[Oe List ...] NY Times editorial - AWE
Tim Wegner
twegner at swbell.net
Wed Dec 8 18:04:10 CST 2010
Jack wrote:
> Just to share with you and others that there are other alternative
> understandings. There are many scientists who do not "buy" into the
> Big Bang theory at all.
Not sure about "many" ... Fred Hoyle championed steady state up until
he died along with Geoffrey Burbidge, and Jayant V. Narlikar. But to
quote the wikipedia article (good summary at
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Steady_State_theory):
'For most cosmologists, the refutation of the steady-state theory
came with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation
in 1965, which was predicted by the Big Bang theory. Stephen Hawking
said that the fact that microwave radiation had been found, and that
it was thought to be left over from the Big Bang, was "the final nail
in the coffin of the steady-state theory."'
So today the steady state theorists are a very small minority of
cosmologists. What the big bang has going for it are predictions of
phenomena that were not known at the time but were later verified,
which is the gold standard for science. The proponents of the several
current variants of steady state theory have yet to answer the
objections made by recent critics such as Edward Wright
(http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/stdystat.htm)
The physical world at both extremely large and small scales is
counter intuitive, not surprisingly upon reflection, because our
intutions were formed to be appropriate for our human scale. Seems to
me that reaction against the big bang stems from the same existential
source as reaction against the weirdness of quantum theory - an
attempt to understand the world in a way closer to our intutions.
Which is not to say it's not worthwhile to try ...
My own view is that the physical world is far more bizarre that our
wildest imagination.
Tim
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