Quantized redshift anomaly

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">'The Big Bang Never Happened' by Eric J. Lerner

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">But I was soon to learn it was still difficult for people to change their views of the heavens.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">.

In our century the cosmological pendulum has swung back. The universe of present-day cosmology is more like that of Ptolemy and Augustine than that of Galileo and Kepler. Like the medieval cosmos, the modern universe is finite in time- it began in the Big Bang, and will end either in a Big Crunch or in slow decay and dissipation of all matter.

A universe of unlimited progress from an infinite past to an infinite future makes sense when society is advancing. But when that advance halts, when the idea of progress is mocked by the century of Verdun, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima, when the prospect of human betterment is dim, we should not be surprised that the decaying cosmos again rises to dominance.

<b>Science and Society</b>

And since, as history abundantly shows, people's views of the universe are bound up with their views of themselves and of their society, this debate has implications far beyond the realm of science, for the core of the cosmological debate is a question of how truth is known.

How these questions are answered will shape not only the history of science, but the history of humanity. The emerging revolution in science extends beyond cosmology. Today the study of the underlying structure of matter, particle physics, is intimately tied up with cosmology- the structure of the universe, theorists argue, is the result of events in the first instants of time. If the Big Bang hypothesis is wrong, then the foundation of modern particle physics collapses and entirely new approaches are required. Indeed, particle physics also suffers from an increasing contradiction between theory and experiment.

Equally important, if the Big Bang never occurred our concept of time must change as well. Instead of a universe finite in time, running down from a fiery start to a dusty, dark finish, the universe will be infinite in duration, continuously evolving. Just such a concept of time as evolution is now emerging from new studies in the field of thermodynamics.

My aim is to explain these new ideas to the general reader, one who is interested in the crucial issues of science but who has no special training in the subject. I believe that if the issues are presented clearly, readers will be able to judge the validity of the arguments involved in this debate.

This history, then, involves more than the history of cosmology, or even of science. One of the basic (although far from original) themes of this book is that science is intimately tied up with society, that ideas about society, about events here on earth, affect ideas about the universe- and vice versa. This interaction is not limited to the world of ideas. A society's social, political and economic structures have a vast effect on how people think; and scientific thought, through its impact on technology, can greatly change the course of economic and social evolution.

My conflict with conventional physics started when I was an undergraduate at Columbia in the mid-sixties. Physics itself interested me, learning why things happen as they do- mathematics was merely a tool to understand and test the underlying physical concepts. That was not the way physics was taught; instead, mathematical techniques were emphasized. This is almost exclusively what students are still tested on, and obviously study the most.

<b>Observation and Conflict</b>

The only test of scientific truth is how well a theory corresponds to the world we observe. Does it predict things that we can then see? Or do our observations of nature show things that a theory says are impossible? No matter how well liked a theory may be, if observation contradicts it, then it must be rejected. For science to be useful, it must provide an increasingly true and deep description of nature, not a prescription of what nature must be.

In the past four years crucial observations have flatly contradicted the assumptions and predictions of the Big Bang. Because the Big Bang supposedly occurred only about twenty billion years ago, nothing in the cosmos can be older than this. Yet in 1986 astronomers discovered that galaxies compose huge agglomerations a billion light-years across; such mammoth clustering of matter must have taken a hundred billion years to form. Just as early geological theory, which sought to compress the earth's history into a biblical few thousand years crumbled when confronted with the aeons needed to build up a mountain range, so the concept of a Big Bang is undetermined by the existence of these vast and ancient superclusters of galaxies.

These enormous ribbons of matter, whose reality was confirmed during 1990, also refute a basic premise of the Big Bang - that the universe was, at its origin, perfectly smooth and homogeneous. Theorists admit that they can see no way to get from the perfect universe of the Big Bang to the clumpy, imperfect universe of today. As one leading theorist, George Field of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, put it, "There is a real crisis".

Other conflicts with observation have emerged as well. Dark matter, a hypothetical and unobserved form of matter, is an essential component of current Big Bang theory- an invisible glue that holds it all together. Yet Finnish and American astronomers, analyzing recent observations, have shown that the mysterious dark matter isn't invisible- it doesn't exist. Using sensitive new instruments, other astronomers around the world have discovered extremely old galaxies that apparently formed long before the Big Bang universe could have cooled sufficiently. In fact, by the end of the eighties, new contradictions were popping up every few months.

In all of this, cosmologists have remained entirely unshaken in their acceptance of the theory.

... cosmologists, with few exceptions, have either dismissed the observations as faulty, or have insisted that minor modifications of Big Bang theory will reconcile "apparent" contradictions. A few cosmic strings or dark particles are needed- nothing more.

This response is not surprising: most cosmologists have spent all of their careers, or at least the past twenty-five years, elaborating various aspects of the Big Bang. It would be very difficult for them, as for any scientist, to abandon their life's work. Yet the observers who bring forward these contradictions are also not at all ready to give up the Big Bang. Observing astronomers have generally left the interpretation of data to the far more numerous theoreticians. And until recently there seemed to be no viable alternative to the Big Bang - nowhere to go if you jumped ship.

<b>Superclusters</b>

While galaxies are a mere hundred thousand light-years across and clusters not more than ten million or so, a supercluster might snake through a few hundred million light-years of space.

It turns out that galaxies almost never move much faster than a thousand kilometers per second, about one-three-hundredths as fast as the speed of light.

Simply put, if Tully's objects exist, the universe cannot have begun twenty billion years ago.

In 1990 the existence of these huge objects was confirmed by several teams of astronomers. The most dramatic work was that of Margaret J. Geller and John P. Huchra of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who are mapping galaxies within about six hundred million light-years of earth. In November of 1989 they announced their latest results, revealing what they called the "Great Wall", a huge sheet a galaxies stretching in every direction off the region mapped. The sheet, more than two hundred million light-years across and seven hundred million light-years long, but only about twenty million light-years thick, coincides with a part of one of the supercluster complexes mapped by Tully. The difference is that the new results involve over five thousand individual galaxies, and thus are almost impossible to question as statistical flukes.

<b>Science, Specialization and Academia</b>

In 1889 Samuel Pierpont Langley, a famed astronomer, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and soon to be the one of the pioneers of aviation, described the scientific community as "a pack of hounds ... where the louder-voiced bring many to follow them nearly as often in a wrong path as in a right one, where the entire pack even has been known to move off bodily on a false scent."

The current system of specialized peer review originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as science became more closely tied to, and supported by, large-scale capitalist enterprise. While inventor-entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison chose for themselves what to research, the later financier-industrialists wanted the "quality of work" guaranteed in advance. So they, together with leading academics, encouraged the idea of peer review- the inspection of scientific work by the "best authorities" in a given field.
At the same time, the growing industrialization of scientific research led to an increasing level of specialization. The older generation of scientists had picked their research topics according to their own interests and often hopped across an entire field (as the best twentieth-century scientists continue to do). But as scientific research became organized in large-scale industrial labs, and as university work fell under the sway of industrial concerns, research came to focus on specific topics of commercial need, and scientists were encouraged to devote their entire career to single specialties.

The combination of growing specialization and the peer-review system have fractured science into isolated domains, each with a built-in tendency toward theoretical orthodoxy and a hostility to other disciplines.

Evidence that "interdisciplinarification" does, in fact, fight orthodoxy and encourage the development of new ideas is in the willingness of Nobel Prize committees to recognize mavericks like Alfven and Prigogine. The committees consist of representatives from the whole broad field, such as physics or chemistry, and so they do not respect the specific orthodoxies of a given specialty and are far better able to judge a scientist's work on its merit, no matter how controversial it may be.

When scientists are specialized," Alfven comments, "it's easy for orthodoxy to develop. The same individuals who formulate orthodox theory enforce it by reviewing papers submitted to journals, and grant proposals as well. From this standpoint, I think the Catholic Church was too much blamed in the case of Galileo- he was just a victim of peer review.

The ability of a scientific theory to be refuted is the key criterion that distinguishes science. If a theory cannot be refuted, if there is no observation that will disprove it, then nothing can prove it - it cannot predict anything, it is a worthless myth.

<b>Nicholas of Cusa, 1401</b>

In his major work, paradoxically entitled On Learned Ignorance, Nicholas, returned to the central idea of Anaxagoras- an infinite, unlimited universe. In contrast to Ptolemy's finite cosmos circumscribed by concentric spheres with earth at their center, Nicholas argued that the universe has no limits in space, no beginning or ending in time. God is not located outside the finite universe, he is everywhere and nowhere, transcending space and time.
Nicholas's infinite universe is populated by an unlimited number of stars and planets, and, of course, has no center, no single immobile place of rest. The earth, he reasoned, must therefore move, like everything else in the universe. It appears at rest only because we're on it, moving with it. He cast aside the geocentric cosmos entirely.

<b>The Atomic Bomb And The Return Of The Big Bang</b>

To one of the Manhattan Project scientists, George Gamow, the detonation of an A-bomb constituted an analogy for the origin of the universe: if an A-bomb can, in a hundred-millionth of a second, create elements still detected in the desert years later, why can't a universal explosion lasting a few seconds have produced the elements we see today, billions of years later? In a paper in the fall of 1946, Gamow put forward his idea, a second version of the Big Bang. Unlike Lemaitre, he took as observational proof of his hypothesis the abundance of the elements, not cosmic rays; but like him, Gamow assumed that this abundance could not have been produced by any process continuing in the present-day universe.

Unlike Lemaitre, Gamow had a tremendous flair for publicizing and popularizing his own theories, a flair that, within a few years, would establish his element theory- soon to be dubbed the Big Bang, ironically, by its detractors - as the dominant cosmology. His propagandist talents are demonstrated in the first sentence of the article proposing his views - "It is generally agreed at present that the relative abundance of the various chemical elements were determined by physical conditions existing in the universe during the earlier stages of its expansion" - which was not at all the case: only a handful of scientists had accepted Lemaitre's primeval atom and perhaps only two or three believed that this could explain the origin of the elements.

But if it hadn't been true before, Gamow changed that: in 1947 he published the immensely popular and well-written book, One, Two, Three, Infinity, which gave a lively and sweeping overview of modern physical science and astronomy. The last chapter presents the Big Bang as accepted fact.

Gamow's persuasive writing and his use of the analogy to the A-bomb, so vivid to the entire post-war population, made his theory plausible to the lay world of science writers and readers. I grew up in the fifties, and remember how exciting I found his books, which were among those that turned me toward physics and astronomy. Gamow's idea had an immediate appeal to his colleagues in nuclear science as well.
Yet the rapid and widespread acceptance of Gamow's theory of a temporally finite universe was as sharp a break with past scientific thinking as Einstein's spatially finite universe had been. The Big Bang completed the swing of the cosmological pendulum, to the medieval universe- finite in extent, having a definite origin in an instant in time, and created by a process no longer at work in the universe. Gamow's Big Bang was a rejection of nearly all the premises that had evolved over the course of the past few hundred years of scientific development- the infinite nature of the universe, and the assumption that its evolution could be described in terms of processes observable here and now.

To the average layman the theory was certainly a shocking and fascinating one. Yet it seemed another insult to common sense, as Einstein's had been. If the universe had an origin in time, what came before it? What started it? The Big Bang seemed, on the surface, an invitation to hypothesize some supernatural power as the initiator of this titanic explosion.

Moreover, even before it was proposed, Gamow's theory of the origin of the elements had been undercut. Gamow had argued that the stars' temperatures are too low to create elements heavier than helium. From nuclear experiments it was known that hydrogen would fuse to form helium at temperatures as low as ten million degrees, which are known to exist at a star's core. But fusing helium to carbon requires much greater temperatures- more than a billion degrees- because the more protons there are in a nucleus the more they repel other nuclei, so far more energy is needed to overcome this repulsion and fuse.

Gamow contended that because these high temperatures couldn't be achieved by stars, the heavier elements must have been formed in the more intense heat of the Big Bang. But in April of 1946, several months before the publication of Gamow's theory, British astronomer Fred Hoyle put forward an alternative hypothesis involving stars that have exhausted their hydrogen fuel. In an normal star, hydrogen is converted to helium in the dense hot core of the star. The tremendous pressure generated by the radiation pushing outward from this core supports the rest of the star, preventing it from collapsing under its own gravity. As the core of the star is depleted of hydrogen, it contracts, increasing its temperature, and burning the remaining fuel faster - thus preventing the overall collapse of the star.
Once the core is entirely converted to helium, no more fusion of hydrogen can take place; there is nothing to support the weight of the star, so it rapidly contracts, and as it does, the temperature swiftly increases at the core. Hoyle calculated that the temperature would soon reach the billion or so degrees needed to start the fusion of helium to carbon. Once again, the energy pouring out of the core would support the weight of the star, stopping its contraction, until the helium is consumed. This process would continue, producing oxygen from carbon, and so on, eventually building up all the elements, either by fusion or by the same neutron-capture process Gamow used in the Big Bang. And with each contraction the star would spin more rapidly, eventually spewing much of its mass into space.

