The Big Bang is being called into question by these people, obviously there is

[HysteryDiagnosis]

something wrong with all of them. There are plenty more at second link.

http://www.cosmology.info/

http://cosmologystatement.org/

Highlighted names are linked to related web pages
Halton Arp, Max-Planck-Institute Fur Astrophysik (Germany)
Andre Koch Torres Assis, State University of Campinas (Brazil)
Yuri Baryshev, Astronomical Institute, St. Petersburg State University (Russia)
Ari Brynjolfsson, Applied Radiation Industries (USA)
Hermann Bondi, Churchill College, University of Cambridge (UK)
Timothy Eastman, Plasmas International (USA)
Chuck Gallo, Superconix, Inc.(USA)
Thomas Gold, Cornell University (emeritus) (USA)
Amitabha Ghosh, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (India)
Walter J. Heikkila, University of Texas at Dallas (USA) ................................................. 10
Michael Ibison, Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (USA)
Thomas Jarboe, University of Washington (USA)
Jerry W. Jensen, ATK Propulsion (USA)
Menas Kafatos, George Mason University (USA)
Eric J. Lerner, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (USA)
Paul Marmet, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (retired) (Canada)
Paola Marziani, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova (Italy)
Gregory Meholic, The Aerospace Corporation (USA)
Jacques Moret-Bailly, Université Dijon (retired) (France)
Jayant Narlikar, IUCAA(emeritus) and College de France (India, France) ........................ 20
Marcos Cesar Danhoni Neves, State University of Maringá (Brazil)
Charles D. Orth, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA)
R. David Pace, Lyon College (USA)
Georges Paturel, Observatoire de Lyon (France)
Jean-Claude Pecker, College de France (France)
Anthony L. Peratt, Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA)
Bill Peter, BAE Systems Advanced Technologies (USA)
David Roscoe, Sheffield University (UK)
Malabika Roy, George Mason University (USA)
Sisir Roy, George Mason University (USA) .................................................................... 30
Konrad Rudnicki, Jagiellonian University (Poland)
Domingos S.L. Soares, Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil)
John L. West, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (USA)
James F. Woodward, California State University, Fullerton (USA)

New signers of the Open letter since publication

Scientists and Engineers
Jorge Marao Universidade Estadual de Londrina Brazi
Martin John Baker, Loretto School Musselburgh, UK
Peter J Carroll, Psychonaut Institute, UK
Roger Y. Gouin, Ecole Superieure d'Electricite, France
John Murray, Sunyata Composite Ltd, UK
Jonathan Chambers, University of Sheffield, UK ................................................................. 40
Michel A. Duguay, Laval University, Canada
Qi Pan, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK
Fred Rost, University of NSW (Emeritus), Australia
Louis Hissink, Consulting Geologist, Australia
Hetu Sheth, Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
Lassi Hyvärinen, IBM(Ret), France
Max Whisson, University of Melbourne, Australia
R.S.Griffiths, CADAS, UK
Adolf Muenker, Brane Industries, USA
Emre Isik Akdeniz University Turkey .................................. 50
Felipe de Oliveira Alves, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud, Service d'Astrophysique, CEA, France
Kim George, Curtin University of Technology, Australia
Tom Van Flandern, Meta Research, USA
Doneley Watson, IBM (ret.), USA
Fred Alan Wolf, Have Brains / Will Travel, USA
Robert Wood, IEEE, Canada
D. W. Harris, L-3 Communications, USA
Eugene Sittampalam, Engineering consultant, Sri Lanka
Joseph.B. Krieger, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA ............................................................ 60
Pablo Vasquez, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Peter F. Richiuso, NASA, KSC, USA
Roger A. Rydin, University of Virginia (Emeritus), USA
Stefan Rydstrom, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Sylvan J. Hotch, The MITRE Corporation (Retired), USA
Thomas R. Love, CSU Dominguez Hills, USA
Andrew Coles, Embedded Systems, USA
Eit Gaastra, infinite universe researcher, The Netherlands
Franco Selleri, Università di Bari, Dipartimento di Fisica, Italy
Gerald Pease, The Aerospace Corporation, USA .............................................................. 70
S.N. Arteha, Space Research Institute, Russia
Miroslaw Kozlowski, Warsaw University (emeritus), Poland
John Hartnett, School of Physics, University of Western Australia, Australia
Robert Zubrin, Pioneer Astronautics, USA
Tibor Gasparik, SUNY at Stony Brook, USA
Alexandre Losev, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
Henry Hall, University of Manchester, UK
José da Silva, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Markus Rohner, Griesser AG, Switzerland
William C. Mitchell, Institute for Advanced Cosmological Studies, USA

[aquart]

1. No bang?

[izquierdista]

4. It was just gas...

Adam! Pull my finger....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

8. A whimper perhaps.... but certainly no bang. There was no one to light the fuse

anyway.

