Bringing Big
Bang Alternatives into the Mainstream Arena
A long, and growing,
list of practicing astronomers, physicists and cosmologists have this
week published an open letter in the weekly science news magazine New
Scientist, urging the establishment to recognise the validity of ongoing
research into big bang alternatives.
The letter is
critical of the way in which the mainstream scientific community refuses
to allow genuine debate into the very real and serious problems existing
within the popular big bang model of the orgins of the universe.
The authors write;
questions and
alternatives [to the big bang] cannot even now be freely discussed and
examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most
mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that
"science is the culture of doubt", 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. Those
who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.
The letter has been
signed by scientists such as American astronomers Dr. Halton Arp from
the Max Plank Institute for Astrophysics in Munich, Hermann Bondi from
Cambridge University in the UK and Thomas Gold from Cornell University
in the US.
The letter is
further evidence that the big bang is not the "be all and end all" in
terms of cosmological models. Furthermore it highlights the very real
problems associated with positions of Biblical compromise, such as those
of the Progressive Creation movement, that rely on the shaky
cosmological foundation of the big bang model, not the obvious and
straightforward understanding of the Genesis creation account, in trying
to explain the origins of the universe.