Your BICEPS Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
If you’ve read the news in the past few days,
you’ve seen many claims that the Big Bang theory
has been proven correct by recent evidence from a
telescope called the BICEP2 stationed at the South
Pole that has been viewing the universe for the last
three years.1
Are the claims true? The short answer is, no. The
long answer will require us to give a short history
of the Big Bang theory and then go through some
of the data of the BICEP2 telescope.
Actually, BICEP2 wasn’t looking specifically for whether the Big Bang occurred. The Big Bang theory is
really no longer considered a “theory” in modern cosmology. It is considered a scientific fact. Just ask
any of the cosmologists who have tried to show the contradictions and missing evidence of the Big Bang
theory over the past few decades. Here are a few samples from some mainstream objections:
What if the big bang never happened?...”Look at the facts,” says Riccardo Scarpa of the
European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile. “The basic big bang model fails to predict
what we observe in the universe in three major ways.” The temperature of today’s universe, the
expansion of the cosmos, and even the presence of galaxies, have all had cosmologists
scrambling for fixes. “Every time the basic big bang model has failed to predict what we see,
the solution has been to bolt on something new - inflation, dark matter and dark energy,” Scarpa
says…
“This isn’t science,” says Eric Lerner who is president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in West
Orange, New Jersey, and one of the conference organizers. “Big bang predictions are
consistently wrong and are being fixed after the event.” So much so, that today’s “standard
model” of cosmology has become an ugly mishmash comprising the basic big bang theory,
inflation and a generous helping of dark matter and dark energy.2
The BICEP2 project was created to find evidence for a particular kind of Big Bang theory, known as
Inflation. Inflation is a theory claiming that whatever exploded 13.7 billion years ago, it did so with such
a force that, as Stephen Hawking puts it,
1
http://bicepkeck.org
“Did the big bang really happen,” M. Chown, New Scientist, July 2, 2005, p. 6. See also, Eric J. Lerner, The Big
Bang Never Happened, New York, Random House, 1991. Eric Lerner in “An Open Letter to the Scientific
Community,” New Scientist, May 22, 2004, p. 20, as he represents thirty-three other signers to the document, states,
“…the Big Bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma
cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end.” In his
major work on the subject, Lerner adds: “If the Big Bang hypothesis is wrong, then the foundation of modern
particle physics collapses and entirely new approaches are required. Indeed, particle physics also suffers from an
increasing contradiction between theory and experiment” (The Big Bang Never Happened, p. 4).
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
…during this cosmic inflation, the universe expanded by a factor of 1 × 1030 in 1 × 10‒35
seconds. It was as if a coin 1 centimeter in diameter suddenly blew up to ten million times the
width of the Milky Way. That may seem to violate relativity, which dictates that nothing can
move faster than light, but that speed limit does not apply to the expansion of space
itself….physicists aren’t sure how inflation happened….3
I will explain momentarily why the Big Bang theorists need Inflation. Right now, notice at the end of his
statement that Hawking admits “physicists aren’t sure how inflation happened.” That’s an understatement,
to be sure. Modern science hasn’t the slightest verified clue how something as spectacular as Inflation
could have occurred, but you will find almost all mainstream cosmologists today speak of Inflation as if it
is the Gospel truth.
If you look at the latest version of Wikipedia’s page, someone just added a sentence regarding BICEP2 as
“strong evidence” of this so-called Inflation:
In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation is the
expansion of space in the early universe at a rate much faster than the speed of light. The
inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang to sometime between 10−33 and
10−32 seconds. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a
slower rate.
The inflationary hypothesis was originally proposed in 1980 by American physicist Alan Guth,
who named it “inflation”. On 17 March 2014, astrophysicists of the BICEP2 collaboration
announced the detection of inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode power spectrum,
providing strong evidence for Guth’s theory of inflation, and for the Big Bang.4
Notice that Wikipedia admits “inflation is the expansion of space in the early universe at a rate much
faster than the speed of light.” This is typical of how modern cosmology tries to sweep problems under
the rug. Here’s the problem. Since light, according to Einstein, can only travel 186,000 miles per second,
this means that light would have taken 1059 seconds or 1052 years to reach from one side of the Inflation to
the other.5
That’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
3
The Grand Design, pp. 129-131. The theorists hold that the Big Bang started 13.7 billion years ago in the Planck
dimensions from a volume of 10-40 cubic centimeters with a diameter of 3.14 × 10-13 centimeters, and was filled with
particles of 1.62 × 10-33 centimeters packed solidly and having a density of 4.22 × 1093, and a gravitational attraction
between each particle of 1.3 × 1049 dynes (roughly 1046 greater than Earth’s gravity). These theorists conveniently
choose the Planck dimensions in order to avoid the infinite dimensions demanded by a singularity. The advocates
postulate that a group of these Planck particles numbering 1060 spontaneously broke away, creating a hole of 3.14 ×
10-13 centimeters in diameter but which was filled in 2 × 10-23 seconds. For some unexplained reason, the implosion
does not reabsorb the 1060 particles (even though the gravitational attraction is immense), and the 1060 Planck
particles do not remember that they are supposed to cease existing in 4 × 10-44 seconds but keep expanding into what
we now have as the present universe. For the record, other physicists say that Inflation occurred by a factor of 1050
in 10‒50 seconds, but with numbers this large, who is counting?
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29
5
1030 x 1035 – 186,000mps = 1059
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
Hawking also admits that such a rapid Inflation “seems to violate relativity, which dictates that nothing
can move faster than light.” He is referring to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity that was invented in
1905 to explain why the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment, which used light as a measuring device,
showed the Earth was standing still in space. Of course, no one wanted a non-moving Earth. We were
now in the modern age and had escaped medieval superstitions. So in order to keep the Earth moving,
Einstein came up with the ingenious idea. Instead of having the Earth in a constant position, he would
move the Earth and make light constant. As a result, all of cosmology must now bow to Einstein’s
postulate of the limited and constant speed of light, otherwise modern science would have to admit that
the Earth was motionless in space. In short, Einstein was their savior.
So what is a cosmologist to do who wants Inflation for his Big Bang theory since Inflation contradicts
Einstein’s postulate of the constancy of the speed of light? Well, you do what Hawking and the rest of the
scientific community has done. You claim there is an exception to Einstein’s postulate! You say what
Hawking claimed above, namely, “but that speed limit does not apply to the expansion of space itself.”
Ah, now we see. Case closed!
Or is it?
Why is it that everything in the universe is limited by the speed of light but somehow “space itself” is the
exception to the rule? No explanation is provided by Hawking, or anyone else in the cosmological
community for that matter.
They don’t even define what “space itself” is, but sure as they know the back of their hand, they know it
can easily exceed the speed of light! At this point we are forced to agree with Mark Twain who once said,
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”6
It appears that modern science is willing to put its whole enterprise at risk by claiming something that
even a 6th grader could figure out is a blatant contradiction (i.e., that space can exceed the speed of light).
Why take such a risk? Have they ignored the fact that this very 6th grader is someday going to ask the
obvious question of how “space,” whatever they conceive “space” to be, can exceed the speed of light,
since, according to the same modern science, even gravity itself is limited to the speed of light at 186,000
miles per second? How can “space” exceed light speed but gravity can’t, especially since in Einstein’s
theory gravity is nothing more than a bending of space?
What an amazing substance this “space” of modern science is! It can do magic tricks when even the very
thing that holds the universe together (gravity) must do its job while being handicapped worse than an old
man with a cane trying to cross traffic at 5th Avenue and 57th Street in New York City. Very interesting.