Hoyle accounted for the production of heavy elements by a process that continues into the present-day universe, and thus can - unlike the Big Bang - be verified. Moreover, he calculated that this process would produce the elements in roughly the observed proportions. Had the Big Bang occurred, the two processes together would have produced more heavy elements than are actually observed.
<b>
The Big Bang In Eclipse</b>

... in 1957, after years of steady work- aided by advances in nuclear physics and stellar observations- Margaret and Gregory Burbridge, William Fowler and Hoyle published a comprehensive and detailed theory showing how stellar systems could produce all the known elements in proportions very close to those observed to exist. In addition, the theory accounted for the growing evidence that the elementary composition varies from star to star, something that would not be possible if the elements were produced by the Big Bang. The new theory was rapidly accepted as substantially correct.
The researchers showed that the most common elements - helium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and all the other elements lighter than iron - are built up by fusion processes in stars. The more massive the star, the farther the fusion process can proceed, until it develops iron; at that point no more energy can be derived from fusion, since the iron nucleus is the most stable of all. Thus, when a star exhausts its fuel, it collapses, and the unburned outer layers of the star suddenly mix as they fall into the intensely high temperatures of the core. The star explodes as a supernova, a "little bang", that outshines an entire galaxy for a year. In this explosion, the heavier nuclei absorb still more neutrons, thereby building up the heaviest elements, including radioactive ones like uranium. This explosion scatters the new elements into space, where they later condense into new stars and planets. The earth and the entire solar system was, five billion years ago, formed from the debris not of the Big Bang but of a supernova.

... just as Lemaitre's Big Bang failed when cosmic rays were shown to be produced in the present-day universe rather than the distant past, so Gamow's failed when the chemical elements were shown to be produced by present-day stars.

<b>The End Of The Golden Age</b>

The annual number of cosmology papers published skyrocketed from sixty in 1965 to over five hundred in 1980, yet this growth was almost solely in purely theoretical work: by 1980 roughly 95 percent of these papers were devoted to various mathematical models, such as the "Bianchi type XI universe." By the mid-seventies, cosmologists' confidence was such that they felt able to describe in intimate detail events of the first one-hundredth second of time, several billion years ago. Theory increasingly took on the characteristics of myth- absolute, exact knowledge about events in the distant past but an increasingly hazy understanding of how they led to the cosmos we now see, and an increasing rejection of observation.

In astrophysics too theoreticians relied on extensive data from nuclear scientists and their accelerators, or on observers' giant radio and optical telescopes- or on even more expensive satellites. By contrast, theoretical cosmologists seemingly need no data at all. A few, especially in the later seventies, started using computers for simulations; but most of their time-consuming calculations needed nothing more than paper and pencil. Cosmology was scientific research on the cheap!

The tremendous growth of the theoretical side inevitably biased the entire field against observation, which became secondary to the "real" work of manipulating equations. Cosmologists came to look down on the observing astronomer who spent long nights at the telescope.

It took no great insight to realize that if the Big Bang theory was basically wrong, as had been thought as recently as the early sixties, then these researchers were simply wasting time and talent. A challenge to the Big Bang theory would threaten the careers of several hundred researchers. It could hardly be surprising that by the end of the seventies virtually no papers challenging the Big Bang in any way were accepted for presentation at major conventions or in publication in major journals. It became simply inconceivable that the Big Bang could be wrong- it was a matter of faith.

Yet in the course of this golden age, not a single new confirmation of the theory had emerged. No new phenomena predicted by theoreticians had been observed, or any additional feature of the universe explained. In fact, serious conflicts between theory and observation were developing.

The first and most serious was the problem of the origin of the galaxies and other large-scale inhomogeneities in the universe. The extreme smoothness of the microwave background posed another, more theoretical problem. According to Big Bang theory, points in the universe separated by more than the distance light can have traversed since the universe began (about ten or twenty billion light-years) can have no effect on one another. As a result, parts of the sky separated by more than a few degrees would lie beyond each other's sphere of influence. So how did the microwave background achieve such a uniform temperature?

<b>The Fourth Big Bang: Inflation</b>

As the eighties progressed, the level of theoretical fancy rose higher. The Higgs field began to produce objects like cosmic strings; these too served to explain away such problems as galaxy formation. Finally cosmologists took off on their own, going the particle theorists one better by postulating quantum gravitational theories that bring gravity under the same theoretical framework as the GUTs' three forces. From this effort came the most bizarre theoretical innovation of the eighties- baby universes- pioneered by Stephen Hawking. At the scale of 10 -33 cm, less than one-million-trillionth of a proton's diameter, space itself is, according to this idea, a sort of quantum foam, randomly shaping and unshaping itself; from this, tiny bubbles of space-time form, connected to the rest by narrow umbilical cords called wormholes. These bubbles, once formed, then undergo their own Big Bangs, producing complete universes, connected to our own only by wormholes 10 -33 cm across. Thus from every cubic centimeter of our space, some 10 to the 143 or so universes come into existence every second, all connected to ours by tiny wormholes, and all in their turn giving birth to myriad new universes- as our own universe itself emerged from a parent universe. It is a vision that seems to beg for some form of cosmic birth control.

During this entire period, none of the cosmologists' speculations received observational confirmation- in fact, the foundations of this theoretical structure were being undercut. Even with dark matter, the Big Bang still could not account for the low level of microwave anisotropy, or the formation of galaxies and stars. Nor could it accommodate Tully's large-scale supercluster complexes. And the dark matter itself was ruled out by new observation and analysis. The Big Bang in all its versions has flunked every test, yet it remains the dominant cosmology; and the tower of theoretical entities and hypotheses climbs steadily higher. The cosmological pendulum has swung fully again.

Today's cosmologists have, as Alfven puts it, "taken Plato's advice to concentrate on the theoretical side and pay no attention to observational detail."

They are creating a perfect edifice of pure thought incapable of being refuted by mere appearances. They have thus returned to a form of mathematical myth. A myth, after all, is just a story of origins, which is based on belief alone, and as such cannot be refuted by logic or evidence. Neither can the Big Bang. Entire careers in cosmology have now been built on theories which have never been subjected to observational test, or have failed such tests and been retained nonetheless. The basic assumption of the medieval cosmos - a universe created from nothing, doomed to final destruction, governed by perfect mathematical laws that can be found by reason alone - are now the assumptions of modern cosmology.

Certainly this development is due in part to the growing legitimacy within cosmology of a purely deductive method, justified by Einstein himself. In 1933 he said,
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">"It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to the understanding of nature ... In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed."<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Today's cosmologists, with the support of this lofty authority, proudly proclaim that they have abandoned experimental method and instead derive new laws from mathematical reasoning. As George Field says, "I believe the best method is to start with exact theories, like Einstein's, and derive results from them."

As we have seen, Einstein himself did not use this deductive method in making his great breakthroughs. More important, I think, he would have been horrified to see what his words have been used to justify: even in his unsuccessful later work he ruthless rejected theories clearly contradicted by observation. Yet today's cosmologists take the deductive method as a rationalization for clinging to long-disproven theories, modifying them into bizarre towers of ad hoc hypotheses and complexities- something Einstein, the lover of simplicity and beauty in both nature and mathematics, would never have tolerated.

If the wealthiest members of society earned billions by mere manipulation of numbers, without building a single factory or mill, it didn't seem to strange that scientific reputations could be made with theories that have no more relation to reality. If a tower of financial speculation could be built on debt - the promise of future payment - then, similarly, a tower of cosmological speculation could be built on promises of future experimental confirmation.

Fortunately for science, even the perfection of existing technologies, such as the computer, requires a broad base of scientific research. But it is fundamental research- investigations whose findings don't seem to be immediately useful- that suffer first when technological development slows. Today those areas are clearly cosmology and particle or high-energy physics- where the link between science and technology, theory and human progress, has been broken almost completely. It is here that, as in post classical Greece, the stagnation of society has led to the return of mathematical myths, a retreat from the problems of base matter to the serene contemplation of numbers.

<b>Myth and Science</b>

When Alfven and his colleagues were developing an alternative cosmology, he opened a broad attack on the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of the Big Bang. In 1978 he formulated the broad thesis that I have elaborated here- that the Big Bang is a return to an essentially mythical cosmology. Over the millennia, Alfven argued, cosmology has alternated between a mythical and scientific approach - an alternation he termed the cosmological pendulum.

The difference between myth and science is the difference between divine inspiration of 'unaided reason' (as Bertrand Russell puts it) on one hand and theories developed in observational contact with the real world on the other, Alfven writes.

The Ptolemaic system - based on the unquestioned acceptance of the unchanging heavens, the centrality of earth, and the necessity of perfect circular motion - is a mythical cosmology. The Copernican system, as perfected by Kepler and Galileo, is an empirical one: ellipses are not more beautiful than circles, but they are the planets' orbits.

Since it is without empirical support, Alfven concluded, the Big Bang is a myth, a wonderful myth maybe, which deserves a place of honor in the columbarium which already contains the Indian myth of a cyclic Universe, the Chinese cosmic egg, the Biblical myth of creation in six days, the Ptolemaic cosmological myth, and many others.

The reason why so many attempts have been made to guess what the state several billion years ago is probably the general belief that long ago the state of the Universe must have been much simpler, much more regular than today, indeed so simple that it could be represented by a mathematical model which could be derived from some fundamental principles through very ingenious thinking. Except for some vague and unconvincing reference to the second law of thermodynamics, no reasonable scientific motivation for this belief seems to have been given. This belief probably emanates from the old myths of creation. God established a perfect order and "harmony" and it should be possible to find which principles he followed when he did so. He was certainly intelligent enough to understand the general theory of relativity, and if He did, why shouldn't He create the Universe according to its wonderful principles?"

"Worst of all, this approach allows theory to rule over observation, like the Ptolemaic astronomers who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Today cosmology is the hands of scientists who ... ' had never visited a laboratory or looked through a telescope, and even if they had, it was below their dignity to get their hands dirty. They looked down on the experimental physicists and the observers whose only job was to confirm the high-brow conclusions they had reached, and those who were not able to confirm them were thought to be incompetent. Observing astronomers came under heavy pressure from theoreticians. The result was the development of a cosmological establishment, like that of the Ptolemaic orthodoxy, which did not tolerate objections or dissent.

Once I found Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar galaxies, it was beautiful. I could link up each picture of a galaxy with some stage of one of my simulations and I knew exactly what forces - electromagnetic forces - were shaping the galaxies. (Peratt)

<b>Quasars and Black Holes</b>

The central radio source and emerging jets looked exactly like quasars and active galactic nuclei that emit such jets- which has long been observed, and which Alfven had theorized plasma processes can generate. Evidently there is no need for a black hole at the galactic center to generate such energy, because trapped magnetic energy, squeezed by the pinch effect, can do the trick even better.

Quasars appear to be only a light-year across, compared with the one hundred thousand light years of a galaxy and the ten thousand light-years cell-size of his stimulation.

In 1989, however, new evidence developed which will probably doom the black-hole hypothesis. Gas and plasma near the center of galaxies has always been observed to move at a high velocity, up to 1500 km/sec for our own galaxy, and similar or higher values for others. These velocities are generally treated as evidence for a black hole whose powerful gravitational field has trapped the swirling gases. But the two scientists at the University of Arizona, G.H and M.J. Rieke, carefully measured the velocities of stars within a few light-years of the center of our galaxy, and found the velocities are no higher than 70km/sec, twenty times slower than the plasma velocities measured in the same area. since the stars must respond to any gravitational force, their low velocities show that no black hole exists. The high-speed gases must therefore be trapped only by a magnetic field, which does not affect the stars.

Tully's results quickly became a hot topic in cosmological circles. However, any alternative to the Big Bang remained almost unknown, since plasma cosmology was routinely rejected by astrophysical journals, and our papers were published only in plasma physics journals, which astronomers never read.

<b>The Search For Beauty</b>

If the Big Bang is wrong, then many of the basic ideas of fundamental physics are wrong as well. The same methods that have led cosmology into a blind alley have also simultaneously stalled the advance of knowledge of the structure of matter and energy.

Fundamental or particle physics, the study of the underlying structure of matter and energy, focuses on the effort to unify the basic forces of nature. As far as is known, the interactions of matter can be described in terms of four forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, and two nuclear forces- the strong force responsible for keeping the nucleus together (the source of nuclear energy), and the weak force responsible for radioactivity and the decay of the nucleus.

As we've seen, over a century ago Maxwell unified two previously separated but related forces - electricity and magnetism - into a single force, electromagnetism, and elaborated its laws and many of its properties. Similarly, today's fundamental physicists hope to develop a theory that will unify all four forces, and thereby to explain the nature of the particles that make up matter - electrons, protons, neutrons, and a host of others.

In itself, this is a fine idea: science has frequently advanced by unifying hitherto distinct phenomena under a single theoretical concept. But it has also advanced by discovering new phenomena not covered by any previous theory. The problem in presenting particle physicists' search for such unified theories is that it is based overwhelmingly on certain mathematical concepts derived from pure reason, rather than on observation. Moreover, this theory is viewed not as the next step in an unlimited search for knowledge but as the Holy Grail of science, the final absolute knowledge that will explain the universe and everything in it, a Theory of Everything.

The goal of this work is nothing less than a complete explanation of the universe, to be achieved within the lifetime of many of those working today, as Stephen Hawking puts it. Such a Theory of Everything will explain not only the four forces, all the particles, the universe itself, galaxies, stars, planets, and people, but it will also be so simple a set of equations that it can be written on a T-shirt. Or, as John Wheeler of the University of Texas puts it, To my mind there must be at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, 'Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?
Such a theory will complete the main task of science, leaving only a mopping up of details, except for one major question, in Hawking's view: Why does the universe exist? Once we know the answer to that final question we will then achieve final knowledge; we will, in his words, know the mind of God.

<b>The Big Bang and Religion</b>

So we should not be surprised that today cosmology remains entangled with religion. From theologians to physicists to novelists, it is widely believed that the Big Bang theory supports Christian concepts of a creator. In February of 1989, for example, the front-page article of the New York Times Book Review argued that scientists and novelists were returning to God, in large part through the influence of the Big Bang.

