No Shadow From the Big Bang? 178
ultracool writes "In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background (WMAP). Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background. Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background."
Grrrrrr! (Score:5, Insightful)
First get this in your head. At this point in history, evolutionary biology is a certainty in the way that gravity is a certainty. We may reconceptualize certain parts of it from time to time, but it is clear and obvious that it is there and happening.
The big bang is NOTHING like this. This is because, unlike in biology, in physics at the moment we have massive unknowns (dark matter, dark energy, no clue what the elementary building material of the universe is, no way to connect quatum mechanics to relativity). At this point the best we can say is all clues seem to hint toward a big bang and that seems the most likely explanation to explain currently observed phenomena.
Big difference!
P.S.: Most Christian fundimentalists don't actually understand the difference between evolution and the big bang. They often see the two in their own heads as linked and think by argueing against one, they are arguing against the other as well. See Kent Hovind [youtube.com] and his crazyness, for example.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't strike out the Big Bang yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
A little shadow anomaly isn't going to seriously dent the Big Bang theory. There is so much evidence for the Big Bang and predictions based on it have been observed that it will take more than a little inconsistency to make the theory suspect. You need something more substantial than shadows to expect a rehauling of the Big Bang.
Remember that there were serious questions about the applicability of Newtonian Dynamics on a large scale too when it was determined that galaxies could not have kept their structure if calculations were based on ND only. However, rather than modify ND, scientists chose to posit an unseen dark matter just to save ND. As it turns out, there is indeed dark matter!
Don't sound the death knell on the big bang yet.
Big Bang (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the big bang gets attacked more in the sense of attacks on exactly what the initial thingy was. There's no real doubt that the universe is exploding and has been for most of physically evident history. It may not be the initial event, the universe could be eternal, cyclical, or whatever -- but it's certainly exploding now, and seems to have been for at least 12 billion years.
There isn't so much an attacking of the big bang as trying to nail down what exactly the big bang was. In other words, it's the same kind of attacks that people like Stephen Gould and Lynn Margulis make on evolution. They don't doubt that evolution is a real phenomenon for a second; they just want to nail down what exactly evolution is, what makes it tick, how it happens. It's the good kind of attacking, and it's what makes science jump.
Fundies, in turn, seem to assume that the big bang was invented for the sole purpose of trying to support evolution, which is so ridiculous that it defies the belief of real people. In fact, they seem to think that every branch of science exists solely to provide support for an otherwise untenable theory of evolution. This despite the fact that many of these ideas preceded Darwin (in a few cases by millenia).
poorly designed "research"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I need to read the REAL article, since the "Science Daily" was a joke, but, here are some issues with the research as described:
#1 the universe has no "edge" in any layman's sense of word. We're no more in the middle than some galaxy 8 billion light years away in any direction.
#2 the CMB is NOT "pointed at" the Earth. It's going in every direction at the same time, including very, very small angles to "straight away" in any direction.
#3 the WMAP antenna is very good, but it is NOT 100% unidirectional, so it will pick up energy from a very narrow cone, not a line straight away.
Therefore the WMAP data will rarely show a "shadow" of much change in intensity, since the antenna will pick up significant CMB from off-axis of the line between the Earth and the nebula, even if the nebula is resolved to nearly all of the sample point. For that matter, it could be lensing on- or off-axis causing some of the intensity variation described in the artice.
The variations in CMB are incredibly small in the first place, and we don't have THAT many significant digits of intensity in the measurement range. We only really detected them when we got WMAP up there. Any additional small variation in CMB co-incident with an ionized nebula is going to be difficult to unambiguously assign to "shadowing", and the even smaller variations of variations from nebula to nebula are very close to the statistical noise values of the original samples.
As I said, maybe the "Astrophysical Journal" article is better presented, but so far, this doesn't sound well thought-out.
Re:Grrrrrr! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly I see the grandparent's attitude among many otherwise smart Christians (I myself am a Christian... just to get that out of the way). Many mistakenly think that evolution contradicts the creation story and they insist it's wrong. They won't even take the time to learn about it or, in the case of private Christian schools, teach it. I didn't learn about evolution in a classroom setting until I was 19, but I'm glad I did. My picture of my faith now encompasses evolution, just like it encompasses a round earth that isn't in the center of the universe--Remember that whole Galileo thing, the church messed up real bad there, and I can't help but thing we're doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING AGAIN. All the independant scientific evidence to support evolution can't be ignored. We as Christians need to acknowledge several things: 1) The core of our belief is that Jesus Christ came to earth to in human form to show his love for us and to give us the chance to have a relationship with him. Evolution does not change this. 2) The Bible is not a scientific textbook and should not be treated as one. Jesus spoke to his people though parables all the time... why would God have chosen a 100% accurate word-for-word report on the beginning of life? Note I am just saying we should be more open-minded about this. 3) Evolution does not say God did not create the world, it merely changes the way He created it. I find it much more exciting to think that God planned the entire process of evolution, and the path of every thing on this world, from the beginning to the end of time, and then started everything rolling and let nature itself take over. After all, God is unchanging, right? Why would he then shape and mold the world for a week and then completely withdraw from managing nature? I'm not saying God is absent in the world... indeed, his current presence has simply been unwavering since the beginning of time.
As you can see I've thought a bit about this, and this excites me. So to my fellow Christians: don't be ignorant about Evoltion, get yourself educated and open your mind! Just like Galileo did.
Re:Grrrrrr! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, a god who's clever enough to set the initial conditions, set the universe off on a 15-billion-year-plus rendering process and still get the results he wanted - that's a real god.
Re:No Big Bang, just cycles of expansion/contracti (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, light can be modeled as particles or waves. Actually, neither may be an entirely acurate description of light, but both theories may make useful predictions. They both describe light in very good (if not complete) ways [thespectroscopynet.com].
More than one model of the shape and origin of the universe may contribute to a view that helps explain observations and make predictions.
These models are not for "believing in". That would prevent us from considering other possible explanations. Two or more models taken together may in some sense seem to contradict each other. But they may both contribute to a yet-to-be-discovered unifying theory. They may both help to shape better approximations of the state of the universe.
Re:Big Bang (Score:2, Insightful)
Certainly off-topic now (Score:3, Insightful)
Science is not about truth.
Science is a method that we have built to understand and predict the universe. However, the thing that science comes up with is not the truth, and does not approach the truth.
Thus, the truth could be that the universe was created 2 minutes ago, with a complete slashdot discussion on the big-bang/evolution, and everything else in it. And it could be that it was created so that there is no observation that can be made that would distinguish this universe from one created 15 billion years ago. Though that possibility (a universe created 2 minutes ago) can be the truth, it is not a valid scientific theory, since it isn't testable. Thus science can not, and often does not claim to be about the truth (unless we redefine the concept of truth).
Religion, on the other hand, is a belief system. It does not need proof, and is usually hurt by proof. If you have proof, you wouldn't need a belief system. religion can be about the truth - that the universe was really created 6000 years ago, or really runs as a simulation on god's computer. But usually religion is also about other things - like providing a meaning to existence, or morals, ethics, and sometimes even a system of laws (all these can create other problems which are even more off-topic). When religion does provide with the truth, then you have to accept that "evidence against" this truth might be found. But just because something is unlikely does not make it false. It could easily be that the truth is very unlikely - that why you'd need to believe in it.
You can also believe that science does approach the truth, or maybe even that it will eventually find it, or already has. That is also a belief system. It is a very convenient belief system for scientists, from the point of view of providing a motivation to do further research.