The End of Cosmology.

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Permalink Reply by Nellie Makarova-Cross on March 25, 2010 at 11:24am

I read John's blog as quoted earlier :


AH! One of my favorites! I am glad you asked. This is not a PhD. opinion, just the result of a lot of thought. maybe a little reason tossed in irrationally, OF COURSE!

This entire theory is based on one observation. Edwin Powell Hubble, using long exposure photograhic film, he discovered that our Milky Way Galaxy had neighbors that were Galaxies too, lots of them. He also noted that the spectrum of the visible light captured, shifted toward the "red" fequency. This observation suggests, that these galaxies are moving away from the Earth. He theorized that if two masses are moving away from each other, they must have occupied the same space at one time. That makes sense.
If you hit a ball with a bat, the ball is traveling away from the bat.....but what if you swing a bat and your buddy throws a ball away from you....GEE! You might think that the bat and ball were in contact.....Glad that I thought of that.

After literally thousands of galaxy spectrum measurements, all demonstrating a "doppler like" shift in light frequency, the BIG BANG THEORY was born.....Now we know that there are billions of galaxies containg billions of stars...Wow that is a lot of mass!

But there are observations and calculations that may contradict the BB theory.
The actual Science and Math is beyond my comprehension, however this is what I understand.

Astronomers have calculated that there is not enough "known" matter in the Universe to substantiate the BB theory from a gravitational perspective. To make the BB theory comply, they predicted that there must be "dark matter" throughout the Universe. Dark matter is matter that we cannot observe. They used to speculate that there were alternate Universes in different dimensions, but that didn't fly well in the face of reason. Great for Science Fiction stories though.

Everytime we discover a new galaxy that is at the outer edge, we push back the estimated date of the BB. I have a small problem with that, it always coincides with the distance of the outermost galaxy. If a galaxy is determined to be 14 Billion light years away, then the BB occured 14 Billion years ago.
That would imply that the relative motion of that galaxy is the speed of light...HMMMM....OH!
A recent notable Phyicist explained that, at the time of the BB,,,the laws of nature did not exist.
So we cannot understand how matter got where it was....."Please pass the KoolAid. our spaceship is almost here."

I see a pattern here....Is the BB a Scientific Theory or an article of Faith. A Scientific Theory is a belief based upon observations, experimentation and reason. Faith is a belief based on Reason alone. The supporters of the BB have crossed the line from Science to Faith.

There was one interesting Science program that I watched about a year ago. A group of scientists were attempting to lower the temperature of a gas to Absolute Zero, -270 degrees Kelvin. A temperature, at which, there is no random molecular motion. They could not reach -270, but they came within a few degrees. One of their experiments involved passing a laser beam through the gas. They observed that there was a reduction in the speed of light...OH BOY! Poor EINSTEIN! He rolled over with that discovery. So why am I relating this experiment....If a beam of light must travel for 14 Billion Years through the vastness and near "absolute zero" stillness of space...How reliable is our observation of that beam of light? I'm not sure, but that was some trip!

One last little problem, the Milky Way Galaxy is predicted to collide with another neighboring Galaxy in the next billion or so years....I guess nobody told that Galaxy that it was traveling in the wrong direction....Where are those Space Police when we need them?
One last note! We exist in a dynamic Universe, everything is in motion. the Earth revoles around the Sun, the Sun revolves around a "Central Point" of the Milky Way and.....What does the Milky Way revolve around????? That's a big question"

and thought about my classroom discussions.

What is the best approach to teach students?

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Permalink Reply by Nellie Makarova-Cross on March 25, 2010 at 11:42am

My understanding of the End of Cosmology is that we get very close to the limitations of our minds ( we can not comprehend eternity) and for this reason to the notion of God. Should we do that in our classrooms?

From the days of Keppler some scientists are looking for the God's design of the Universe.
My understanding is that we ( in the Milky Way Galaxy) are not only moving away from the point of explosion,
but are accelerating at the same time. This means that some unknown force is pulling us towards itself.
It is not known what made the explosion of the BB and is not known what is pulling us towards itself, which means that for the lack of the better answer we start with the notion of God and we end with it.
In my classroom there were some statements that being a scientist we can not conduct an experiment where
the presence of God can be established, nor can we reproduce it again and again, so we can not neither prove
nor disprove its presence, neither can we strictly speaking define how this higher power "looks like", so we leave
the notion of God as a notion of belief, or otherwise we would continue to look for it.
At this point it is time to add that I am a Christian.

By the way,who is Steve Hawkins?

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Permalink Reply by John J Caprice on March 25, 2010 at 7:43pm

Dear Nellie,
Sorry about my mis-spelling of his name, Stephen Hawking. He is one of the most noted Physicist / Astronomer / Mathematician in the world, Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking for a quick bio.

Faith and Science cannot be joined. By definition they are inherently different.

I went to a Catholic High School, the Priests were reasonable men, They welcomed knowledge along with their Faith, There was no contradiction no conflict of Faith.

"The soul of man was infused by God at some point in our evolutionary journey." This essence, this soul, stood man apart from all the other creatures of our known world. (Made sense to me!)

Our Faith is in Salvation, an everlasting existence. What a terrible waste of awareness it would be, if there was an END, a nothingness after death. I prefer to believe that there is an awakening and an answer to all my questions. I want an absolute knowledge of it all. Not to compete with God, but with His Blessing.

There is no need to prove creation. Einstein, a man of Faith, preferred a stable Universe theory.

The whole matter of the Universe is in motion, Is it traveling in one direction, or is it following a orbital path?

I lean toward the orbit idea. We're just swirling around and around for trillions and trillions of years.
I said "idea", not theory, no one has professed this concept. Their too busy with the BB.

We all have beliefs, our Faith gives us hope and provides direction,
The Atheist believes as well, but their end is the end.
JJC

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