Oh, but wait! Einstein comes to the rescue again. Ten years after he told us that “nothing can exceed the
speed of light,” he then told us with a brand new theory called General Relativity that anything can
exceed the speed of light! Yes, you heard it here, folks. In fact, General Relativity also says the Earth can
6
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Signet Classics, 2001, p. 106.
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
even be motionless in space and the center of the universe, while Special Relativity claimed ten years
earlier that the Earth can neither be motionless nor the center of the universe. How’s that for consistency?
Let’s let the geniuses at Wikipedia attempt to answer the question that the 6th grader will invariably ask.
Watch as one group uses one theory of Einstein’s and the other group uses the second theory of
Einstein’s, and both come up with different reasons to explain away the problem:
There are many galaxies visible in telescopes with red shift numbers of 1.4 or higher. All of
these are currently traveling away from us at speeds greater than the speed of light….General
Relativity does allow the space between distant objects to expand in such a way that they have a
“recession velocity” which exceeds the speed of light, and it is thought that galaxies which are
at a distance of more than about 14 billion light years from us today have a recession velocity
which is faster than light.7
So it appears that the left hand (Special Relativity) doesn’t know what the right hand (General Relativity)
is doing. If one theory won’t allow what they want, then, by George, the other theory will! No wonder
everyone likes Einstein. Everyone can have their cake and eat it, too!
But now, let’s look at another explanation on Wikipedia. This one is more in line with Hawking’s
explanation, but with a few twists of its own:
While Special Relativity constrains objects in the universe from moving faster than the speed of
light with respect to each other, there is no such theoretical constraint when space itself is
expanding. It is thus possible for two very distant objects to be expanding away from each other
at a speed greater than the speed of light…. Over time, the space that makes up the universe is
expanding. The words ‘space’ and ‘universe’, sometimes used interchangeably, have distinct
meanings in this context. Here ‘space’ is a mathematical concept and ‘universe’ refers to all the
matter and energy that exist. The expansion of space is in reference to internal dimensions only;
that is, the description involves no structures such as extra dimensions or an exterior universe.8
So, like Hawking, this group of scientists avoid using General Relativity as their scapegoat and prefer to
say that Special Relativity, while true, doesn’t apply to “space.” I guess that’s similar to when Obama
makes all kinds of “executive orders” that go against our Constitutional rights but then claims, “Oh, that
law doesn’t apply to me.”
Now, while engaging in this parlay about the limits of Special Relativity, they graciously attempt to give
us just a smidgen of definition concerning what, precisely, this “space” is that is moving way beyond the
speed of light. But you may be disappointed, since the only rabbit they can pull out of this hat is to say
that “space is a mathematical concept,” as opposed to the fact that a “universe refers to all matter and
energy.”
Oh, what a relief! I was getting confused there for a second. ‘Space’ can expand faster than the speed of
light because, listen up, it “is a mathematical concept.” Wow! Why didn’t I think of that? Yes, I’ve
always known that mathematical concepts can travel faster than the speed of light. Didn’t you? After all,
7
8
http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light
http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion _of_space
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
if F = ma on Earth, it must equal the same in the Andromeda galaxy. Did you see how fast I made that
“mathematical concept” travel from Earth to Andromeda?
Obviously, as any 6th grader could see, we have a mass of contradictions in modern physics. But, dag
nabit, we need Inflation, otherwise we won’t have a universe at all!
So why do they take such a big risk with all these contradictions facing modern cosmology?
Well, that’s because the cost for not taking the risk is even greater than when the 6th grader will finally
ask that all-important question. You see, if one is a believer in the Big Bang, there are certain things that
must occur in that primordial explosion to give even a semblance that it can produce the kind of universe
these cosmologists envision today. Simply put, without Inflation added to the Big Bang, there would be
no chance in hell of creating such a universe.
Why is that the case? Let’s let the geniuses at Wikipedia speak for the science community:
As a direct consequence of inflation, the Universe appears to be the same in all directions
(isotropic) and the cosmic microwave background radiation is distributed evenly. Inflation
answers the classic conundrum of the Big Bang cosmology: why does the universe appear flat,
homogeneous, and isotropic in accordance with the Cosmological Principle when one would
expect, on the basis of the physics of the Big Bang, a highly curved, heterogeneous universe?9
So there you have it. Modern cosmology desperately needs the Big Bang explosion to be as homogeneous
as possible, even though their original math equations predicted a heterogeneous explosion.
When you drink milk from the store it is homogenized. There are no fat globules floating around. But
guess why modern cosmology needs a homogenized universe?
As you can see from the quote, the driving force behind the need for homogeneity is the “Cosmological
Principle.” In other words, modern cosmology begins its analysis of any data it sees in its telescope by
assuming the Cosmological Principle is correct.
What is the Cosmological Principle? It firmly believes that there is no special place in the universe and
that everything we see here is the same as we would see elsewhere.
In other words, right from the starting blocks, modern science is declaring itself to be anti-geocentric
before any evidence actually enters into its telescopes. But don’t let that presupposition make you think
that modern science is biased and unfair. 
In fact, modern cosmology holds to the Cosmological Principle for the same reason that Einstein invented
Special Relativity. As noted earlier, Einstein invented Special Relativity to have an alternative answer to
why the Michelson-Morley and other experiments in the 1800s were all showing the Earth was standing
still in space. In order to prevent the world from having to return to the Middle Ages, Einstein invented
Special Relativity out of whole cloth just as modern cosmology invented Inflation out of whole cloth.
They needed it, so they invented it. I guess the old saying is true: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
If modern cosmology were to be stuck with an inhomgeneous or heterogeneous universe containing,
analogously, celestial fat globules all over the place, that scenario would suggest there was a center
amongst all those globules. Lo and behold, the Earth just might occupy that center, especially after Edwin
Hubble saw that such was precisely the case. I kid you not. Hubble looked through his giant telescope in
1929 and essentially saw that the Earth was in the center of the universe, but then exclaimed…
…Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in
a sense, to the ancient conception of a central Earth.…This hypothesis cannot be disproved, but
it is unwelcome and would only be accepted as a last resort in order to save the phenomena.
Therefore we disregard this possibility...the unwelcome position of a favored location must be
avoided at all costs...such a favored position is intolerable….Therefore, in order to restore
homogeneity, and to escape the horror of a unique position…must be compensated by spatial
curvature. There seems to be no other escape.
…there must be no favored location in the universe [i.e., no central Earth], no center, no
boundary; all must see the universe alike. And, in order to ensure this situation, the cosmologist
postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity.…10
My, my! The man seems rather upset that the evidence points to an Earth in the center of the universe.
Why such a visceral reaction? Shouldn’t he be overjoyed to find such astounding evidence? Apparently
not, for reasons that will become all too obvious as we move on in this analysis.
So, to rid us of this “horrible” possibility, Hubble must, as he says, “restore homogeneity…to escape the
horror of a unique position.”
So the equations for modern man are very simple:
(1) Homogeneity = No Geocentrism
(2) Inhomogeneity = Geocentrism.
And if the universe is geocentric, that means the Earth is special because it’s in a special place. And if it’s
in a special place, then common sense tells us that it could not happen by time and chance. It means
Someone (with a capital S) had to put it there; and that Someone is bigger and better than us, and it also
means that we are responsible to Him and not, as Carl Sagan once boasted, do…
We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms
in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in
some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.11
Are you seeing the dire implications? Do you understand what’s at stake?
