Thread: Flat universe and the big bang theory

great music and vision, thank you! I must watch that series one day.

Now comes the really challenging part ( which I do with a sense of fun and puckness) Those science minded individuals out there I would encourage you to use the laws of permutations to calculate the accumlative statistical likelhood of the big bang being correct noting the few of the many probabilities in the first posting that it needs to be held true. heres a link if you need it.
Probability theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now having done that (please be civil and scientific ) I ask why is "God just did it" any less remote an idea ?
Ladies and gentlemen start your engines.

Perhaps God is the uncaused cause and he just did do it?

Soapboxmom

consolidated,

You are no doubt referring to the article in Scientific American this month by Paul Steinhardt. He makes a very eloquent case for the defects in Inflation Theory, and in addition points out some of its strengths. Further elaborations on the article can be found at the SciAm web site. Steinhardt’s arguments are not universally accepted, and are in fact a minority view. That does not make them wrong however. Some of the rebuttals to his arguments include that at the moment there is no better theory available that is supported by the preponderance of data (and Steinhardt is trying to develop his own theory, so may not be the most unbiased author). Admittedly, we do not have all of the data necessary to validate inflation theory. COBE and subsequent probes have generated a lot of data in support of inflation, and the mainstream view is still that inflation is the best we’ve got for now. Second, the data show that the observable universe is astoundingly flat as well as astoundingly uniform. It is incredibly unlikely that such a state could arise from the rapid initial conditions of the Big Bang (which is thought of as an explosion, but wasn’t anything of the sort). Inflation is one way of explaining not just the uniformity and flatness, but also a lot of other observational data. Steinhardt points out (correctly IMO) that the current version of inflation theory (not Guth’s original version, but the so-called “new” theory) relies on things that are improbable and has some gaps. His arguments on various individual points appear to have merit, but the individual points do not lead to a new theory (yet??). The situation as I see it is that our present state is incredibly unlikely regardless of how it is modeled. For a model to be able to generate the near-zero values for lack of flatness or nonuniformity, it must be very sensitive to perturbation (which is part of Steinhardt’s argument). The analogy is that it is difficult to accurately distinguish small differences between large quantities – how good of a scale would you need to have in order to differentiate between one billion grams and one billion and one grams? The third rebuttal for Steinhardt’s argument in the anthropic principle. We exist, and if rare events must occur in order for us to exist, then those rare events must have happened in our universe. In many cosmological models, there are an infinity of universes, and thus even rare events occur. While this is not all that satisfying, it is a mathematically consistent argument. 10 to the 100th power is a LOT less than infinity…….

In all emergent science, data collection and theory proposal, testing, and refinement occur simultaneously. You are correct in saying that inflation and the Big Bang are the best theories we have at the moment. It is also correct to say that there are significant anomalies, pointed out by Steinhardt and many others.

I'll leave the "God Just Did It" part alone.......however, if you are interested, Hawking's lastest book addresses that specific issue.

Originally Posted by consolidation

great music and vision, thank you! I must watch that series one day.

Now comes the really challenging part ( which I do with a sense of fun and puckness) Those science minded individuals out there I would encourage you to use the laws of permutations to calculate the accumlative statistical likelhood of the big bang being correct noting the few of the many probabilities in the first posting that it needs to be held true. heres a link if you need it.
Probability theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now having done that (please be civil and scientific ) I ask why is "God just did it" any less remote an idea ?
Ladies and gentlemen start your engines.