Some recent evidence against the Big Bang

JStewart

I am submitting this on behalf of MazeHatter, who originally posted it here in the most recent open tread. Go there to upvote if you like this submission.

Begin MazeHatter:

I grew up thinking that the Big Bang was the beginning of it all. In 2013 and 2014 a good number of observations have thrown some of our basic assumptions about the theory into question. There were anomalies observed in the CMB, previously ignored, now confirmed by Planck:

Another is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres of the sky. This runs counter to the prediction made by the standard model that the Universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look.

Furthermore, a cold spot extends over a patch of sky that is much larger than expected.

The asymmetry and the cold spot had already been hinted at with Planck’s predecessor, NASA’s WMAP mission, but were largely ignored because of lingering doubts about their cosmic origin.

“The fact that Planck has made such a significant detection of these anomalies erases any doubts about their reality; it can no longer be said that they are artefacts of the measurements. They are real and we have to look for a credible explanation,” says Paolo Natoli of the University of Ferrara, Italy.

... One way to explain the anomalies is to propose that the Universe is in fact not the same in all directions on a larger scale than we can observe. ...

“Our ultimate goal would be to construct a new model that predicts the anomalies and links them together. But these are early days; so far, we don’t know whether this is possible and what type of new physics might be needed. And that’s exciting,” says Professor Efstathiou.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe

We are also getting a better look at galaxies at greater distances, thinking they would all be young galaxies, and finding they are not:

The finding raises new questions about how these galaxies formed so rapidly and why they stopped forming stars so early. It is an enigma that these galaxies seem to come out of nowhere.

http://carnegiescience.edu/news/some_galaxies_early_universe_grew_quickly

http://mq.edu.au/newsroom/2014/03/11/granny-galaxies-discovered-in-the-early-universe/

The newly classified galaxies are striking in that they look a lot like those in today's universe, with disks, bars and spiral arms. But theorists predict that these should have taken another 2 billion years to begin to form, so things seem to have been settling down a lot earlier than expected.

B. D. Simmons et al. Galaxy Zoo: CANDELS Barred Disks and Bar Fractions. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2014 DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stu1817

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141030101241.htm

The findings cast doubt on current models of galaxy formation, which struggle to explain how these remote and young galaxies grew so big so fast.

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/spitzer/splash-project-dives-deep-for-galaxies/#.VBxS4o938jg

Although it seems we don't have to look so far away to find evidence that galaxy formation is inconsistent with the Big Bang timeline.

If the modern galaxy formation theory were right, these dwarf galaxies simply wouldn't exist.

Merrick and study lead Marcel Pawlowski consider themselves part of a small-but-growing group of experts questioning the wisdom of current astronomical models.

"When you have a clear contradiction like this, you ought to focus on it," Merritt said. "This is how progress in science is made."

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7528/20140611/galaxy-formation-theories-undermined-dwarf-galaxies.htm

http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.1799

Another observation is that lithium abundances are way too low for the theory in other places, not just here:

A star cluster some 80,000 light-years from Earth looks mysteriously deficient in the element lithium, just like nearby stars, astronomers reported on Wednesday.

That curious deficiency suggests that astrophysicists either don't fully understand the big bang, they suggest, or else don't fully understand the way that stars work.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140910-space-lithium-m54-star-cluster-science/

It also seems there is larger scale structure continually being discovered larger than the Big Bang is thought to account for:

"The first odd thing we noticed was that some of the quasars' rotation axes were aligned with each other -- despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years," said Hutsemékers. The team then went further and looked to see if the rotation axes were linked, not just to each other, but also to the structure of the Universe on large scales at that time.

"The alignments in the new data, on scales even bigger than current predictions from simulations, may be a hint that there is a missing ingredient in our current models of the cosmos," concludes Dominique Sluse.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141119084506.htm

D. Hutsemékers, L. Braibant, V. Pelgrims, D. Sluse. Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2014

Dr Clowes said: "While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe. This is hugely exciting -- not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130111092539.htm

These observations have been made just recently. It seems that in the 1980's, when I was first introduced to the Big Bang as a child, the experts in the field knew then there were problems with it, and devised inflation as a solution. And today, the validity of that solution is being called into question by those same experts:

In light of these arguments, the oft-cited claim that cosmological data have verified the central predictions of inflationary theory is misleading, at best. What one can say is that data have confirmed predictions of the naive inflationary theory as we understood it before 1983, but this theory is not inflationary cosmology as understood today. The naive theory supposes that inflation leads to a predictable outcome governed by the laws of classical physics. The truth is that quantum physics rules inflation, and anything that can happen will happen. And if inflationary theory makes no firm predictions, what is its point?

http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/0411036.pdf

What are the odds 2015 will be more like 2014 where we (again) found larger and older galaxies at greater distances, or will it be more like 1983?

