Planck sees the Big Bang—or not?
by John Hartnett
Published: 13 July 2010(GMT+10)
The microwave sky as seen by Planck.1
This multi-frequency all-sky image of the microwave sky has been composed using
data from Planck covering the electromagnetic spectrum from 30 GHz to 857 GHz. The
image was derived from data collected by Planck during its first all-sky survey
and comes from observations taken between August 2009 and June 2010. Image: ESA/
LFI & HFI Consortia.
On July 5th 2010 the European Space Agency (ESA) released its first one-year-long
all-sky survey map of the cosmos as seen by the Planck-satellite-borne microwave
telescope. The image shown here is the result. Nice picture!
The accompanying press release2
said:
It not only provides new insight into the way stars and galaxies form but also tells
us how the Universe itself came to life after the Big Bang.
“This is the moment that Planck was conceived for,” says ESA Director
of Science and Robotic Exploration, David Southwood. “We’re not giving
the answer. We are opening the door to an Eldorado where scientists can seek the
nuggets that will lead to deeper understanding of how our Universe came to be and
how it works now. The image itself and its remarkable quality is a tribute to the
engineers who built and have operated Planck. Now the scientific harvest must begin.”
There is no doubt in my mind that this is a major technological achievement, and
as a microwave physicist3
I greatly appreciate the technical challenges that have gone into this venture.
But what are they really looking at? Clearly the telescope orbiting in space at
the second Lagrangian Point4
L2, located 1.5 million kilometres directly ‘behind’ the Earth as viewed
from the Sun, has a clear view of the microwave and millimeter-wave radiation pouring
in from space. The radiation is said to come from primarily two sources:
1) our Milky Way galaxy, and that is what you see across the central band of the
image and
2) the Big Bang. This is radiation that is now seen at microwave frequencies, and
known for four decades now as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR).
A large portion of the image is dominated by the diffuse emission from the gas and
dust in the Galaxy. However, the mottled structure at high latitudes in this image
is the CMBR. The mottling represents tiny temperature fluctuations seen after a
near uniform radiation flux at a constant 2.7 K temperature has been extracted.
The fluctuations are claimed to be representative of the primordial density variations
in the Big Bang fireball from which today’s cosmic structure originated.
One headline claimed, “Big Bang telescope probe captures first image of our
universe”5 and continued
in the article to say, “A SPACE telescope that reveals how the universe came
to life after the Big Bang returned its first image this morning.”
Another claimed “ ‘Afterglow’ of big bang captured by satellite”6 and justified the headline
with “It’s sometimes known as the ‘afterglow of creation’
because it was the first light to be produced when matter began to form following
the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Now scientists are close to producing
the best-ever image of this fossilised relic from the dawn of time.”
… if there was no naturalistic big bang, but instead God ‘stretched
out the heavens’ in an awesome display of supernatural power, even eliminating
all other naturalistic causes for the CMBR would not mean that a big bang had been
demonstrated.
But how do we know that this radiation comes from the big bang? Firstly, this cannot
be a ‘photograph’ of the big bang itself, because it is very
feeble low temperature radiation, and it is assumed that as the universe
expanded the very hot unobserved putative radiation from the initial putative
primordial fireball was adiabatically cooled to this radiation we see today. Secondly,
only by eliminating all other possible sources of the CMBR radiation could
you definitely say it is from an alleged ‘big bang’.
But that last statement, like big bang theory itself, assumes a naturalistic cause—no
Creator. So, if there was no naturalistic big bang, but instead God ‘stretched
out the heavens’ in an awesome display of supernatural power, even eliminating
all other naturalistic causes for the CMBR would not mean that a big bang had been
demonstrated.
