The Cosmic Microwave Background

The Cosmic Microwave Background is an ubiquitous background radiation of the universe, viewed by astronomers as strong evidence in support of the Big Bang. However, the evidence is not as conclusive as many make it out to be, and Dr. Pierre-Marie Robitaille explains why this is so in his series of lectures on the subject.

Redshift

First off, we need to consider the phenomenon of redshift, and how it is interpreted, because it is the redshift in the microwave background that gives us reasons to believe that the observed signal is the afterglow of the Big Bang.

The way redshift is detected is that molecules that occupy a space between a light source and an observer show up as lines in the observer's light specter. Every molecule has its own signature of lines, and these lines belong to specific frequency ranges. When such lines appear out of place relative to where they should have been, we have either blueshift or redshift, depending on whether the signal is bluer or redder than expected.

In the case of the microwave background, the redshift constitutes a shift from visible light to microwave. That's an enormous shift. Furthermore, the redshift is identical wherever we look.

One event or multiple events

From the way the data is presented, it looks like the microwave background is the result of a single event, because multiple events would give different redshift signals depending on where they happened. It also looks like the event was extreme, like a big explosion.

However, Dr. Robitaille is far from convinced that we have in fact observed a nice sharp redshift footprint in the microwave background. He points out weaknesses in the methods used. Instead of a single event, it appears that we're dealing with a lot of different events who's signals average out to something sharp and greatly redshifted.

What these events have in common is that they appear to be distant. But this can be explained by the fact that the farther out we look, the more of the universe we see. At the very limit of the observable universe, we see a huge number of stars for every arch second of sky, and it speaks for itself that this region must generate an almost uniform background signal.

The microwave background is in other words likely to be the glow of distant stars.

Relative to this, all other explanations come across as contrived. Why invoke a Big Bang, when everybody knows that stars generate heat?

Proton decay

My proposed alternative explanation to the Big Bang is also contrived when viewed in this perspective. But I will give it a mention nevertheless, because a balanced universe requires a mechanism known as proton decay for things to balance out, and this will generate heat.

If matter becomes heavier over time, as proposed by Halton Arp, it must eventually evaporate back into radiation for our universe to be both balanced and eternal. There must be a limit to how heavy protons can become before they decay, and once decay sets in, it must be irreversible.

If we assume that matter is created in the hot centers of galaxies, we can equally assume that protons decay at the dark edges of these same galaxies. Every galaxy would therefore be surrounded by a faint glow at low energy levels. With galaxies everywhere around us in the universe, we'd get a uniform background radiation.

Assuming further that protons decay into photons and light weight hydrogen, possibly with some helium as well, we get an explanation for the observed redshift in the hydrogen and helium specters as well.

EM Spectrum Properties

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