplished within the strict confines of very carefully fine-tuned physical constants and laws. The power and care this explosion reveals exceeds human mental capacity by multiple orders of magnitude.”
Prof. Henry F. Schaefer – closing statement of the following video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....age#t=360s
It should be noted that Hoyle made the “”Big Bang’ remark in 1950, but in 1953 he had his materialistic worldview turned upsidedown:
From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? … I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has “monkeyed” with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. –
Sir Fred Hoyle, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982): 16.
Of note: Hoyle conceded the Big Bang was right in 1965 but later reversed himself opting for, I believe, the steady state model, which was subsequently refuted.
Refutation Of Steady-state & Oscillating Universe Models – Michael Strauss PhD – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4169594/
of note: Hoyle’s disparaging ‘Big Bang’ remark can be picked up a little before the 40 minute mark of the video I listed
Mapou/ Eric @ 11,
Big Bang is the only game in town. It is only theory that explains most of the observed facts. That’s all there is to it.
The steady state model is the only game that should be in town.
The Big Bang is self-contradictory because, according to the current definition of a singularity, nothing can escape its gravitational pull, not even light. And this was the mother of all singularities. An exploding singularity is an oxymoron, by definition.
Could’ve Had A V8 commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShcbV31tcAk
[NCIS] – Headslap Compilation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRM2OENl2jk
Hi Mapou @15,
Steady State is a long abandoned theory. The WMAP and CMBR clearly show that there is no polarization and the homogenous and isotropic image of CMBR is not consistent with steady state. Of course even as early as 1960s discovery of quasars only in distance part of universe showed Steady state theory in poor light
selvaRajan,
It’s funny how you try so hard to pass yourself as some kind of physics guru on this forum and yet, you don’t know that nothing can move in Einstein’s spacetime or why. Worse, even though I explained it to you on at least two occasions, you still act like you are totally clueless.
If time can change, as you claim, please give us the equation of the rate of change of time. BTW, the rate of change of position is given as v = dx/dt. So the equation for the rate of change of time must be similar. So let’s hear it. And please try not to stick your foot in your mouth as you do so.
selvaRajan @17,
In your irrational defense of the Big Bang, I noticed you forgot to explain how a singularity can explode even though nothing can escape its gravitational pull. So let’s hear the physics of it. And again, please try not to stick your foot in your mouth as you do so.
Hi Mapou, I am not in contest for best Physics guru! I am just explaining what I think you misunderstand about physics. Apparently you missed my answers in earlier thread. I am reproducing the thread below, and the equation for Space Time graph is derived at the end without self reference to time:
Space-time is explanation for gravity. It posits that heavier objects curve space-time more hence have more gravity. There is no mention of infinite gravity
Time is just another coordinate added to Space coordinates, so how could time ‘make motion impossible’?
You are mixing up Quantum mechanics with General relativity !
Again, you are mixing up Quantum mechanics with General relativity !
Space time has to be continuous – as with any other coordinates. There is no regress
I know you are referring to time being self referential. Let’s derive space-time graph equation so it is clear that time need not be self referential:
Time can be expressed as component of distance
d = v *t( Where d is distance,v is velocity and t is time).If we now calibrate v as say ‘c’, we can plot ct (time) on Y axis and distance ‘d’ on x axis.Mark 2 points on this graph. So, the distance in space time ‘S’ can be obtained by simple Pythagoras theorem
S^2= (ct)^2+ d^2 OR S^2= (ct)^2 - d^2.The former equation leads to speed being greater than light speed and allows travelling back ward in time, so we accept the later equation:s^2 = (ct)^2 - d^2.This is a parabola and time can’t travel backward. Speed cannot overshoot speed of light. Congratulations! we just derived space-time equation without self referencing time!selvaRajan, give us the equation of the rate of change of time. Until you do so, everything else you write here is just BS. And, darn it, don’t try to ignore my argument @15 and the question I posed @19. I won’t let you get away with it.
PS. Methinks you’re a troll, a lesser demon whose job is to BS as many people as you can. You’re lucky I’m not in charge of this forum. I’d boot you out as unceremoniously as possible. I can smell trolls a mile away.
Mapou @ 19,
Big Bang singularity is what is called a ‘White Hole’. The Big Bang singularity is not derived from crunched gravity of matter. That singularity was radiation dominated. The radiation’s outward force due to temperature in the region of 10^12K was what forced the rapid expansion ( There was no Bang as many think- only an rapid inflation). There was no matter to start with in the singularity The matter and antimatter formed by perturbations in the expanding universe. Due to the very rapid expansion, not all matters and anti matter could alienate each other. A lot of matter survived. As you know the
E=mc^2The abundance of energy got converted to Hydrogen and helium. The quarks got converted to photons in high radiation period, which led to further increase in energy. The masses of clumped matter started the slow assembly to form the stars. The elements up to iron formed after the initial cooling period. Irons heavier than iron formed by nucleosynthesis.Of course no one has any idea how the Singularity developed in the first place- that is one the things that physicists are trying to answer with theory of multiverses.
