It’s Past Time to Bury the Big Bang – Part III

Continuing from the last post the reasons why the Big Bang is in error and it is way past time to put it to rest (or bury it, so to speak). The first 13 point were covered in the previous two posts:

14) Even a small amount of diffuse neutral hydrogen would produce a smooth absorbing trough shortward of a Quasi-stellar object (QSO) Lyman-alpha emission line called the Gunn-Peterson effect. However, such is rarely seen, implying that most hydrogen in the universe has been re-ionized. A hydrogen Gunn-Peterson trough is now predicted to be present at a redshift z = 6.1. Observations of high-redshift quasars near z = 6 briefly appeared to confirm this prediction. However, a galaxy lensed by a foreground cluster has now been observed at z = 6.56, prior to the supposed reionization epoch and at a time when the Big Bang expects no galaxies to be visible yet. Moreover, if only a few galaxies had turned on by this early point, their emission would have been absorbed by the surrounding hydrogen gas, making these early galaxies invisible. So the lensed galaxy observation falsifies this prediction and the Big Bang theory it was based on. Another problem example: Quasar PG 0052+251 is at the core of a normal spiral galaxy. The host galaxy appears undisturbed by the quasar radiation, which, in the Big Bang, is supposed to be strong enough to ionize the intergalactic medium.

15) An excess of QSOs is observed around foreground clusters. Lensing amplification caused by foreground galaxies or clusters is too weak to explain this association between high- and low-redshift objects. This apparent contradiction has no solution under Big Bang premises that does not create some other problem. It particular, dark matter solutions would have to be centrally concentrated, contrary to observations that imply that dark matter increases away from galaxy centers. The high-redshift and low-redshift objects are probably actually at comparable distances, as Arp has maintained for 30 years.

16) The Big Bang violates the first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be either created or destroyed, by requiring that new space filled with “zero-point energy” be continually created between the galaxies. In the Las Campanas redshift survey, statistical differences from homogenous distribution were found out to a scale of at least 200 Mpc. This is consistent with other galaxy catalog analyses that show no trends toward homogeneity even on scales up to 1000 Mpc, yet the Big Bang requires large-scale homogeneity. On the other hand, the Meta Model and other infinite-universe models expect fractal behavior at all scales, and observations remain in agreement with that, not Big Bang.

17) Elliptical galaxies supposedly bulge along the axis of the most recent galaxy merger. However, the angular velocities of stars at different distances from the center are all different, making an elliptical shape formed in that way unstable. Such velocities would shear the elliptical shape until it was smoothed into a circular disk. Where are the galaxies in the process of being sheared? None are observable.

18) The polarization of radio emission rotates as it passes through magnetized extragalactic plasmas. Such Faraday rotations in quasars should increase (on average) with distance. If redshift indicates distance, then rotation and redshift should increase together. However, the mean Faraday rotation is less near z = 2 than near z = 1 (where quasars are apparently intrinsically brightest, according to Arp’s model).

20) If the dark matter needed by the Big Bang exists, microwave radiation fluctuations should have “acoustic peaks” on angular scales of 1° and 0.3°, with the latter prominent compared with the former. By contrast, if Milgrom’s alternative to dark matter (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) is correct, then the latter peak should be only about 20% of the former. Newly acquired data from the Boomerang balloon-borne instruments clearly favors the MOND interpretation over dark matter.

21) Redshifts are quantized for both galaxies and quasars, and so are other properties of galaxies. This should not happen under Big Bang premises, but it is observed as happening.

22) The number density of optical quasars peaks at z = 2.5-3, and declines toward both lower and higher redshifts. At z = 5, it has dropped by a factor of about 20. This cannot be explained by dust extinction or survey incompleteness. The Big Bang predicts that quasars, the seeds of all galaxies, were most numerous at earliest epochs.

23) The falloff of the power spectrum at small scales can be used to determine the temperature of the intergalactic medium. It is typically inferred to be 20,000°K, but there is no evidence of evolution with redshift. Yet in the Big Bang, that temperature ought to adiabatically decrease as space expands everywhere. This is another indicator that the universe is not really expanding.

24) Measurements of the two-point correlation function for optically selected galaxies follow an almost perfect power law over nearly three orders of magnitude in separation. However, this result disagrees with n-body simulations in all the Big Bang’s various modifications. A complex mixture of gravity, star formation, and dissipative hydrodynamics seems to be needed.

25) Emission lines for z > 4 quasars indicate higher-than-solar quasar metallicities. The iron to magnesium ratio increases at higher redshifts (earlier Big Bang epochs). These results imply substantial star formation at epochs preceding or concurrent with the QSO phenomenon, contrary to normal Big Bang scenarios.

26) The absorption lines of damped Lyman-alpha systems are seen in quasars. However, the HST NICMOS spectrograph has searched to see these objects directly in the infrared, but failed for the most part to detect them. Moreover, the relative abundances have surprising uniformity, unexplained in the Big Bang. The simplest explanation is that the absorbers are in the quasar’s own environment, not at their redshift distance as the Big Bang requires.

27) The luminosity evolution of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) cannot be adequately explained by a single evolutionary model. For example, BCGs with low x-ray luminosity are consistent with no evolution, while those with high x-ray luminosity are brighter on average at high redshift.

28) The fundamental question of why it is that at early cosmological times, bound aggregates of order 100,000 stars (globular clusters) were able to form remains unsolved in the Big Bang. However, it is no mystery in infinite universe models.

29) Blue galaxy counts show an excess of faint blue galaxies by a factor of 10 at magnitude 28. This implies that the volume of space is larger than in the Big Bang, where it should get smaller as one looks back in time.

Perhaps never in the history of science has so much quality evidence accumulated against a model so widely accepted within a field. Even the most basic elements of the theory, the expansion of the universe and the fireball remnant radiation, remain interpretations with credible alternative explanations. One must wonder why, in this circumstance, that four good alternative models are not even being comparatively discussed by most astronomers.

There seems little question that it is past time to bury the Big Bang and move on in cosmology to better and more accurate models!