So now that we know the philosophical reasons why they want Inflation (to keep Earth out of the center
of the universe and to keep that special Someone out of their lives), how do they propose Inflation solved
this problem?
10
11
The Observational Approach to Cosmology, 1937, pp. 50, 51, 58-59, 63.
Cosmos, p. 193.
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
To recap, the problem they face is that electromagnetic radiation (light) travels too slow. It was made to
travel slow by Einstein in his attempt to answer the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment so that he could
keep the Earth moving.
But the Big Bang theory wasn’t proposed until about thirty years after Einstein put a speed limit on light.
What a dilemma for science! Nobody wants to go back to a motionless Earth, so they are stuck with
Einstein’s speed limit for light. But if Einstein’s speed limit were applied to the Big Bang, it would take
light 1052 years to travel from one side of the baby universe to the other side. If one side can’t
communicate instantaneously with the other side, then the universe can’t know if it’s homogeneous, and
they need homogeneity because they don’t want geocentrism. In modern physics this is known as the
“Horizon problem,” since one horizon of activity doesn’t know what the other horizon of activity is
doing.
The Horizon Problem
Here is how Wikipedia describes the Horizon problem:
The horizon problem is a problem with the standard cosmological model of the Big Bang which
was identified in the 1970s. It points out that different regions of the universe have not
“contacted” each other because of the great distances between them, but nevertheless they have
the same temperature and other physical properties. This should not be possible, given that the
exchange of information (or energy, heat, etc.) can only take place at the speed of light. The
horizon problem may have been answered by inflationary theory, and is one of the reasons for
that theory’s formation. Another proposed, though less accepted, theory is that the speed of light
has changed over time, called variable speed of light…
In a more general sense, there are portions of the universe that are visible to us, but invisible to
each other, outside each other’s respective particle horizons.
In standard physical theories, no information can travel faster than the speed of light. In this
context, “information” means “any sort of physical interaction.” For instance, heat will naturally
flow from a hotter area to a cooler one, and in physics terms this is one example of information
exchange. Given the example above, the two galaxies in question cannot have shared any sort of
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
information; they are not in “causal contact.” One would expect, then, that their physical
properties would be different, and more generally, that the universe as a whole would have
varying properties in different areas.12
Big Bang theorists claim Inflation solves this problem because separated regions of the universe already
in light-speed contact within themselves, suddenly expand into each other’s territory thereby allowing
their individual boundaries (“horizons”) to overlap and consequently allow causal contact with each other.
Whatever was on one side of the universe expands into the other side of the universe, and vice-versa.
Essentially, Inflation expands space at superluminal speed rather than increasing the speed of light inside
space. So the apparent solution to the Horizon problem is that the two baseball-like circles in the
foregoing diagram expand and overlap into each other at t = 10‒35 seconds after the initial explosion.
Interestingly enough, whether they know it or will admit it, Big Bang proponents have invoked something
similar to a Genesis-like instantaneous creation to answer the anomalies of their theory.
Also interesting is that when Alan Guth invented Inflation in 1980 to take care of the problem, he had
absolutely no empirical evidence to support his wild imagination. As physicist John Ralston puts it: “The
‘cosmological principle’ was set up early without realizing its implications for the horizon problem….it is
dealt with by the ‘duct tape’ of inflation…and almost entirely without support from observational data.”13
Inflation was needed to support both the Big Bang theory and the Cosmological Principle, and the science
community was going to have it, come hell or high water. The alternative was a geocentric universe, not
to mention giving a heartfelt apology to the Catholic Church for reprimanding Galileo.
So, after almost four decades without empirical evidence for Inflation, coupled with a strong desire to
maintain the status quo and keep the world from believing in geocentrism, do you think the science
community has a vested interest in finding at least some evidence for their cherished dream world? You
can depend upon it that it is at the top of their “To Do” list.
Someone then proposed that a sudden Inflation of space would cause a big ripple in outer space
somewhere down the time-line of 13.7 billion years that they believe the space has been expanding. Yes,
perhaps if there actually was an Inflation (unproven), and perhaps if the universe is expanding (unproven)
it seems logical that there would be a ripple passing by us at some point in time.
But if there was only one Inflation, it should have produced only one ripple. How would we know
whether the ripple had already gone by us or not? Curious minds want to know.
Ah, but perhaps this ripple imprinted itself on this undefined “space” in some unknown fashion. If so, a
good candidate that might act as a sort of photo-film for this imprint is the Cosmic Microwave
Background Radiation (CMB), which, as you can imagine, has also been attributed to the Big Bang
explosion.
12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_problem
John P. Ralston, “Question Isotropy,” Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Kansas, Nov. 2010, p. 1,
arXiv:1011.2240v1.
13
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
As the story goes, the heat at the point of the Big Bang explosion was about 3000 degrees Kelvin, but as
this undefined “space” expanded outward and spread out in all directions, the temperature decreased to
2.75 degrees Kelvin, where it is today.
So, perhaps this “ripple” from the Inflation made an indelible cut somewhere in the CMB; and this cut is
now radiating at a slightly different temperature above or below the 2.75 degree Kelvin mark.
Ingenious theory, but who knows whether it is correct or not? The CMB hasn’t even been proven to come
from a so-called Big Bang. It may merely be the collective energy of the universe that has always been at
2.75 degrees.
The current reports on BICEP2 do your thinking for you. For example, Bjorn Carey of the Stanford News
Service stated:
Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence
supporting this theory, known as “cosmic inflation.” Their data also represent the first images of
gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time.14
But the truth is, they didn’t see “gravitational waves” or even “space-time.” Both of these are merely
theories. You can’t see theories, can you? The only thing the BICEP2 telescope has seen is some kind of
minor disturbance in the CMB. Big Bang theorists, however, are prone to attribute it to a “gravitational
wave” because then they can claim it supports their other theory, Inflation, which they need so badly to
give credibility to the universe they desire.
In the same article it states:
Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of
light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes
polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave
background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.
“Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called ‘B-modes,’ which represents a
twisting or ‘curl’ pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light,” said BICEP2 coleader Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL).
Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern
in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a “handedness,” much like
light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.
“The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their
handedness,” Kuo said.
14
“Physicists Find Evidence of Cosmic Inflation: First direct evidence of cosmic inflation supports origin theory of
the universe,” By Bjorn Carey, Stanford News Service, March 17, 2014.
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
Did you notice anything funny going on here? The article claims that gravitational waves seen in the
CMB shows evidence of Inflation. But how can that be so if the CMB is said to come into existence
almost a half-million years after Inflation?
Let’s look at Wikipedia for some clarification:
The CMB is a snapshot of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when the
Universe was just 380,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to
regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and
galaxies of today.15
Okay, so the CMB is verified as coming “380,000 years” AFTER the Inflation period. For verification
that the Inflation came first, let’s read another paragraph on the same Wikipedia page:
In the Big Bang model for the formation of the universe, Inflationary Cosmology predicts that
after about 10−37 seconds the nascent universe underwent exponential growth that smoothed out
nearly all inhomogeneities. The remaining inhomogeneities were caused by quantum
fluctuations in the inflation field that caused the inflation event. After 10−6 seconds, the early
universe was made up of a hot, interacting plasma of photons, electrons, and baryons. As the
universe expanded, adiabatic cooling caused the energy density of the plasma to decrease until
it became favorable for electrons to combine with protons, forming hydrogen atoms. This
recombination event happened when the temperature was around 3000 K or when the universe
was approximately 379,000 years old.16
So, the $64,000 question is, how can the “gravitational waves,” which are creases of polarized light from
the CMB, be evidence of Inflation that happened 380,000 years prior, especially when this so-called
Inflation “smoothed out nearly all inhomogeneities” and would have left no creases or cuts of itself?
