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Yay! My first question on here :)

So, I've been researching information about the big bang theory for a good few months now, and I recently stumbled across this article detailing some of the biggest scientific issues the theory has.

https://techreader.com/top-ten/top-ten-scientific-flaws-in-the-big-bang-theory/

Now, admittedly there are some things in this article that I either don't know a lot about and in the case of point 10, wasn't even aware of the existence of, but that aside, how much of what is written here actually correct? Are these real issues the big bang theory has, or is this just a bunch of nonsense written by a guy (or girl) who clearly doesn't know his/her cosmology all that well?

PS: Don't bother with the comments at the bottom of the article. All you'll find there are a bunch of people either agreeing with the article, writing their own theories on the origin of the universe or using the article as an excuse to validate God's existence.

Crystal King
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1 Answers1

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This is not a well researched article. Most of the problems at best only contradict early versions of the big bang theory.

  1. Grand unified theories, which are appealing models for the early universe, would indeed produce magnetic monopoles. One of the reasons for introducing inflation (which is usually considered an extension of the big bang theory rather than a refutation of it) was to introduce a mechanism that would make the monopoles extremely diluted. A previous question contains more detail.
  2. The flatness problem was an even stronger motivation for inflation. The pre-inflation universe can have all sorts of curvature before it is smoothed out by the exponentially expanding period.
  3. Instead of recognizing the possibility that someone else may have had this idea before, the author should recognize the possibility that it's nonsense. Astronomers regularly see stars which are billions of years old, or in the process of forming, or both. Moreover, they see the cosmic microwave background which decisively favors the big bang scenario over a steady state.
  4. I don't see why the big bang or any other good theory would predict a perfectly uniform universe. Early critics of the big bang were worried that the observed universe was too uniform to be compatible with expansion. This is again solved by inflation which sends impurities into far off regions of space after they've had time to very nearly come to thermal equilibrium.
  5. Saying that Aleph, Gamow, Hubble, Guth and other architects of the big bang dreamed up dark matter and dark energy to save their theory is completely false. Direct observations of galaxy rotation curves and even more direct observations of the bullet cluster are what make dark matter a good theory. Dark energy, while more mysterious, also has observable effects. The fact that big bang paradigms are compatible with these two additions should count in their favour.
  6. Now the author is finally mentioning inflation but only in a very poorly informed rant. The fact that there is a "speed limit" on matter in no way implies that there is also one on the expansion of space.
  7. The big bang suggests that the universe started off highly ordered and gained entropy, not vice versa. However, the extremely low initial entropy does have some people worried. This is where much talk of the anthropic principle comes from since most initial conditions would not be compatible with life, let alone life which perceives time to have a direction.
  8. Ignoring the problems with how he paraphrased the first law of the thermodynamics, this is a strawman because most modern cosmologists don't claim "something came from nothing". Eternal inflation is also perfectly compatible with their data. Even so, conservation of energy is not as straightforward as one might think.
  9. Data shows that the universe is expanding. A non-expanding model (even if it has no free parameters and accomplishes every other goal) is therefore wrong.
  10. This is a restatement of the author's confusion over what inflation is.
Connor Behan
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