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow echoes the same theme in his widely noted God and the Astronomers: the Big Bang of the astronomers is simply the scientific version of Genesis, a universe created in an instant, therefore the work of a creator. These ideas are repeated in a dozen or more popular books on cosmology and fundamental physics.
Such thinking is not limited to physicists and novelists, who could perhaps be dismissed as amateur theologians. Ever since 1951, when Pope Pius XII asserted that the still-new Big Bang supports the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, Catholic theologians have used it in this way. The pope wrote in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">In fact, it seems that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial 'Fiat lux' [Let there be light] uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of the chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore, there is a Creator, God exists!<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

To many in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the idea of a universe infinite in time and space is not allowed for the same reasons Augustine argued two millennia ago: infinity is exclusive to the deity, and thus prohibited for the material universe. To say that the universe is unlimited is to obscure a crucial difference between God and nature, and thus to advocate pantheism- the idea that nature itself is inherently divine and, perhaps, needs no God. Thus a belief in an infinite cosmology implies heresy. Such reasoning is intimately linked to the arguments used against Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno hundreds of years ago. For many theologians they have lost none of their force today.

For many this all proves that the meaning of the universe resides in a progress toward God to be achieved in the last judgment. But to many existentialists (and physicists) this vision is one of complete meaninglessness. Bertrand Russell, for example, writes: "All the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the death of the solar system- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

Cosmologists such as Edward Harrison describe a similar end: The stars begin to fade like guttering candles and are snuffed out one by one. Out in the depths of space the great celestial cities, the galaxies cluttered with the memorabilia of ages, are gradually dying. Tens of billions of years pass in the growing darkness ... of a universe condemned to become a galactic graveyard.

Paul Davies, another cosmologist, writes: No natural agency, intelligent or otherwise, can delay forever the end of the universe. Only a supernatural God could try to wind it up again.

The ability of human society to make increasingly better use of energy flows by increasing the level of technology would preclude both an end to life and even an end to the growth of life. Cosmic pessimism is unsupported by science.

... the idea that the evolution of humankind is purely an accident, divinely engineered or otherwise, ignores the vast mass of evidence that there are long-term trends in biological evolution. Over these millions of years there has been an irregular but unmistakable tendency toward adaptability to a greater range of environments, culminating in human adaptation to virtually any environment. Over this period the intelligence of the most developed animals on earth has risen with increasing speed, from trilobites, to fish, to amphibians, to the dinosaurs, to mammals, to primates, to the hominid apes and the direct ancestors of humankind.

Of course, through this long period there have been many chance events, many zigs and zags, advances and setbacks, which determined the exact timing and mode of the development of a creature capable of social evolution. Yet this unpredictability in no way erases the long-term tendency that makes the development of higher levels of intelligence, and eventually something resembling human beings, all but inevitable - as inevitable as the development of amino acids in a primal chemical soup.

Thus we find that the apparently improbable accidents of the universe are neither the products of a random and incomprehensible cosmos nor evidence for a designing creator. Rather, they are misinterpretations of the general evolution of the universe.

The old cosmology and the old physics leave humanity with a choice between despair at contemplating a purposeless cosmos and abandonment of the scientific project and the ascription to the deity of all that science can not explain. In either case a gap is created between a rational humanity and a fundamentally irrational, incomprehensible nature - whether or not it is guided by God.

If as a result of some interior revolution, I were to lose in succession my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, and my faith in spirit, I feel that I should continue to believe invincibly in the world. The world (its value, its infallibility and its goodness) - that , when all is said and done is the first, the last and the only thing in which I believe. It is by this faith that I live. (Teilhard de Chardin, "How I Believe").

What is precluded by the new cosmology is the allocation of the mysteries left by bad science to the charge of a deity so clumsy as to leave his calling cards as incomprehensibilities written across the galaxies or in the equations of physics. It assumes that the universe is intelligible and that the scientific method can push back the frontiers of ignorance, so that no mystery will remain forever unexplained."

"Once more, in the past twenty years, we have been faced with the paradox of a gigantic unfilled need for goods, for food, clothing, and housing, side by side with a "lack of markets," a saturation of the market for goods that can be sold at a profit. While children in Latin America lack clothing, clothing manufacturers are closing in the United States. While cities fall into decay and millions go homeless, steel mills are dismantled as unprofitable.

As the 1989 report of UNICEF put it:
Three years ago, former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere asked the question, "must we starve our children to pay our debts?" That question has been answered in practice. And the answer has been "Yes". In those three years hundreds of thousands of the world's children have given their lives to pay their countries' debts, and many millions more are still paying the interest with their malnourished minds and bodies.

---

The Big Bang Never Happened, Eric J. Lerner<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

<b>The Big Bang Theory Under Fire</b>

by William C. Mitchell

(As Published in Physics Essays Volume 10, Number 2, June 1997)

<b>Abstract</b>

The very old big bang problems (of the singularity, smoothness, horizon, and flatness) and the failed solutions of inflation theory; newer Big Bang problems relating to missing mass (as required for a flat inflationary universe), the age of the universe, radiation from the "decoupling" ("smearing" of black body spectrum), a contrived Big Bang chronology, the abundance of light elements, and red shift anomalies; and problems, newer yet, regarding inconsistencies of red shift interpretation, curved space, inflation theory, the decelerating expansion of a Big Bang universe, and some additional logical inconsistencies of Big Bang theory are presented.
Key words: singularity, smooth universe, flat universe, average density, age, black body radiation, neutrinos, chronology, light elements, red shift, curved space, quasars, inflation, decelerating expansion. (Note: Numbers in brackets refer to references at the end of this document.)

Contents
1. IS A SINGULARITY ACCEPTABLE?
2. IS THE UNIVERSE SMOOTH?
3. ORIGINAL SMOOTHNESS OR SMOOTHING?
4. IS THE UNIVERSE FLAT?
5. IS DENSITY TOO LOW?
6. UNIVERSE TOO OLD?
7. SOURCE OF RADIATION?
8. CONTRIVED CHRONOLOGY?
9. SOURCE OF LIGHT ELEMENTS?
10. DOPPLER RED SHIFT?
11. WHAT SPACE CURVATURE?
12. DOES INFLATION FIX THE BIG BANG?
13. WHAT IS DECELERATING?
14. DOES LOGIC PREVAIL?
15. WHAT TO DO?

<b>Introduction</b>

In one of its several variations the big bang cosmological theory is almost universally accepted as the most reasonable theory for the origin and evolution of the universe. In fact, it is so well accepted that virtually every media article, story or program that touches on the subjects of astronomy or cosmology presents the big bang (Big Bang) as a virtual proven fact. As a result, the great majority of the literate populace of the world, including most of the scientists of the world, accepts big bang theory (Big Bang Theory) as scientific fact.

Education establishments involved in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, theoretical physics and cosmology are dominated by those who have accepted Big Bang as the theory to be pursued. Scientists who seriously question the Big Bang are generally considered disruptive, ridiculed and derogatorily referred to as big bang bashers.

As a result of that attitude alternate cosmological possibilities are left uninvestigated. Untold man-hours and vast sums of money are spent in pursuit of data in support of the prevailing theory. Such endeavors are not in keeping with the ideals of impartial scientific investigation. It is all but forgotten that the Big Bang is not fact, but an unproven theory.

Fortunately there long has been an unindoctrinated minority of scientists, both amateur and professional, who continue to discover and present observational evidence and logic that provides reason to doubt the accepted paradigm. Some of better known and most effective of the scientists in this struggle are Halton Arp of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, Anthony Peratt of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, and Jayant Narlikar of the Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in India. Other well known astronomers/cosmologists who have long fought for the proper consideration of alternate cosmologies include Geoffrey and Margaret Burbridge, Fred Hoyle, Herman Bondi, Thomas Gold and Eric Lerner.
Due to the efforts of those and other fighters for even-handed cosmological investigation and, despite the powerful influence of mainstream Big Bang cosmologists, evidence against the Big Bang has been building to the point where the world may soon start to doubt it. Some of that evidence is briefly reviewed in this paper.

<b>1. IS A SINGULARITY ACCEPTABLE?</b>

The oldest and perhaps best known problem of Big Bang Theory is that of the singularity. At the first instant of the Big Bang universe, in which its density and temperature were infinitely high, is what is known to mathematicians as a singularity. That situation is considered to be a breakdown of theory. That is, it cannot be assumed that the laws of physics as we know them can apply to that event, thus presenting serious questions about it.
In addition, the postulated creation of the entire mass and energy of the universe out of nothing in the first instant of time, seems to represent an extreme violation of the law of conservation of mass/energy.

According to prevailing theory, before that instant, space and time did not exist. Although to some, who confuse their religious ideas with science, this is seen as a reasonable interpretation of their religious beliefs, to others the beginning of space and time might represent a significant problem.

If there were a Big Bang, it would seem that events during the first instant of time would involve the instantaneous acceleration of the enormous number of particles (the entire mass) of the universe to relativistic velocity; and some variations of Big Bang Theory postulate velocities well above the speed of light. Because the acceleration of even a minute particle to the speed of light requires an infinite amount of energy, the Big Bang might have required on the order of an infinity times and infinity of ergs; not to mention the additional energy that would be required to overcome the gravitational attraction of the entire mass of the universe.

It has been suggested that this singularity problem can be solved by postulating a universe of zero net energy;(2) a universe wherein the positive kinetic energy, the potential energy, and the Einsteinian equivalent energy of the mass of the universe is equal and opposite to the negative energy of gravity. Somehow, if the universe is to collapse in the future as some believe, all the energy that was expended in the birth and expansion of the Big Bang universe was only borrowed; someday to be paid back. However, that doesn't provide an adequate explanation for the source of the energy requirement described above.

It should be noted that this zero net energy explanation couldn't reasonably be postulated for other than a recollapsing universe. However, as will be discussed further on, observational evidence has all but ruled out the possibility of the collapsing Big Bang universe case, thus adding to the incredibility of zero net energy; and certainly it would seem that the positive energy of the potential, kinetic and the enormous mass equivalent energy of the of the universe must be far greater than the negative energy of its gravity. For any Big Bang universe case the postulated zero net energy idea appears to be unrealistic.

Inflation theory, (3,4) which will be discussed further on, has claimed to solve the singularity problem (and other Big Bang problems as well) but it requires an enormous quantum theory vacuum fluctuation (2) and, according to some, an enormous cosmic repulsive force to provide for a Big Bang. These are purely speculative ideas that have no known means of experimental verification.

<b>2. IS THE UNIVERSE SMOOTH?</b>

One of the older problems of Big Bang Theory, that of its postulated large-scale smoothness of the universe, appears to be the result of what was originally a simplifying assumption (5- that was made to aid in the solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity on which the Big Bang is based. That apparently resulted in the establishment of smoothness as a basic tenet of Big Bang Theory; that is, the universe is isotropic (the same in all directions) and homogeneous (the same everywhere). Those ideas, combined with curved space, provide the basis for the Big Bang concepts of space expansion (rather than simple expansion of matter in space), for a "Big Bang that happened everywhere", and for a centerless universe.

However, the observed irregularities of the universe, which include vast galactic formations, (9) gigantic voids and sheets of galaxies, (10) and the "Great Wall", (11,12) that is estimated to stretch across one half billion light years of space, tend to deny that smoothness.

The smoothness of the distribution of the matter of the universe is said to be verified by the smoothness of microwave background radiation (MBR) that is received from all directions of space. That radiation is believed by adherents of Big Bang Theory to have come directly from a smooth Big Bang. However, it would seem that both the improbability of a smooth Big Bang explosion (explosions experienced in our time certainly are not smooth), and presently observed irregularities of the universe, tend to deny a Big Bang as the direct source of MBR.

(Regarding the plasma universe explosion postulated by Hannes Alfven, a leading advocate of Big Bang cosmology P. J. E. Peebles wrote, "It would be hard to imagine that the explosion produced a spherically symmetric expanding system of galaxies ..." (13) One wonders why similar doubt is not expressed about a smooth Big Bang.)

The enormous expansion of the early universe at speeds far in excess of that of light, in accordance with inflation theory, is said to solve the Big Bang smoothness problem. However, postulating a different form of expansion doesn't change the present state of the universe, and, as will be discussed further on, it is not clear that inflation can provide an adequate explanation for the expansion of the universe at speeds far in excess of that of light.

<b>3. ORIGINAL SMOOTHNESS OR SMOOTHING?</b>

Another old Big Bang problem that is related to the smoothness problem is called the horizon problem. In the event, however unlikely, that the universe should ultimately prove to be smooth (on an extremely large scale), an additional problem would have to be faced. Regardless of whether the Big Bang was chaotic or smooth, how it might have become smooth or remained smooth is not explained. Because of the enormous initial rate of expansion of a Big Bang universe, faster-than-light signaling would have been necessary for gravitational (or other) forces to produce or retain that smoothness over billions of years. However, even the transmission of information at or above the speed of light is a violation of the theory of relativity.

The rapid expansion of the very early Big Bang universe in accordance with inflation theory is thought to provide a solution to this horizon problem. As Peebles has also written, "The recent tendency is to assume this embarrassment can be resolved by inflation or some other adjustment of the physics of the very early universe". (13) But again, it is not clear just how the more rapid expansion of inflation might solve this problem.

<b>4. IS THE UNIVERSE FLAT?</b>

An additional older problem of Big Bang Theory is the flatness problem. A special theory is required to explain a flat "Euclidean" Big Bang universe of uncurved space that is accepted by many mainstream cosmologists. In that universe the average density would be at a critical level, that is, at a balance between the average density of a "closed" Big Bang universe (expanding at less than escape velocity) that would eventually collapse, and the average density of an "open" Big Bang universe (expanding at greater than escape velocity) whose expansion would continue to increase, but at an ever decreasing rate. The postulated expansion of this flat Big Bang universe (just at escape velocity) would eventually cease to increase, and thereafter remain at a fixed size.