Curious minds want to know.
As we can see, the whole enterprise is a theory, based on another theory, based on another theory, and it is
all driven, as admitted by its very adherents, on the “Cosmological Principle.”
As even the recognized co-inventor of Inflation, Andre Linde, said a few days ago, “Let us hope it is not a
trick. I always leave with this feeling of ‘what if I’m tricked?’ What if I believe in this just because it is
beautiful?”17
Well, Andre, from the juxtaposition of the 380,000 year old CMB with the 10-35 second old Inflation,
which we normally call putting the cart before the horse, we can only conclude that you have been “had.”
15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background. My thanks to Nick Percival for this insight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background
17
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/18/andrei-linde-right-how-universestarted_n_4981229.html?icid=maing-grid7|htmlws-main-bb|dl22|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D455285
16
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
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BICEP2 Telescope at the South Pole One thing we know for sure is that those who believe in Big Bang Inflation have a vested interest in
making BICEP2 support their view. If you think that scientists are above fudging the data to support their
ideological and philosophical preferences, think again. There is a plethora of literature showing that many
of these high-profile scientists are about as honest as used-car salesman, not to mention that most of them
are atheists. As we saw earlier with Edwin Hubble’s emotional protestations, any data that appears to go
against the Cosmological or Copernican Principles is either dismissed out-of-hand or forced-fit back into
their theories.
One can usually tell that the story is being fudged and excessively promoted when the language
describing its credibility varies from reporter to reporter. In the above source quoting Andre Linde, the
reporter, Isaac Saul of the Huffington Post, says: “All that changed last week, when Linde got word from
a colleague that his theory had at last been confirmed.” But another report from the Associated Press by
Malcolm Ritter says: “Cosmic Inflation Discovery Lends Key Support For Theory of Expanding Early
Universe”18 Needless to say, there is a big difference between actually “confirming” a theory and merely
“lending key support” for a theory.
Let’s look further into the article by Ritter:
NEW YORK (AP) — The universe was born almost 14 billion years ago, exploding into
existence in an event called the Big Bang. Now researchers say they’ve spotted evidence that a
split-second later, the expansion of the cosmos began with a powerful jump-start.
Here we see that Ritter regards it as a fact of science that there was a Big Bang, and that it happened 14
billion years ago. The problem, of course, is that it is not a scientific fact. Not even close. Not only are the
problems with the Big Bang incessantly ignored, any mainstream scientist today who criticizes the Big
Bang is ostracized from the science community.
Ritter’s article continues:
18
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/cosmic-inflation-theory-early-universe-expansion_n_4979486.html
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Experts called the discovery a major advance if confirmed by others. Although many scientists
already believed that initial, extremely rapid growth spurt happened, finding this evidence has
been a key goal in the study of the universe. Researchers reported Monday that they did it by
peering into the faint light that remains from the Big Bang.
If verified, the discovery “gives us a window on the universe at the very beginning,” when it
was far less than one-trillionth of a second old, said theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of
Arizona State University, who was not involved in the work.
“It’s just amazing,” he said. “You can see back to the beginning of time.”
Okay, let’s back up a bit. We’ve already seen why “many scientists already believed that initial,
extremely rapid growth spurt happened.” They are forced to this position because of the Horizon
Problem, and it is a humdinger for Big Bang advocates. In effect, they invented an imaginary band-aid to
solve their problem, and then three decades later they went looking for the band-aid.
The Axis of Evil
Now, the most curious element of this interview with Lawrence Krauss is that several years ago Krauss
went on record stating that the CMB – the same CMB observed by the BICEP2 telescopes – has much
more than a single “ripple” in its history.
In an article he wrote in 2006, Krauss basically admitted that the CMB is not homogeneous and isotropic,
the very two ingredients essential to maintain the Cosmological Principle. It amounts to saying that there
are “ripples” all over the CMB, but these “ripples” don’t support either the Big Bang theory or the
Inflation theory. They support geocentrism and flatly deny the Cosmological and Copernican Principles.
Here are Krauss’ own words:
But when you look at CMB map, you
also see that the structure that is
observed, is in fact, in a weird way,
correlated with the plane of the earth
around the sun. Is this Copernicus
coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy.
We’re looking out at the whole
universe. There’s no way there should
be a correlation of structure with our
motion of the earth around the sun —
the plane of the earth around the sun —
the ecliptic. That would say we are truly
the center of the universe.”19
In other words, what Krauss discovered was that the CMB, which, according to Krauss and his
colleagues, spreads out over 93 billion light years in diameter)
…is aligned with the Earth’s equator and the Sun-Earth ecliptic!
19
“The Energy of Empty Space is not Zero,” 2006, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/krauss06/krauss06.2
_index.html
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That’s like saying that the Milky Way galaxy is aligned with the seams of a basketball.
Ah, but that astounding information was tucked away in the file called:
Krauss wasn’t the only one to see this remarkable alignment of the CMB with our tiny Earth. Dozens of
peer-reviewed papers have been written about this phenomenon over the last two decades. It has been
known since about 1978 when astronomers found the first glimpse of the alignment (the year, ironically,
that Pensias and Wilson won their Nobel Prize for discovering the CMB, but had attributed it to the Big
Bang). It was so puzzling that NASA sent up the COBE probe in 1990 to take more measurements of the
CMB. Lo and behold, COBE reported that the CMB was aligned with the Earth and the Sun.
They couldn’t believe their eyes. So they sent up another probe in 2001 called the Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). You guessed it. WMAP came back with the same data – the Earth and Sun
were aligned with the entire known universe.
So distraught were they that in 2004 the CMB alignment was dubbed “The Axis of Evil,” a name taken
from George Bush’s caricature of the Iraq, Iran, Korea, axis.
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So NASA teamed up with the European Space Agency (ESA) in
2009 and sent up a third probe, this one named the “Planck
Probe,” with all new and better instrumentation, hoping it would
find that the COBE and WMAP data was a fluke. No such luck.
Not only did Planck confirm COBE and WMAP, it did so in
living color, with more detail and clarity than ever before.
As the old saying goes, ‘three strikes and you’re out,” so it is with
NASA’s attempt to derail the Axis of Evil. It is here to stay.
It is interesting to see how the ESA describes the Axis of Evil. They don’t mention it by name, and they
try their best to interpret it in line with the Copernican Principle. But they weren’t very successful. For
example, the Agency stated:
“One of the most surprising findings is that the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave radiation
(CMB) temperatures at large angular scales do not match those predicted by the standard [Big
Bang] model….Another is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres
of the sky. This runs counter to the prediction made by the standard [Big Bang] model that the
Universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look….We see an almost perfect fit to
the standard [Big Bang] model of cosmology, but with intriguing features that force us to
rethink some of our basic assumptions.”20
It is not too hard to see that the ESA was fumbling over its own words. To admit the Planck data does
“not match those predicted by the standard model” and runs “counter to the prediction made by the
standard model” and has “features that force us to rethink some of our basic assumptions,” in essence
means the Big Bang theory and the Cosmological Principle were falsified by the 2013 Planck data. But
this is being finessed and glossed over due to a prior metaphysical commitments.
