Table Of ContentThe Vindication
of the Big Bang
Breakthroughs and Barriers
OTHER RECOMMENDED BOOKS
BY BARRY PARKER
COSMIC TIME TRAVEL
A Scientific Odyssey
COLLIDING GALAXIES
The Universe in Turmoil
INVISIBLE MATTER AND THE
FATE OF THE UNIVERSE
CREATION
The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe
SEARCH FOR A SUPERTHEORY
From Atoms to Superstrings
EINSTEIN'S DREAM
The Search for a Unified Theory of the Universe
The Vindication
of the Big Bang
Breakthroughs and Barriers
Barry Parker
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parker, Barry R.
The vindication of the big bang breakthroughs and barriers I
Barry Parker.
p. em.
Inc I udes bib Ii ograph i ca I references and index.
1. Cosmology. 2. Big bang theory.
QB981.P294 1993
523.1' 8--dc20 92-43948
CIP
ISBN 978-0-306-44469-2 ISBN 978-1-4899-5980-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-5980-5
© 1993 Barry Parker
Originally published by Plenum Press in 1993.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1993
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Preface
About a year and a half ago a colleague from a nearby university came
to ISU to give a talk. His topic was "Why the Big Bang Theory Is
Wrong." During his talk he listed the tests that a good cosmology
should be able to pass, and he attempted to show that other theories
passed the tests just as well as the big bang theory did. He was quite
emphatic in his assertion that the big bang theory was no better than
certain other theories.
I thought about the talk for several days. Was the big bang really
that bad? I had always had considerable confidence in it, but I was also
intrigued by some of the evidence Halton Arp and others had pre
sented showing that it might not be the correct theory. But if there were
problems with the big bang theory, the rival theories had always
seemed to me to be much more unsatisfactory. I decided to look into
the problems in more detail. The result is this book.
There has, indeed, been considerable controversy surrounding
the big bang theory in recent years. Anyone who has read the science
sections of the New York Times or Time magazine knows this. And
most astronomers agree that the theory is far from complete. Still, it
has a lot going for it. Its successes have been quite phenomenal. Most
of its predictions, things such as the cosmic background radiation and
light-element nuc1eosynthesis, have been shown to be correct. Fur
thermore, recent breakthroughs such as the discovery of fluctuations
in the cosmic background radiation have enhanced the popularity of
the theory.
In this book I have started with the earliest discoveries in
v
vi PREFACE
cosmology-the discovery of galaxies and the expansion of the
universe-and have shown how they led to the formulation of the big
bang theory. I have also talked about the obstacles that the theory has
had to overcome, and the difficulties that it still has to face. I have not,
however, neglected its competitors. I have discussed all of the rival
cosmologies, showing their strong points, and their downfalls. In
presenting the theories, I have tried not only to present the details of
the theory, but also to present the people behind the theory. The story
of the scientists who have struggled to understand how the universe
began is an intriguing one, and as much as possible I have tried to
include it.
It is difficult in a book such as this to avoid technical terms. I
have avoided them as much as possible, but for people unfamiliar with
some of the words I use, I have provided a glossary at the end of the
book. Very large and very small numbers are also difficult to deal with
so I have used scientific notation in presenting them. In this notation,
large numbers such as 10,000 are written as 104; small numbers such
as 1110,000 are written as 10-4.
I am particularly grateful to the scientists who assisted me.
Interviews were conducted, mostly by telephone, with many of the
people mentioned in the book. In some cases they provided me with
photographs and reprints. I would like to express my appreciation to
them. They are Andreas Albrecht, Charles Bennett, David Bennett,
Edmund Bertschinger, Nancy Boggess, Marc Davis, Alan Dressler,
Richard Gott, Samuel Gulkis, James Gunn, H. P. Gush, Alan Guth,
Michael Hauser, Stephen Holt, John Huchra, Nick Kaiser, David Koo,
Gordon Lind, Steve Maddox, John Mather, Stephen Meyer, J. V.
Narlikar, Jeremiah Ostriker, James Peebles, Ian Perry, Will Saunders,
David Schramm, George Smoot, David Spergel, Alex Szalay, Alex
Vilenkin, Jens Villumsen, Ethan Vishniac, and Edward Wright.
The sketches, paintings, and line drawings were done by Lori
Scoffield. I would like to thank her for an excellent job. I would also
like to thank Linda Greenspan Regan, Naomi Brier Gross, and the
staff of Plenum for their assistance in bringing this book to its final
form. And finally I would like to thank my wife for her support while
the book was being written.
Contents
CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1
CHAPTER 2 Discovery of the Expansion of the Universe 17
The Spectrum of Stars and Nebulae 23
Radial Velocities of Nebulae 28
A Period of Uncertainty-1924 to 1929 35
Hubble 37
The Velocity-Distance Relation Vindicated 41
CHAPTER 3 Formulation of the Big Bang Model 49
Einstein's Universe 49
The Marriage Broker 54
Father of the "Big Bang" 55
Rejection of the Cosmological Constant 58
The First "Big Bang" Model 60
The Second "Big Bang" Model 61
A Serious Rival 64
The BB-SS Controversy 66
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER 4 Overview of the Big Bang and
Expanding Universe 69
An Explosion That Occurred Everywhere 69
Evidence for the Explosion 70
Are We at the Center of the Universe? 71
Is There an Edge to the Universe? 74
Velocities Greater Than That of Light? 76
Deceleration of the Expansion 79
Curvature of the Universe 81
The Big Bang 84
The Dark Nightsky Paradox 85
CHAPTER 5 Successes of the Big Bang Model 89
The First Pillar: Age of the Universe 90
The Second Pillar: Nucleosynthesis 101
The Third Pillar: Number of Types of Elementary Particles 105
CHAPTER 6 Discovery of the Cosmic Background
Radiation 113
Dicke and Peebles 113
Penzias and Wilson 116
Getting Together 119
The Aftermath 120
Origin of the Cosmic Background Radiation 122
Anisotropy and Clumpiness 125
CHAPTER 7 COBE: The Cosmic Background Satellite 129
Genesis of the COBE Project 129
Overview of the Three Experiments 132
FlRAS 133
DMR 136
CONTENTS ix
DIRBE 138
The Launch 140
Early Results 145
Sorting Through the DIRBE Data 147
The Discovery of Fluctuations 150
Other Projects 153
ROSAT 154
The Future 156
CHAPTER 8 Difficulties of the Big Bang Model 159
The Horizon Problem 159
The Flatness Problem 162
The Galaxy Problem 165
The Monopole Problem 170
The Entropy Problem 172
The Antimatter Problem 173
The Photon Problem 175
The Rotation Problem 175
Dirac Coincidences 176
CHAPTER 9 Bubbles, Voids, and Walls 177
The Discovery of Large-Scale Structure 177
The Universe in 3-D 179
Bubbles, Voids, and a Great Wall 185
A Series of Great Walls 189
The QDOT and APM Surveys 196
The Great Attractor 200
Problems for the Big Bang 206
CHAPTER 10 Explaining the Large-Scale Structure 209
Dark Matter 212
Early Models 215