It has been postulated that a universe of zero net energy, in addition to solving the singularity problem, might solve this flatness problem. However, as mentioned above, that concept is highly suspect. Additionally, the observed low average density of the universe, probably not more than a few percent of the critical amount, appears to deny the possibility of the flat universe case.
As in the case of the previously mentioned problems, the enormous rate of expansion of the early Big Bang universe as postulated by inflation theory, is said to provide a solution to the flatness problem. However, it is not clear how an enormously fast rate of expansion might result in an average density at the critical level; and the low observed density of the universe represents an especially severe problem to inflation theory. That situation has provided the incentive for a frantic search for the "missing mass" that would be necessary to increase the average density to the expectations of inflation theory.

<b>5. IS DENSITY TOO LOW?</b>

Actually, the density of the universe appears to be insufficient to support any Big Bang universe case: closed, flat or somewhat open. That situation presents what is called the missing mass problem.
The directly observed density of the universe is estimated at only one to two percent of the required density for the above cases. Calculations based on observed dynamics of galactic rotation of a small sample of galaxies indicate there may be as much as ten times that amount of matter in their vicinities.

There is insufficient evidence to indicate that is true of the majority of galaxies, and little evidence that the average density of intergalactic space is nearly that high. However, even if the density of all of space were found to be as high as in the vicinity of those sample galaxies, resulting in an average density on the order of ten percent of the critical amount, that is still far short of the level necessary for the usual Big Bang cases.

If the Big Bang universe is flat, requiring its average density to be at the critical level (somewhat less for the open Big Bang universe and somewhat more for the closed Big Bang universe), as much as 99 percent of its mass might consist of non-baryonic matter of no known characteristics other than gravitational attraction. Investigators have made valiant efforts, both theoretical and observational, to find that missing matter, both cold dark matter (CDM) and hot dark matter (HDM). All sorts of exotic stuff, including photinos, gravitinos, small black holes, magnetic monopoles, solitons, cosmic strings and sheets, MACHOS (massive astrophysical halo objects), WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), massive neutrinos (meaning neutrinos that have mass), and several others have been proposed, but no significant observational evidence in support of those has been discovered.

[Because it has been said that the universe, in addition to photons, is flooded with neutrinos from the Big Bang, some theorists had suggested that electron neutrinos are more massive than previously thought by particle physicists; possibly as much as 30 eV (rather than less than 10 eV) which might be sufficient to solve the missing mass problem. For the same reason, it has more recently been suggested that muon neutrinos might have a mass of about 2500 MeV, more than 10,000 times greater than previously estimated. However, experiments failed to support an electron neutrino of 30 eV, (14) and there is no experimental evidence in support of a muon neutrino of 2500 MeV.]

Inflation theory, that is claimed to solve several of the major problems of conventional Big Bang Theory, postulates a flat universe. (15) For that reason the significance of the missing mass problem has in recent years increased in the minds of those who support that theory. As mentioned, that has provided increased incentive for the as yet unsuccessful search for missing mass.

<b>6. UNIVERSE TOO OLD?</b>

A major problem, known as the age paradox, (16) plagues Big Bang Theory: The postulated age of the Big Bang universe may be incompatible with observations.

Despite the insistence of some Big Bang advocates on a lower value, recent observations of distant galaxies have confirmed the Hubble constant to be approximately 80 km/sec/Megaparsec (about 24.5 km/sec/million light years). (13,17) Hubble time, the age 12 billion years. The age of a flat or near flat Big Bang universe, as postulated by Big Bang theorists in recent years, would be two thirds of that, or about 8 billion years; somewhat more than that for an open Big Bang universe, and somewhat less than that for a closed Big Bang universe. That age is only about one half of the known age of some stars and galaxies, (18,19) presenting an obviously impossible situation.

Conversely, a flat Big Bang universe having an age of 15 billion years, would require a Hubble time of 22.5 billion years and a Hubble constant of about 42.2 km/sec/Mpc; little more than one half of the observed value.

Even if the age of the Big Bang universe was considerably more than 8 billion years (and the Hubble constant correspondingly smaller), there may not have been time for the formation of observed gigantic galactic configurations. The time required for those to form (due to gravity) in accordance with Big Bang Theory) has been estimated to be on the order of 100 billion years.

The heavy elements observed in the solar system, and in other stars and galaxies, require at least one previous stellar cycle. (20,21) The formation of those stars, their life time, their collapse, explosion and dispersal, and the subsequent formation of our galaxy, sun and planets might well have required a period considerably greater than 8 billion years. Because of the high probability of more than one previous stellar cycle in this process, an age of at least tens of billions of years may have been required.

Astronomical observations support a period of rotation of our galaxy of 1/4 billion years. (22,23) At that rate, if the Big Bang had occurred on the order of 10 billion years ago, there would have been time for only 40 rotations. However, astronomical theory tells us that the rate of rotation has increased from a much lower rate as the galaxy has evolved, (24) providing time for considerably less than 40 rotations. As judged by the present spiral form of the galaxy, it might be expected that an order of magnitude more revolutions, and thus an order of magnitude more that 10 billion years, may have been required for the formation of our galaxy. These comments apply to other spiral galaxies as well as our own.

Possibly adding to this age problem, there have been observations of polarization of radiation received from distant quasars indicating the presence of relatively strong magnetic fields. Some of those quasars are reckoned by Big Bang theorists to be observed as they were at less than one tenth of the age of the universe, (25) far sooner than such fields might have developed in accordance with Big Bang Theory.

On the whole it would seem that the age of the universe is more likely to be at least several tens of billions of years, rather than 10 to 15 billion years as believed by Big Bang advocates. As in the case of the missing mass problem, Big Bang age problems alone appear to provide convincing evidence against all of Big Bang Theory.
It should be noted that Big Bang theorists' estimates of the age of the universe are based on their belief in an expanding universe. That in turn is based on the accepted Doppler interpretation of red shift which, as we will see, may present additional difficulties.
<b>
7. SOURCE OF RADIATION?</b>

The microwave background radiation (MBR), that is received uniformly from all directions of space, considered by many to be the most important evidence in support of Big Bang Theory, may be inconsistent with that theory.

In addition to the previous comment that one would expect the observed gigantic galactic formations to cause irregularities in the isotropy of MBR reception, the observed spectrum of the MBR, corresponding to a near perfect black body temperature of 2.7 K, doesn't agree very well with temperatures predicted by various Big Bang theorists. Those predictions had varied over a range of 5 to 50 K. (26) History also shows that some Big Bang cosmologists' "predictions" of MBR temperature have been "adjusted" after-the-fact to agree with observed temperatures.

The prediction of 5 K (by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman in 1948), (27) which has been selected as a basis for agreement with the observed temperature, was made by those who had accepted a Big Bang scenario that included concepts that were incorrect. Those included the idea that all of the elements of the universe were produced in the Big Bang, which was later determined to be erroneous.
If the temperature of the universe was at absolute zero, all matter would collapse. The temperature of radiation from space might reasonably be expected to be some small number of degrees above that temperature. In fact, some physicists (including Sir Arthur Eddington in 1926 and Andrew McKeller in 1942)(28) had estimated temperatures in the range of 2 to 3 K; closer to that of the MBR than has been estimated by Big Bang cosmologists.

According to Big Bang theorists, the "decoupling era", from whence MBR is said to have originated, may have lasted at least several hundred thousand years. (29) It has occurred to me that, if radiation comes to us directly from that period, later radiation would have lower source temperature and less red shift, resulting in distortion, "smearing", (24) of the postulated black body spectrum from the decoupling. Big Bang theorists may have assumed that the temperature and red shift changes of that period would cancel; but unless the universe had linear (fixed-rate) expansion, that cancellation could not be perfect. Because Big Bang theorists believe, not in a fixed rate of expansion, but in a non-linear decelerating expansion, it would seem reasonable to suppose that a less than perfect black body spectrum might be received from the Big Bang decoupling than that which is observed.

Smearing of a black body spectrum from the decoupling would also result if the shape of the Big Bang universe were less than perfectly spherical during that period. Although Big Bang advocates believe in that smoothness, it may be difficult for others to accept an explosion of such symmetry.

If MBR from the decoupling had caused thermal equalization (thermalization) of the matter of the space that surrounds us, as other theorists have suggested, and that matter were quite remote, the large irregularities of galactic formations might be expected to cause fairly large directional variations of the MBR. If the MBR is radiated from thermalized matter relatively close to us (but perhaps outside of our galaxy), the MBR might possess the observed isotropy. However, the possibility should not be overlooked that, as the work of Eddington, McKeller and others indicates, the observed MBR may be the result of sources of
energy other than the Big Bang decoupling.

Some Big Bang cosmologists have contended that thermalization of surrounding space could not produce a spectrum so closely resembling that of black body radiation. However there is theoretical support for the existence of particles in space (called whiskers) (30-32) that in turn supports the possibility of thermalization. Physical evidence of these particles has been found in meteorites that have struck the earth. (33,34)

Further doubt about the Big Bang as a source of the MBR results from consideration of the amplitude of MBR signal strength received here on earth. Calculations indicate that the received energy may be orders of magnitude lower than would be expected from the enormous energy release of the postulated Big Bang decoupling. (24)
According to Big Bang Theory, positively curved space provides the explanation for omnidirectional reception of MBR from the decoupling. However, characteristics of the positively curved space of a closed universe cannot be ascribed to the flat or somewhat open universe that is accepted by the majority of Big Bang theorists.

As presented above, the closed Big Bang universe would seem to be ruled out by age and density considerations. But if that had not been the case, and space were positively curved as postulated for the closed Big Bang universe case, neutrinos from the Big Bang would be raining on us as well as photons. Those have not been detected. By similar reasoning, in a Big Bang universe of positively curved space, rather than being "clumped" at great distances (as they are perceived to be by the presently accepted interpretation of red shift data), quasars would be more evenly distributed in direction, distance and speed. If that were found to be true it might tend to deny one of the alleged proofs of Big Bang Theory, that of an evolving universe.

Photons [that is, electromagnetic radiation (EMR) in the infrared region] are believed to originate from the Big Bang decoupling, to be red-shifted by about 1,000, and to be received from all directions of space as MBR. According to Big Bang Theory, neutrinos are also said to originate from the Big Bang, but at a much earlier time. They, like the MBR, are believed to fill the space that surrounds us. According to quantum wave theory, although they are particles rather than EMR, they are considered to have a red shift much greater than that of Big Bang photons. Their energy is therefore too low to allow their detection: their frequency below the capability of available technology. Although neutrinos from nearby sources (from the sun and from Supernova 1987A) have been detected, the treatment of Big Bang neutrinos as waves is said to provide an explanation for the lack of their detection. However, the application of wave theory to neutrinos, but not to other particles (electrons, protons, neutrons, etc.) believed to have originated in the Big Bang at or before the time of the decoupling, appears to present a logical inconsistency.
It would seem that, upon consideration of the available evidence, rather than supporting Big Bang Theory, the presence of MBR might actually be counted against it. It seems more reasonable to postulate natural radiation from matter or energetic processes in relatively nearby space as the source of MBR.

<b>8. CONTRIVED CHRONOLOGY?</b>

The time line of events from the first instant of the Big Bang until the present time, as presented by various cosmologists in their attempts to reconcile Big Bang Theory with quantum theory, have been inconsistent with their own versions of Big Bang Theory thus presenting serious chronology problems.

As an example of this, although there are few if any Big Bang adherents who believe in a universe that has expanded at a constant rate since the Big Bang, the chronology that is most often presented indicates a fixed-rate universe that is 10 billion years old. (3,35,36)

That chronology, indicating a Hubble time of 10 billion years, requires a Hubble constant of almost 100 km/sec/Mpc (30 km/sec/million light years), a value far in excess of that accepted by Big Bang supporters. For a Hubble constant of that value, all of the usual Big Bang cosmological cases (somewhat open, flat or closed) would require the Big Bang to have occurred at about 2/3 of Hubble time, or approximately 6 billion years ago, which is incompatible with current Big Bang thinking.

The great majority of Big Bang advocates believe in a considerable degree of gravitational deceleration of the expansion of the universe since the Big Bang for either a somewhat open, a flat or a closed universe. For those cases the plot of energy and temperature vs. time would require considerable decreasing slope as time progresses, rather than the linear expansion that is usually depicted.

Furthermore, the nonlinearity required for a decelerating expansion, would require considerable modification to the occurrence of quantum theory events (and other events, such as the decoupling), in the Big Bang chronology as customarily presented.

Study of this matter leads one to suspect that the timing of the events of the Big Bang Theory chronology as usually shown may merely have been contrived. Any amount of energy, measured or theoretical, required for the creation of particles of quantum theory can be placed between the infinite energy (infinite temperature and density) of the Big Bang singularity and the present low energy level of space (a temperature of 2.7 K).

Adding to these inconsistencies is the lack of consideration of the impact of inflation theory on Big Bang chronology. Although many of those who present chronological information have accepted inflation theory, and must be aware of its impact, they continue to describe Big Bang events essentially in accordance with a chronology, already inconsistent with pre-inflation Big Bang Theory, that shows a linear decrease in energy and a linear increase in size as functions of time.

<b>9. SOURCE OF LIGHT ELEMENTS?</b>

The agreement of the observed abundance of light elements in the universe with those predicted by various Big Bang cosmologists is frequently cited as one of the primary proofs of their theory, but this proof also faces some difficulties.

The study of historical data shows that over the years predictions of the ratio of helium to hydrogen in a Big Bang universe have been repeatedly adjusted to agree with the latest available estimates of that ratio as observed in the real universe. (Human science is very fallible!) The estimated ratio is dependent on a ratio of baryons to photons (the baryon number) that has also been arbitrarily adjusted to agree with the currently established helium to hydrogen ratio. These appear to have not been predictions, but merely adjustments of theory ("retrodictions") to accommodate current data.

