Thread: We can prove dream sharing is real

Some scientists cannot stomach the idea

Some scientists will not surrender to not knowing. The information we have available is that the universe is expanding isotropically, meaning in every direction uniformly. The idea was first based on a study by Hubble that showed that most distant objects have a redshift in their electromagnetic spectra. That means that as the light was emitted from luminous bodies that were headed very speedily away, it was stretched out towards the "redder" side, which contains longer waves. It's like sound from a car passing by you, the sound waves are compressed when coming near you and it sounds higher, but as the car drives away the pitch drops noticeably, because the waves are stretched out.

We can know that these objects are not simply "red", because we use a spectrograph, a tool that separates incoming light into a spectrum, a "rainbow" of sorts, leaving very clear black lines where no light is coming from the object. It looks much like a bar code. Each element has its own distinct fingerprint. Red shifted galaxies in the distance have the sort of spectrograph that we would expect, except that the further away the object is, the more the lines have moved up the "red" side of the spectrum, simply shifting their position. Hence, redshift.

From this we can extrapolate that at one point in the past, the universe was much closer together, as objects at the end of the light horizon, the end of what we can see, would have been set in motion an unfathomably long time ago.

I am familiar with the basics of the big bang, that it "came from a point smaller than an atom", that you aren't making that up. I don't know why the conversation/argument has turned in this direction but you aught to learn about it. I'm sure shadowofwind has some things to say about it, as well.

Metric expansion, that space is expanding uniformly, is virtually accepted by all because it lies on a wealth of evidence. Frankly I can't write all of it. Google it. On the the big bang:

Big-bang like predictions first emerged in the 1920s. People used relativity to predict a "starting point" of rapid expansion, then followed by uniform, isometric expansion of space in all directions without an actual center. It's difficult to imagine, because it's different from everything in common human experience. One common example is a balloon with marker dots on it. As you blow it up, all of the points grow further away from each other. The bad thing about that visualization is that you say, "but what about the center of the balloon?" Space is the material of the balloon; not the air inside of it. The analogy is limited.

The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, or CMB, was discovered after it was predicted by big bang theorists. A surface of last scattering, where a pretty homogenous cloud of radiation was in the background of everything, red shifted to show that it is expanding in every direction. To explain expansion a little better, gravity has overcome expansion in small pockets that we call galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. Lone galaxies and clusters in the background have clear redshifts, not so much with the local group that is actually slowly headed closer to us, thus "blue shifted".

Other evidence, the theory predicted lone pockets of gas early in the beginning, consisting largely of the simplest element, hydrogen. Then, as they were compressed by gravity, they became steadily brighter. The first primeval stars were forming, beginning to undergo nuclear fission and fusion. From these, heavier elements were formed, ejected in the death of stars and spread out into the dust that is common in "old galaxies". Gravity forced these new nebulae and their formed stars into larger cosmological structures. Large collections of stars, whirling around huge compressed points of bright light, we have the galaxies.

These are often found in groups, clusters, consistent with big bang predictions of larger formations coming into being as time passed. Larger than that, we can see sorts of "threads", or lines where objects are grouped by gravity, snaking and weaving throughout the cosmos much like a collection of soap bubbles, where the matter is found in the "bubble" part, and there is a whole lot of empty space in-between everything.

Recently, in 2011, pockets of "pristine gas" were discovered-- pure hydrogen. Massive pockets of hydrogen(we can tell by their spectrographs). Strong evidence indeed of an early universe whose physical matter is almost exclusively hydrogen. That is why we have a great abundance of light elements-- loads of it is left over from the big bang itself.

As for things expanding faster than light, it's quite the problem to explain, isn't it?

It is believed, not because scientists are all huffy and offended by other ideas, but because it is a solution to a problem and it is supported by some amount of evidence. This is why it triumphs your "f!$% it, god did it" mentality. You've said so many times that "it seems to me like", and "I think it just"... Don't you see that it doesn't matter what you think, because you aren't out there doing mind frying research and looking at data, and you do not have a background in astrophysics so it's very easy of you to say, whelp, "I think it just ___", and there's no pressure on you to explain yourself. You have an idea about the way things work so you can see everything through that lens. However, science seeks to "remove the lens" in that way, to actually view the universe without preconceptions and biases. You think science can just say "god did it"? Absolutely not, not until god turns around and says "here I am!". They are in the pursuit of knowledge, and do not just "believe in" X or Y willy nilly. You say "why can't just believe ___", because that is anti-science! You don't just believe based on what is easiest to believe in!

... Some scientists cannot stomach the idea... They instead choose to believe... So those people choose to believe... they want to avoid the idea that everything suddenly appeared... can not allow themselves to believe in a sudden creation... Maybe it offends their atheistic idiology in some cases...

What are you talking about? There aren't just a load of astrophysicists walking around saying "bollocks to god, I'm going to fudge a way for the universe to work without him!" Science dives into it without preconceptions of a god or gods, and in order for you to rest on that, you have to previously have formed ideas of it. The god or gods that you and others believe responsible do not emerge from the evidence, they were present in your mind before ever viewing the evidence. That's all I'm going to say for now.

I didn't answer much about the infinitesimally small early universe, because we don't know enough right now, but we're working on it. I don't know enough to answer you. I'm shocked to see so clearly an example of saying "science doesn't know X, so wouldn't it just be easier to say it was god?"