20
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_ an_almost_perfect_Universe
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For the European Space Agency to claim that the Planck data are “an almost perfect fit to the standard
[Big Bang, homogeneous] model of cosmology” yet have features that “do not match those predicted by
the standard model,” is akin to saying that this cake of Jello contains 97% homogenous gelatin, except, of
course, for the two swords going through the middle of the cake. The swords, in this case, are analogous
to the cosmic microwave radiation’s dipole and quadrupole axes found in the Planck data, otherwise
known as the “Axis of Evil,” with the Earth in the center of it all.
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If we were to transpose the Jello image and superimpose its axes on the latest pictures of the CMB
radiation, it would look something like this: an X cutting across the entire sphere of the universe, but with
the added feature that the two lines coincide with the Earth’s ecliptic and equator, respectively.
The Axis of Evil on the Whole Known Universe This new information from the Planck probe should send shivers up the spine of any human being who is
alert and open to understanding the implications of what this sophisticated instrument is showing us. As
one cosmologist put it: “The discovery that the CMB is cosmically aligned to the Earth should make the
hair on the back of your neck stand up.”21 Unfortunately, as noted in the European Space Agency’s report,
the pride of man seems to have a much bigger stake in this game than a commitment to unbiased and
dispassionate reporting of scientific facts and their implications.
Later in the AP article it states:
Krauss said he thinks the new finding could rank with the greatest discoveries about the
universe over the last 25 years, such as the Nobel prize-winning discovery that the universe’s
expansion is accelerating.
Arizona State’s Krauss cautioned that it’s possible that the light-wave pattern is not a sign of
inflation, although he stressed that it’s “extremely likely” that it is. It’s “our best hope” for a
direct test of whether the rapid growth spurt happened, he said.
Krauss and other experts said the results must be verified by other observations, a standard
caveat in science.
As opposed to other cosmologists who have made glowing reports that the “light-wave pattern” is
confirmation of Inflation, we must give Krauss credit for at least suggesting that such conclusions are not
certain and that this uncertainty is his “best hope” of ever verifying Inflation.
21
Lawrence Vescera, Nov. 9, 2007, http://www.idscience.org/ 2007/11/09/the-discovery-that-dare-not-speak-itsname/
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Krauss’ doubts are similar to other cosmologists who have admitted the same. Cosmologist and Perimeter
Institute director, Neil Turok, who worked on an inflationary model of his own with Stephen Hawking in
the 1990s, urges caution and says that extensive experimental confirmation is necessary before BICEP2’s
results can be considered as evidence for inflation.
According to Turok, there is a discrepancy between the new results and previous data from the Planck and
WMAP telescopes. The tensor-to-scalar ratio of 0.20 that BICEP2 measured is considered to be
significantly larger than that expected from previous analyses of data. Although the BICEP2 researchers
said in their press conference they believe certain tweaks could be made to an extension of the ΛCDM
cosmological model that could make the two results agree, Turok retorted, “But these tweaks would be
tremendously ugly....and in fact, I believe that if both Planck and the new results agree, then together they
would give substantial evidence against inflation!”22
This one, titled, “Time for a cosmological reality check,” says:
Taking all this together I have to say that I stick to the point of view I took when I first saw the
results. They are very interesting, but it is far too earlier to even claim that they are
cosmological, let alone to start talking about providing evidence for or against particular models
of the early Universe. No doubt I’ll be criticized for trying to put a wet blanket over the whole
affair, but this is a measurement of such potential importance that I think we have to set the bar
very high indeed when it comes to evidence. If I were running a book on this, I would put it at
no better than even money that this is a cosmological signal.23
The most puzzling thing about Krauss’ statement, however, is why in 2006 when he admitted that the
same “light-wave pattern” of the universe’s CMB was aligned with the Earth, that such a discovery would
not also “rank with the greatest discoveries about the universe over the last 25 years.” The alignment of
the CMB with the Earth/Sun is probably the greatest discovery in the last 250 years, if not the last 2500
years, since it nullifies the very Copernican Principle that Krauss depends upon to support the Big Bang,
Inflation, and the so-called “accelerating universe.”
Technical Analysis
We will now turn our attention to a technical analysis of the BICEP2 data. For this we will consult some
scientists in the mainstream who know precisely how to analyze the data.
I will underline the most pertinent statement of the author.
http://profmattstrassler.com/2014/03/17/bicep2-new-evidence-of-cosmic-inflation
BICEP2: New Evidence Of Cosmic Inflation!
22
23
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/mar/18/neil-turok-urges-caution-on-bicep2-results
http://telescoper.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/time-for-a-cosmological-reality-check.
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I’m still updating this post as more information comes in and as I understand more of what’s in
the BICEP2 paper and data. Talking to and listening to experts, I’d describe the mood as
cautiously optimistic; some people are worried about certain weird features of the data, while
others seem less concerned about them…typical when a new discovery is claimed. I’m
disturbed that the media is declaring victory before the scientific community is ready to. That
didn’t happen with the Higgs discovery, where the media was, wisely, far more patient.
The Main Data
Here’s BICEP2′s data! The black dots at the bottom of this figure, showing evidence of B-mode
polarization both at small scales (“Multipole” >> 100, where it is due to gravitational lensing of
E-mode polarization) and at large scales (“Multipole” << 100, where it is potentially due to
gravitational waves from a period of cosmic inflation preceding the Hot Big Bang.) All the
other dots on the figure are from other experiments, including the original BICEP, which only
put upper bounds on how big the B-mode polarization could be. So all the rest of the points are
previous non-detections.
From the BICEP2 paper, showing the power in B-mode polarization as a function of scale on
the sky (“Multipole”). Small multipole is large scale (and possibly due to gravitational waves)
and large multiple is small scale (and due to gravitational lensing of E-mode polarization.) The
black dots are BICEP2′s detection; all other points are non-detections by previous experiments.
(Earlier discoveries of B-mode polarization at large Multipole are, for some reason, not shown
on this plot.) The leftmost 3 or 4 points are the ones that give evidence for B-mode polarization
from cosmic effects, and therefore possibly for gravitational waves at early times, and therefore,
possibly, for cosmic inflation preceding the Hot Big Bang!
Note: for some reason, they do not show the detection of B-modes at small scales, due to
lensing, by the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and POLARBEAR.
The claim that BICEP2 makes is that their measurement is 5.2 standard deviations (or “sigma”s)
inconsistent with zero B-mode polarization on the large scales (small Multipoles). That’s
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normally enough to be considered a discovery, but there are some details that need to be
understood to be sure that there are no subtleties with that number. Note that this is not a 5.2
sigma detection of inflationary gravitational waves! For that, they need enough data to show
their observed data agrees in detail with the predictions of inflation. The 5.2 sigmas refers to
the level of the detection of B-mode polarization that is not merely due to lensing.
They can only disfavor the possibility that their measurement is caused by dust or by
synchroton radiation at the 2.3 sigma level, however. This may be something to watch.
A Point of Concern
One thing you can worry about is that the points at large multipoles are systematically higher
than expected from lensing. Why is that? Could it suggest an effect that is being neglected that
could also affect small multipoles where they’re making their big claim of discovery? The
more I look at this, the more it bothers me; see the figure below.
