Big Bang or Simple Expansion? Help!

I thought they were the same thing, but it appears there are folks who say the universe didnt explode from a dot. It simply expanded and is still expanding. This is why many bodies in space defy angular momentum or something or other.....whatever..

My question is...
IS the Universe still expanding?
If it is, then how can it be that objects in all directions from us are moving closer AND moving away? It shouldnt be that way in EVERY direction.
















should it?

As far as I know every galaxy outside out local group of galaxies is red-shifted... which means they are moving away. I think the delemma is measuring the change in velecoity, but if everything was moving away at a constant speed it wouldn't make much sense

The big bang is a good theory because it allows a velocity for everything to get out of earchothers way

The latest observations show that distant galaxies are moving away from each other at an ever accelerating pace, an observation that can't be explained by any physical law or property of the universe our science is now familiar with.

As far there not being a big-bang but a simple expansion from a smaller universe, but not a singularity, I think Stephen Hawking has had thoughts on this recently and may be advocating it.

Now look closely at the rising spray. A drop near the center of the rising jet sees almost every other drop- from its viewpoint- moving away from the other drops. It can't 'see' far enough 'back in time' to see the fountain at the base- the other drops are in the way. As the drop looks as far out as it can, the drops are moving apart even faster- under the acceleration of gravity- an acceleration driven by the mass of the Earth that is totally out of the drop's range of vision.

The drop hypothesizes 'Big Bang' when indeed it is inside the Big Spray- just as we ourselves are viewing from the inside a very small portion of a very large polar jet issuing from a very large black hole, when we look out into the Universe.

I watched some show on the Discovery channel or something like that about black holes that said at the center of the universe was an incredibly large black hole that would eventually suck everything into it.

A few months later I heard some NPR Science Friday show about our expanding universe and how eons from now galaxies would be even farther apart and so on.

So which is it? Expanding...or sucked into a huge black hole? Is there an absolute answer?

Originally posted by IndigenousDave
So which is it? Expanding...or sucked into a huge black hole? Is there an absolute answer?

The problem, I think, is that our current models of physics don't handle the very large or the very small precisely enough to predict either the origins or the future of the universe.

Our physics models handle extremely well the objects we have direct contact with. It handles very well objects that are much larger ( e.g motion of the planets and galaxies) and much smallers ( e.g. chemistry, nuclear physics, electronics, nano-tech), but beyond those extremes the models break down.

Without better models (new theories that refine the old) I don't think that we'll have any better understanding than we have now about the origins or the fate of the universe, that is to say, we don't really know but we have some educated guesses.

... but to more directly answer your second question with another question, why not both? Why can't the universe oscillate between a condensed and expanded state?





[edit on 2005/6/28 by McGrude]

Originally posted by IndigenousDave
I watched some show on the Discovery channel or something like that about black holes that said at the center of the universe was an incredibly large black hole that would eventually suck everything into it.

I find that very hard to believe, as there is no "center of the universe." You must have misunderstood. Probably the subject was about whether the universe would continue to expand, come to a stop, or begin to contract. This is an old question which has pretty much been pushed aside for the time being since it was discovered that the expansion of the universe is in fact accelerating.

The contraction of the universe, were this to occur, would result in the entire universe forming a black hole. Indeed, another way to state the question about expansion, stasis or contraction is to ask "Is the universe itself a black hole, or not?"

Harte