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"String theory, et al"  Materialism hasn't been mechanical since Marx.


The Big Bang Never Happened
  
by Eric J. Lerner    May 1992 edition; 466 pages

Review by Harald Illig, 1994 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lerner lays bare some painful and embarrassing features of the Big Bang
Theory. 

He covers the history of science in a nutshell, and ventures into other fields
related to the human condition, fields that may yet be accessible to inquiry
by the scientific method -- the nature of life and other self-organizing
systems, Quantum Mechanics and the idea of free will, and the role of echo
systems in filtering energy in a cooperative and competitive-cooperative,
game-of-life, Gaia world.

If these topics seem a bit too Velikofskian, wait until you examine with
Lerner the step-by-step exposition of these themes. He begins by mentioning
the problems with current Cosmology, the not-so-often advertised problems of
Big Bang. Here are some: 

The recent COBE satellite's picture of a homogeneous, smooth background
radiation (it's apparently not like "looking at the hand of God", after all,
contrary to the furor in the press). 
The missing matter that scientists have postulated and for which they are now
searching. ("Cosmologists decided to represent the density of the universe as
a ratio to the density needed to stop the expansion, a ratio they termed
'omega'. If there were just enough matter to stop the expansion, omega would
equal 1. It appeared, however, that omega was really about .01 or .02 -- only
a few hundredths of the matter needed to stop the expansion of the universe,
and far too little to magnify the fluctuations fast enough to form galaxies.")
Since this edition of Lerner's book was published, 1995 Hubble data show that
so-called brown dwarf stars and smaller ones, which could have helped to
supply a substantial amount of matter, do not seem exist in sufficient
quantity. 
The similarity of Big Bang on to the creation of Genesis, both finite in space
and time, both from the void. And both, the author shows, are at odds with
observation. 
The author describes how the abundance of Helium, Deuterium and Lithium is at
odds with observation and provides a better hypothesis. 
The (usual) absence of anti-matter. 
The existence of extremely large-scale structures, such as the recently,
partially mapped 'Great Wall'. 
amamazon.com: 
 The author first describes the Cosmic Tapestry, the structure of the known
universe, its organization. Diagrams and photos make accessible, for example,
the scale of stars and their separation, and that of other objects. Galaxies,
groups of stars, belong to Clusters, which in turn are parts of Superclusters.


Lerner maintains that the Big Bang's parameters are arbitrary, hypothetical
entities, such as are the posited cosmic strings of string theory. They exist
just to make things come out right for the theorists, and that fact
contradictory evidence leads him else where -- to a plasma alternative. Lerner
draws heavily on the work of Swedish Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven, and on his
own work, to show that eddies, or vortexes in plasma are sufficient to explain
the genesis of all the observed structure of the universe. The cover of the
paper back book depicts the action of magnetic plasma filaments, which feature
prominently on all scales of the cosmos; the example shown is the center of
our very own galaxy, the milky way. 

Lerner's universe is infinite in time and space, and 'avoids' the creation
from nothing to which we have become so accustomed.

The fact that the Big Bang of Hubble and Einstein have gained such immediate
popularity, Lerner ascribes to the culturally 'accessible' mind-set that we
have inherited from Western tradition's most influential thinkers, Plato and
Aristotle. The influence of these philosophers is well entrenched in our
culture.