big bang???

Question

can someone please explain the theory of "the big bang" and how people have come to that conclusion?

(i'm a christian, so i know how it works in the bible. i dont get the big bang, however...)

Answer 1

The idea of the big bang was independently arrived at by George LeMaitre (a Belgian priest, and the man who gets most of the credit) and Aleksandr Friedmann (a Russian meteorologist) who realised it was a consequence of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. It wasn't widely accepted at the time - the idea that the universe was infinite and eternal was still the prevailing view, and there were some significant problems such as the resulting universe not having any matter in it!

Vesto Slipher noticed that galaxies showed a doppler red shift, indicating that they were moving away from us, and then Edwin Hubble was able to show that not only are the other galaxies receding, but the further away they are, the faster they recede. Some quite simple maths shows that everything had to be in one place at one time, in other words the universe had a beginning!

Once that was established, a lot more work was put in to start refining the work LeMaitre and Friedmann had done and putting it on a more solid footing (including working out why matter exists!).

A key thing in any scientific theory is the ability to predict things, and the big prediction of the big bang was that there should be a background radiation in the universe, with a specific temperature - the so called "echo of the big bang". This background radiation was found by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, and is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the big bang. There are others though, such as accurately predicting the relative amounts of Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium in the universe.

I don't think anyone would claim that the theory's perfect, but right now it's the best we've got.

As an aside, the man who came up with the idea of the big bang was a devout Christian who doesn't seem to have had a problem reconciling his scientific work with his religious beliefs - he wrote "it had to have begun with light.".

Answer 2

The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.
In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lemaître's theory. He found that distant galaxies in every direction are going away from us with speeds proportional to their distance.

The big bang was initially suggested because it explains why distant galaxies are traveling away from us at great speeds. The theory also predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation (the glow left over from the explosion itself). The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions

Answer 3

Galileo was a Christian too. In order to negotiate science with the Bible he had to postulate two world systems. You will not find too much details about the big bang in the bible but you sure can read Hawking's brief history of time

Answer 4

Ive heard bits and pieces about it, but what does it really matter, it's the biggest load of crap ever. How can anyone look around them at the trees and flowers, etc, and not think that they were created? Our Heavenly Father is responsible for all the beautiful things on the earth. And to anyone who might come back at that and say but what about the distruction that is happenning in todays world-read the bible!