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The 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