Big Bang cosmologists tell us that the observed ratio of helium to hydrogen in the universe could only have been the result of Big Bang thermonucleosynthesis. However, that presumes, not only a precise knowledge of the processes of a Big Bang, but a precise knowledge of the processes of other possible cosmologies. If, for example, another cosmology should suggest that helium has accumulated as a result of other processes (37,38) (such as stellar nucleosynthesis over tens of billions of years), having given other cosmological possibilities little or no consideration, on what basis might a Big Bang theorist deny that? In addition to helium, Big Bang theorists have in the past maintained that other light elements including boron, beryllium and lithium, can only have been produced by Big Bang nucleosynthesis (fusion). However, it has been found that these elements can be produced by cosmic rays acting on supernovae remnants (fission). (29) It is also possible for deuterium to have been produced by processes in the formation of galaxies, rather than in Big Bang nucleosynthesis as claimed by those theorists.

Adding to those problems, recent observations have shown that the abundance of helium is less than that indicated by standard Big Bang Theory, and that the ratios of beryllium and boron are inconsistent with that theory. (39-41)

<b>10. DOPPLER RED SHIFT?</b>

Inconsistencies regarding the current interpretation of observed red shift present many problems to Big Bang Theory. Many of those have to do with the distant massive bodies that are called quasars.
As presently utilized, red shift data results in the perception of extremely great masses and brilliances of quasars. Variations in the level of radiation from these sources (27,42) require their size to be extremely small and their densities to be extremely great. These extreme characteristics suggest that the present interpretation of red shift data as Doppler shift doesn't tell the whole story about the speed and distance of remote massive bodies in space.

Red shift data as presently used also shows quasars to be "clumped" at great distances (great relative velocities). According to Big Bang Theory that would require the formation of large numbers of quasars too soon after the Big Bang. That interpretation of red shift data also results in the anomaly of quasars at various distances, and thus of various ages, that are observed to have similar electromagnetic spectrums.

But perhaps even in greater conflict with Big Bang Theory, the clumping of distant quasars in all directions would appear to put us at the center of the universe. That situation, known as the Copernican Problem, is in direct conflict with the basic Big Bang Theory tenet of smoothness; that is, isotropy and homogeneity.
Dependence on Doppler red shift for the determination of velocity and distance also results in the perception of an unreasonably large number of distant quasars having associated superluminal flares. (32,43) Some simple mathematics can show that, if the perceived distance of those quasars was less, fewer of such flares would be indicated. (Also, mathematical investigation of the velocity relationships between quasars perceived to be at great distances and their perceived superluminal flares, has provided unintelligible results.)

Big Bang theorists accept special relativity, and thus the application of the Lorentz transformations to the red shift of radiation from galaxies and quasars that are believe to be at great distances and receding from us at "relativistic" speeds. Those speeds are thus believed to result in red shifts that are greater than would be expected by the linear application of a Hubble constant. That would appear to be reasonable for a universe consisting of matter that is expanding as the normal result of an explosion. However, because Big Bang theorists insist that it is not the matter of the universe, but the space of the universe that is expanding, I have suggested an additional problem: Although the Lorentz transformations may apply to matter, they do not apply to massless space. It is therefore inappropriate to apply them to a Big Bang universe.

In addition to quasar related problems, there is considerable observational evidence indicating that the presently accepted interpretation of red shift data is to some degree erroneous. Observations over many years by highly regarded astronomers have shown many "companion galaxies"(27) to have considerably higher red shifts than those of unmistakably neighbouring galaxies. Most notable among those astronomers is Halton Arp, who has also provided considerable evidence that radiation from newly formed galaxies is in some manner red shifted by other than Doppler effect. (44)

Although it has long ago been ruled out by Big Bang cosmologists as an important factor, massive dense bodies, that may not be massive enough and dense enough to become black holes, may be massive enough and dense enough to cause appreciable amounts of gravitational red shift (Einstein shift)(24,49) of their radiation.

In support of this it is known, for example, that even our sun has a small gravitational red shift (z 0.000002); and it is suggested that the differences in masses and radii of stars of some binary pairs(50) may be the cause of observed differences in their average red shift.
Any of these possible causes of red shift may add to Doppler red shift (if that exists) and thus cause the appearance of greater relative speed and distance of quasars and other massive bodies in space. If that should prove to be so, problems regarding the interpretation of red shift data might be eased or eliminated.

It seems obvious that, if other causes of the red shift of radiation from massive bodies were given consideration, problems resulting from the conventional interpretation of red shift might be eased. Quasars might be found to be much closer and their velocity much lower, thus solving the perception of excessive brilliance, mass, density, large numbers of superluminal flares and other problems, including the clumping of quasars at great distances. (If red shift were found to have causes other than or in addition to Doppler effects, the velocity of distant quasars would fall on a lower, more linear portion of a plot of velocity vs. red shift that incorporates relativistic effects [as derived from the Einstein- Lorentz transformations]. The perception of clumping would thus be reduced.)
It should be pointed out that Hubble himself was not convinced that red shift was exclusively due to Doppler effect. Up to the time of his death he maintained that velocities inferred from red shift measurements should be referred to as apparent velocities. (45,51)

<b>11. WHAT SPACE CURVATURE?</b>

No references to negatively curved space can be found in Einstein's Relativity, The Special and General Theories, or in other early books on Einstein's work such as Biography of Physics by George Gamow or Understanding Relativity by Stanley Goldberg. In all of those there is only discussion of positively curved space resulting from gravitational attraction (or equivalent acceleration).

Not only have Big Bang theorists thoroughly accepted the questionable concept of positively curved space but, based on some later interpretations of relativity, (5, they have decided that space may be negatively curved.

Accordingly, the closed Big Bang universe has positively curved space, the flat Big Bang universe has uncurved space, and the open Big Bang universe has negatively curved "saddle shaped" space. (In the second two of these space doesn't close on itself, and it has no edge.)

According to Einstein, space is curved due to the presence of matter, but is only positively curved. Therefore, if it is believed that space is uncurved or negatively curved, it has occurred to me that there must be something in the Big Bang universe to overcome the positive curvature resulting from the presence of the matter of the universe.

If the universe is flat, that "something" must be just sufficient to compensate for the gravitational influence of the matter of the universe and, if the universe is open, it must be sufficient to overpower that influence.
In other words, logic would seem to indicate that Big Bang theorists' acceptance of uncurved space of a flat universe, or the negatively curved space of an open universe, implicitly acknowledges the existence of negative gravity. There must be more than an equation to provide the rationale for flat or negative curvature in a universe of significant mass; the mathematics must represent some physical phenomena; something like cosmic repulsion. (24)

For many years it had been thought that a term in Einstein's equations known as cosmic repulsion was his "greatest mistake"; even he had reached that conclusion. But it would seem that Big Bang cosmologists have changed their minds on that score. Some of them have now accepted cosmic repulsion, now called the cosmological constant, as an essential feature of inflation theory. (1)

Some Big Bang theorists have also suggested (quite logically) that cosmic repulsion provides the solution to the age paradox. If it is like negative gravity, and of sufficient magnitude, the expansion of the universe in the past may have been slower than indicated by the presently observed Hubble constant. If that is so, the Big Bang may have occurred sufficiently long ago for their universe to be older than some stars are observed to be, thus rescuing the Big Bang from its age problem. That, of course, would result in a kind of universe not normally envisioned by Big Bang enthusiasts; one that has an ever increasing rate of expansion. (As interpreted from red shift data in the usual manner, out to a red shift of one [z = 1], astronomical evidence would appear to indicate a universe having a fixed rate of expansion. (13) However, because of measurement uncertainties and possible relativistic effects at a relative distance of about one billion light years and beyond, there is considerable doubt concerning the constancy of the Hubble "constant".)

It would seem that logical inconsistencies regarding the curvature of space might tend to discredit the prevailing Big Bang cosmology.

<b>12. DOES INFLATION FIX THE BIG BANG? </b>

Inflation theory, that was invented for the purpose, is said to provide simple solutions to some of the problems of pre-inflation Big Bang Theory. (3,4) However, convincing support for claims of solutions to the singularity, smoothness, horizon, and flatness problems is lacking.

Inflation theorists have alleged that the inflationary expansion of the early Big Bang universe, involving speeds orders of magnitude greater than that of light, (3,4) did not involve the travel of mass or energy, and thus did not violate the theory of relativity in solving the singularity problem. But how inflation, as opposed to ordinary expansion, can in some manner displace all the mass or energy of the universe without physically moving it, defies common understanding. A violation of Einstein's prohibition of speeds in excess of that of light seems to be inherent in that process.

The quantum concept of false vacuum, previously postulated only to deal with the spontaneous generation of the tiny fundamental particles of modern physics, is called upon by inflation theory to instantaneously produce the mass and energy of the entire universe. But this sudden appearance of the universe from the energy of vacuum, (1) still essentially out-of-nothing, does not escape the perception of an enormous violation of the law of conservation of mass/energy.
Inflation theorists have also explained that an enormous cosmic repulsive force (an enormously large cosmological constant)(1) provided the expansive force necessary for an exponential expansion of the universe. However, as previously noted, both the birth of the universe from a gigantic vacuum fluctuation(2,52) and the expansion of the universe from a gigantic cosmic repulsive force are speculations that have no means of verification.

Perhaps as a form of insurance for their claim of inflation's enormous expansion of the early universe without violation of the conservation of mass/energy, some inflation theorists have borrowed the Big Bang zero net energy idea that an equivalent amount of energy is merely on loan from the energy of the vacuum; that loan to be repaid upon the ultimate collapse of the universe.
Because of the apparent impossibility of a collapsing closed universe, that repayment might be put off indefinitely. However, even if the Big Bang universe were some day to collapse, that wouldn't happen for many billions of years: seemingly a long time for the loan of all of its mass and energy to go unpaid. Furthermore, those who support inflation theory espouse, not a closed universe, but a flat one, so the zero-net-energy idea appears to conflict with their own beliefs.

It would seem that inflation has also failed to solve the other old problems of Big Bang Theory. To state that inflation smoothed the universe by stretching out irregularities of the first instant of the Big Bang, but left just enough of them to provide the "seeds" for the later formation of galaxies may be a matter of faith, not science. To state that inflation at orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light solved the horizon problem that had been attributed to the high rate of expansion of pre-inflation Big Bang Theory, may be illogical. To state that inflation, that is said to result in an exponential expansion of somewhere between 10 to the 50th power (Guth's original inflation)(3) and 10 to the 1,000,000th power (Linde's new inflation), (4) would cause anything greater than a minutely low average density, far less than the critical density required for a flat Big Bang universe, seems difficult to accept.

Inflation theorists postulate a universe that expanded to unimaginable size, and thus claim that we can observe only a tiny portion of it. But they continue to tell us that quasars can be seen to within a small percentage of the distance to the Big Bang; two very conflicting ideas. In addition, some Big Bang cosmologists who have accepted inflation, continue to describe events essentially in accordance with the typical chronology of pre-inflation Big Bang, having a linear decrease in temperature (energy) and a linear increase in size as functions of time, without consideration of the appropriate changes necessary to accommodate inflation.
In addition to its apparent failure to solve pre-inflation Big Bang problems, it would seem that inflation has introduced some new problems and complexities.

<b>13. WHAT IS DECELERATING?</b>

A new quandary, that I have called the Big Bang deceleration problem, has occurred to me. (24) If the universe is expanding and, if that expansion is decelerating due to gravitational attraction of the mass of the universe, as Big Bang theorists believe, they have not made it clear whether the expansion of space is decelerating, or whether the expansion of the matter of space is decelerating.

Most Big Bang theorists agree that, rather than the matter of space, space itself is expanding. However, if the expansion of space is decelerating, the physical law that relates the deceleration of space with gravitation has not been made clear. It would seem reasonable to expect the expansion of the matter of a Big Bang universe to be decelerating, but, if that is so, matter must have an increasing inward velocity relative to expanding space; or perhaps the expansion of both matter and space is decelerating possibly doubling the effect of gravity. A lack of clarity regarding this matter would seem to add to the difficulties of Big Bang Theory.

<b>14. DOES LOGIC PREVAIL?</b>

In addition to those suggested above, some miscellaneous logical oversights regarding Big Bang Theory are presented in the these closing paragraphs.
The first of these has been alluded to, but is repeated for emphasis. Big Bang cosmologists repeatedly ascribe closed universe attributes to the flat and open Big Bang universe cases. Those attributes include the concepts of closed, curved, expanding space that has no edge, and a centerless universe in which the Big Bang happened everywhere: ideas that do not apply to a flat Euclidian universe or an open universe of saddle shaped space. It would seem that in those cases the universe must have a center at which the Big Bang once occurred, thus denying a basic tenet of Big Bang Theory.
Because they believe it solves one of Big Bang Theory's major problems (despite its apparent unlikelihood), some Big Bang cosmologists still favor a closed cycling Big Bang universe. They feel that, because it didn't come out-of-nothing, but from the remains of a previous universe, the explosion of a collapsed universe avoids the singularity problem. However, there is no theory in physics that can account for the re-explosion, or "bounce", of the universe. (2) Famous physics professor John Archibald Wheeler, who believed in the bounce, once said that black holes are "laboratory models" for the collapsing universe case. (54) However, prevailing theory denies that a giant black hole might explode. (55)

Big Bang advocates have criticized the once competing steady state cosmology of Hoyle, Bondi and Gold because it provided no explanation for the origin of the universe. However, at the same time, some of those espouse a cycling Big Bang universe, that has repeatedly collapsed and re-exploded in the past (and that might continue to do so in the future), which exhibits the same no-origin flaw that they ascribed to steady state theory. Big Bang theorists have in the past indicated that all galactic formation had started in the same early era, that is, within the first billion years following the Big Bang. However, recent evidence has increasingly indicated much later and continuing formation of galaxies. (56,57) In the light of this evidence the previous view is no longer stressed. However, it would seem that such "waffling" might tend to discredit Big Bang Theory.

