On Thursday, January 30, 2014 9:34:51 PM UTC, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 05:10:34AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
> > All, More FYI for discussion, not because I believe it. Best, Edgar
> >
> >
> > *Eric Lerner*
> > *Big Bang Never Happened*
> > http://bigbangneverhappened.org/
> > *Home Page and Summary*
> >
> ...
>
>
> Is the Big Bang a Bust?
> The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of
> the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe. By
> Eric Lerner New York: Random House, 1991, 466 pp. Cloth,
> $21.95.
> Victor J. Stenger
> Published in Skeptical Inquirer 16, 412, Summer 1992.
>
> Normally the refutation of a dominant scientific
> theory takes place on the pages of a scientific journal.
> But strange things are happening in science these days,
> as a Nobel laureate admits to publishing falsified data,
> great research universities are accused of misspending,
> and wacky claims like cold fusion are announced by press
> conference. News magazines proclaim that science is in
> trouble, so it must be so. The scientific establishment
> has been smug and complacent for too long. It's high
> time it was pulled down from its pedestal and told
> who's boss in a democratic society.
> The big-bang theory is the standard framework
> within which most cosmologists operate, having assumed
> the same position held by evolution for biologists and
> quantum mechanics for physicists. Eric Lerner wishes to
> pull down not only that framework, but also what he
> perceives as the outdated mentality that built it.
> Lerner's case against the big bang is composed
> of several different lines of argument. The first is
> conventional scientific criticism: The big-bang
> conjecture is said to be invalidated by the data.
> Cosmologists have a theory, the big bang, that makes
> specific quantitative and qualitative predictions that are
> tested against observations. They claim success for a
> significant majority of these tests, far exceeding all
> alternatives. The recent highly-publicized results from
> the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE) provide
> further evidence for the validity of the big-bang model.
> While admitting that a detailed, satisfactory explanation
> of several phenomena, notably large-scale structure
> formation, is yet to be provided, big-bang cosmologists
> do not see this as fatal. Lerner, however, argues that
> these deficiencies are so severe as to invalidate the
> whole notion of a universe finite in time and space.
> The big bang may be wrong, but Lerner can't
> seriously expect to prove it in a popular book. The issue
> is hardly likely to be settled without the technical
> detail, careful reasoning, and expert critical review of
> the conventional scientific paper or monograph, which
> this is not. Lerner attempts to go over the heads of
> cosmologists to the general public. Despite current
> criticism of science, I see no sign that the public is
> demanding suffrage in the determination of scientific
> truth.
> The author does not limit himself to a scientific
> critique of big-bang cosmology, but has a larger agenda.
> His goal is to refute not just the big bang, but the very
> thought processes of conventional science as well. He
> argues that the hypothesis-testing procedure is a
> throwback to Platonism, a product of theological rather
> than scientific thinking and antithetic to the essence of
> the scientific revolution.
> According to the author, the equations used in big-
> bang calculations are treated by the science elite as the
> ultimate reality of the universe - like Plato's forms.
> Even after these equations are shown to disagree with
> observational facts, as Lerner claims they have been,
> they are retained by big bangers because of an irrational
> prejudice that the theory must be correct regardless of
> the facts. Rather than discard the big-bang theory,
> cosmologists invent new unobserved phenomena, such as
> cosmic strings and invisible dark matter, to "save the
> phenomena."
> The big bang is promoted, in Lerner's view,
> because science has sacrificed its soul to theology. The
> theory confirms the theological notion of creation _ex
> nihilo_: The universe is finite, having a definite
> beginning, created with a fixed design, and gradually
> winding down under the inexorable effect of the second
> law of thermodynamics.
> Lerner argues that this picture disintegrates on
> exposure to observed facts, not just those gathered with
> telescopes but common experience as well. From
> everyday observations, the universe is growing and
> evolving to a state of increasing order. The second law
> is simply wrong, or wrongfully interpreted.
> The curved space and black holes predicted by
> general relativity are likewise not common experience,
> but the result of abstruse mathematics. Lerner says we
> should believe what our eyes tell us, not some
> fashionable mathematical equation.
> Finally, Lerner finds within this cosmotheological
> conspiracy the source of most of the evils of society.
> The slavery of the past and the continued
> authoritarianism of the present somehow arise from the
> idea that the universe came into being at an explosive
> instant and is headed toward ultimate decay. He says the
> big bang is a convenient paradigm employed by an unholy
> alliance between church and state to subjugate humanity.
> In their view, the material world came from nothing and
> is next to nothing, transient and meaningless in the face
> of the eternal, limitless power of God.
> Lerner's alternative universe is based on the
> matter-antimatter symmetric plasma cosmology
> promoted for years by Nobel laureate Hannes AlfvŽn.
> Most conventional cosmologists insist that plasma
> cosmology is inconsistent with observational data. In
> particular, AlfvŽn's universe is half matter and half
> antimatter; yet no more than one part in a billion of
> antimatter is observed anywhere in the universe.
> What arguments does Lerner use to promote the
> plasma universe? Again they fall into the same classes
> as his arguments against the big bang. And they possess
> the same flaws he purports to find in conventional
> cosmological argument.
