Why this? Why Now?

After all that has been written over these last few millennia, cosmologists, astronomers and astrophysicists are confronting the prospect of new data that may either vindicate their ideas or refute them entirely. They are placing their bets on the table, and with them their reputations. Am I convinced of my correctness? No, absolutely not. But I do think that the model I propose has much to offer. It fits the data, is falsifiable, parsimonious, and has explanatory and predictive power. The key is the predictive power. It is the currency that I use for the bet I am placing. These are exciting times to be alive!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Forward

“If we do discover a complete [unified] theory [of the universe], it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists.”  Steven Hawking

The short description of this blog is that, given the recent discoveries in particle physics, the discovery of virtual particles in “empty space” and the hypotheses regarding mass generation from virtual particles (quantum vacuum fluctuations), I believe that Hoyle’s theory (Quasi Steady State Cosmology) has been vindicated.  When I started this blog, I was actually unaware that my own ideas and Hoyle’s were essentially identical. 

This current thought regarding the Big Bang rests on the creation of mass from quantum vacuum fluctuations.  That is, when there was “nothing”, the universe came into being because of the transformation of energy (the virtual particles) into matter.  The differences are in degree, not in kind.  I think that this phenomenon is common and repeating while cosmologists in general believe it happened only once. 

Hoyle was missing a mechanism for mass generation, and his theory fell by the wayside as the Big Bang theory seemed a simpler and more elegant way of explaining the expansion of the universe.  The original Big Bang Theory, however, postulated an explosive event that sent matter hurling away from a center and carried away from that center by momentum from the explosion. 

Now, however, it is known that 1) there is no center, 2) the expansion is accelerating because of Dark Energy (from quantum vacuum fluctuations) and not momentum, and 3) there was no “Bang”.  We can deduce much more about the nature of the universe, including the parts we can’t see, but if the universe is “flat” and infinite, there was no single event responsible for the existence of all matter.

There was no Big Bang.


This really is not a typical blog.  The pages were written to be read in the order they were written, and so they are arranged in that order on the right side of this page.

The first page, entitled “The Incredible Shrinking Big Bang”, introduces some of the problems with the current theory that led me to believe that there might be another way of looking at how the universe works.

The second page, entitled “THE HYPOTHESIS”, presents a model for how the universe might be developing.  It also gives the reasoning, evidence and predictions this model makes.

The third page, entitled “How Matter Appears”, suggests mechanisms that may allow matter to appear in the universe.

The fourth page, entitled “Philosophy”, is meant to show that the processes suggested in the hypothesis are consistent with the rest of the nature of the universe.

The fifth page, entitled “Alternatives”, shows how it is possible to have some details correct with different histories of the universe.

The sixth page, entitled “The Logical Conclusion”, is a poem, intended to be humorous, that shows how our human tendency to extrapolate backwards from the present can lead to erroneous conclusions.

The seventh page, entitled “Biography”, presents my background, education, accomplishments and briefly discusses the reasoning I used to arrive at the new hypothesis.

The eighth page, entitled "Quotes and Comments", presents some quotes from various sources that, perhaps unintentionally, support my hypothesis.  I include some comments after the quotes to explain why these quotes are significant.

I suspect that after reading this material, the reader will likely be left scratching his or her head and unconvinced.  Even for those that dismiss it out of hand, I would hope that the reader will say, “I dismiss it, but if it were correct, it would explain a lot about the way things are.”

Also, after researching a name for my hypothesis I decided upon the name "Dynamic Equilibrium", and I found that most of the elements of my hypothesis are not only not original, but they have been around since the beginning of modern cosmology.  I present some quotes from others who have dabbled with the idea of "mass creation" in the following paragraph.

The ninth paragraph, entitled "Dynamic Equilibrium", presents the quotes about theories similar to my own.