Furthermore, it seems unlikely for galaxies to have formed from particles of matter that were initially departing from each other at or above the speed of light. No known force, gravity, electrodynamic or other, may have been strong enough to cause those particles to accrete. This problem has been recognized by some Big Bang theorists in the past who have postulated that turbulence in the early Big Bang could have started the necessary accumulation. However, it is difficult to imagine, even in the presence of turbulence, how the great departing speed of particles could allow their accretion. Furthermore, the insistence of most Big Bang theorists on extreme smoothness of the Big Bang explosion would also seem to deny that possibility.

Theorists insist that an expanding universe provides important evidence in support of Big Bang Theory. However, they seem to ignore the fact that expansion (if true) might support other cosmologies, including the rejected steady state cosmology.
Recent convincing evidence that the number of families of fundamental particles in the universe is limited to just three, and recently observed "lensing"(49,58) of radiation from distant matter by the gravitational fields of closer matter in space (as predicted by Einstein) have both been cited as added proof of Big Bang Theory. However, as in the cases of Hubble expansion, the presence of MBR, and the abundance of light elements, these observations might provide support to alternate cosmologies equally well.

Big Bang theorists have implied that their solution to Olber's paradox, (24,27,59) that the relativistic speeds (large red shifts) of distant bodies of the universe dim the sky, provides proof of Big Bang Theory. But, instead of relying on that solution, it might be more reasonable to accept the straightforward solution that Olber himself had long ago offered, that closer, smaller, cooler matter can obscure visible radiation from more distant, larger, warmer matter of space. In his discussion of C. V. L. Charlier's clustering hierarchical universe(13), P. J. E. Peebles has recognized that the view of distant galaxies is obscured by dust in our galaxy. And certainly telescopic images of supernovae appear to show that "dust" hides more distant matter. If correct, that solution would seem to support no cosmology in particular.

There has been a consistent pattern of neglect of evidence that might tend to discredit the prevailing Big Bang cosmology. Examples of this are the vast amount of data compiled over many years by Halton Arp that shows the proximity of objects of higher red shifts to galaxies of lower red shift, (44) and by Anthony Peratt regarding the role of plasma physics in the formation of galaxies. (60) Although that data is well known, its impact on the field of cosmology is all but ignored.

<b>15. WHAT TO DO?</b>

Although the problems presented here may seem overwhelming to those who question big bang theory, mainstream cosmologists insist that, like Dr. Pangloss, theirs is the best of all possible worlds. They are confident that all Big Bang problems will ultimately be overcome by further pursuit of evidence in support of that theory. However, on the chance that they could be wrong, it might be prudent to also pursue some alternate paths of investigation.

One of the more prominent alternate cosmologies that deserves more attention is that presented by Anthony Peratt and Eric Lerner(61); a plasma cosmology based on the earlier work of Hannes Alfven, wherein electromagnetic forces have determined the evolution of the universe rather than gravitational force in accordance with General Relativity. I admire Hannes Alfven's logic.

The tired light concepts that deny Doppler red shift, and the vast amount of "anomalous red shift" data that has been presented by Halton Arp, both of which tend to deny a major premise of big bang theory, certainly should be taken more seriously.
Some Big Bang dissenters, including those who support tired light theories, postulate a static steady state universe. However, I feel that the evidence for expansion, at least in the "near universe" (out to many thousands of light years?) is quite convincing, and therefore, have proposed a new steady state cosmology (24) similar to the old SS cosmology of Hoyle, Gold, and Bondi. (62)

In addition to the apparent imperfection of its perfect cosmological principle, a lack of rationale for either the generation of new matter in space or for expansion of the universe, appears to have caused the failure of old SS theory failed to win acceptance. This newly postulated SS cosmology overcomes those failings by proposing the generation of new matter from the energy of space in accordance with quantum theory, and expansion due to Einstein's previously condemned (but now accepted in inflation theory) cosmic repulsion. (These are proposed, not on the incredibly enormous scales required by inflation theory, but on scales just sufficient for the generation of fundamental particles and to overcome the force of gravity in remote empty space.)

One of these postulated alternate cosmologies, combinations or portions of those or others, unknown or omitted here, may or may not prove to be viable but, in view of the many Problems of the Big Bang Theory, alternates possibilities certainly deserve more serious consideration.

References (William C. Mitchell)

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43. C. D. Dermer, and R. Schlickeiser, Science (18 September 1992).

44. H. C. Arp, "Fitting Theory to Observation From Stars to Cosmology" in Progress in New Cosmologies: Beyond the Big Bang (Plenum Press, NY, 1993).

45. E. Hubble, Observational Approach to Cosmology, (Oxford University Press, 1937). (see also)

46. G. Reber, "Endless, Boundless, Stable Universe," in University of Tasmania Occasional Paper, (University of Tasmania,1977).

47. P. Marmet and G. Reber, IEEE Trans. on Plasma Sci. (April 1989).

48. P. Marmet, Phys. Essays 1,24, (1988).

49. P. J. E. Peebles, D. N. Schramm, E. L. Turner and R. G. Kron, Nature (29 August 1991).

50. P. Marmet, IEEE Trans. on Plasma Phys. (February 1990).

51. D. E. Osterbrock, J. A. Gwinn and R. S. Brashear, Sci. Am. (July 1993).


52. G. Gale, "Cosmological Fecundity: Theories of Multiple Universes" in Physical Cosmology and Philosophy edited by J. Leslie (Macmillan, NY, 1990)

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54. J. A. Wheeler, "Beyond the End of Time" in C. W. Misner, K. A. Throne and J. A. Wheeler, Gravitation (W. H. Freeman, NY, 1971). (see also)


55. T. J.-L. Courvoisier, and E. I. Robson, Sci. Am. (June 1991).

56. F. Flam, Science (28 February 1992).

57. S. Flamsteed, Discover (24 June 1992).

58. Jacqueline N. Hewitt, "Gravitational Lenses" in Encyclopedia of Physics , 2nd ed. (VCH Publishers, NY, 1991).

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<b>'Seeing Red' </b>

by Halton Arp

There is now a fashionable set of beliefs regarding the workings of the universe, greatly publicized as the Big Bang, which I believe is wildly incorrect. But in order to enable people to make their own judgments about this question, we need to examine a large number of observations. Observations in science are the primary and final authority.

More than 10 years have passed and, in spite of determined opposition, I believe the observational evidence has become overwhelming, and the Big Bang has in reality been toppled. There is now a need to communicate the new observations, the connections between objects and the new insights into the workings of the universe - all the primary obligations of academic science, which has generally tried to suppress or ignore such dissident information. (It makes one wonder, perhaps with profit, whether there are other uncertain assumptions on which much of our lives are built, but of which we are innocently overconfident.)

The present book is sure to outrage many academic scientists. Many of my professional friends will be greatly pained. Why then do I write it? First, everyone has to tell the truth as they see it, especially about important things. The fact that the majority of professionals are intolerant of even opinions which are discordant makes change a necessity. Those friends of mine who also struggle to get the mainstream of astronomy back on track mostly feel that presenting evidence and championing new theories is sufficient to cause change, and that it is improper to criticize an enterprise to which they belong and value highly. I disagree, in that I think if we do not understand why science is failing to self-correct, it will not be possible to fix it.

At this point, I believe we must look for salvation from the non-specialists, amateurs and interdisciplinary thinkers - those who form judgments on the general thrust of the evidence, those who are skeptical about any explanation, particularly official ones, and above all are tolerant of other people's theories. (When the complete answer is not known, in a sense everyone is a crackpot - Gasp!)

If the cause of these redshifts is misunderstood, then distances can be wrong by factors of 10 to 100, and luminosities and masses will be wrong by factors up to 10,000. We would have a totally erroneous picture of extragalactic space, and be faced with one of the most embarrassing boondoggles of our intellectual history.

Because objects in motion in the laboratory, or orbiting double stars, or rotating galaxies all show Doppler redshifts to longer wavelengths when they are receding, it has been assumed throughout astronomy that redshifts always and only mean recession velocity. No direct verification of this assumption is possible, and through the years many contradictions have arisen and been ignored. The evidence presented here is, I hope, convincing because it offers many different proofs of intrinsic (non-velocity) redshifts in every category of celestial object.

It is interesting to note that at first, Einstein felt this solution was incorrect. Later he said it was correct, but of no consequence. Finally he accepted the validity of this solution, but was so unhappy with the fact that it was not a stable solution, i.e., it either collapsed or expanded, that he retained the cosmological constant he had earlier introduced in order to keep the universe static. (This constant was later referred to as the cosmological fudge factor.)

In 1924, Hubble persuaded the world that the "white nebula" were really extragalactic, and a few years later announced that the redshifts of their spectral lines increased as they became fainter. This redshift-apparent magnitude relation for galaxies became known as the Hubble law ( through lack of rigor, often referred to as the redshift-distance relation). At this point Einstein dropped his cosmological constant as a great mistake, and adopted the view that his equations had been telling him all along, that the universe was expanding. Thus was born the Big Bang theory, according to which the entire universe was created instantaneously out of nothing 15 billion years ago.

This really is the entirety of the theory on which our whole concept of cosmology has been rested for the last 75 years. It is interesting to note, however, that Hubble, the observer, even up to his final lecture before the Royal Society, always held open the possibility that the redshift did not mean velocity of recession but might be caused by something else.

In his seminal book Realm of the Nebulae Hubble wrote: "On the other hand, if the interpretation as velocity shifts is abandoned, we find in the redshifts a hitherto unrecognized principle whose implications are unknown."

In the ensuing years the evidence discussed in the present book has built up to the point where it is clear that the velocity interpretation can now be abandoned in favor of a new principle which stands on a firm observational and theoretical foundation.
But of course, the stunning aspect of the ROSAT observations was that two quasars of redshift .63 and .45 are actually physically linked by a luminous connection to a low redshift object of z= .007. When I showed this to the local experts, there were alarmed states followed by annoyance.

This result made it clear that the compact and interacting groups were just a more concentrated ensemble of young, non-equilibrium companion galaxies which had been ejected more recently from the parent galaxy, and were composed of material of higher redshift. Aside from being empirically true, this interpretation solves all the conventional paradoxes of the failure of the galaxies to merge into a single galaxy on a cosmic time scale, and also explains the unbearable presence of "discordant" redshifts.

In later chapters we will show that galaxies and quasars tend to occur at certain preferred redshifts. This quantization implies that galaxies do not evolve with smoothly decreasing redshifts, but change in steps.

One major point of the present book is to try to make it impossible to ignore the enormous amount of mutually supporting significant evidence which all points to the same conclusion.
In the face of 28 years of accumulated evidence, to go on proclaiming that quasars are out at the edge of the universe seems unpardonable.

<b>Summary - Alignments, Quasars, BL Lac's and Galaxy Clusters</b>


1) Objects which appear young are aligned on either side of eruptive objects. This implies ejection of protogalaxies.

2) The youngest objects appear to have the highest redshifts. This implies that intrinsic redshift decreases as the object ages.

3) As distance from the ejecting central object increases, the quasars increase in brightness and decrease in redshift. This implies that the ejected objects evolve as they travel outward.

4) At about z= .3 and about 400 kpc from that parent galaxy the quasars appear to become very bright in optical and X-ray luminosity. This implies there is a transition to BL Lac Objects.

5) Few BL Lac objects are observed implying this phase is short-lived.


6) Clusters of galaxies, many of which are strong X-ray sources, end to appear at comparable distances to the BL Lac's from the parent galaxy. This suggests the clusters may be a result of the breaking up of a BL Lac.

7) Clusters of galaxies in the range z= .4 to .2 contain blue, active galaxies. It is implied that they continue to evolve to higher luminosity and lower redshift.

Abell clusters from z= .01 to .2 lie along ejection lines from galaxies like CenA. Presumably they are evolved products of the ejections.

9) The strings of galaxies which are aligned through the brightest nearby spirals have redshifts z= .01 to .02. Presumably they are the last evolutionary stage of the ejected protogalaxies before they become slightly higher redshift companions of the original ejecting galaxies. (p166-7)

<b>Quantization of Redshifts</b>

The fact that measured values of redshift do not vary continuously but come in steps- certain preferred values- is so unexpected that conventional astronomy has never been able to accept it, in spite of the overwhelming observational evidence. Their problem is simply that if redshifts measure radial components of velocities, then galaxy velocities can be pointed at any angle to us, hence their redshifts must be continuously distributed. For supposed recession velocities of quasars, to measure equal steps in all directions in the sky means we are at the center of a series of explosions. This is an anti-Copernican embarrassment. So a simple glance at the evidence discussed in this Chapter shows that extragalactic astronomy and Big Bang theory is swept away. (p195)

On the theoretical front it has become more persuasive that particle masses determine intrinsic redshifts and that these change with cosmic age. Therefore episodic creation of matter will imprint redshift steps on objects created at different epochs. In addition it appears increasingly useful to view particle masses to be communicated by wave like carriers in a Machian universe. Therefore the possibility of beat frequencies, harmonics, interference and evolution through resonant states is opened up. (p195)
My attitude toward this result is that in a Machian universe there must be some signal carrier for inertial mass coming from distant galaxies. (p202)

In the phenomena of quantization, we have a connection from the redshifts of the quasars, to the redshifts of the galaxies, to the properties of the solar system and finally to the properties of fundamental particles like the electrons. The quantization of physical parameters would seem to be governed by the laws of non-local physics, i.e. like quantum mechanics in which the fundamental parameter appears to be time- for example the repetition rate of a spinning electron. It is clear that we are not running out of problems to solve. In fact, contrary to some rumors that we are reaching an end to physics, the more we learn the more primitive our previous understanding appears, and the more challenging the problems become. (p223)

On Academia and 'Belief' in Scientific Theories

After about 45 years, I now know that if the academic theoreticians at that time had not forced his observations into fashionable molds, we might at least not have started off modern cosmology with the wrong fundamental assumption. We could be much further along in understanding our relation to a much larger, older universe - a universe which is continually unfolding from many points within itself.
..the problem is pervasive throughout astronomy and, contrary to its projected image, endemic throughout most of current science. Scientists, particularly at the most prestigious institutions, regularly suppress and ridicule findings which contradict their current theories and assumptions.