I am submitting this on behalf of MazeHatter, who originally posted it here in the most recent open tread. Go there to upvote if you like this submission.

Begin MazeHatter:

Another is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres of the sky. This runs counter to the prediction made by the standard model that the Universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look.

Furthermore, a cold spot extends over a patch of sky that is much larger than expected.

The asymmetry and the cold spot had already been hinted at with Planck’s predecessor, NASA’s WMAP mission, but were largely ignored because of lingering doubts about their cosmic origin.

“The fact that Planck has made such a significant detection of these anomalies erases any doubts about their reality; it can no longer be said that they are artefacts of the measurements. They are real and we have to look for a credible explanation,” says Paolo Natoli of the University of Ferrara, Italy.

... One way to explain the anomalies is to propose that the Universe is in fact not the same in all directions on a larger scale than we can observe. ...

“Our ultimate goal would be to construct a new model that predicts the anomalies and links them together. But these are early days; so far, we don’t know whether this is possible and what type of new physics might be needed. And that’s exciting,” says Professor Efstathiou.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe

We are also getting a better look at galaxies at greater distances, thinking they would all be young galaxies, and finding they are not:

The finding raises new questions about how these galaxies formed so rapidly and why they stopped forming stars so early. It is an enigma that these galaxies seem to come out of nowhere.

http://carnegiescience.edu/news/some_galaxies_early_universe_grew_quickly

http://mq.edu.au/newsroom/2014/03/11/granny-galaxies-discovered-in-the-early-universe/

The newly classified galaxies are striking in that they look a lot like those in today's universe, with disks, bars and spiral arms. But theorists predict that these should have taken another 2 billion years to begin to form, so things seem to have been settling down a lot earlier than expected.

B. D. Simmons et al. Galaxy Zoo: CANDELS Barred Disks and Bar Fractions. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2014 DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stu1817

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141030101241.htm

The findings cast doubt on current models of galaxy formation, which struggle to explain how these remote and young galaxies grew so big so fast.

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/spitzer/splash-project-dives-deep-for-galaxies/#.VBxS4o938jg

Although it seems we don't have to look so far away to find evidence that galaxy formation is inconsistent with the Big Bang timeline.

If the modern galaxy formation theory were right, these dwarf galaxies simply wouldn't exist.

Merrick and study lead Marcel Pawlowski consider themselves part of a small-but-growing group of experts questioning the wisdom of current astronomical models.

"When you have a clear contradiction like this, you ought to focus on it," Merritt said. "This is how progress in science is made."

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7528/20140611/galaxy-formation-theories-undermined-dwarf-galaxies.htm

http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.1799

Another observation is that lithium abundances are way too low for the theory in other places, not just here:

A star cluster some 80,000 light-years from Earth looks mysteriously deficient in the element lithium, just like nearby stars, astronomers reported on Wednesday.

That curious deficiency suggests that astrophysicists either don't fully understand the big bang, they suggest, or else don't fully understand the way that stars work.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140910-space-lithium-m54-star-cluster-science/

It also seems there is larger scale structure continually being discovered larger than the Big Bang is thought to account for:

"The first odd thing we noticed was that some of the quasars' rotation axes were aligned with each other -- despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years," said Hutsemékers. The team then went further and looked to see if the rotation axes were linked, not just to each other, but also to the structure of the Universe on large scales at that time.