[Liberal Veteran]

2. Perhaps some Pycnogenol™ would help?

:shrug:

[Skidmore]

3. So, are these guys astronomy's version of creationists or is this

a legitimate scientific endeavor? I'm not an astronomist pr an astrophysicist and I don't play either on teevee.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. You need some help in this area, let me see if I can assist you.

They seem to be smarter than your average bear. Look to this PDF for technical talk able to impress the impressionable.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0901.3854v3


http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3854
Alternative cosmology fits supernovae redshifts with no dark energyy
Authors: Francis J. M. Farley
(Submitted on 24 Jan 2009 (v1), last revised 17 Mar 2009 (this version, v3))

Abstract: Supernovae and radio galaxy redshift data are fitted in an alternative cosmology. The galaxies are assumed to recede with unchanging velocities in a static Robertson-Walker metric with a(t) = 1. An exact fit is obtained with no adjustable parameters. There is no indication that the recession velocities are changing with time, so no call for "dark energy".

Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures. New title, text extensively revised, more references, theory unchanged. New SN1a data used, radio galaxy redshift data added. Submitted to Physics Letters B
Subjects: General Physics (physics.gen-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:0901.3854v3
Submission history
From: Francis Farley
Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:52:06 GMT (55kb,D)

[MineralMan]

10. Your second example is of an unpublished paper.

It has undergone no review, and has not appeared in any journal. Do you understand that it could be completely incorrect? Do you understand the paper well enough to endorse it? If not, why present it as evidence of anything. Unpublished papers are just that, and nothing more.

[Skidmore]

27. And it didn't answer my question either.

[MineralMan]

31. You didn't really expect an answer, did you?

:shrug:

[underpants]

5. They are questioning Kaley Cuoco?

[Ricochet21]

6. Why is it obvious? nt

[MineralMan]

9. Well, one of the questions with this sort of thing is whether

you or I have the knowledge needed to know whether what these folks are saying makes sense or not.

Science changes all the time, and new theories often replace old ones, with the appropriate evidence.

You're just posting a list of names, and no actual information. What is the information that convinces you that these folks have a better explanation? I'm assuming that you have the knowledge needed to understand the information. If not, then you're just guessing.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

11. I read and I understand what they are putting out, I'm just guessing that it will

take a rather long time for these viewpoints to sink in since the power of myth is so strong in all of us.

[Posteritatis]

13. Quite a few of them seem silly

"Engineering consultants" and retired geologists don't carry much weight in a discussion of cosmology, for instance. At least one of the names on that list has a site that's just a bunch of rants about how the evil liberals are oppressing him.

Lists like these are generally about the same thing as the ones young-Earth creaionists put out of "scientists who doubt evolution" - half the lists are usually people not even vaguely qualified to comment, and beyond that you could probably get a longer petition rebutting the initial one from qualified people who all share the same first name.

[MineralMan]

18. Exactly. This kind of nonsense is aimed at

laypersons who do not understand any of the science involved in any of these fields. Rather than displaying the math and demonstrating the evidence for an actual theory, these charlatans spend most of their time with facile, incorrect explanations of why "traditional science" gets it wrong. Then, they present some seemingly logical explanation in lay language for their own nonsense.

Since the audience understands none of the actual science, the lay explanations find a ready following, and that sells books. Velikovsky was the founder of this type of pseudoscience, and did pretty well for himself. Since then, many others have followed along his path, bilking the curious but unwilling to learn real science part of the population out of their dollars.

People eat it up. For them, the writer of this nonsense sounds "real smart," so must be correct. They can explain stuff in a simple way that folks can understand. It doesn't matter if it's correct or not, and the reader has no way to know, anyhow, so the most egregious bullshit passes as truth.

It's impossible to fight, though, since it requires explaining why the nonsense is nonsense, and the true believers don't understand the explanation.

It's a great racket. I should take it up and quit struggling for every dollar, I guess. Somehow, though, I just can't.

[Odin2005]

12. Name-dropping of a bunch of nobodies

The only name I recognize on that list is Zubrin, and he isn't a cosmologist or theoretical physicist, he's a space exploration expert.

[Posteritatis]

15. There's some "engineering consultants," at least one philosophy professor, some mathemeticians...

Clearly a list brimming over with experts on cosmology.

[and-justice-for-all]

14. In Science, real Science....

there is nothing wrong with presenting a hypothesis towards a theory, and the list of supports for that new hypothesis can be infinite. What matters is if that new hypothesis can survive peer reviews and years testing. You can scrutinize an existing Theory all you like, but you better be able to prove it and your hypothesis better hold water.

Why a letter in need of signatures? All those people have to do is contrive their own hypothesis and allow it be peer reviewed and tested like all other hypothesis. I find the letter to by rather humorous to say the least; the person or peoples who scratched that out know that those two 'fudge factors' are still being evaluated and has not come to be a full theory.

"in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model." That is utterly false. If one wants to question a theory, they are more than welcome to and again, if their objection and alternative ideal can not bear the weight of examination, then their idea is not valid because it does not work in any model.

