While the Big Bang model of the Universe may well be correct, since it has the support of the majority of scientists, it does no harm to challenge it. For any successful model to become a well-established theory, it should be able to defend itself from other ideas. The usual charge is that there are no other ideas. However, lets have a go.
It is a long established view that electromagnetic radiation, which includes light, can travel the eternity of space without anything happening to it. However, all established physical laws sometimes turn out to have an exception. Take for example the well establish law that light only travels in straight lines. This is perfectly true, except of course, when it undergoes refraction. Then there is the case when it undergoes diffraction and then again when it is acted upon by a gravitational field.
The Uncertainty principle to which Heisenberg gave his name implies that that on a very small scale there is some fuzziness involved when we try to find out information about atomic particles. Take for example an electron. If you want to find out exactly where it is, then you need to shine some light on it. This then disturbs the electron so that you do not now know exactly where it is anyway. If you want to find out how fast an electron is moving you can only do this by bombarding it with photons of light, so that you alter its speed as well as its position. Heisenberg determined that you could not possible know the product of both position and momentum, or speed since momentum is just the particle;s mass times the speed, with any greater accuracy than h/4p where p is 3.14 and h is the Planck Constant. The Planck Constant is such a very small value as you can find on your calculator, that you would think that it would hardly make any difference. This is true in everyday life but at the atomic scale, it is more relevant.
Now suppose that the Uncertainty principle is a more fundamental property of the Universe itself, in that it manifests itself in each and every interaction between particles including photons of light and particles whether they are being directly observed or not. It also manifests itself with interactions between virtual positron and electron pairs that are continuously appearing and disappearing in the vacuum of space. Then, every now and again we can regard a photon as interacting with space itself. Quantum effects could rob it of a tiny quantity of energy. Because this tiny amount of energy lost is allowable due to the Uncertainty Principle, the original photon carries on in its original direction. The only difference is, the loss of a small amount of energy to the vacuum of space, itself a photon travelling in any random direction. Now, we have to ask, if it may be possible to do an experiment to see if this really happens in the Universe. The answer is probably no, because a photon would have to travel uninterrupted way beyond the solar system before we could expect this to happen. The lost energy by all photons travelling in all directions from all the stars in the Universe then becomes the background radiation. This is would be true source of the background radiation and it is not a relic of a big bang.
Einstein had originally come up with the idea that there must be some sort of natural repulsive force at work in the Universe otherwise it would collapse in on itself. The idea of the expanding Universe did away with the need for this and he later said that it was one of the greatest blunders of his life. But was it? If the Universe is not expanding, but just looks like it is, then there does have to be a balancing force that keeps the Universe in what we would call dynamic equilibrium. This would be where our concept of galaxies and black holes would have to change. The original idea, that they formed from irregularities in some enormous explosion which produced hydrogen and helium and that some large conglomerations of matter collapsed to form galaxies and black holes would not be needed. Instead, we would need a different model on the purpose of black holes and galactic structure.
For one interesting alternative on the working of galaxies have a look at the Rufus Young Steady State Galaxy Web Page. Here black holes drive the galaxies themselves ejecting hydrogen and 25% helium at the poles, which in many galaxies feed the spiral arms, were star formation takes place. Old stars move towards the centre where the black hole gobbles them up for recycling. The speed of ejection would depend on the size of the black holes. In a spiral galaxy, the black hole is at the centre on its side rotating and undergoes precession at the same time. This is what gives rise to the spiral effect, with all spiral galaxies only having in reality two arms. All other effects are to do with the speed of ejection, the speed of precession and the orientation of the black hole at the centre. See the web page for more details. Then look at as many pictures of galaxies that you can find. They all have two arms. The traditional picture of pressure waves causing the arms as the pressure wave moves through the galaxy no longer appears as feasible. With that model, there need not be two spiral arms. This model justifies their reason for being there. If a black hole is two big, it will fire material out way beyond the galaxy itself. Therefore there would be a limit to the size of any black hole and two much matter cannot congregate in one part of the Universe. This also puts an upper limit on the size of galaxies. This agrees with what we actually observe, galaxies up to a certain size but no bigger.
