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The Big Bang
Is it possible to get a child to go along with the notion that the Universe arose out of nothing, that is, that nothing made everything out of nothing? It may be impossible
to get anyone who has not been through high school to go along with
such a notion, and I'm pretty sure that all the Big Bang cosmologists
went through high school first. So let's put the Big Bang cosmology in
the subjunctive. If we can get nothing to make everything out of nothing, we could get started. But shucks, our fire ball would be in a black hole. Oh, if we can hold off on the physics of
black holes, we can get our little fire ball to expand and cool off
to material particles. But shucks, it would be fiftyfifty matter
and antimatter. How can we get rid of the antimatter? Aha, if we can invent two radioactive particles, one that makes antimatter out of matter, and one that makes matter out of antimatter, we can get rid of the antimatter because the particle that makes matter decays more slowly and leaves this Universe as the residue. But shucks, the particle that makes matter out of antimatter and decays more slowly, decays to magnetic monopoles and leaves us a Universe billions of times denser than the Universe which we see. How to get rid of the monopoles? Well, if we can get the protons to decay, we can have a grand unified theory, and if we have a grand unified theory we can have an inflationary model and get rid of the monopoles. How? We simply allow a pimple at the edge of the expanding fire ball to inflate to the Universe we see, and leave the monopoles behind. But again shucks. The inflationary models require that the present cosmological expansion rate should be on the escape velocity, and that requires that there should be at least ten times as much matter in the Universe as we thought was there. That would mean that the observed cosmological helium abundance, on which we based our Big Bang model, would be wrong for our model unless all that extra matter, the so called dark matter, responds only to gravity and to no other force. But there is still a problem. If the dark matter responds only to gravity,
why didn't it all fall into the galaxies? Oh no, it can't fall into
the galaxies because it can't get rid of its gravitational energy. Then it wouldn't be
in the haloes of the galaxies either, and that's where it is. But however much
one may doubt the Big Bang model, it isn't fair to make fun
of it without replacing it with something which one feels to be more likely. Let's stick to the observational evidence, and since
there's no observational evidence for creation, let's leave it out. So let's stick to
the observations. When we look out toward the border of the observable
Universe, imposed on us by the cosmological expansion, what we see
is that the radiation from there is gravely redshifted. (Actually it is the redshift itself that imposes the border.)That would mean that, as seen by us, the energy of the particles, and therefore their mass, is gravely reduced. Remember, we're sticking to the observations. Observationally the mass is reduced, and that has two very interesting consequences. First, all radiation running through such a field of low mass particles would be so often picked up and reradiated that it would be thermalized to 3K and give rise to the cosmic background radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1965. Second, the particles could recycle from the border. Because if the mass of the particles is small, their momentum must also be small. And, if the momentum approaches zero at that border, our uncertainty in that momentum must also approach zero. Then, by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, our uncertainty in their position must approach totality, and the particles can recycle back in. Is there any observational evidence that particles
are thus recycling back in by tunneling? Yes, indeed there is_ Measurements
by the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that there are some nine or
twelve clouds of hydrogen between the quasar 3C273 and ourselves.
According to the Big Bang model, there shouldn't be such clouds since
there is no way to put new hydrogen in there, and no way to have
such clouds hanging around for fifteen billion years without condensing
into something we could see. Measurements by the Hubble Telescope
also indicate that there is more than enough hydrogen in the great
intergalactic voids to make all the known galaxies. Where did all
that hydrogen come from if it didn't recycle from the border? The driving mechanism
for the cosmological expansion in this recycling model is simply
the loss of energy by the redshifting of the radiation. If the radiation
looses its energy by redshift because of the expansion, it drives the
expansion. The mechanism for the cosmological expansion in the Big Bang
model stands without explanation. It may be asked, what does this recycling cosmological model predict? Since it is a steady state model, it predicts that the Universe must have frustration built in or it couldn't go on like this. The ocean is trying to fall to the center of the
Earth but the rocks are in the way, and it gets frustrated. And the
rocks are trying to fall to the center of the Earth but the iron
of the Earth's core is in the way, and it gets frustrated. And the Earth
is trying to fall into the Sun but its inertia frustrates it, and it goes round and round. And the Sun is trying to fall into the center of the Galaxy and it goes round and round. The Galaxy itself is trying to merge with all the rest of the matter in the Universe but the cosmological expansion frustrates it. But even the expansion can't succeed because it recycles the particles back from the border. If the Universe didn't have frustration built in, it couldn't go on like this. And if it couldn't go on like this, all steady state models would be dead
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