Big Bang Prediction example essay topic

366 words
BIG BANG THEORY: A Failure from the Beginning There is no real scientific evidence that the Big Bang ever occurred, of course there is "supposed" evidence such as the red shift, which is not really evidence since it has several possible causes. Its also claimed that the Big Bang was verified by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965, which Gamov and colleagues had predicted from Big Bang theory in the 1940's. However, "it is a well attested fact of logic that while a true theory will always make true predictions, true predictions can also come from a false theory... Many false hypotheses have been held by scientists and laymen alike, simply because accurate predictions could be made from these hypotheses despite their falsity".

Since a false theory can make true predictions, the Big Bang prediction that the CBR should exist never did constitute proof of the Big Bang. But the situation is even worse than this, because the Big Bang prediction for the temperature of the CBR was many times too large: "The big bang made no quantitative prediction that the 'background' radiation would have a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin (in fact its initial prediction was 30 degrees Kelvin)". Thus, this "prediction" was not really true at all. One of the first predictions arising from Big Bang theory, and possibly the most famous, was a failure.

Another supposed "prediction" by Gamov also proved to be a flop when his ratio of H to He provided no confirmation at all; because "these concepts are to a certain degree 'free creations of the human mind' we do, to some extent, impose the creations of our minds onto the workings of nature. We make experiments to fit our descriptions of nature as often as the other way around". The two most famous Big Bang 'predictions' about the CBR and the H / He ratio do not confirm the Big Bang, and the Big Bang still remains scientifically unproven. If science were the objective human activity it is so often claimed to be, the Big Bang model would have been discarded a long time ago.