Now going back to the Universe as a whole, we are likely to ask, “Is there any mathematical evidence to support these ideas?” Well, there is some circumstantial evidence which when dealing with such small energy losses over such great distances is probably all there can be. If you want more mathematical information then go to my separate Big Bang or Big Illusion web section.
Let's have a look at this standard equation
E = hc/w where w is the wavelength of the photon.
We can differentiate the energy E with respect to wavelength
dE/dw = -hc/w2
Re-arranging gives us: dw/w2 = -dE/hc
This appears to be telling us that the red shift, the rate of change of wavelength per wavelength is an intrinsic wavelike property rather than being due to an expansion of space. If we know dE then we can work out the red shift factor. Now, it would appear that dE is the lowest quantum of energy possible in the Universe. That is the energy of a photon having a fundamental wave the size of the observable universe 1.57 x 10-51J or 1.57 x 10-44 ergs. This agrees with the value of the red shift factor 7.9 x 10-27 m-1 E=Eo e(-7.9 x 10^-27.x) where x is the distance to the object concerned in metres.
This gives us our exponential decay curve for the Universe. It can also be seen that differentiating E with respect to x gives us the gradient of the curve:
dE/dx = Eo 7.9 x 10^-27.x
When x is close to zero, that is, we are dealing with original energy values. In other words, when we are looking at relatively close regions of the Universe, the gradient appears to cut the x-axis at around 1.265 x 1026m. This means that we have the impression that all energy will be lost over this distance or all wavelengths will have gone to infinity by this distance. Another way of putting it would be, that we appear to have a boundary, which appears to be moving away at the speed of light when in fact it is not. Therefore, this gives rise to an apparent redshift, which is proportional to distance. Now, this only applies in our own region of space because all exponential graphs appear like straight lines in their early stages. As we look further out into the more distant reaches of the Universe, things start to change. The gradient becomes less. This gives us the impression that the Universe is bigger than when we did the observations closer at hand. A bigger Universe is one, which is expanding slower. See my Big Bang or Big Illusion section to see how a positive exponential can be used to calculate the red shift for any distance in metres.
Another small piece of circumstantial evidence is a strange coincidence to do with the conservation of energy. We have all learned that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change from one form to another. If the Universe were to maintain its energy then they energy entering a system would have to be balance by the energy leaving it. If we take a sphere the size of the observational universe and work out the amount of background radiation passing in and out of it, it turns out to be around 1047 Watts. In addition, if you estimate the entire energy production from stars in galaxies in a volume of this size we end up with around the same value. This shows that the entire Universe could follow the conservation of energy principle and always be at the same average temperature.
A consequence of all this would be that we would now have a Universe enshrined in eternity rather than one with a beginning and an end. Most of the other problems we had disappear. The microwave background radiation does have slight irregularities in it, but that is because the Universe itself has slight irregularities in it. We do not have to worry about the concept of no time and space because it is always there. We can see that the Universe will have structure because there are no time restraints on the evolution of its structure. In an eternal Universe, the Universe will always be older than its constituents. Old stars die and are recycled possibly through the action of black holes.
Very distant galaxies look ill formed not because they are any different to those in our own region, but because of the gravitational distortion of the rest of the Universe’s contents upon the radiation as it crosses the vastness of intergalactic space. On a large scale, the Universe does not change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. The Bible: Hebrews 13:8 . I the Lord do not change. The Bible: Malachi 3:6 The Lord will reign for ever and ever. The Bible: Exodus 15:18
As I said before, the big bang model has a lot going for it and it has the majority support of scientists throughout the world. Although at times you cannot help wondering if it may have escaped Occam’s razor. This is that given a number of explanations, the correct one usually turns out to be the simplest. It does no harm to have an open mind and explore alternatives. This you can do by entering the key words given at the end of chapter 6 in your search engine.