Hi piopio -
I hope you are enjoying a good day. You raise a lot of interesting points, and I have done a good bit of research in the astronomical literature to see what astronomers say in response.
I would be very pleased if you carefully read the sources I cite in this response, just as I have carefully read the sources you cited. And as I speak, I recognize that I am only an avid reader of astronomer, not a practicing scientist. I would be quite happy to have a research astronomer step into this thread and illuminate the discussion far more than I ever could. At the same time, I am not saying anything that the astronomers are not saying. I am not being “mega-optimistic,” unless you think that the whole scientific enterprise is an exercise in mega-optimism.
Before I start gushing on my latest reading, I think it’s important to understand what’s really going on in the Big Bang. It is a “framework,” or overarching theory, according to which the observable universe emerged from a “singularity” (a dimensionless, timeless point, if you will) billions of years ago and has expanded ever since. Time itself, along with the spatial dimensions we observe, came into being at the beginning of this expansion. This dovetails quite nicely with the Biblical doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The Big Bang framework is supported by an overwhelming amount of scientific data.
Within the framework, though, astronomers are working hard to fill in the fine details of cosmology. Astronomers have modeled the Big Bang in dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways over the past few decades. As new data have been discovered, they have forced astronomers to discard existing models and build better, more accurate models. This enterprise of refining models continues, which is why astronomers are still doing basic research, writing papers, holding colloquia, etc.
The critical point here is that when someone publishes an article about how certain data challenge the existing Big Bang models, that does not mean that Big Bang framework has been disproven. It simply means that the astronomical community is doing good science; they are using new and better data to refine their models.
To make my response as readable as possible, I want to summarize the discussion as clearly as possible. In this vein, I would categorize your position as having five objections to Big Bang cosmology:
(1) “Steady state” astronomers like Tifft and Hoyle never agreed with it.
(2) Dark energy and dark matter don’t seem right.
(3) “Great walls” are incompatible with Big Bang cosmology.
(4) Priester and Hoell believed Lyman-alpha forests from distant quasars demonstrate an age of roughly 25 billion years.
(5) Halton Arp’s quasar- was unjustly criticized by the astrophysics community.
Please forgive me if I have misunderstood or omitted anything. But this gives us a starting point.
I’d like to start with an overview, though: you acknowledged that none of your points would dispute the data from “standard candles” showing the universe is billions of years old. Perhaps God created the universe a few thousand years ago and only made it seem like it’s billions of years old, as you say. But do you see where that way of thinking can lead us? Did God really create a universe that would mislead us that way?
For that matter, perhaps you and I were really created 15 minutes ago, with memories and a physical appearance that make it seem like we’re a lot older. How would you disprove that? Once you say that a large body of scientific evidence (the age of light reaching the earth) is all a sham, and things aren’t really as they seem, anyone can say anything whatsoever without any fear of contradiction. The whole point of doing science becomes a waste, an exercise in futility, if it is possible to discard the results by saying that they were only made to look that way by God and do not comport with reality. I would humbly propose to you that we should not go down that road.
Now to your points:
(1) Tifft and Hoyle. In my previous response, I showed that Tifft’s redshift quantization model has been ruled out by subsequent research.Your statement that Tifft is still writing a blog doesn’t really respond to the research I cited. If you could show that the research I cited has been subsequently superseded, please let me know: I’m all ears.
As for Hoyle and the steady state theory, that has been superseded two generations ago by the overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang. I refer you to the link I cited above; you would find the evidence quite interesting, I’m sure. It’s not a criticism of individuals like Tifft and Hoyle to state that subsequent research has shown that some of their hypotheses were not correct. That’s the way science works.
(2) Dark energy doesn’t seem right. The fact that a scientific theory seems strange doesn’t mean it’s wrong. General relativity says that space is curved and clocks don’t all run at the same rate. Particle-slit experiments show that a single electron can be fired at 2 different slits and create an interference pattern. In other words, it seems to be passing through both slits simultaneously and interfering with itself. So what’s the problem with dark energy?
In fact, the evidence for dark energy is overwhelming.
(3) The “great walls.” The article you cited shows that, as of 2011, the existing Big Bang models did not accommodate the phenomenon. However, the Horizon 2 model simulation of 2013 showed that great walls are quite consistent with the Big Bang.
(4) Quasars and Lyman-alpha forests. I was unable to read the article you linked to because it is behind a paywall. However, I managed to dig up a subsequent discussion of the same data by the same authors. In this article, it is clear that the authors consider several different models and assumptions for the curvature of space, the Hubble constant, and other parameters to cosmological equations such as Friedmann’s. One of the solutions they discuss in Bahcall’s, which would have yielded an age of 14 billion years. However, they chose (for reasons I can’t really understand as a non-astronomer) a different set of parameters which led to the conclusion of 25 billion year old quasars. One of the key points to note is that Priester had a strong preference for a solution that relied on baryons, and little dark matter.
Already, their conclusion is suspect, because subsequent studies of the gravitation within spiral galaxies show that roughly 90% of their gravitation results from a halo of dark matter and dark energy. Moreover, Thomas and Schulz showed in 2000 that their quasar data could be reconciled with the standard candle data by introducing two additional parameters to the models.
(5) Halton Arp. As the Telegraph obituary mentioned, Arp was unable to get telescope time because he refused to provide a research agenda. That would be somewhat akin to expecting to get a loan from a bank without filling out an application. For whatever reason, he thought he didn’t have to follow the rules that his fellow astronomers had to follow. I can’t say I blame the observatories for insisting that he follow the rules. If he felt ostracized, it was because of his own actions.
In addition, this explanation of quasars and Lyman-alpha forests from a UCLA astronomer shows that the data flatly contradict Arp’s conjectures.
A final point about Arp: the Telegraph obit mentioned that the Wolf effect was proven by other scientists. That is true, but the proof came from sound wave analysis. To apply the Wolf effect to quasars, you would need to show the existence of several things which are completely absent from the data we have. As one of Arp’s former students wrote:
“One can easily spot potential problems with the theory presented here. For example, we have been
deliberately vague about the underlying physical nature of the scattering medium, other than
specifying its anisotropic coherence properties. The scatterer, which is assumed to have a ‘white
noise’ power spectrum (implying that its fluctuations are very energetic), is situated further away
from the central engine than the line emitting clouds (which cannot be too hot, otherwise they
would have completely ionized, making line radiation impossible). Although our results apply
for a broad spectral range, we have not considered the shifts of absorption lines or of the 21cm
radio line. We have ignored the unscattered radiation and the efficiency of the scattering process
(although it is possible a stimulated version of the spontaneous scattering process considered
here is applicable). Also the issue of spectral linewidths has not been addressed.”
In other words, the effort to find any reality behind Arp’s conjectures hasn’t even reached first base.
My friend piopio: I want to encourage you to read more broadly. Proverbs 18:17 says-
The first one to plead his cause seems right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him.
This verse is saying that we need to carefully consider both sides of an argument before reaching a conclusion. Are you reading as much material from the mainstream scientific community as you read from creation science sources? If not, I would encourage you to stoke your curiosity engine, follow the advice of Proverbs 18:17, and see what the scientific community has discovered about the universe our God created. I have read a lot of both sides of this debate in my lifetime, and I read everything you linked to very carefully. I hope you will do the same.
God bless.
It demonstrates the mechanism by which a vast cosmic void (i.e., the space between 2 “walls”) could form.