This letter seems more like a whiners fest than anything else, a list of people who have had their ideas examined onoy to have them handed back to them because they do not work. Those people who signed that letter seem to me, to not want their ideas examined and peer reviewed and when thy had, they did not like what they had to hear or read in their regards.

I support the Big Bang, because that is what the models tell us what happened along with the observations of the red and blue shift, which is a clear indicator that galaxies are moving away from us, telling us that something is obviously pushing them apart and it is not gravity.

I would be interested to know who wrote that, since the page gives no indication of the writer(s).

[HysteryDiagnosis]

16. Some heavyweights are not 100% convinced in the BBT

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100613212708.htm

[johnaries]

17. I'm not "married" to the BIg Bang Theory, but it does a better job

than the debunked theory of Plasma Cosmology.

Mainstream studies also suggest that the universe is homogeneous on large scales without evidence of the very large scale structure required by plasma filamentation proposals.<22> The largest galaxy number count to date, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, corresponds well to the mainstream picture.<23>

Light element production without Big Bang nucleosynthesis (as required in plasma cosmology) has been discussed in the mainstream literature and was determined to produce excessive x-rays and gamma rays beyond that observed.<24><25> This issue has not been completely addressed by plasma cosmology proponents in their proposals.<26> Additionally, from an observational point of view, the gamma rays emitted by even small amounts of matter/antimatter annihilation should be easily visible using gamma ray telescopes. However, such gamma rays have not been observed. This could be resolved by proposing, as Alfvén did, that the bubble of matter we are in is larger than the observable universe. In order to test such a model, some signature of the ambiplasma would have to be looked for in current observations, and this requires that the model be formalized to the point where detailed quantitative predictions can be made. This has not been accomplished.

No proposal based on plasma cosmology trying to explain the cosmic microwave background radiation has been published since COBE results were announced. Proposed explanations are relying on integrated starlight and do not provide any indication of how to explain that the observed angular anisotropies of CMB power spectrum is (so low as) one part in 105. The sensitivity and resolution of the measurement of these anisotropies was greatly advanced by WMAP. The fact that the CMB was measured to be so isotropic, in line with the predictions of the big bang model, was subsequently heralded as a major confirmation of the Big Bang model to the detriment of alternatives.<27> These measurements showed the "acoustic peaks" were fit with high accuracy by the predictions of the Big Bang model and conditions of the early universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology

[MineralMan]

19. Never mind.

Wrong place.

[Phoenix63]

20. Wow did I miss the memo where the Big Bang Theory

became fact? It's called a theory. Anyone who doesn't question it, anyone who blindly subscribes to a "theory" is no more clever than your average creationist.

Was there a point here?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

26. The point is that research that toes the line with regard to the bbt is funded

quite nicely and everyone else (people who don't research in that particular direction) get food stamps so to speak.

[TransitJohn]

21. I can't believe you haven't gotten the banhammer over your constant spamming yet.

This shit shouldn't be in GD. There are other more appropriate Groups on the DU for it.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

23. Oh it's coming I can feel it. Please don't cry for me. nt

[jpak]

22. Horseshit Alert

A-oOOOoga

A-oOOOoga

[HopeHoops]

24. Where's the Big Bang's long-form birth certificate?

[Phoenix63]

25. The problem with the "Big Bang" is the name...

They always let these stiff scientists name this stuff... They should have asked someone creative... Instead of the "Big Bang" it should be called....

THE HORRENDOUS SPACE KABLOOIE!!!!


-Calvin

[CBGLuthier]

28. Funnily enough, the name was meant to be ironic

The man who coined the term, Fred Hoyle, never ever believed it happened.

[mmonk]

29. So they do not adhere to the idea of an expanding universe.

Something to do with not finding the Transverse proximity Effect according to them.

[MilesColtrane]

30. .

[girl gone mad]

32. I think it's odd that this debate is happening among lay people.

What is the conflict really about? Selling books? Attacking irreligious ideas? Trying to assert scientific authority without having to do the rigorous work of learning actual math and physics (which are very difficult subjects for many people)?

Big Bang theory is scientifically sound. It makes accurate predictions. It has held up to numerous tests. It's a strong theory. We are nowhere close to replacing it, least of all with something radically different. You can't simply discard hundreds of years of scientific progress on a whim.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

34. Galileo would agree with you whole heartedly. n/t

[drokhole]

33. The Big Bloom

Can't remember where I first heard it, but I really like this concept. It's like the cosmic unfolding of a flower - seed (point), stem (line), leaf (surface), flower (volume) - or, an "unfolding" of dimensions. As a matter of fact, there's a theory floating around that the universe expanded from one dimension:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420152059.htm

Regardless, it does make sense when you consider the procession of life, and the flow/process of energy. A few places I've found that touch on it:

http://www.discovery.org/a/1992
http://seeingwhatyoubelieve.blogspot.com/2010/11/big-bloom.html

So, there you have it folks - The Big Bloom. Heard it here first. Spread it around.