lpetrich

As described in his new article, <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/bigbangredux.shtml" target="_blank">I Was a Big Bang Skeptic</a>, he has "converted" to belief in the Big Bang.

He acknowledged that his earlier views had contained some confusions about what the Big Bang was, confusing the Universe's early history with its ultimate origin. In particular, he neglected to lay out the Universe's various eras and tell us what he finds the most convincing. Which he has still failed to do. I think it strange that someone otherwise so expert on historical methodology should fail to do something so simple.

Present: t ~ 13 Gyr, T ~ 2.726 K

Stars, galaxies, quasars (which mostly burn out after the first few billion years)

t ~ 0.5-1 Gyr, T ~ 30 K

The Dark Ages (no luminosity, UV-opaque); matter collapses into large-scale structure

t ~ 300,000 yrs, T ~ 3000 K (Recombination; Universe stops being photon-opaque; CMB goes back to this time)

t ~ 3 min, T ~ 10^9 K (Nucleosynthesis: light elements form)

t ~ 1 s, T ~ 10^10 K (Universe stops being neutrino-opaque; neutrons start decaying)

t ~ 10^-6 s, T ~ 10^13 K (Quarks freeze out into hadrons)

t ~ 10^-12 s, T ~ 10^16 K (Electroweak interaction splits into electromagnetic and weak ones)

t ~ 10^-36 s, T ~ 10^28 K (?) (Inflation; a phase of exponential expansion that leaves the Universe very flat -- also, GUT splits into strong and electroweak interactions)

t ~ 10^-43 s, T ~ 10^32 K (???) (Quantum-gravity era; Theory of Everything splits into gravity and GUT)

From <a href="http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/early.html" target="_blank">this course outline</a>.

The earlier phases are, not surprisingly, very speculative; RC seemed to mix them up with the later phases, to the extent that he had understood BB theory. Redshifts and BB nucleosynthesis are a far cry from origin at a single point or quantum fluctuation.

[ September 20, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]

[ September 20, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Ted Hoffman

Lpetrich
In particular, he neglected to lay out the Universe's various eras and tell us what he finds the most convincing. Which he has still failed to do.

I think he does state what he finds most convincing:
The guy did his homework though. I think its impressive. But of course I am not qualified to critically evaluate his write-up.

lpetrich

True, but he had never done the layout that I'd done.

And here is <a href="http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/errors.html" target="_blank">a nice site that rebuts some BB skeptics</a>.

Rusting Car Bumper

I like Richard Carrier. I like his stuff greatly.

I am confused though.

I still do not understand why he was not convinced.

I mean its one thing to not understand the arguments or their complexities and say one is not convinced. That's simply good thinking. The Big Bang is such an animal for such skepticism. He is trained in history and not specifically in physics that I am aware of. His writings on history, as far as I can tell, are great. They are certianly lucid and understandable to someone who is not a historian. I have, however, taken exception to various statements he has made in general writings on science. For example, he made statements about the use of the term "Law" by scientists which were completely innacurate.

I have a degree in physics and although I never went into cosmology, I investigated most of the arguments he states here about 10 years ago. Of course the inflation thing is more recent but most of what he explains hasn't changed or has merely gotten stronger. Being more versed in the mathematics of how this stuff gets accomplished and in fact having studied things like decay rates gives one more confidence when such evidences are used.

Now I am not a historian. (He is.) I accept that I may not understand the various complexities of various periods due to lack of training and especially lack of familiarity with first source writings and other facts. So when I do not understand or accept an explanation in history I do not raise a stink about it. I meely accept that I have more to learn.

In any case this puzzles me.

DC

lpetrich

Here are some threads on the subject from the 2001 S&S archive:

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=000324&p=" target="_blank">Can We Be Skeptical of the Big Bang Theory?</a>
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=000545&p=" target="_blank">Richard Carrier's Big-Bang Skepticism</a>

I also find his previous views rather odd; they seemed too much like crackpottery, and more specifically, like creationist arguments. He showed little familiarity with the appropriate literature, he viewed Halton Arp as a Galileo-ish martyr, and he confused different aspects of the BB theory.

And in a previous thread, I did what I did here: I laid out various eras of the BB. And back then, he failed to tell us what parts he found unconvincing.

However, in fairness, we ought to give RC credit for not using one really stupid argument: <a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/huascar.htm" target="_blank">Is the Big-Bang a Religious Hoax?</a>, by a certain Huascar Terra do Valle.

Which is something like Voltaire's rejection of the aquatic origin of fossil-containing rocks around 250 years ago; he had tried to debunk that view because such rocks had seemed like excellent evidence of Noah's Flood.