[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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