My concern: the three data points circles in blue are all higher than they should be, by
something approximately 0.01, which is the same height as the points to their left. (The two
points to their right aren’t higher than they should be, but the uncertainties on those points [the
vertical bands passing through them] are very large.) But the prediction of gravitational waves
from inflation, circles in green, is that there should be very little contribution here — which is
why these points should lie closer to the solid red “lensing” prediction. So the model of lensing
for the right-hand part of the data + gravitational waves from inflation for the left-hand part of
the data does not seem to be a very convincing fit.
The effects of “gravitational waves” (dashed lines) should be very small around Multipole of
200, but in fact (comparing the solid lensing prediction with the black dots data) they seem to be
as large as they are around Multipole of 80. One might argue that this actually disfavors, at
least somewhat, the interpretation in terms of gravitational waves. However, this may be too
hasty as there may be other aspects of the data, not shown on this plot, that support the standard
interpretation. I’ll be looking into this in coming days. [And I’ve just notice that David Spergel
is also concerned about this --- he also points out this anomaly shows in a poor fit in Figure 9 of
the paper, and that there are also problems, at *low* multipoles, in Figure 7. Definitely things
to worry about here...]
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[[However, this point was addressed by the BICEP2 folks in their presentation. Their view is
that (1) the high data points are not very statistically significantly high, and (2) with new data
that they haven’t released from their third-generation experiment, they don’t see the same
effect. So this is presumably what gives them confidence that the excess is a temporary,
statistical fluke that will go away when they have more data.]]
How It Compares with Planck Data
After the results of the Planck satellite, described here and here, the best estimate for the “tilt”
n_s of the power spectrum (which measures how much the fluctuations from inflation fail to be
a simple fractal, roughly speaking) versus the “tensor-to-scalar ratio” r (which tells you how
large the gravitational waves generated during inflation were, and thus how much dark energy
there was), the most likely value for r was zero, but with 0.2 still basically allowed. This is
shown in the orange region in the figure below, also from the BICEP2 paper, which shows
Planck combined with a couple of other measurements. [But strangely, this orange region does
not agree with the one shown most recently by Planck; it looks out of date! this is because they
allow for the possibility that the tilt changes over time (thanks commenter Paddy Leahy --- but
Kev Abazajian, one of the experts, has complained they didn’t do it consistently. More on this
in the next-to-next figure.] The blue region is the new situation — not BICEP2 alone, but the
combination of BICEP2 with Planck and the other experiments. BICEP2 favors a value of r
between 0.1 and 0.35, with 0.2 preferred, and the combination of BICEP2 with the other
experiments now makes the range 0.13 and 0.25 preferred, with 0 highly disfavored. That
means that, as long as BICEP2 has made no errors and encountered no unknown surprises in the
heavens, and as long as we interpret the data in the most conventional way, the preference in
current data is now for a gravitational wave signal from inflation.
Analysis by John G. Hartnett, Ph.D.
Next we will consult with a personal friend of mine, Dr. John G. Hartnett, an astrophysicist of the
University of Adelaide. John and I have corresponded on many things over the years, and one of his
major contributions is his work on the spherical distribution of galaxies. John has discovered that all the
galaxies we can see in the known universe are centered around us, the Earth and the Milky Way. John
appears in our movie, The Principle, explaining this astounding fact. Similar to the CMB being aligned
with our Earth, the galaxy distribution also nullifies the Copernican Principle.
John’s article on the BICEP2 data can be found at http://creation.com/big-bang-smoking-gun
John’s main point, as you will see, is that the tendency in modern cosmology is to jump on the least bit of
evidence available and claim it for the Big Bang theory, regardless whether that evidence could be
applied to a different model of the universe and regardless whether the evidence is not repeated by other
observers.
John’s second point is that the entire Big Bang model itself is full of ad hoc theories and fudge factors
(such as Dark Matter and Dark Energy that have never been found despite how the cosmological literature
treats them as scientific fact).
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Has the ‘smoking gun’ of the ‘big bang’ been found?
Media headlines make people think that some astounding scientific ‘proof’ has been discovered.
The reality is far less spectacular.
by John G. Hartnett
Published: 20 March 2014 (GMT+10)
“Astronomers Just Detected the Beginning of the Big Bang”, “Big Bang’s Smoking Gun
Found”, “Astronomers Discover First Direct Proof of the Big Bang Expansion” and “Major
Discovery: Smoking Gun for Universe’s Incredible Big Bang Expansion Found” were some of
the headlines on Monday 17 March 2014 around the web-based news media.
One article described it as follows:
Radio astronomers operating telescopes at the South Pole said Monday that they’ve discovered
evidence that the universe ballooned out of the Big Bang due to a massive gravitational force
generated by space itself. The discovery is being called the “smoking gun” for the Big Bang
theory, and it could have huge implications for our understanding of our universes [sic] (and
possible others).
Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist John M. Kovac and his team detected gravitational
waves—tiny ripples in the fabric of space—that could be the first real evidence for the
‘inflation’ hypothesis of how the universe basically bubbled into being nearly 14 billion years
ago. The discovery also suggests that our 14 billion light-years of space aren’t all that’s out
there—our universe could be a tiny corner of something much, much bigger.
In short, the claim is this. The universe began in a big bang nearly 14 billion years ago, but
because of various problems encountered with the ‘standard’ cosmological model for the origin
of the universe, the idea of a super-rapid inflation was suggested to have occurred in the first
miniscule period of time after the big bang. Wikipedia states:1
In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation is the
expansion of space in the early universe at a rate much faster than the speed of light. The
inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang to sometime between
10−33 and 10−32 seconds. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to
expand, but at a slower rate.
The term ‘inflation’ is used to refer to the hypothesis that inflation occurred, to the theory
of inflation, or to the inflationary epoch. The inflationary hypothesis was originally
proposed in 1980 by American physicist Alan Guth, who named it ‘inflation’. On 17
March 2014, astrophysicists of the BICEP2 collaboration announced the detection of
inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode power spectrum, providing strong
evidence for Guth’s theory of inflation and the Big Bang.
The problems that inflation was proposed to solve are:
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1. Why is the universe flat? That means, why is its geometry Euclidean? We experience such a
universe but there is no good reason for that to be so.
2. Why is matter (the galaxies) uniformly distributed everywhere (i.e. homogeneous on the
largest scales) and the same in every direction (isotropic)?
3. Why are there no magnetic monopoles detected, when the Grand Unified Theory (GUT)
predicts them in the early big bang universe?
4. Why is the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation so uniform in all directions in the
sky? It is at a uniform 2.72548±0.00057 K temperature, but that is a problem because the
radiation has not had an opportunity to mix up bringing the temperature of the universe into
equilibrium. This has been called the horizon problem. For these and other reasons inflation
comes to the rescue.
But what really caused inflation, that rapid initial expansion? What caused the sudden start and
smooth stopping of the process? What is the physics behind it? The particle physics mechanism
responsible for inflation is unknown. A hypothetical particle or field thought to be responsible
for inflation is called the inflation, an ‘unknown’ proposed to solve the above problems. It has
been given a name and certain properties, the rest is unknown.
Now it is claimed that from inflation theory they have a prediction that has been verified by
observations.
What have they detected?
The question is, if you could discover what this inflation field or particle is, would you have
evidence for the big bang? Well, no, it is not that simple. Consider what is being observed. The
CMB radiation is being studied and a map of a certain polarization mode in the noise from that
photon field is teased out using numerous statistical filtering methods.
Did they ‘directly’ observe the big bang? Not unless you redefine the meaning of the word
‘direct.’ No, they observed millimetre-wave photons (at about 150 GHz) at the surface of the
earth, with a South Pole based telescope.
