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From: wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.physics,sci.space,sci.astro
Subject: Re: Big Bang:  Did it happen?
Message-ID: <263@cfa.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: 19 Dec 89 15:28:52 GMT
References: <963@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu>
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Followup-To: talk.origins
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From article <963@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu>, by HOWGREJ@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu:
> In article <822@tahoma.UUCP>, jpg3196@tahoma.UUCP (James P. Galasyn) writes:
>>I just heard from a fairly reliable source that CalTech has demonstrated
>>the Big Bang never happened. [...]

> [...]  I really don't know how you could *disprove* the BB; it's
> been pretty well accepted since the '60s.  There's a lot of data that it
> explains real well that you'd have to come up with a better explanation
> for... 3 degree background, expansion, primordial nucleosynthesis, etc.
> The BB theory, combined with Guth's inflation, does a fine job at the
> moment... [...]

Well, the BB in general is separate from inflation theory. And no,
inflation theory certainly does not do `a fine job': it is a pretty
theory completely at odds with observations. Most theorists really
*want* the Universe to be closed (i.e. Omega >= 1.0), so much so that
they call these the `standard' theories. People ignore the fact that
the standard theories currently require exotic (i.e. unknown) physics. 

The inflation theory predicts Omega is exactly 1.0000... , but
every piece of observational evidence says Omega is between 0.1 and
0.3, so the Universe is open. There are lots of truly creative  ways of
reconciling the discrepancies; shadow matter, tailored particles,
etc., etc. None of them has any observational basis; their sole
reason for being is to close the Universe.

Bill Wyatt, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory  (Cambridge, MA, USA)
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