Some people see the BBT as successful and useful - but I
don't. I see it as a huge ship doomed from the start -
but with passengers and crew so transfixed by the size
of the vessel, its long history and the good company they
are in to recognise how the theory fails to explain things
which really must be understood, if the theory is to be
regarded as being as reliable as the proponents seem to
think it is.

I don't see how anyone can take the BBT seriously, in
principle or especially in terms of these supposedly very
precise quantitative estimates of the Hubble "constant", the
"age" of the Universe (13.7 +/- 0.2 = 1.5%), when the BBT
proponents have no proper explanations for some phenomena
(or at least observations we reasonably conclude reflect
phenomena) which seem to be crucial to any understanding of
stars, galaxies and large-scale structure.

I have already mentioned the failure to find the Transverse
Proximity Effect with a foreground quasar. This is an acid
test of the BBT. If the BBT is true, and unless quasars
are much shorter lived, more intermittent or narrowly
beamed than any other observations indicate, then the
effect would be observed. The researchers fully expected
to find it, and they didn't. If they had, I would have
been highly inclined to abandon my critique of the BBT,
if this particular prediction was observed. This is a
quantitative prediction - about where exactly in a
spectrum some absorption will not occur. There's no room
in the BBT for the absorption to be found or not found at
any other part of the spectrum of the background quasar.

Finding this lack of absorption, in a number of objects,
would be so impressive.

The high redshift seemingly old galaxy clusters is likewise
another acid test - unless galaxy formation theory is
contorted into ever shorter periods of time.

Here are some other important phenomena / observations I
think the BBT proponents have so far failed to
satisfactorily explain:

The intergalactic medium (IGM) emitting X-rays which can
best be explained by extraordinarily high temperatures,
such as 440,000,000 Kelvin:

Field, G. B.; Perrenod, S. C. 1977
Constraints on a dense hot intergalactic medium.
ApJ vol. 215, Aug. 1, 1977, p. 717-722.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...pJ...215..717F

Marshall, F. E. et al. 1980
The diffuse X-ray background spectrum from 3 to 50 keV.
ApJ vol. 235, Jan. 1, 1980, p. 4-10.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...pJ...235....4M

I don't know of any conventional explanation for such high
temperatures. (My theory is that it is heated by starlight
etc. due to some redshift and/or scattering process which
is not yet properly recognised. It can't easily radiate
the energy, except by getting to such high temperatures,
because it is so sparse that the particles rarely get close
enough to emit bremsstrahlung.) Stars surfaces are only
a fraction of this temperature. We can't even explain
1 Mega Kelvin temperatures in our own Sun's corona - and
the most popular conventional explanations of that are
based on magnetic waves, which clearly can't work out
into the IGM, if only because it is such a lousy conductor
due to it being so thin.

Why galaxy clusters in no way resemble the shape of
gravitationally bound collapsing systems, such as
galaxies or our solar system.

Why the galaxy clusters often are stretched out in space
and resemble liquid squeezed into the gaps between
generally spherical bubbles. (I suggest that the void IGM
is so hot that it is of sufficient pressure, which is
probably very low, to corral the galaxies into the
smallish clusters.)

Why galaxies don't so often come close to each other.
(I figure that galaxies are exuding a corona which
pushes others away. Exactly how the mass of the galaxy is
coupled to this in an aerodynamic fashion, I am not sure,
but a rough guess is that most of the mass is in
black-dwarfs and their potentially numerous and relatively
small collision fragments, which would have a fair bit of
drag. I am not sure how anything could push a star around
to a significant degree, by gas pressure in the
surrounding medium, but maybe not much pushing is required.
Maybe none is required if the visible stars are
gravitationally bound to the larger mass of black-dwarf
fragments which are themselves coupled to the corona of
the galaxy.)

The extra mass in spiral galaxies which presumably causes
the observed visible stellar rotation curves.

The heating and acceleration of stellar coronae and
winds. http://astroneu.com/plasma-redshift-1/#Cranmer

Likewise the nature of solar spicules, the heating and
acceleration of prominences etc.

A whole bunch of things about quasars and AGN:

Why they vary so fast when according to the BBT they are
impossibly large, due to their supposedly high output,
based solely on their distance being according to the
BBT interpretation of redshift.

The nature of jets.

How, if as according to the BBT, there used to be lots
of quasars etc. why there aren't similarly massive
and luminous objects around the place today, such as
in the middle of galaxies.

The CMB. While the BBT has an explanation for the CMB, I
don't think it is the only possible explanation, as I have
written in previous messages in this thread.


I know its a big task to develop cosmological theories.
The BBT is fine as a theory, but I see so many problems
with it that I can't take it seriously.

Other folk don't seem to see or care about the problems
I think are significant - but to me, the BBT really looks
like a great overblown and entirely wrong theory which
will soon be discredited. The key, I think, is coming
up with a good in-principle - and yes Bjoern, Quantitative -
theory of the redshift we observe in stars, galaxies and
AGN.

I am on the case, but I think the first task is to
overcome the problems caused by thinking of
electromagnetic radiation and the quanta of energy which
result from it as involving independent "photons". Once
there is a good redshift theory - especially one we can
test in space or on Earth - then the only remaining task
to deal with is the BBT supporter's interpretation of
supernovae light curves, which are conventionally
understood to show time dilation. Jerry Jensen's critique
looks like a good starting point:

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0404207

But it will be a lot of work getting the raw data and
reworking it, whilst paying close attention to all the
difficult questions of corrections and interpretation.

- Robin http://astroneu.com http://www.firstpr.com.au