Mapou @ 21
Didn’t you understand the derivation here?:
I know you are referring to time being self referential. Let’s derive space-time graph equation so it is clear that time need not be self referential:
Time can be expressed as component of distance d = v *t( Where d is distance,v is velocity and t is time).If we now calibrate v as say ‘c’, we can plot ct (time) on Y axis and distance ‘d’ on x axis.
Mark 2 points on this graph. So, the distance in space time ‘S’ can be obtained by simple Pythagoras theorem S^2= (ct)^2+ d^2 OR S^2= (ct)^2 – d^2. The former equation leads to speed being greater than light speed and allows travelling back ward in time, so we accept the later equation: s^2 = (ct)^2 – d^2. This is a parabola and time can’t travel backward. Speed cannot overshoot speed of light. Congratulations! we just derived space-time equation without self referencing time!
Naming a singularity a white hole is just voodoo science. Where did this radiation come from and how is EM energy converted into mass, pray tell? Gravity is the consequence of energy/mass. If all this energy was concentrated in a singularity, why did it not have enough gravity to cause a black hole? Science by definition is not science. It’s voodoo nonsense. You might as well say that the singularity was full of zombies trying to get out. Where is the falsifiable science?
selvaRajan @23,
Stop trying to evade the question. A changing time implies a rate of change. Give us the equation of time’s rate of change. It must be in the same form as v = dx/dt. Anything else is cr*p.
One thing that makes me skeptical abut this report is the fact that carbon is supposed to have been present in significant quantities, just 15 million years after the Big Bang. A recent report hailed the discovery that “significant amounts of carbon existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang,” but 15 million years after the Big Bang is more than sixty times less than that. Also, this carbon had to be generated inside stars – not exactly the most life-friendly environment for a fledgling micro-organism.
Incidentally, the very existence of carbon in the universe is excellent evidence for fine-tuning.
Mapou: As I understand it, the special theory of relativity doesn’t say that time changes. It says that time-measurements vary, according to one’s velocity. There’s no rate at which they vary. Hence to ask for the rate of change of time is meaningless. That’s my understanding.
vjtorley:
Of course, it’s meaningless. That is precisely my point. However, this has not prevented legions of physicists (including famous people like Stephen Hawking and Einstein himself) to write about motion in spacetime (geodesics), time travel, wormholes, expanding spacetime and similar nonsense. Spacetime is changeless precisely because one’s time coordinate in it cannot change, by definition.
Dr.vjt / Mapou,
Isn’t it tragic that millions of physicists and astronomers across decades are wasting their time and money by using General Relativity in their work and research? Some one please listen to Mapou 🙂
We can stop adjusting the 38,000 nanoseconds on the 36 (not 24 now) GPS satellites’ atomic clocks everyday to adjust for relativistic effects. Who says we would not accumulate 10 Km error every day on our GPS trackers if we stopped adjusting the clock on GPS satellites? Definitely not me! I like my car’s SatNav just as it is 🙂
I know it’s rather out of date now (2003), but see “Rare Earth” by Peter Ward & Donald Brownlee. One of the basic requirements for Earthlike planets is that they be in second or third generation galaxies. The earlier ones were formed before enough stars went nova and allowed the creation (um, “production”) of heavier elements such as carbon and iron. Newer galaxies, such as the ones we see forming, on the other hand have too many heavy elements to properly support complex life. For example, if the concentration of Thorium in the Earth’s crust were only a wee bit higher, the crust would melt from the heat.
Earth is in EXACTLY the right place near a star of EXACTLY the right size and age, in EXACTLY the right kind of galaxy.
I think I’d seen someone post that they had identified 30 separate requirements for a “habitable” planet. This should drive the Drake Equation crazy. Earth is VERY very improbable. We are mostly likely the ONLY habitable planet in Milky Way Galaxy. And perhaps that’s they way it is throughout space: some tiny percentage of galaxies are “just right” for complex life, and each of those galaxies has exactly 1 planet where Life dwells.
The rest of the planets, regardless of size, are continuously bathed in sterilizing radiation from neighboring stars that formed too closely or are unstable and will go nova. The entire Core of Milky Way is a dead zone for such reasons.
I’ve searched high and low for your strictures concerning the conventional adoption of infinity as a mathematical concept, indeed, your outright condemnation of it; and the more I’ve thought about it, the more correct you seem to be be. Whether your proceed from there correctly may be another matter, imo, but that’s not the point that interests me.
Mathematics is apparently an all-purpose, analytical tool for studying the nature of the whole of material Creation in all its scope and complexity, while pointing to an exogenous and extra-material/supernatural reference-frame.
Would it not then be a category error to involve infinity no less via its algebraic notation than as a concept, in mathematics? I was always baffled how infinity seemed to be bandied about in equations, like so much confetti. Crazy. Surely measurement is the very warp and weft of mathematics and science.
Infinity is a concept that can only be meaningful in relation to an immanent Creator/Ground of all Being; which latter (unfortunately imo) you disbelieve, in favour of demiurges of some kind. But that’s another issue.