One thing has been accomplished, though I now understand what should be called the statistics of nihilism. It can be reduced to a very simple axiom: "No matter how many times something new has been observed, it cannot be believed until it has been observed again."
In view of all the other evidence known to show that quasars, and 3C273 in particular, belonged to the Virgo Cluster, I gloomily came to the ironic conclusion that if you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality.

I had long ago learned that colloquia were events of intense social pressure, and that comments from the floor which questioned the assumptions of the speaker and were not explainable in a few sentences were neither understood nor welcome.

The greatest mistake in my opinion, and the one we continually make, is to let the theory guide the model. After a ridiculously long time it has finally dawned on me that establishment scientists actually proceed on the belief that theories tell you what is true and what is not true! Of course that is absurd - observations and experiments describe objects that exist- they cannot be "right" or "wrong". Theory is just a language that can be used to discuss and summarize relationships between observations. The model should be completely empirical and tell us what relationships between fundamental properties are required.

This is the kind of theory we are looking for - simple, capable of being visualized- one that can connect together the puzzling observational facts that presently confound understanding. It seems to me that this should be the working hypothesis that is useful in opening up new directions of investigation until further paradoxes are encountered. We are certainly not at the end of science. Most probably we are just at the beginning!

In 1964, Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar proposed a theory of gravitation (I would now prefer to call it a theory of mass) which had its origin in Mach's principle. According to this theory every particle in the universe derives its inertia from the rest of the particles in the universe. Imagine an electron just born into the universe before it has time to "see" any other particles in its vicinity. It has zero mass because there is nothing to operationally measure it against. As time goes on it receives signals from a volume of space that enlarges at the velocity of light, and contains larger and larger numbers of particles. Its mass grows in proportion to the number and strength of the signals it receives.

But in a very fundamental sense, the Machian physics which we depend on to fit the observations- that is what bridges the gap between classical dynamics and quantum mechanics. Because the particle "feels" the mass with which it communicates inside its light horizon, it is in contact through an electromagnetic wave whose particle aspect materializes and dematerializes like a quantum.
Cosmologically, the physics that assumes particle masses constant with time is not valid. What goes on in the rest of the universe affects what happens everywhere else. In addition to the pictures they form in their minds, I think it is very important for humans to realize that the fundamental particles that make up their bodies and brains, and thus they themselves, are in some ill understood way in continual contact with the rest of the universe.

---

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>The Top 30 Problems with the Big Bang</b>

[reprinted from Meta Research Bulletin 11, 6-13 (2002)]

Abstract. Earlier, we presented a simple list of the top ten problems with the Big Bang. 1 Since that publication, we have had many requests for citations and additional details, which we provide here. We also respond to a few rebuttal arguments to the earlier list. Then we supplement the list based on the last four years of developments – with another 20 problems for the theory.


(1) Static universe models fit observational data better than expanding universe models.
Static universe models match most observations with no adjustable parameters. The Big Bang can match each of the critical observations, but only with adjustable parameters, one of which (the cosmic deceleration parameter) requires mutually exclusive values to match different tests. 2],[3 Without ad hoc theorizing, this point alone falsifies the Big Bang. Even if the discrepancy could be explained, Occam’s razor favors the model with fewer adjustable parameters – the static universe model.


(2) The microwave “background” makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball.
The expression “the temperature of space” is the title of chapter 13 of Sir Arthur Eddington’s famous 1926 work, 4 Eddington calculated the minimum temperature any body in space would cool to, given that it is immersed in the radiation of distant starlight. With no adjustable parameters, he obtained 3°K (later refined to 2.8°K 5), essentially the same as the observed, so-called “background”, temperature. A similar calculation, although with less certain accuracy, applies to the limiting temperature of intergalactic space because of the radiation of galaxy light. 6 So the intergalactic matter is like a “fog”, and would therefore provide a simpler explanation for the microwave radiation, including its blackbody-shaped spectrum.

Such a fog also explains the otherwise troublesome ratio of infrared to radio intensities of radio galaxies. 7 The amount of radiation emitted by distant galaxies falls with increasing wavelengths, as expected if the longer wavelengths are scattered by the intergalactic medium. For example, the brightness ratio of radio galaxies at infrared and radio wavelengths changes with distance in a way which implies absorption. Basically, this means that the longer wavelengths are more easily absorbed by material between the galaxies. But then the microwave radiation (between the two wavelengths) should be absorbed by that medium too, and has no chance to reach us from such great distances, or to remain perfectly uniform while doing so. It must instead result from the radiation of microwaves from the intergalactic medium. This argument alone implies that the microwaves could not be coming directly to us from a distance beyond all the galaxies, and therefore that the Big Bang theory cannot be correct.

None of the predictions of the background temperature based on the Big Bang were close enough to qualify as successes, the worst being Gamow’s upward-revised estimate of 50°K made in 1961, just two years before the actual discovery. Clearly, without a realistic quantitative prediction, the Big Bang’s hypothetical “fireball” becomes indistinguishable from the natural minimum temperature of all cold matter in space. But none of the predictions, which ranged between 5°K and 50°K, matched observations. 8 And the Big Bang offers no explanation for the kind of intensity variations with wavelength seen in radio galaxies.


(3) Element abundance predictions using the Big Bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work.
The universal abundances of most elements were predicted correctly by Hoyle in the context of the original Steady State cosmological model. This worked for all elements heavier than lithium. The Big Bang co-opted those results and concentrated on predicting the abundances of the light elements. Each such prediction requires at least one adjustable parameter unique to that element prediction. Often, it’s a question of figuring out why the element was either created or destroyed or both to some degree following the Big Bang. When you take away these degrees of freedom, no genuine prediction remains. The best the Big Bang can claim is consistency with observations using the various ad hoc models to explain the data for each light element. Examples: 9],[10 for helium-3; 11 for lithium-7; 12 for deuterium; 13 for beryllium; and 14],[15 for overviews. For a full discussion of an alternative origin of the light elements, see 16.


(4) The universe has too much large scale structure (interspersed “walls” and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years.
The average speed of galaxies through space is a well-measured quantity. At those speeds, galaxies would require roughly the age of the universe to assemble into the largest structures (superclusters and walls) we see in space 17, and to clear all the voids between galaxy walls. But this assumes that the initial directions of motion are special, e.g., directed away from the centers of voids. To get around this problem, one must propose that galaxy speeds were initially much higher and have slowed due to some sort of “viscosity” of space. To form these structures by building up the needed motions through gravitational acceleration alone would take in excess of 100 billion years. 18


(5) The average luminosity of quasars must decrease with time in just the right way so that their average apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely.
According to the Big Bang theory, a quasar at a redshift of 1 is roughly ten times as far away as one at a redshift of 0.1. (The redshift-distance relation is not quite linear, but this is a fair approximation.) If the two quasars were intrinsically similar, the high redshift one would be about 100 times fainter because of the inverse square law. But it is, on average, of comparable apparent brightness. This must be explained as quasars “evolving” their intrinsic properties so that they get smaller and fainter as the universe evolves. That way, the quasar at redshift 1 can be intrinsically 100 times brighter than the one at 0.1, explaining why they appear (on average) to be comparably bright. It isn’t as if the Big Bang has a reason why quasars should evolve in just this magical way. But that is required to explain the observations using the Big Bang interpretation of the redshift of quasars as a measure of cosmological distance. See 19],[20.

By contrast, the relation between apparent magnitude and distance for quasars is a simple, inverse-square law in alternative cosmologies. In [20], Arp shows great quantities of evidence that large quasar redshifts are a combination of a cosmological factor and an intrinsic factor, with the latter dominant in most cases. Most large quasar redshifts (e.g., z &gt; 1) therefore have little correlation with distance. A grouping of 11 quasars close to NGC 1068, having nominal ejection patterns correlated with galaxy rotation, provides further strong evidence that quasar redshifts are intrinsic. 21


(6) The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe.
Even though the data have been stretched in the direction toward resolving this since the “top ten” list first appeared, the error bars on the Hubble age of the universe (12±2 Gyr) still do not quite overlap the error bars on the oldest globular clusters (16±2 Gyr). Astronomers have studied this for the past decade, but resist the “observational error” explanation because that would almost certainly push the Hubble age older (as Sandage has been arguing for years), which creates several new problems for the Big Bang. In other words, the cure is worse than the illness for the theory. In fact, a new, relatively bias-free observational technique has gone the opposite way, lowering the Hubble age estimate to 10 Gyr, making the discrepancy worse again. 22],[23


(7) The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform.
In the early 1990s, we learned that the average redshift for galaxies of a given brightness differs on opposite sides of the sky. The Big Bang interprets this as the existence of a puzzling group flow of galaxies relative to the microwave radiation on scales of at least 130 Mpc. Earlier, the existence of this flow led to the hypothesis of a "Great Attractor" pulling all these galaxies in its direction. But in newer studies, no backside infall was found on the other side of the hypothetical feature. Instead, there is streaming on both sides of us out to 60-70 Mpc in a consistent direction relative to the microwave "background". The only Big Bang alternative to the apparent result of large-scale streaming of galaxies is that the microwave radiation is in motion relative to us. Either way, this result is trouble for the Big Bang. 24],[25],[26],[27],[28


( Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe.
The Big Bang requires sprinkling galaxies, clusters, superclusters, and the universe with ever-increasing amounts of this invisible, not-yet-detected “dark matter” to keep the theory viable. Overall, over 90% of the universe must be made of something we have never detected. By contrast, Milgrom’s model (the alternative to “dark matter”) provides a one-parameter explanation that works at all scales and requires no “dark matter” to exist at any scale. (I exclude the additional 50%-100% of invisible ordinary matter inferred to exist by, e.g., MACHO studies.) Some physicists don’t like modifying the law of gravity in this way, but a finite range for natural forces is a logical necessity (not just theory) spoken of since the 17th century. 29],[30


Milgrom’s model requires nothing more than that. Milgrom’s is an operational model rather than one based on fundamentals. But it is consistent with more complete models invoking a finite range for gravity. So Milgrom’s model provides a basis to eliminate the need for “dark matter” in the universe at any scale. This represents one more Big Bang “fudge factor” no longer needed.


(9) The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the highest-redshift quasars.
The Big Bang requires that stars, quasars and galaxies in the early universe be “primitive”, meaning mostly metal-free, because it requires many generations of supernovae to build up metal content in stars. But the latest evidence suggests lots of metal in the “earliest” quasars and galaxies. 31],[32],[33 Moreover, we now have evidence for numerous ordinary galaxies in what the Big Bang expected to be the “dark age” of evolution of the universe, when the light of the few primitive galaxies in existence would be blocked from view by hydrogen clouds. 34


(10) If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just a part in 1059. Any larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed on itself or already dissipated.
Inflation failed to achieve its goal when many observations went against it. To maintain consistency and salvage inflation, the Big Bang has now introduced two new adjustable parameters: (1) the cosmological constant, which has a major fine-tuning problem of its own because theory suggests it ought to be of order 10120, and observations suggest a value less than 1; and (2) “quintessence” or “dark energy”. 35],[36 This latter theoretical substance solves the fine-tuning problem by introducing invisible, undetectable energy sprinkled at will as needed throughout the universe to keep consistency between theory and observations. It can therefore be accurately described as “the ultimate fudge factor”.



Anyone doubting the Big Bang in its present form (which includes most astronomy-interested people outside the field of astronomy, according to one recent survey) would have good cause for that opinion and could easily defend such a position. This is a fundamentally different matter than proving the Big Bang did not happen, which would be proving a negative – something that is normally impossible. (E.g., we cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist.) The Big Bang, much like the Santa Claus hypothesis, no longer makes testable predictions wherein proponents agree that a failure would falsify the hypothesis. Instead, the theory is continually amended to account for all new, unexpected discoveries. Indeed, many young scientists now think of this as a normal process in science! They forget or were never taught that a model has value only when it can predict new things that differentiate the model from chance and from other models before the new things are discovered. Explanations of new things are supposed to flow from the basic theory itself with at most an adjustable parameter or two, and not from add-on bits of new theory.


Of course, the literature also contains the occasional review paper in support of the Big Bang. 37 But these generally don’t count any of the prediction failures or surprises as theory failures as long as some ad hoc theory might explain them. And the “prediction successes” in almost every case do not distinguish the Big Bang from any of the four leading competitor models: Quasi-Steady-State [16,[38]], Plasma Cosmology [18], Meta Model [3], and Variable-Mass Cosmology [20].