Most ‘big bangers’ ascribe all creative power to some sort of a quantum
fluctuation of nothing, no God, and certainly no design, no purpose, nothing. Given
sufficient time, anything can be believed, it seems. For people to be gazing at
this as if it is a picture of origins reminds me of the guy who claimed, “I
would not have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” And that is how the
ESA press release reads. It is now only a matter of digging into the details, they
say, and given more time and more data, a sharper image, they hope.7
Fly in the big bang ointment
But in 2006 it was reported and published in the Astrophysical Journal8 that there is strong evidence
that, out to at least one degree from the centre of 31 galaxy clusters studied,
no shadow was being cast in their foreground by the CMBR.9 This casts serious doubt on the conclusion that
the CMBR is really coming from way out in space, behind the clusters, as it would
have to be if it were the ‘echo’ of this alleged big bang. A team of
University of Alabama Huntsville scientists, led by Dr. Richard Lieu, used data
from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic
microwave background for shadows. They looked for a shadow in the CMBR cast by foreground
galaxies10 and compared
this to what was expected. However the expected cooling due to the shadowing effect
of the galaxy clusters was found to be deficient. This analysis was averaged over
31 clusters observed, with a net result indicating that on average no shadow
was detected. In fact, the question is asked by Lieu et al., “Why
are the clusters so relatively hot? Is there an additional source of emission that
cancels out the expected shadow?”
Remember WMAP satellite was designed specifically to detect the signature or echoes
of the big bang. But from this analysis … “Either it (the microwave
background) isn’t coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang
is blown away, or … there is something else going on”, said Lieu.
And it (inflation) must be correct (remember, no Creator, no purpose) because
it solves so many other problems with the big bang, like the isotropy problem, flatness
problem, the horizon problem, problem, problem, etc. … .
So does the Planck satellite really tell us something new about the Big Bang? Not
really! The problem is that you cannot know for sure what you are looking at. The
cosmos is not the same as the local laboratory where you can do a control experiment—send
in some radiation and look for a response. Nowadays it has come down to inventing
many unknowns11—‘dark’
matter, ‘dark’ energy, this big bang ‘afterglow’ and even
‘inflation’, some unobserved super-expansion that occurred for an infinitesimal
moment after the big bang, that was started and stopped by … well, no one
knows, but it caused the volume of the universe to increase 1070 times
(yikes!) in this brief moment, so causing the universe to expand much faster
than the speed of light. The ESA press release says they hope to examine this period.
And it (inflation) must be correct (remember, no Creator, no purpose) because
it solves so many other problems with the big bang, like the isotropy problem, flatness
problem, the horizon problem, problem, problem, etc. … . You can believe
anything you like, it seems, but the true historical creation account, found in
the first book of the Bible, makes much more sense to me.12
Further reading
References
-
www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMF2FRZ5BG_index_1.html accessed 7 July 2010
Return to text.
-
www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMF2FRZ5BG_index_0.html accessed 7 July 2010
Return to text.
- [Dr Hartnett is a full Research Professor at the University
of Western Australia—Ed.]. Return to text.
- At this point spacecraft are free from gravitational forces
and sort of just hover there—an ideal place in solar orbit to place a scientific
satellite. Return to text.
-
www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/big-bang-telescope-probe-captures-first-image-of-our-universe/story-e6frf7lf-1225888309540
accessed 7 July 2010 Return to text.
-
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10656869
accessed 7 July 2010 Return to text.
- “He hath made every thing beautiful in its time: also
he hath set the world in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that
God hath done from the beginning even to the end.” Eccleciastes 3:11
ERV Return to text.
- Lieu, R., Mittaz, J.P.D. and Shuang-Nan Zhang, The Sunyaev–Zel’dovich
effect in a sample of 31 clusters: A comparison between the x-ray predicted and
WMAP observed Cosmic Microwave Background temperature decrement, Ap. J.
648:176–199, 1 September 2006. Return to text.
-
The Big Bang fails another test Return to text.
- If the CMBR is truly from the big bang fireball, it must
be from the background of all other possible sources in the universe.
Return to text.
-
‘Cosmology is not even astrophysics’ Return to text.
- Genesis stands in stark opposition to big bang cosmology;
firstly the millions of years issue, and secondly the order of events. Genesis has
the sun and stars created after the earth exists—big bang thinking has them
existing millions of years before the earth. Return to text.
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