Big Bang busted?

I have considerable difficulty in understanding the Big Bang theory.
It is a wet Sunday afternoon and I wondered if any one out there could
shed a light or three for me.

We were told last week of how Hubble managed to see within a billion
years of the Big Bang. Presumably light from that period has just
caught up with us.

If the subject of the image captured by Hubble (lets call it the
Hubble Viewed Object, HVO) was travelling in the same direction away
from the Big Bang as ourselves then we must have been travelling in
excess of the speed of light, then slowed down, for the subject of
Hubble's images and ourselves to have originated from the same point.
We would have a few difficulties explaining that I guess.

It would appear therefore that the HVO is moving away from us and the
combined speed of our seperation would need to be very fast,
approaching the speed of light, something like 13/15ths of the speed
of light if we believe the Big Bang to be 14 billion years ago, or
thereabouts in round figures.

At those speeds we should be able to detect the centre of the Big
Bang, our relative 'flight path' and observe other galaxies visibly
'shrinking' as we part our ways.

Have any of these three things been determined?

"Bob Wallum" wrote in message
m...
I have considerable difficulty in understanding the Big Bang theory.
It is a wet Sunday afternoon and I wondered if any one out there could
shed a light or three for me.

We were told last week of how Hubble managed to see within a billion
years of the Big Bang. Presumably light from that period has just
caught up with us.

If the subject of the image captured by Hubble (lets call it the
Hubble Viewed Object, HVO) was travelling in the same direction away
from the Big Bang as ourselves then we must have been travelling in
excess of the speed of light, then slowed down, for the subject of
Hubble's images and ourselves to have originated from the same point.
We would have a few difficulties explaining that I guess.

The Big Bang was not an explosion that occurred in some
particular spot in space. It was an explosion *of* space,
and as such occurred everywhere at the same time. There
is no one direction you can point to that is in the direction
of the Big Bang; *every* direction points to the Big Bang.

Consider the often used expanding balloon analogy. The
surface of the balloon is a 2D representation of space.
As it expands, points on the surface grow more distant from
each other. But where's the center of expansion on that
surface?

Dear Bob Wallum:

"Bob Wallum" wrote in message
m...
I have considerable difficulty in understanding the Big Bang theory.
It is a wet Sunday afternoon and I wondered if any one out there could
shed a light or three for me.

We were told last week of how Hubble managed to see within a billion
years of the Big Bang. Presumably light from that period has just
caught up with us.

If the subject of the image captured by Hubble (lets call it the
Hubble Viewed Object, HVO) was travelling in the same direction away
from the Big Bang as ourselves

No reason this should be true. And likely would only be true for objects
in our supercluster.

then we must have been travelling in
excess of the speed of light, then slowed down, for the subject of
Hubble's images and ourselves to have originated from the same point.

No. No such requirement for high velocity. Two ways come to mind to not
require FTL, and I cannot tell you which is more likely:
1) the Universe is finite, and light emitted will travel "around and
around" until it is absorbed, even 13.4 Gy later,
2) expansion is just under the speed of light, so light from 13.4 Gy ago is
still arriving, and will continue to do so for more billions of years
(although detection will be even more difficult).
Perhaps others can supply more mechanisms.

We would have a few difficulties explaining that I guess.

FTL? Not if it is FTL wrt the past we wouldn't. We suspect that there
could be entire galaxies that will be forever outside our light cone. To
them, we have crossed the line of "expanding at exactly c".

It would appear therefore that the HVO is moving away from us and the
combined speed of our seperation would need to be very fast,
approaching the speed of light, something like 13/15ths of the speed
of light if we believe the Big Bang to be 14 billion years ago, or
thereabouts in round figures.

It is not motion per se, but the creation of new space. We don't see
evidence of the transmission of enough energy to be accelerating the
objects themselves. Only the creation of new distance between
non-gravitaionally bound systems.

At those speeds we should be able to detect the centre of the Big
Bang, our relative 'flight path' and observe other galaxies visibly
'shrinking' as we part our ways.

It is only ten or so million light years away, at our current speed. And
there appears to be no "center" there. In fact it appears that there is no
unique center anywhere.

Have any of these three things been determined?

Yes.
URL:http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmo_01.htm
Read it all the way through. Come back here with questions.

David A. Smith

The Big Bang was not an explosion that occurred in some
particular spot in space. It was an explosion *of* space,
and as such occurred everywhere at the same time. There
is no one direction you can point to that is in the direction
of the Big Bang; *every* direction points to the Big Bang.

Consider the often used expanding balloon analogy. The
surface of the balloon is a 2D representation of space.
As it expands, points on the surface grow more distant from
each other. But where's the center of expansion on that
surface?


Excuse me but the center should be the center of the balloon
isn't it?

Careful with analogies, specially when you speak
about "the universe".

There is NO analogy for it.

"jacob navia" wrote in message
...
The Big Bang was not an explosion that occurred in some
particular spot in space. It was an explosion *of* space,
and as such occurred everywhere at the same time. There
is no one direction you can point to that is in the direction
of the Big Bang; *every* direction points to the Big Bang.