This is the state of modern cosmology. Because you cannot interact with the universe, you can
only observe what it produces, and you have to run statistical arguments based on what you
observe.
Is the discovery the ‘smoking gun’ of the big bang? This implies that it is something similar to
just after a crime was committed and you found the guy holding the smoking gun. Well, even if
that were so, you could still have the wrong guy, because you were not there to ‘directly’ see the
crime happen. It is circumstantial at best. In this case it would have to be shown that the
evidence could not come from any other possible source or mechanism. This is the problem
with cosmology in general.
Not only is the claim that inflation has been detected, but also that they have discovered the
effects of gravitational waves associated with the initial big bang. They claim they see the
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ensemble effect of primordial gravitational waves on the CMB photons. This is based on their
modelling of what power should be expected in certain CMB fluctuations imprinted by
gravitational waves from the big bang.
Gravitational waves, a prediction of Einstein’s General Relativity theory, so far have not been
detected with the very large earth-based interferometric detectors like LIGO. This current claim
is that they have detected the signal of these inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode
power spectrum around l ~ 80 (l is a measure of the multipole expansion term used to quantify
the power in the CMB radiation on different angular scales across the sky).
The paper associated with this release states,
The power spectrum results are perfectly consistent with lensed-ΛCDM with one striking
exception: the detection of a large excess in the BB spectrum in exactly the l range where
an inflationary gravitational wave signal is expected to peak. This excess represents a 5.2
σ excursion from the base lensed-ΛCDM model. We have conducted a wide selection of
jack-knife tests which indicate that the B-mode signal is common on the sky in all data
subsets. These tests offer very strong empirical evidence against a systematic origin for
the signal.
It is stated that various methods were used to exclude foreground contamination from the
galaxy. In the data they have heavily filtered to extract the result they have modelled what a
primordial gravitational lensed signature should look like. In addition they see an excess effect
on the polarization of the CMB photons, over a particular angular scale expected from the
theory.
One universe
We only observe one universe. Due to this fact there arises the problem of ‘cosmic variance,’
because we do not know what a typical universe should look like. So even if they were able to
separate the foreground contamination by modelling the expected signal from dust in the galaxy
how could you know if your model was correct? You can’t test it on another universe. They
claim to have subtracted “…the best available estimate for foreground dust …” after which a
null detection is disfavoured at 5.9 σ. This relies heavily on what the modelling says a typical
universe without a gravitational wave spectrum should look like.
What you do is divide up the data set into various blocks from different regions of the sky and
use that to generate a set of ‘different’ data sets. This is called ‘jack-knife’ which is used to give
you some sort of estimate of your standard error in the measurements. Of course, it is all from
the same universe and really this only gives a measure of the variation across the sky. Next you
model what a typical universe should look like and generate mock universes, then compare your
observed data to that from the mock universes. You can generate many mock universes and use
them to create a statistic.
But this belies the problem of ‘cosmic variance.’ It all depends on the biases you have in your
model. They use the dark energy (Λ), cold dark matter (CDM) cosmology to construct their
mock universes and compare the observed data to that universe. It heavily depends on the biases
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built into the model. Those biases also determine what data you accept or reject in the analysis.
Besides, there still does not exist any laboratory evidence for dark energy nor dark matter. After
that it is just modelling.
‘But it must be correct because the big bang happened, we all know that!’
This is the problem:
Researchers have measured the temperature variations in the CMB so precisely that the
biggest uncertainty now stems from the fact that we see the microwave sky for only one
Hubble volume [i.e. only one possible observable universe—JGH], an uncertainty called
cosmic variance. ‘We’ve done the measurement,’ [Charles] Bennett says. (emphasis
added)
That barrier to knowledge, some argue, is cosmology’s Achilles’ heel. ‘Cosmology may
look like a science, but it isn’t a science,’ says James Gunn of Princeton University, cofounder of the Sloan survey [currently the biggest large-scale survey of millions of
galaxies—JGH]. ‘A basic tenet of science is that you can do repeatable experiments, and
you can’t do that in cosmology.’ (emphasis added)
‘The goal of physics is to understand the basic dynamics of the universe,’ [Michael]
Turner says. ‘Cosmology is a little different. The goal is to reconstruct the history of the
universe.’ Cosmology is more akin to evolutionary biology or geology, he says, in which
researchers must simply accept some facts as given. (emphasis added)
Many universes
These results are also suggested to tell us something about all the other universes out there,
because if the inflation of this universe is correct then our universe must be only one of many
bubble universes that have bubbled into existence and we just happened to have evolved in this
one and now we are able to discover this. This is the multiverse, which solves the problem of
why we are here. It is just random chance that we live in this particular universe—the
‘Goldilocks’ universe—not too hot, not too cold, but just right—for life to exist.
This now shows the philosophical nature of cosmology. Only by first assuming the big bang
cosmogony to be true, followed by cosmic evolution, does a discussion of a multiverse have any
relevance.
So much hinges on the ‘unknowns.’ And the ‘unknowns’ result from applying the particular
cosmological model—now known as the ‘standard’ model—to the observational data. The fact
that these fudge factors are needed does not seem to disturb the atheist world because this is
what they expect from the universe. To me it would engender a lot more confidence in the
science if the picture of the universe they obtained made sense.
‘It made itself.’ We must accept that as a given, and then we can discover how that happened.
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Concluding remarks
My point is that even if this detection of an anisotropy in the excess B-mode polarization of the
CMB photon field at the claimed angular scales is confirmed it may not be evidence of anything
more than an effect resulting from some other source in the universe. You would have to rule
out all other causes before you could definitely say it was a detection of the big bang. But to do
that you would have to know everything and that would make you a god.
Making a prediction from some esoteric quantum theory in regard to the putative inflationary
epoch, and then claiming a fulfilment of this in these observations is not the same as a clean
prediction in testable, repeatable physics. In the case of the latter, there are ways to interact with
the experiment and repeatably test one’s hypothesis. In the case of the former, i.e. when the
laboratory is the cosmos, we cannot do that. The best we can do is run simulations on what we
think the universe should look like and try to quantify the likelihood of the outcome of an
observation. Astrophysicist Richard Lieu wrote,
Hence the promise of using the Universe as a laboratory from which new incorruptible physical
laws may be established without the support of laboratory experiments is preposterous7 …
Summary
Far from being a definitive proof of either inflation or the big bang, this so-called ‘smoking
gun’ is very ‘model-dependent’, which means it depends on unprovable assumptions—
including that there was a big bang to begin with. Whereas even the idea that the CMB is the
leftover echo of this alleged event has some serious and unresolved problems; for example, if
the radiation really is coming from deep space, why is there no ‘shadow’ in it from objects
supposedly in its foreground? See The big bang fails another test.
Consider for a moment something else, something consistent with all the observations,
including these latest reports; namely, that the universe did not begin in a big bang, because the
universe never started in a singularity. It began in time, yes, … but, “In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth.”
------------------------------------Now we will add a paper written by a critic who is partial to the Big Bang theory and desires to see proof
of Inflation. His name is Phil Bull. He is a postdoctoral fellow in cosmology at the Institute of Theoretical
Astrophysics, Oslo.
http://philbull.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/how-solid-is-the-bicep2-b-mode-result/
I will underline the more important statements in his paper. You will see that he makes some of the same
criticisms that John Hartnett made:
How solid is the BICEP2 B-mode result?
By Phil Bull
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
Phew! An exciting day indeed, so I’ll jot down a few notes to recap what happened.
