... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A New Cosmology In the April 1999 issue of Physics Today -- certainly a mainstream publication, but occasionally daring -- we find a long, technically deep article outlining a new cosmology that jettisons the Big Bang and even redshifts as infallible measures of cosmological distances. It should come as no surprise that the authors are G. Burbidge, F. Hoyle, and J.V . Narlikar. They propose a quasi-steady-state universe to replace the hot Big Bang. It is easy to itemize narrow, specific problems bedeviling the Big Bang, but the three "boat-rockers" listed above also have an important philosophical bone to pick with modern astronomers and cosmologists. "The theory departs increasingly from known physics, until ultimately the energy source of the universe is put in as an initial condition, the energy supposedly coming from somewhere else. Because that "somewhere else" can have any properties that suit the theoretician, supporters of Big Bang cosmology gain for themselves a large bag of free parameters that can subsequently be tuned as the occasion may require. "We do not think that science should be done in that way. In science as we understand it, one works from an initial situation, known from observation or experiment, to a later situation that is also known. That is the way physical laws are tested. In the currently popular form of cosmology, by contrast, the physical laws are regarded as ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 35 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf124/sf124p05.htm
... AOB17 The Existence of Globular Clusters AOB18 The Existence of Stars AOB19 Absence of Binaries in Globular Clusters AOB20 Alignment of Axes of Young Stars AOB21 Young Stars with Anomalous Velocities AOF ANOMALIES DETECTED THROUGH STELLAR RADIATION AOF1 Star Color Changes in Historical Times AOF2 Anomalous Variable Objects: A Few Extreme Cases AOF3 Unidentified Objects at the Core of Our Galaxy AOF4 Anomalies of Wolf-Rayet Stars AOF5 Nova and Supernova Anomalies AOF6 Cepheid Anomalies AOF7 Apparent Absence of Bright Carbon Stars AOF8 The "Missing" Solar Neutrinos and, by Extension, Stellar Neutrino Deficits AOF9 Pulsar Anomalies AOF10 Unidentified Infrared Objects in Our Galaxy AOF11 Optical Bursters and Flare Stars AOF12 Flicker Stars AOF13 Supermassive Stars AOF14 Discordant Binaries AOF15 Stars Emitting Excess Infrared Radiation AOF16 Spinning-Up Stars AOF17 Physical Barriers in the Evolutionary Path between Red Giants and White Dwarfs AOF18 Discrete Redshifts in Stellar Spectra AOF19 Gamma-Ray Sources Correlated with Solar Oscillations AOF20 Rapid Variation of Celestial Radio Sources AOF21 Gamma-Ray Objects AOF22 Galactic Sources of Unidentified Radiation AOF23 White-Dwarf Anomalies AOF24 Globular-Cluster "Age' Anomalies AOF25 Infrared Bursters AOF26 Stellar "Age" Anomalies AOF27 Higher Masses of Smaller White Dwarfs AOF28 Historical Disappearance of Stars AOF29 Gamma-Ray Bursters AOF30 X-Ray Bursters AOO EXTENDED GALACTIC OBJECTS AOO1 X-Ray Rings AOO2 Nebular Jets AOO3 The North Polar Radio Spur AOO4 Triangular Appearance of Stars in Telescopes AOO5 Puzzling Nature of Bok Globules AOO6 Jets from Young Stars AOO7 The Red Rectangle AOO8 Herbig-Haro Objects AOO9 Molecular-Cloud Rings AOO10 Infrared Cirrus Clouds AOO11 Diffuse Cartwheel-Like Structures AOX STELLAR-ECLIPSE PHENOMENA AOX1 Anomalous Precession of Eclipsing Binaries AOX2 Anomalous Stellar- ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 40 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /cat-astr.htm