> While castigating big-bang cosmologists for using
> hypothesis-testing, Lerner is not beyond claiming
> successful tests of the hypotheses of plasma cosmology.
> While maligning big bangers for inventing new ad hoc
> entities, such as the dark matter, to "save the
> phenomena," he introduces unobserved, invisible
> "filaments" throughout the universe to scatter the
> microwave background and make it isotropic as the data
> require. (The big bang requires nothing ad hoc here, and,
> in fact, _predicted _ the microwave background.) While
> he derides the mathematical equations of general
> relativity for being inferred from arguments of
> symmetry and elegance, rather than directly from
> experiment, Lerner extols the marvels of Maxwell's
> equations of electromagnetism - also inferred as much
> from arguments of symmetry and elegance as from
> observation. And while he criticizes the theological
> nature of creation _ex nihilo_, he calls on the equally
> mystical ideas of Teilhard de Chardin.
> Has Eric Lerner punctured the big-bang balloon so
> that its collapse is at hand? I doubt it. The big-bang
> theory is in no more trouble than the theory of evolution.
> Creationists tried and failed to invalidate evolution by
> trumpeting a few of the problems biologists still argue
> over. Similarly, Lerner tries and fails to invalidate the
> big bang by drawing attention to its current unsolved
> problems, declaring them fatal while ignoring the
> theory's many successes, unmatched by any
> alternative theory.
> The first successful test of the big bang occurred
> with the discovery of the microwave background in 1964.
> Lerner dismisses this prediction, labeling it a failure
> because the measured temperature of the radiation was
> lower than predicted. But the important result was that
> the radiation was there at all. No other theory, including
> plasma cosmology, foresaw this. Lerner's argument
> here is like someone saying that Columbus failed to prove
> that the earth was round since he set foot in the
> Americas, rather than East Indies, where he had expected
> to land.
> Lerner also argues that the universe must be much
> older than the 15 to 20 billion years required by standard
> big-bang theory. He claims that the large structures
> being observed by astronomers ". . . . were just too big
> to have formed in the twenty billion years since the big
> bang" (p. 23). While current cosmology has yet to
> accommodate these structures, Lerner has not
> demonstrated that it never will within the big-bang
> framework. His calculation is based on the _lengths_ of
> the structures, the longest being somewhat less than a
> billion light-years. In fact, only their _widths_, tens or
> hundreds times smaller, need be explained. In a 15 to 20
> billion year-old universe, ample time exists to generate
> a structure a billion light-years long and a hundred
> million light-years wide. We just do not yet know the
> exact mechanism.
> The fact is: No observation rules out the big bang
> theory at this time. And the big bang theory is
> successful in quantitatively explaining many
> observations. For example, calculations on the synthesis
> of light chemical elements in the big bang give
> remarkable agreement with measured abundances.
> Lerner uses the kinds of arguments one often hears
> in public discourse on science, but rarely among
> professional scientists themselves. For example, he
> argues that plasma cosmology is in closer agreement
> with everyday observation than big-bang cosmology, and
> hence is the more sensible. A look through a telescope
> reveals spirals and other structures similar to those
> observed in the plasma laboratory (and, as cosmologist
> Rocky Kolb has remarked, in your bathroom toilet as
> well). Following Lerner's line of reasoning, we would
> conclude, as people once did, that the earth is flat, that
> the sun goes around the earth, and that species are
> immutable. The scientific revolution taught us to
> question commonsense expectations.
> Finally I want to comment on Lerner's
> connection of the big bang to the Judeo-Christian concept
> of Creation. I agree with the author in condemning the
> way the big bang has been exploited by preachers, popes,
> and some scientist-authors of popular books, as
> providing an imagined link between science and religion,
> and even a verification of the existence of a Creator. We
> have seen this phenomenon repeated as the recent COBE
> results are trumpeted by the media as evidence for
> God's presence "shining through" in the design
> of the universe. These commentators do not understand
> that quite the opposite is the case. No support for
> creation by design can be found in the theory of the big
> bang.
> Complete quantum chaos must have existed at an early
> moment of the big bang (the _Planck Time_, 10^-43
> second). All we know about the universe is consistent
> with a beginning that was a spontaneous quantum
> fluctuation, with structure and physical laws developing
> by the purely material processes of self-organization.
> The uncreated universe does not, as some people think,
> require a violation of the first or second law of
> thermodynamics, nor any other principle of physics.
> Perhaps the big bang did not happen exactly as
> currently envisaged, but Lerner does not make much of a
> case against it. In fact, a great deal of what he
> discusses in his book, like cosmic plasma phenomena, is
> perfectly consistent with the big bang. He could have
> used the same material had he decided to write "The
> Big Bang Happened!"
>
>
>
> --
>
LOL - beautiful. I was worried for a moment because if the big bang is
> wrong my pet theory is wrong. Or..if a large amount of the universe didn't
> start very small.
I love that Lerner guy. It looks like he really cares. He thinks
science is bombing, and he's doing his duty as he sees it, to try to save
it. He's clearly insane...but could he be expected to know that.
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