Why such a Bold statement?...

I used to Adore the Big Bang Theory. It went along with all Manner of other nifty explanations for what we See and Interact with in the universe.

It seemed to go Hand in Hand with advances in Genome research and Quantum Physics in terms of explaining how things all Began... WOW... Imagine... we can say what the Universe was like 10^-38 Seconds after its Formation!

I Followed it along from when I was a Child, back when it was still Competing with the Steady State and Oscillating Universe models. It seemed to start out as such a nice Simple model. Hot Gases in stars produce lines of very particular Colors. Folks observed that if you check the lines from distant Galaxies, the colors of the lines are slightly Redder or Bluer than they should be.

So the Doppler Effect was invoked. You know it well from the Sound of a passing Ambulance, making the pitch HIGHER when it approaches and LOWER when it has passed by. The same thing happens with Light, except that instead of a lower Pitch as something recedes, you get Redder light. This is called a Redshift

Relative motion...

Stationary Moving Away

Edwin Hubble (whose namesake Telescope floats in orbit) discovered that, as he looked outwards into the Universe, instead of seeing a mix of Blue and Red shifts, practically everything was shifted to the Red, and the further outward you Looked, the Redder things got.

So, goes the basic thinking behind the Big Bang... that must mean that everything in the Universe is receding from us at huge Speeds. If it's RECEding, it must have been closer in the past. So, if you go further into the Past, you must reach a point where everything is together at the same Point.

I watched it evolve from a Simple theory at its start through to its present-day Complexity. A lot of the Big Bang's current-day problems are due to its best Estimates of the age of the Universe being far too Young. At Most, on the order of 15 Billion years.

This isn't enough Time. I keep running across articles about Galaxies found at extremely high Redshifts, which is, in their own words, "Uncomfortably close to the beginning of the Universe". The Milky Way's own slow Rotation would only allow for 40 Rotations since the start of the Universe. We are accruing a lot of Evidence of large-scale Structures in the universe, which would require time to form.

Various sundry and Bizarre explanations have been sought. Inflationary theory, where space must have expanded Faster than the speed of light for a while, one-dimensional Cosmic s-t-r-i-n-g-s that have really high Gravity to help form the structures in time, and various attempts to get Ripples to somehow form in this otherwise perfectly Smooth-and-symmetricaL primordial *Explosion*

All to save the Lynchpin of the whole theory, which is the premise that the Doppler shift is the one and Only cause of Redshift.

NOTE: Hubble himself did not unilaterally ascribe redshifts to actual velocities - see this page, especially the scan from Hubble's American Scientist article.

I couldn't get around the Doppler effect problem myself until I heard about the Compton effect, which is the lengthening of the Wavelength of light interacting with stationary Electrons. It is typically illustrated as a Deflection, but those who have done the "Random Walk Analysis" have should that it isn't Necessarily the case. Through the telescope, even through interstellar Dust, images are dimmed but not blurred.

What would be Required for the Compton effect to have a profound Redshift effect? Interstellar and Intergalactic matter is what. Hard to See? You bet, but it's Testable. Grote Reber found the black night sky was Bright in the 100+ meter radio wavelength in 1977. An Orbital hectometer radio telescope could provide us much-needed Data, but, as with most Institutions, the Big Bang theorists have no need of such Observations, and with the Stranglehold on minds Big Bangism has right now... don't hold your ~BREATH~.

That said, there are possible Problems with the Compton effect as well.

One of the Best and most maligned of the scientists involved in the Quest for what's really going on out there is Halton "Chip" Arp, a former student of Hubble's, keeping alive the Concept of a large, slow, old Universe from decades of observation, spurred on by many of his Observations of peculiar galaxies.

The following list of Assertions can be made from a survey of his work and that of other Scientists working on the Controversy:

• Redshifts can be attributed to three different factors:
  • Doppler (for rotation and local movement)
  • Age-based (based on the age of the galaxy, younger means redder)
  • Cosmological (based on distance, but not likely velocity - may be related to age-based)
• Active galaxies eject material along their poles and equators, often in opposing pairs
• Most of the so-called collisions seen in space are much too improbable to occur - they are much more likely to be ejection events
• Polar ejections give rise to quasars
• Equatorial ejections may give rise to spiral arm material (my own conjecture - Arp simply shows observations of quasars inside existing arms) or quasars that may or may not escape
• Quasars are extremely likely to be associated with a nearby active galaxy
• Quasars are very young, thus very redshifted, and are much closer than their "redshift distance"
• Quasars evolve into normal galaxies, increasing in optical brightness and decreasing in redshift
• Redshift is unusually "quantized", giving the false impression from distance measurements that we are in the center of shells of galaxies

For me, it's a test of Reasonability. Either the universe Flung itself apart with twelve tightly controlled Physical constants that, if changed slightly, wouldn't even let us be here, lets Galaxies form extremely quickly as they teeter on the Brink of flying apart, that looks old but isn't, that's filled with Invisible matter in exotic forms (the normal estimates on dark matter aren't enough), and for some reason is Accelerating its expansion (!)...

...or is the universe an Old, relatively stable, big place where physical Constants don't need to be within a narrow range, where the Cosmic Microwave Background is just from the average temperature of Intergalactic material (otherwise, why on Earth would it still be "such a perfect blackbody [heat] spectrum"?), and which will be around for a Long time to come?

So There you have it. I think the Big Bang will eventually be in even worse Trouble than it is, but sheer academic Stubbornness will keep it alive until the winds of Fashion change :)

Still, I Sigh for cosmology. What are we doing, Wasting the youth, middle and old age of some of our best and brightest minds on such Far-from-reality and nearly untestable theories like String Theory, and avoiding finding out some pretty Interesting rules of Nature by insisting that Nature must bend to our Math instead of the other way around?

Did you know that back in Newton's time, the theory was that the Universe was Infinite? From what I can tell, the major thought that brought that worldview Down (besides all manner of religious, political and societal changes) was that, Mathematically, if you have an Infinite Universe, the sky should be infinitely Bright (this is known as Olber's Paradox). Mind you, this was Predicated upon the (reasonable) conclusion that Empty space was... well, Empty... empty of [enough] matter that would interact with Light

Also see John Kierin's The Big Bang is Wrong page and Vincent Sauvé's Assertions Challenged web site.