Tag: Big Bang problems

A star hides inside a star

Post author By John Gideon Hartnett
Post date August 13, 2019
4 Comments on A star hides inside a star

Just when you thought story-telling in astronomy and cosmology had reached its peak we read an even more bizarre story.^1,2 It is nothing more than extreme special pleading that the big-bang-believing astronomers must engage in to maintain their story.

The Milky Way. (Credit: Roanish, Flickr)

Big bang cosmologist believe that the first stars in the universe were what they call Population III stars. These were the stars that allegedly first formed after the big bang. They allegedly were borne with very few elements other than hydrogen and helium. The reason for this is that the big bang itself allegedly could only make hydrogen, helium and a little bit of lithium.

But that presented a problem for big bang cosmology as a viable story for the origin of the universe. Where are all the Population III stars now? Surely some of them must still be around? No … none have been found! As a prediction of the standard big bang model that is a serious problem.

Tags Big Bang, Big Bang problems, population III stars

astronomy Cosmology Creation/evolution

Four high redshift quasars puzzle astronomers

Post author By John Gideon Hartnett
Post date May 23, 2015

A team of astronomers led by Joseph Hennawi of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, using the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii, have discovered the first quadruple quasar: four quasars with approximately the same redshift of about z ~ 2 and located on the sky in close proximity. The online article¹ from Max Planck Institute is titled “Quasar quartet puzzles scientists” with the subtitle “Astronomers must rethink models about the development of large-scale cosmic structures.” This is a discovery of the first known group of four quasars with the same redshift found in the same location on the sky. A research paper has been accepted for publication in the journal Science and a preprint is now available.²

The quartet resides in one of the most massive structures ever discovered in the distant universe, and is surrounded by a giant nebula of cool dense gas. Either the discovery is a one-in-ten-million coincidence, or cosmologists need to rethink their models of quasar evolution and the formation of the most massive cosmic structures.¹