Consider the often used expanding balloon analogy. The
surface of the balloon is a 2D representation of space.
As it expands, points on the surface grow more distant from
each other. But where's the center of expansion on that
surface?


Excuse me but the center should be the center of the balloon
isn't it?

Careful with analogies, specially when you speak
about "the universe".

There is NO analogy for it.

Granted, all analogies have their limitations.
They are a convenient way to deal with situations
where our ability to picture higher dimensions
fails.

In the case of the balloon analogy, you have to
imagine that we are 2D creatures living on the
2D surface of the balloon. There is no way that
such a creature can point in the direction of
the center of the balloon, since it lies in
a direction orthogonal to all of their spatial
dimensions.

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004 18:42:51 +0000, Bob Wallum wrote:

I have considerable difficulty in understanding the Big Bang theory. It
is a wet Sunday afternoon and I wondered if any one out there could shed
a light or three for me.

I shall try :-)

We were told last week of how Hubble managed to see within a billion
years of the Big Bang. Presumably light from that period has just caught
up with us.

No. Light from those galaxies were flowing through our part of the
Universe for a long time. We only turned the Hubble telescope to them now
& recorded them on a film. Remember, Hubble had to look at the same area
for many hours to get enough photons to record them. Just pointing a
telescope to that area won't collect enough photons to "see" them.

If the subject of the image captured by Hubble (lets call it the Hubble
Viewed Object, HVO) was travelling in the same direction away from the
Big Bang as ourselves then we must have been travelling in excess of the
speed of light, then slowed down, for the subject of Hubble's images and
ourselves to have originated from the same point. We would have a few
difficulties explaining that I guess.

Big Bang was not an event or explosion at a particular time or point in
space - it is a theory. According to this theory the Universe started
growing from a point; time & space were created only at the Big Bang.
Everything within the Universe was part of that point. So the Big Bang
started everywhere - there is no specific centre and light was not
travelling from the centre to us. Light from every sources were travelling
to and fro within the Universe. The Big Bang is continued today - the
Universe is still expanding.

It would appear therefore that the HVO is moving away from us and the
combined speed of our seperation would need to be very fast, approaching
the speed of light, something like 13/15ths of the speed of light if we
believe the Big Bang to be 14 billion years ago, or thereabouts in round
figures.

That is correct.

At those speeds we should be able to detect the centre of the Big Bang,

See above. There was no centre of Big Bang.

our relative 'flight path' and observe other galaxies visibly
'shrinking' as we part our ways.

Have any of these three things been determined?

Our observation time is too short and accuracy of size determination is
too crude to see the "shrinking" of the galaxies due to increasing
distance.

--

Gautam Majumdar

Please send e-mails to

Bob Wallum wrote:

I have considerable difficulty in understanding the Big Bang theory.

Don't worry - I would say that most people have. This is partly due to
the bad job which popular science accounts are doing in "explaining" it.


It is a wet Sunday afternoon and I wondered if any one out there could
shed a light or three for me.

We were told last week of how Hubble managed to see within a billion
years of the Big Bang. Presumably light from that period has just
caught up with us.

No. Light from these objects had already "catched up" with us for a long
time - but it's *very* faint (these objects are *very* far away), and so
Hubble (and no over telescope) didn't see it before. A very long
exposure time was needed to "catch" this little amount of light.



If the subject of the image captured by Hubble (lets call it the
Hubble Viewed Object, HVO) was travelling in the same direction away
from the Big Bang as ourselves

First misunderstanding, probably from popular science accounts: the Big
Bang didn't happen at once specific point (it happened essentially
everywhere at once), so it makes no sense to say that anything traveled
away from it.


then we must have been travelling in
excess of the speed of light, then slowed down, for the subject of
Hubble's images and ourselves to have originated from the same point.

The space between us and other objects expanded very rapidly back then.
This can make it *look like* as if these other objects receded from us
at superluminal speeds.


We would have a few difficulties explaining that I guess.

No, there is no difficulty at all.


It would appear therefore that the HVO is moving away from us and the
combined speed of our seperation would need to be very fast,
approaching the speed of light, something like 13/15ths of the speed
of light if we believe the Big Bang to be 14 billion years ago, or
thereabouts in round figures.

Replace "moving away from us" with "the space between us and it is
expanding", and it becomes more correct.


At those speeds we should be able to detect the centre of the Big
Bang,

It had no center.


our relative 'flight path' and observe other galaxies visibly
'shrinking' as we part our ways.

Huh? Sorry, I can't follow you here.


Have any of these three things been determined?

No. They shouldn't be observed!


Bye,
Bjoern

... was travelling in the same direction away
from the Big Bang as ourselves ...

There is no such concept. The Big Bang happened
everwhere. It happened right here.

Ben

... we are 2D creatures living on the
2D surface of the balloon. There is no way that
such a creature can point in the direction of
the center of the balloon ...

If you must insist on pointing to the "center,"
the point backwards in TIME.

Ben