"The alignments in the new data, on scales even bigger than current predictions from simulations, may be a hint that there is a missing ingredient in our current models of the cosmos," concludes Dominique Sluse.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141119084506.htm

D. Hutsemékers, L. Braibant, V. Pelgrims, D. Sluse. Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2014

Dr Clowes said: "While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe. This is hugely exciting -- not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130111092539.htm

In light of these arguments, the oft-cited claim that cosmological data have verified the central predictions of inflationary theory is misleading, at best. What one can say is that data have confirmed predictions of the naive inflationary theory as we understood it before 1983, but this theory is not inflationary cosmology as understood today. The naive theory supposes that inflation leads to a predictable outcome governed by the laws of classical physics. The truth is that quantum physics rules inflation, and anything that can happen will happen. And if inflationary theory makes no firm predictions, what is its point?

http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/0411036.pdf

What are the odds 2015 will be more like 2014 where we (again) found larger and older galaxies at greater distances, or will it be more like 1983?

As other posters have noted, this is not a case of overturning the 'big bang' in the sense that there was a time about 13 gigayears in the past when the universe was dense and hot and it has expanded since. Inflation (its veracity and the details thereof if it did indeed happen) and early galaxy formation are active areas of research.

Another is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres of the sky. This runs counter to the prediction made by the standard model that the Universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look.

I remember when that was discovered! It is very interesting. That and the 'dark flow', an apparent bias in the movement of galaxies across the visible universe. I have wondered if this apparent inhomogeneity in the early universe reduces the need for inflationary cosmology in the first place to explain what is observed? It was posited in the first place to explain extreme sameness in all directions of the CMB. That it runs counter to certain cosmological nuances does not go against the evidence that the universe is expanding and used to be dense and hot.

We are also getting a better look at galaxies at greater distances, thinking they would all be young galaxies, and finding they are not

They aren't noting their age, they are noting their star-forming status. And finding that many finished star formation much earlier than previous models suggested, suggesting models of galaxy and star formation are wrong. It should be noted that it does not take long after star formation stops for galaxies to lose their 'young' gleam - star brightness increases with the 3.5th power of mass and so star lifetime decreases with the 2.5th power of mass. A star 4x as massive as the sun will be 128x as bright and only live for a bit over 300 megayears. The thin scum of the largest stars (up to 100 solar masses) dominates the light produced by any given galaxy and goes away quite fast after star formation ceases, cosmologically speaking.

It should also be noted that there IS a very distinct arrow-of-time in star formation rates that points at the early universe being very different than the late universe: ARXIV, PDF Popular press

To quote myself from a previous post I made:

To make a long story short, a survery was made looking into deep space, and back in time up to 11 billion years, of a pretty good proxy of star formation (the emission lines produced by emission nebulae that are lit up like neon lights by the ultraviolet light of freshly-born huge stars). After doing some fancy math to correct for the expansion of space and the like the conclusions are striking - the modern average rate of star formation in the universe is less than 1/30 the peak rate of 11 billion years ago, and half of the stars in the universe are over 9 billion years old. To make matters even more interesting, the empirically-derived relationship between time and star formation actually converges to a finite number of stars when you project it into the future, and at infinity reaches a total number of stars born only 5% more than currently exist today.

95% of stars that will ever exist already exist.

This is a very strong tendency through time for star formation rates to be high early and tail off. (NOTE: if space weren't expanding, that star formation rate difference would be even higher than the above figure given the observations made.) Combined with the fact that there don't seem to be any stars older than the age of the cosmic microwave background radiation... yeah, something big happened 13 gigayears ago.

To my mind the cosmic microwave background radiation, the observation of the slow reionization of the universe from neutral hydrogen to hydrogen plasma over the course of hundreds of megayears after the first quasars, and the fact that if you fit models of space expansion and run them back to t=0 and calculate the densities and temperatures thereof and simulate nuclear reactions of the first few minutes after t=0 you can get out the primordial hydrogen and helium and isotope ratios that are observed (lithium 7 showing difficulties with the models with several possible implications which are being explored, including possibly relaxing the assumption of homogeneity) are the best pieces of evidence that about 13 gigayears ago there was a major event where a dense hot universe began expanding into a cool empty one. That and the redshift. Basically, something banged, and theyre still trying to figure out what did and why, and lots of details of the early universe are still being worked out. As is the apparent fact that the expansion is accelerating, and the fact that the best model so far for predicting the motions and spins of galaxies requires nonbaryonic mass.

Additionally, to my mind, any speculation as to if the big bang was truly the 'beginning of time', or one among many, or symmetrical about t=0, or all manner of other things is premature as there is insufficient data as to the nature of the event in the first place. The fact that an event happened seems clear though.