8 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

As a kid, I would visit the top of the World Trade Center with its ginormous floor-to-ceiling windows.

That sounds "safer" than the glass balcony at the top of the Sears (Hancock) tower in Chicago. I could never build up the courage to venture out, even knowing the glass floor was nearly a foot thick!

2 hours ago, n4gix said:

That sounds "safer" than the glass balcony at the top of the Sears (Hancock) tower in Chicago. I could never build up the courage to venture out, even knowing the glass floor was nearly a foot thick!

There is a glass bridge like that, I think somewhere in China.

It has some sort of transparent display built in that can make it appear like the glass is cracking beneath your feet. I suspect I would laugh at that, but I know many people I would expect to absolutely lose their minds, if they saw that.

Found it!

Anyway, probably every day, we rely on the expertise and knowledge of others for our lives and safety. Seeing everything for yourself is attractive, but sometimes you just have to have faith that the engineers (and physicists!) know their stuff.... because its their job to do so.

 

Edited September 3, 20223 yr by HiFlyer

1 hour ago, n4gix said:

That sounds "safer" than the glass balcony at the top of the Sears (Hancock) tower in Chicago. I could never build up the courage to venture out, even knowing the glass floor was nearly a foot thick!

There's a glass floor panel at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto.  I had no trouble standing on it but most people won't do it.  I do have to admit, though, that looking down gives you a tingle in a private place.

I may have been on the one on top of the Hancock tower in Chicago.  I don't recall it though.  I've been to the top of both the Hancock tower and the Sears tower.  Also the World Trade Center in New York and the Empire State Building.  And the Space Needle in Seattle.

Also that tower in Tokyo.  I forgot the name of it.

I tend to gravitate toward high places.  That's not an oxymoron is it?  Gravitating to high places? 

Noel 

 

CMB is landmark evidence of the Big Bang origin of the universe. When the universe was young, before the formation of stars and planets, it was denser, much hotter, and filled with an opaque fog of hydrogen plasma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#:~:text=CMB is landmark evidence of,opaque fog of hydrogen plasma.

Or, instead of observing images of the Big Bang's afterglow from the Planck spacecraft, or WMAP, you could just de-tune an old CRT analogue TV and gaze at the interference, a few percent of which is from the CMB

 

 

Edited September 3, 20223 yr by martin-w

Here's the article about images from the Webb Space Telescope disproving the Big Bang *Theory*: https://principia-scientific.com/do-james-webb-telescope-images-disprove-the-big-bang-theory/

So, here's another thought: where did the singularity, that supposedly exploded and created all the "stuff" of the universe, come from in the first place?  Anyone?

For all I know the BB theory may be correct, but it still doesn't answer the ultimate question: how did the universe come into existence?

Dave

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Here's the article about images from the Webb Space Telescope disproving the Big Bang *Theory*: https://principia-scientific.com/do-james-webb-telescope-images-disprove-the-big-bang-theory/

I was looking at the papers referenced in this article and, although I couldn't understand 99% of what they said, I think none of them says there was no Big Bang. They do suggest that the JWST needs to provide more data.

Here is a quotation from one paper:

“Clearly it is premature to draw broad conclusion based on a single field, considering cosmic variance, clustering and lensing. However, these results show that JWST can obtain the scientific results it has been designed for.”

Also,  Allison Kirkpatrick  when asked the following question on Twitter:

“Do you question the Big Bang theory?  Genuinely asking, I came across this tweet through an article claiming there was no Big Bang and that a lot of the data from the Webb images support that- and I’m curious as to whether that's what you’re implying here.”

gave the following answer:

"Absolutely not! Galaxy evolution is actually a problem completely separate from the Big Bang. You can have a Big Bang and yet create no galaxies. One does not imply the other. I was referring to our current understanding of galaxy evolution."

Edited September 5, 20223 yr by dmwalker

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

So, here's another thought: where did the singularity, that supposedly exploded and created all the "stuff" of the universe, come from in the first place?  Anyone?

Well, they say the universe is expanding.  What happens if at some point it stops expanding and starts contracting.  And it eventually contracts into a singularity which starts another big bang and another universe.  This might have been going on forever.  No telling how many universes there were before this one or how many will be created after this one.

I'm sure others have thought of this but nevertheless I'm calling it Noel's Big Bang Yo-Yo Theory.  But take it with a grain of salt.  I had only a year of high school physics and never went to college.  So I have no credentials with which to even participate in this discussion.

Noel 

On 8/26/2022 at 9:39 AM, martin-w said:

Spoiler alert... the data from the JWST makes us even more convinced it did! 

There's a lot of nonsense being propagated on the internet at the moment to get clicks on YouTube etc. The claim is that the JWST has provided data that the Big Bang didn't happen.

In this video Anton clears up the confusion.

 

Did James Webb Prove Big Bang Theory Wrong? Here Are The Facts

 

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/20/ask-ethan-can-we-really-get-a-universe-from-nothing/?sh=25fcddc038ee

We have many ideas how the universe began. No definitive evidence yet.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/12/how-did-universe-begin.html?m=1

Edited September 5, 20223 yr by martin-w

5 hours ago, birdguy said:

I have no credentials with which to even participate in this discussion.

Since nobody knows the answer to 'the big question', you have as good credentials as anyone to discuss it; one might even argue you are actually better placed to do so, since you will not be a slave to any extablished common favourite theories and are therefore free of any bias on the matter.

I however, strongly suspect it was all created by the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and have yet to be proved wrong about that. All praise her translucent pink mane.

Edited September 5, 20223 yr by Chock

5 hours ago, birdguy said:

Well, they say the universe is expanding.  What happens if at some point it stops expanding and starts contracting.  And it eventually contracts into a singularity which starts another big bang and another universe.  This might have been going on forever.  No telling how many universes there were before this one or how many will be created after this one.

 

There are a number of cyclic universe theories. Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is one of them.

As I said above, we don't definitively know what (if anything) existed before the big bang but we do have a number of ideas.

Worth remembering that "nothing" isn't really nothing. It's replete with quantum fields and virtual particles popping in and out of existance. And the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle suggests that a universe can be created from the quantum vacuum.

All this has been discussed early in this thread. 

 

"But we can consider even more foundational questions. Since the atomists were wrong and emptiness is nowhere to be found, what was there before the big bang? Did our universe emerge from a vacuum fluctuation? These questions can only be answered within the framework of a predictive theory of quantum gravity that combines quantum mechanics and gravity, which we do not have as of yet.  Until it is developed, we will not figure out our cosmic roots."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/endless-creation-out-of-nothing/

 

Edited September 5, 20223 yr by martin-w

Back in the 1960s, there was a lot of debate about whether the Big Bang theory or the Steady State theory was more likely. Then one sarcastic London Daily Telegraph columnist came up with the perfect compromise, the Steady Bang theory, but it never gained traction.

Edited September 5, 20223 yr by dmwalker

Scotland always sheds light on such esoteric subjects as this...