Reasons to doubt `Age of Universe' / `Redshift' Recession / `Big Bang' --- Universe evolution theories in doubt An Australian-led research team which was refused use of an American telescope has discovered a string of galaxies, challenging existing theories about how the universe evolved. The team used telescopes in Chile and at the Siding Spring Observatory in western NSW to detect an enormous string of galaxies about 10.8 billion light-years away. Australian National University astronomer Paul Francis, who led the research team, said existing scientific theories cannot explain how the galaxy string could have existed 10.8 billion years ago. "We have detected 37 galaxies and one quasar in the string, but it probably contains many thousands of galaxies," Dr Francis said in a statement. "The existence of this galaxy string will send astrophysicists around the world back to the drawing board to re-examine theories of the formation of the universe." Dr Francis' team was refused the use of a telescope in the United States because the observations they wanted to carry out were considered to be technically impossible by many American astronomers. The team have since presented their findings to the American Astronomical Society. Dr Francis said computer simulations of the early universe had been unable to reproduce galaxy strings as large as the one his team found. "There simply hasn't been enough time since the Big Bang for it to form structures this colossal," he said. The team believes the string probably contains thousands of galaxies, and work is now under way to map it. The string of galaxies itself is thought to be 300 million light years long. A light year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres. January 8, 2004 - 11:50AM http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/08/1073437388680.html?from=storyrhs --- Same event - different audience --- Young galaxies too old for the big bang A team of astronomers from the University of Texas announced a startling discovery this year [2004]. They had used the 4-metre Blanco Telescope in Chile to find a long string of fully formed galaxies. It has sometimes been called the Francis Filament, after team member Dr Paul Francis from the Australian National University. The astronomers calculated that the supercluster was 300 million light-years across, and right at the most distant edge of the universe, 10.8 billion light-years away. (A light-year is how far light would travel at its current speed of 300,000 km/s (186,000 mps) in a year — 9.5 trillion km or 5.9 trillion miles.) However, the discovery is a huge problem for evolutionary timescales. These galaxies exist when, according to big bang cosmology, they shouldn’t have had time to form. The astronomers used a filter to block out light from other sources. This enabled them to pick out galaxies so far from Earth. They expected to find young, faint ‘proto’-galaxies spread evenly throughout the area. Instead, they found 37 mature, bright galaxies that seem to be lined up in a string, with emptiness elsewhere. It was exactly the opposite of what they expected from the big bang theory. Further observations from Siding Springs Observatory in Australia confirmed this galaxy cluster was real. The galaxy cluster lies in the direction of the southern hemisphere constellation Grus (the Crane). At such a distance, evolutionary astronomers assume they are viewing the galaxies as they were around 11 billion years ago. This is allegedly just two billion years after the big bang supposedly formed the universe. Galaxy The research team caused a stir when they reported their discovery at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on 7 January this year. Astronomers around the world were astonished at how mature galaxies could have formed so fast in the young universe. In the current main evolutionary model, galaxies formed from variations in the density of matter produced by the big bang. Big bangers imagine that the universe needed billions of years before stars and galaxies could form into the recognizable structures we see near the Milky Way galaxy today. But this new discovery is precisely the reverse of big-bang predictions: * These galaxies appear to be fully formed, mature structures. * The galaxies are aligned in a long string. * The string is colossal—more than 300 million light-years long. Dr Francis himself expressed the problem, ‘The simulations tell us that you cannot take the matter in the early universe and line it up in strings this large’, he said. ‘There simply hasn’t been enough time since the big bang to form structures this colossal.’ by Andrew Rigg First published: Creation 26(3):15 June 2004 http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v26/i3/galaxies.asp --- Astronomers up against the "great wall" "For more than a decade now, astronomers have been haunted by a sense that the universe is controlled by forces they don't understand. And now comes a striking confirmation: 'The Great Wall.'" The Great Wall is the largest known structure in the universe at present, having superceded sundry superclusters and clusters of superclusters. The Wall is a "thin" (15 million-light-year) sheet of galaxies 500 million light years long by 200 wide; and it may extend even farther. It is emplaced some 200-300 million light years from earth. It helps outline contiguaous parts of vast "bubbles" of nearly empty space. Both the Wall and the adjacent voids are just too large for current theories to deal