The BICEP2/Keck experiments detected B-modes at large angular scales in the polarisation of
the CMB. They released two papers and some data online just as the announcement was made,
which you can find here. Not all of the data mind, but it’s plenty to go on for now.
Their interpretation of the data is that they detect a bump at low-ell that is characteristic of
primordial B-modes generated by inflation. If true, this is super exciting, as it gives us a (sort of,
but not really) direct detection of gravitational waves, and opens up a new window on the very
early Universe (and hence extremely high energy scales). People are even saying it’s a probe of
quantum gravity, which I guess is sort of true. Furthermore, they find a best-fit value of the
scalar-tensor ratio of r = 0.20 +0.07/-0.05, which is a significantly higher value than many
inflationary theorists would have expected, but which counts as a very firm detection of r. This
will surely shake-up the inflation people in coming months.
Null tests
There do appear to be some issues with the data – as there always are for any experiment – but
it’s not clear how important they are. In particular, Hans Kristian Eriksen points out that their
null tests look a bit fishy at first glance. Check out the blue points in the plot to the right. These
are the null test for the BB power spectrum, which you’d expect to be consistent with zero if
everything is hunky dory. And they are! The problem is that they look too consistent –
absolutely all of the errorbars overlap with zero. You’d naively expect about a third of the
points to have their errorbars not overlapping with zero, since they represent a 68% confidence
level – on average, 32% of samples should lie more than one errorbar away. This isn’t the case.
What does this mean? Well, maybe they don’t have a perfect handle on their noise levels. If
they overestimate the noise, the errorbars are larger than they should be, and the null tests look
more consistent than they really are. This could hide Bad Things, like systematics. (I’m
certainly not saying they purposefully inflated their errorbars, by the way; just that something
doesn’t quite add up with them. This happens very commonly in cosmology.) But hey, maybe
this is a relatively minor issue.
You also see this in Table I of the results paper [pdf], where they quote the results of their
“jackknife” tests. The idea behind jackknife tests is explained reasonably well here (Section 7) –
you cut up your data into two roughly equal halves that should have the same signal, but might
be subject to different systematics, and check to see if they’re statistically consistent with one
another. If not, you’ve identified a systematic that you need to deal with.
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
The consistency test normally involves subtracting one sub-set from the other, and checking if
the result significantly differs from zero. For example, you might imagine splitting the data
depending on what time of year it was taken: Spring/Summer vs. Autumn/Winter, for example.
If the two are inconsistent, then you’re seeing some sort of seasonal variation, which is most
likely a systematic that you didn’t account for rather than a real time-dependence in your data…
Anyway, Table I quotes the results of a whole battery of jackknife tests. Great. But things are
still a bit fishy. Why do three of the tests have a probability to exceed (PTE) of 0.000, for
example? (Up to rounding error, this actually means p < 0.0005). What are the odds of that
happening? PTE’s should be uniform distributed. For the 14 x 12 jackknife tests that have been
used, the odds of getting three results drawn from Uniform with p < 0.0005 is a bit slim – you
could maybe get away with one, but not three. So there’s maybe some inconsistency here. It
could be the data, it could be to do with the simulations they’ve used to calculate the PTE’s, I
don’t know. Or maybe I’ve missed something. But the problem gets worse if you think the
errorbars are overestimated; shrinking the errorbars will shrink the width of the simulated
distribution, and the observed value will look less and less consistent – the PTE’s will fall
across the board.
[Update: Christopher Sheehy comments below that the three null test failures were apparently
just typos. The BICEP2 team have updated the paper on arXiv, and now there’s only one PTE <
0.0005 in the table.]
(Quick note: the PTE, as I understand it in this context, is the probability that a value drawn
from their simulations will be greater than the observed value. So a PTE of 0.9 means that
there’s a 90% chance a randomly-chosen simulated value will be greater than the observed
value, which would be good here – it means the observed value is well within what they expect
from simulations, so it would be consistent with no systematic effect being present. Low PTE’s
are bad, since it means the observed value is less consistent with your expectations. You should
normally expect to see some low PTE’s, however, and the number of very low PTE’s that can
be tolerated depends on how many tests you did. More tests means you expect more low
PTE’s.)
Excess/additive systematics
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
So that’s the blue points in the plot above. Now on to the black points and red/green lines. If
you squint a bit, and ignore the dashed red lines, you can convince yourself that a straight line
would fit the points quite well (green line; my addition). The point is that BICEP2 don’t clearly
see the bump feature (the “smoking gun” of the inflationary B-modes) in their data; they just see
an excess amplitude at low ell. Could something else cause this excess?
Imagine if there were no primordial B-modes, and you only had the lensing spectrum, which is
the solid red line. If the lensing amplitude was increased, could you make it fit? Probably not;
the lensing spectrum drops off too quickly at low-ell, so it would be difficult to capture the first
two data points while staying consistent with everything at higher ell just by changing the
amplitude. The BICEP2 team have tried this trick, in fact (see the plot on the right), and even
allowing the lensing amplitude to vary by quite a large factor isn’t enough to explain the low ell
power. So it still looks like a detection of non-zero r.
There’s also the issue of an excess at higher ell in the BICEP2-only results, as shown in the first
plot, above (it seems to go away in the BICEP2 x Keck preliminary results). You could maybe
imagine an additive systematic in the BB power spectrum that shifts a lensing-only BB
spectrum upwards (roughly the green line). This would fit the data quite well, without any
primordial contribution, although whether such an additive systematic is plausible or not I don’t
know.
Other non-inflation stuff (primordial magnetic fields or some such, who knows) might explain
the low-ell power too. All I’m saying here is that while the primordial B-mode seems to fit
extremely well, the unique “bump” shape isn’t clearly detected, so maybe there are other
explanations too. We’ll need to wait and see if anything else works.
Foregrounds
I’ve heard some minor grumbling about foreground subtraction, which I’ll only mention briefly.
Polarised galactic dust seems to be the main worry, and they’re arguably not using the most
fantastically realistic dust maps, although as they correctly point out it will probably have to
wait until the next Planck release until something better is available. Their Fig. 6 shows the
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Your BICEPs Are Too Small, Mr. Big Bang!
Robert Sungenis
contribution to the polarisation that they’d expect from a bunch of foreground models, all of
which are dwarfed by the detected signal. The implication is that foregrounds aren’t a major
issue, but of course this statement is only as good as the models. Maybe Planck will see more
polarised emission at the BICEP2 pointing than expected? We’ll have to wait and see, although
it seems like a bit of a stretch to flag this up as a major concern.
Also, if I’m interpreting their paper correctly, it seems that they just subtract off the foreground
templates with fixed amplitude, rather than fitting the amplitude (and propagating through the
errors associated with doing this). Hey, this is what Commander is for. But I doubt that
accounting for this would blow up their errorbars too much. Foreground subtraction does shift
their best-fit value of r down to more like r=0.16, though, which is slightly less jarring than a
full r=0.2. It doesn’t get rid of the detection, though.
Overall picture
The overall picture is that this is a serious result, which looks pretty good, but isn’t entirely free
of holes. My gut feeling is that the claimed detection significance, and best-fit value of r, will go
down with further analysis. I’d be surprised to see the detection go away entirely, though, unless
they found a whopping systematic. We’ll have a better idea what’s going on when the Keck
analysis has been completed and, after that, when the Planck polarisation data is released
towards the end of the year.
Authored by Robert Sungenis, March 20, 2014. All rights reserved.
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