For the most part, these four alternative cosmologies are ignored by astronomers. However, one web site by Ned Wright does try to advance counterarguments in defense of the Big Bang. 39 But his counterarguments are mostly old objections long since defeated. For example:

(1) In “Eddington did not predict the CMB”:

a. Wright argues that Eddington’s argument for the “temperature of space” applies at most to our Galaxy. But Eddington’s reasoning applies also to the temperature of intergalactic space, for which a minimum is set by the radiation of galaxy and quasar light. The original calculations half-a-century ago showed this limit probably fell in the range 1-6°K. [6] And that was before quasars were discovered and before we knew the modern space density of galaxies.

b. Wright also argues that dust grains cannot be the source of the blackbody microwave radiation because there are not enough of them to be opaque, as needed to produce a blackbody spectrum. However, opaqueness is required only in a finite universe. An infinite universe can achieve thermodynamic equilibrium (the actual requirement for a blackbody spectrum) even if transparent out to very large distances because the thermal mixing can occur on a much smaller scale than quantum particles – e.g., in the light-carrying medium itself.

c. Wright argues that dust grains do not radiate efficiently at millimeter wavelengths. However, efficient or not, if the equilibrium temperature they reach is 2.8°K, they must radiate away the energy they absorb from distant galaxy and quasar light at millimeter wavelengths. Temperature and wavelength are correlated for any bodies in thermal equilibrium.

(2) About Lerner’s argument against the Big Bang:

a. Lerner calculated that the Big Bang universe has not had enough time to form superclusters. Wright calculates that all the voids could be vacated and superclusters formed in less than 11-14 billion years (barely). But that assumes that almost all matter has initial speeds headed directly out of voids and toward matter concentrations. Lerner, on the other hand, assumed that the speeds had to be built up by gravitational attraction, which takes many times longer. Lerner’s point is more reasonable because doing it Wright’s way requires fine-tuning of initial conditions.

b. Wright argues that “there is certainly lots of evidence for dark matter.” The reality is that there is no credible observational detection of dark matter, so all the “evidence” is a matter of interpretation, depending on theoretical assumptions. For example, Milgrom’s Model explains all the same evidence without any need for dark matter.

(3) Regarding arguments against “tired light cosmology”:

a. Wright argues: “There is no known interaction that can degrade a photon's energy without also changing its momentum, which leads to a blurring of distant objects which is not observed.” While it is technically true that no such interaction has yet been discovered, reasonable non-Big-Bang cosmologies require the existence of entities many orders of magnitude smaller than photons. For example, the entity responsible for gravitational interactions has not yet been discovered. So the “fuzzy image” argument does not apply to realistic physical models in which all substance is infinitely divisible. By contrast, physical models lacking infinite divisibility have great difficulties explaining Zeno’s paradoxes – especially the extended paradox for matter. [3]

b. Wright argues that the stretching of supernovae light curves is not predicted by “tired light”. However, one cannot measure the stretching effect directly because the time under the lightcurve depends on the intrinsic brightness of the supernovae, which can vary considerably. So one must use indirect indicators, such as rise time only. And in that case, the data does not unambiguously favor either tired light or Big Bang models.

c. Wright argued that tired light does not produce a blackbody spectrum. But this is untrue if the entities producing the energy loss are many orders of magnitude smaller and more numerous than quantum particles.

d. Wright argues that tired light models fail the Tolman surface brightness test. This ignores that realistic tired light models must lose energy in the transverse direction, not just the longitudinal one, because light is a transverse wave. When this effect is considered, the predicted loss of light intensity goes with (1+z)-2, which is in good agreement with most observations without any adjustable parameters. [ NOTEREF _Ref4051228 \h \* MERGEFORMAT 2,[40]] The Big Bang, by contrast, predicts a (1+z)-4 dependence, and must therefore invoke special ad hoc evolution (different from that applicable to quasars) to close the gap between theory and observations.


By no means is this “top ten” list of Big Bang problems exhaustive – far from it. In fact, it is easy to argue that several of these additional 20 points should be among the “top ten”:

· "Pencil-beam surveys" show large-scale structure out to distances of more than 1 Gpc in both of two opposite directions from us. This appears as a succession of wall-like galaxy features at fairly regular intervals, the first of which, at about 130 Mpc distance, is called "The Great Wall". To date, 13 such evenly-spaced "walls" of galaxies have been found! 41 The Big Bang theory requires fairly uniform mixing on scales of distance larger than about 20 Mpc, so there apparently is far more large-scale structure in the universe than the Big Bang can explain.

· Many particles are seen with energies over 60x1018 eV. But that is the theoretical energy limit for anything traveling more than 20-50 Mpc because of interaction with microwave background photons. 42 However, this objection assumes the microwave radiation is as the Big Bang expects, instead of a relatively sparse, local phenomenon.

· The Big Bang predicts that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the initial explosion. Matter dominates the present universe apparently because of some form of asymmetry, such as CP violation asymmetry, that caused most anti-matter to annihilate with matter, but left much matter. Experiments are searching for evidence of this asymmetry, so far without success. Other galaxies can’t be antimatter because that would create a matter-antimatter boundary with the intergalactic medium that would create gamma rays, which are not seen. 43],[44

· Even a small amount of diffuse neutral hydrogen would produce a smooth absorbing trough shortward of a QSO’s Lyman-alpha emission line. This is called the Gunn-Peterson effect, and is rarely seen, implying that most hydrogen in the universe has been re-ionized. A hydrogen Gunn-Peterson trough is now predicted to be present at a redshift z » 6.1. 45 Observations of high-redshift quasars near z = 6 briefly appeared to confirm this prediction. However, a galaxy lensed by a foreground cluster has now been observed at z = 6.56, prior to the supposed reionization epoch and at a time when the Big Bang expects no galaxies to be visible yet. Moreover, if only a few galaxies had turned on by this early point, their emission would have been absorbed by the surrounding hydrogen gas, making these early galaxies invisible. [34] So the lensed galaxy observation falsifies this prediction and the theory it was based on. Another problem example: Quasar PG 0052+251 is at the core of a normal spiral galaxy. The host galaxy appears undisturbed by the quasar radiation, which, in the Big Bang, is supposed to be strong enough to ionize the intergalactic medium. 46

· An excess of QSOs is observed around foreground clusters. Lensing amplification caused by foreground galaxies or clusters is too weak to explain this association between high- and low-redshift objects. This apparent contradiction has no solution under Big Bang premises that does not create some other problem. It particular, dark matter solutions would have to be centrally concentrated, contrary to observations that imply that dark matter increases away from galaxy centers. The high-redshift and low-redshift objects are probably actually at comparable distances, as Arp has maintained for 30 years. 47

· The Big Bang violates the first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be either created or destroyed, by requiring that new space filled with “zero-point energy” be continually created between the galaxies. 48

· In the Las Campanas redshift survey, statistical differences from homogenous distribution were found out to a scale of at least 200 Mpc. 49 This is consistent with other galaxy catalog analyses that show no trends toward homogeneity even on scales up to 1000 Mpc. 50 The Big Bang, of course, requires large-scale homogeneity. The Meta Model and other infinite-universe models expect fractal behavior at all scales. Observations remain in agreement with that.

· Elliptical galaxies supposedly bulge along the axis of the most recent galaxy merger. But the angular velocities of stars at different distances from the center are all different, making an elliptical shape formed in that way unstable. Such velocities would shear the elliptical shape until it was smoothed into a circular disk. Where are the galaxies in the process of being sheared?

· The polarization of radio emission rotates as it passes through magnetized extragalactic plasmas. Such Faraday rotations in quasars should increase (on average) with distance. If redshift indicates distance, then rotation and redshift should increase together. However, the mean Faraday rotation is less near z = 2 than near z = 1 (where quasars are apparently intrinsically brightest, according to Arp’s model). 51

· If the dark matter needed by the Big Bang exists, microwave radiation fluctuations should have “acoustic peaks” on angular scales of 1° and 0.3°, with the latter prominent compared with the former. By contrast, if Milgrom’s alternative to dark matter (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) is correct, then the latter peak should be only about 20% of the former. Newly acquired data from the Boomerang balloon-borne instruments clearly favors the MOND interpretation over dark matter. 52

· Redshifts are quantized for both galaxies 53],[54 and quasars 55. So are other properties of galaxies. 56 This should not happen under Big Bang premises.

· The number density of optical quasars peaks at z = 2.5-3, and declines toward both lower and higher redshifts. At z = 5, it has dropped by a factor of about 20. This cannot be explained by dust extinction or survey incompleteness. The Big Bang predicts that quasars, the seeds of all galaxies, were most numerous at earliest epochs. 57

· The falloff of the power spectrum at small scales can be used to determine the temperature of the intergalactic medium. It is typically inferred to be 20,000°K, but there is no evidence of evolution with redshift. Yet in the Big Bang, that temperature ought to adiabatically decrease as space expands everywhere. This is another indicator that the universe is not really expanding.] 58

· Under Big Bang premises, the fine structure constant must vary with time. 59

· Measurements of the two-point correlation function for optically selected galaxies follow an almost perfect power law over nearly three orders of magnitude in separation. However, this result disagrees with n-body simulations in all the Big Bang’s various modifications. A complex mixture of gravity, star formation, and dissipative hydrodynamics seems to be needed. 60

· Emission lines for z &gt; 4 quasars indicate higher-than-solar quasar metallicities. 61 The iron to magnesium ratio increases at higher redshifts (earlier Big Bang epochs). 62 These results imply substantial star formation at epochs preceding or concurrent with the QSO phenomenon, contrary to normal Big Bang scenarios.

· The absorption lines of damped Lyman-alpha systems are seen in quasars. However, the HST NICMOS spectrograph has searched to see these objects directly in the infrared, but failed for the most part to detect them. 63 Moreover, the relative abundances have surprising uniformity, unexplained in the Big Bang. 64 The simplest explanation is that the absorbers are in the quasar’s own environment, not at their redshift distance as the Big Bang requires.

· The luminosity evolution of brightest cluster galaxies (BGCs) cannot be adequately explained by a single evolutionary model. For example, BGCs with low x-ray luminosity are consistent with no evolution, while those with high x-ray luminosity are brighter on average at high redshift. 65

· The fundamental question of why it is that at early cosmological times, bound aggregates of order 100,000 stars (globular clusters) were able to form remains unsolved in the Big Bang. It is no mystery in infinite universe models. 66

· Blue galaxy counts show an excess of faint blue galaxies by a factor of 10 at magnitude 28. This implies that the volume of space is larger than in the Big Bang, where it should get smaller as one looks back in time. 67


Perhaps never in the history of science has so much quality evidence accumulated against a model so widely accepted within a field. Even the most basic elements of the theory, the expansion of the universe and the fireball remnant radiation, remain interpretations with credible alternative explanations. One must wonder why, in this circumstance, that four good alternative models are not even being comparatively discussed by most astronomers.


<b>Acknowledgments</b>

Obviously, hundreds of professionals, both astronomers and scientists from other fields, have contributed to these findings, although few of them stand back and look at the bigger picture. It is hoped that many of them will add their comments and join as co-authors in an attempt to sway the upcoming generation of astronomers that the present cosmology is headed nowhere, and to join the search for better answers.

Source: www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp

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<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">[/quote]

from The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada:

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">"Hubble concluded that his observed log N(m) distribution showed a large departure from Euclidean geometry, provided that the effect of redshifts on the apparent magnitudes was calculated as if the redshifts were due to a real expansion. A different correction is required if no motion exists, the redshifts then being due to an unknown cause. Hubble believed that his count data gave a more reasonable result concerning spatial curvature IF the redshift correction was made assuming NO RECESSION [i.e., no expansion]. To the very end of his writings he maintained this position, favoring (or at the very least keeping open) the model where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift "represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature". <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

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Allan Sandage:

"The most curious impression we are left with [about Hubble] is his
lack of comment on the significance of the redshift phenomenon, which
is surely one of the most important discoveries in science. In none of his writings did Hubble comment on the central importance that the form of the redshift-distance law is linear.... Discovery of the linear form is usually taken to be as important as the discovery of the expansion itself if the phenomenon has any relevance to "the creation of the universe" 4

----

NET article entitled "Redshift" states:



"Mainstream astronomy is presently trying to explain away a large set of high redshift objects that are closely associated with low redshift galaxies as being optical illusions caused by ‘gravitational lensing’. Here [below on the site] are ten examples of such groupings.

The only way such an optical illusion could occur is if Earth, a nearby galaxy, and a distant quasar (all three) precisely fall on a single straight [i.e., linear] line. Could this happen once?

Surely. But dozens of times? Not likely. In fact, the probability is vanishingly small." Furthermore, in "Redshifts and the Hubble Law", Ballard notes:

"‘Redshift’ describes the characteristic lines in the spectrum...which appear at longer (redder) wavelenghts than in a terrestrial laboratory. The simple explanation attributes this effect to the recession velocity of the emitting source--like the falling pitch of a receding train whistle, the Doppler effect. It was therefore concluded that the fainter and smaller the galaxy, the more distant it is, and the faster it is moving away from us.

This velocity interpretation of the redshift - the apparent brightness relation - forms the standard interpretation of the Hubble Law....Extrapolating these velocities back to the origin of time gave rise to the concept of the universe being created in a primeval explosion - the Big Bang cosmology....

...observations began to accumulate from 1966 that could not be accounted for by this conventional explanation of the redshift effect. Some extra-galactic objects had to have redshifts which were not caused by a recession velocity....

...some influential specialists reacted very strongly to these anomalous observations. It was said they "violated known laws of physics" and must therefore be wrong; that is to say, a useful hypothesis [not theory or "law"!]

The color spectrum depicts radiation in the form of light thus the color bouncing back is red meaning it is moving farther away; indesputable. However, does cosmic background radiation show temperature? Can we measure the tempurature of the edges of our universe thus a solar system of universes with a massive sunburst what I call it supply heat energy to other universes within our solar system of universes also the rate of expansion the doplar shift shows expansion at an accelerated rate. The larger the mass the more smaller masses it attracts could our universe be being pulled into expansion by more mass and when it reaches a critical phase where there is no where else for it to go it would just implode or fuse.

ryan Henningsgaard