with. All popular theories have great difficulties in accounting for such large inhomogeneities. To illustrate an important observable -- the 2.7?K cosmic background radiation -- which is usually described as the afterglow of the Big Bang, argues for a very smooth, uniform distribution of galaxies. Great Walls are definitely anomalous. M.J. Geller, codiscoverer of the Great Wall with J.P. Huchra, remarked: "My view is that there is something fundamentally wrong in our approach to understanding such large-scale structure -- some key piece of the puzzle that we're missing." (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "Astronomers Go Up against the Great Wall," Science, 246:885, 1989.) Also: Geller, Margaret J., and Huchra, John P.; "Mapping the Universe," Science, 246:897, 1989. And: McKenzie, A.; "Cosmic Cartographers Find 'Great Wall,'" Science News, 136:340, 1989.) The discovery of the Great Wall of galaxies and the regular clumping of galactic matter has greatly surprised astronomers, who have been emphasizing how uniformly distributed galactic matter should -- according to theory, at least. Now, D.C. Koo, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, says, "The regularity is just mind-boggling." M. Davis, an astrophysicist at Berkeley, admits that if the distribution of galaxies is truly so regular, "...it is safe to say we understand less than zero about the early universe." (Wilford, John Noble; "Unexpected Order in Universe Confuses Scientists," Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 28, 1990. Cr. E.D.Fegert) http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf067/sf067a08.htm --- Big Bang's Afterglow Fails an Intergalactic Shadow Test Discussion at PhysOrgForum The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies. "These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial. "If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not." Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background. Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background. If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background. These findings are scheduled to be published in the Sept. 1, 2006, edition of the Astrophysical Journal. Taken together, the data shows a shadow effect about one-fourth of what was predicted - an amount roughly equal in strength to natural variations previously seen in the microwave background across the entire sky. "Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment. "Based on all that we know about radiation sources and halos around clusters, however, you wouldn't expect to see this kind of emission. And it would be implausible to suggest that several clusters could all emit microwaves at just the right frequency and intensity to match the cosmic background radiation." Predicted as early as 1948 and discovered in 1965, the cosmic microwave background is a faint glow of weak radiation that apparently permeates the universe. Because it is seen coming from every direction in nearly uniform power and frequency, cosmologists theorized that the microwave background is afterglow radiation left over by the Big Bang that created the universe. If that were the case, the background microwave radiation reaching Earth today would have traveled billions of light years through space from the furthest edges of the universe. Galaxy clusters are the largest organized structures in the universe. Each cluster can contain hundreds of galaxies like the Milky Way, each with billions of stars. The gravity created at the center of some clusters traps gas that is hot enough to emit X-rays. This gas is also hot enough to lose its electrons (or ionize), filling millions of cubic light years of space inside the galactic clusters with swarming clouds of free electrons. It is these free electrons which bump into and interact with individual photons of microwave radiation, deflecting them away from their original paths and creating the shadowing effect. This shadowing effect was first predicted in 1969 by the Russian scientists Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zel'dovich. Like shadow puppets on a wall, however, these shadows would only form if all three ingredients (light, object and observer) are in the correct order. If an object casts no shadow, it might be because the light source is closer to the observer than the object. That might mean that the cosmic microwave background didn't originate at the far edges of the universe, although there are no obvious or popular alternative sources. The WMAP dataset is available to the public and other scientists are already testing the UAH group's results, Lieu said, although no one has yet reported finding any flaws in their analysis. Just over a year ago Lieu and Dr. Jonathan Mittaz, a UAH research associate, published results of a study using WMAP data to look for evidence of "lensing" effects which should have been seen (but weren't) if the microwave background was a Big Bang remnant. Lieu, Mittaz and Shuang-Nan Zhang, UAH, "The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in a sample of 31 clusters: A comparison between the X-ray predicted and WMAP observed decrement," Astrophysical Journal, Sept. 1, 2006, Vol. 648, No. 1, p. 176 Source: University of Alabama Huntsville http://www.physorg.com/news76314500.html ----------------------------------------------- FURTHER REFERENCES GO - "search perceptions" - in SEARCH-ENGINE file-ID www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/nobigb.txt