String theory is an alternative theory, so is superstring theory and M-theory, so was the quasi-steady state cosmology, plasma cosmology, chronometric cosmology, Arp's cosmology, so is loop-quantum gravity, supergravity, and so is supersymmetry. Even inflation is an alternative theory. The only theory that is not an alternative theory is the standard model, the canonical hot big bang cold dark matter model. At the time of it's inception the standard model was seen as radical, a radical alternative. Great scientists like Einstein, Hubble, de Sitter, Eddington, Weyl and so on, were all seeking alternatives to thwart the primeval atom.

I respectfully report these complementary theories, but I do not necessarily sympathize with them. Far from being promising, provocative, dissenting, decadent even, alternative cosmological models, of the type above appear at the present, if nothing else, as farsighted attempts to blanket the hideous blunder generated by the big bang and its animated derivatives, in essence an indiscriminate remedy to metaphysics.

Inflation was held as the undisputed remedy to the problems of the big bang until the 1998 supernovae Type Ia data showed that the universes is not flat (which was the only testable prediction of inflation theory).

The idea that the standard model today is the only theory that stands up against observational scrutiny is wrong. Here are a few examples stated as questions: where is the so-called dark age where galaxies were supposed to be forming hierarchically (see Hubble UDF), why are there well formed metal rich galaxies located where galaxies where once predicted to be forming? Why was a fourth Friedmann models required, one in which the expansion accelerates? I'll stop there but the list is long...

Are there quacks and charlatans out there? There sure are. But there are too within the ranks of the academia itself. Who knows, one of them might be reviewing (and rejecting from publication) right now the ultimate theory, because it disagrees with the standard model and its offshoots.

Coldcreation