Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
The term Big Bang is misleading.
It's implies explosion but the parallel is inappropriate and borders on useless.
We have a starting point for time and space which we can not describe and deal with the evolution of the Universe which inflated at at rate many times the rate of an explosion .
As Steven said inflation and expansion are separate matters. One is too grand to be called explosion and the other too humble to be called an explosion.
I think it is wise to remember we may not be describing reality but what we do describe is scientific theories which provide a very reasonable footing.
I personally find Inflation impossible to accept but I don't have an alternative theory.
My point is if one wishes to offer alternative cosmology one must offer a better theory.
As cosmology turns on general relativity one needs to offer something that takes us further than general relativity.
That won't be easy.
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Indeed Xela,
it took several centuries before Classical Newtonian mechanics was augmented with Special Relativity (inertial/non accelerating frames of reference) and General Relativity (accelerating frames of reference).
And one needs to acknowledge that the Special Relativity and General Relativity theories are astonishingly accurate in explaining physical phenomena in the Universe (likewise Newtonian laws). However they all break down as some point (e.g singularities or phenomena that behave with an infinite curvature of space-time). In addition, the problem of unifying the Quantum world with gravity and large scale phenomena hasn't been resolved yet. This is god indication that both Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity may undergo revision or even a revolution. This of course isn't certain, because it may well turn out that resolving the microscopic domain with large scale effects could be beyond mathematics/science or inherently unresolvable. (especially with deterministic laws which are obviously contrary to the stochastic nature of Quantum mechanics).
Quantum theory is extremely accurate and reproducible, even though its description of the microscopic world is counter intuitive and insane (I will add that Quantum mechanics is not an exclusive theory of the microscopic world, but applies to the Universe as a whole and to large objects such as planets and stars and galaxies - the quantum effects are not noticeable at these scales and are swamped by other forces and more dominant effects).
The quest continues ladies and gentlemen - onward we go riding upon our grand silver horses like those that came before us.
