This article is dated July 2, 2005.

http://www.newscientistspace.com/cha...mg18625061.800

Just because a few scientists get together to discuss alternative theories is no reason for ATM types to start digging the BBT's grave. It's not as if they've actually come up with a viable alternative yet. (And frankly, any alternative they do come up with is unlikely to resemble anything the ATM crowd advocates.) Finally, bear in mind that any alternative they come up with will have to meet all of the observational tests BBC does describe well. There's a reason BBC is the mainstream theory of the universe's origin, and that reason isn't that scientists are stupid, which is the implication most ATM types implicitly make. These guys in Portugul have a steep hill to climb, and my guess is that they know it.

Like all press releases, the title of this one is misleading, intended to be controversial, grab the eye, and get you to read the article. It actually does a bad job of describing the article's content. Notice all the "What ifs," "Ifs," and "perhaps" in just the first paragraph. Frankly, IMO, New Scientist is going the way of Discover and Popular Mechanics, and that isn't good.

So John, Jerry, P.Asmah, et al., put away that champagne bottle. Rumors of the BBT's demise are greatly exaggerated.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

so, the short answer is, "yes"?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Even if there was no Big Bang, it doesn't put any of the ATM theories even in the running, which is the part that puzzles me. Just because a candidate didn't win doesn't mean you get to be president because you aren't him. It doesn't work like that.

You have to supplant the theory with your own better one, better in the sense of accounting for more, making more accurate predictions, and so on, all of which many ATM theories fail at rather miserably.

And what's with that line from the story:

If no one is supposed to ask, why was the conference advertised by the likes of NCSA, AIP, CERN, NASA, PhysicsWeb, SPIRES/HEP (SLAC, DESY)?

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0....

When they said "a small band of researchers," my baloney detector went off. Hopefully, these "researchers" aren't pseudoscientist from the ICR, Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis, or worst of all, "Dr." Kent Hovind.

And what are they talking about when they say "the question no one is supposed to ask"? Science isn't a religion, science isn't dogmatic. You can ask science anything without risk of excommunication.

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Everything I say is a lie.

I think the criticisms of the article's title are right on track, but when I'm looking through articles in places like New Scientist and space.com, I'm constantly amazed at the gaps between the headlines and the actual contents of articles. The article might have a title like, "scientists solve puzzle of..." and the meat of the article is merely that someone made a new computer model that seems to provide a possible explanation for something, but it's not a "solution."

I think it's just a thing with journalists: try to make the article sound important.

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As above, so below

I don't see why that's really that important. If a theory has flaws in it, the flaws exist whether there is any theory to supplant it or not. Of course, one might make the argument that when necessary, one has to use a theory that has flaws as long as it performs fairly well. A good example is the fact that even though we know that Newtonian physics are not really true, we still use them for lots of things because it's useful.

The thing about issues like whether the universe is infinite or not, or whether it started with a big bang or not, is that to me at least, it seems like a fairly academic issue, with few practical applications. But I may be wrong on this point. In any case, if it is really just an academic issue, then there's no reason to act as if one is true just because there is no convincing alternative. It seems perfectly valid to say, "we don't know."

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As above, so below

8) tHE SHORT ANSWER IS... NO.

but it looks a big bang.. but it was instead the 8 th dimension.
which is just like a big bang, but technically not.

see my proposal on the "unification thread"

-MT

That's true about any theory. My point was that to have a successful theory, it should extend or supplant the current model. Simply trashing the current model on its flaws does not make another theory suddenly correct if it still does not make accurate predictions.

Fair enough, however, much of what we speculate comes from observing trends and extrapolating. We can't help but speculate on the distal ends - such as the calculation of 0 Kelvin.

There's a list of interested scientists here, below a statement that concludes:

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Ah, the first signatory is Halton Arp. :roll:
OOh! The Psychonaut Institute! and MetaResearch!

you've got some ad hominem problems with this statement.

not really. if you ask the wrong questions, you are shunned, and the money is cut off. sorry to say, but the funding world really does choose sides by ruling out any alternative theory as "invalid" therefore no money. this is historical truth. it takes overwhelming evidence to the contrary for alternative ideas to become "mainstream."

taks

I just wish the Steady state people were right. Always has been here--always will be.

First runner up--The Big Bang/Gnab Gib (explosion/implosion) model--like the cycle of a beating heart is second best--tho' you can't orbit it as in Tau Zero since you would be in it.

But no...

The universe is supposed to keep expanding--leaving each galaxy all alone--with all the stars dying outand even matter and black holes decaying into a Lovecraftian never-ending blackness.

I don't like that at all.

At least some models have a Big Rip or a collapse of the vacuum/second brane collision after that--something to rend the veils...and end the torment of oblivion.

Perhaps that is the best way, so that rather than funding a myriad of blind alleys and bleeding the funding dry we only go after good prospects. There are no shortages of theories, but dollars are finite. It's like it's been said: build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Note it says nothing about public funding for the mousetrap prior to creating it.

There are two cases that I can think of where an ad hominem is not fallicious.

1. It is not an ad hom fallacy to question a source of information. An argument can be assessed for validity in isolation. Information requires corroboration or a trusted authority.

2. Somewhat of an addendum to #1. If a murderer says that he got a secret message from God to murder his neighbor, it would not be fallicious to analyze the person and make statements such as "Hey, you don't look like the type of guy God would contact."

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Everything I say is a lie.

Eh, there's my own "Big Flash" theory... it just ends up with island universes and no Big Rip, just an eventual flashover into a new "Big Flash" (i.e. big bang) with the idea that inflation, Dark Energy, and Dark Matter are all the same thing, and that with enough expansion, matter and energy can be coaxed out of the virtual sea of particles in normal space-time. (No idea if this has gone on before, or will go on again, though) This might also result in "fossil" galaxies from periods before, if this theory is expanded, but they would be very rare.

This is ATM so I don't feel bad for mentioning it.

I like one of M-theories cosmological models: cyclically colliding branes, causing a Big Bang, followed by a Big Rip, and then the branes come back together collide, etc... The steady state scenario is represented by the Branes, the Big Bang by the Brane collision. Best of both worlds.

hey, publiusr, if more science books were written that beautifully, I'd know an awful lot more about science.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Arp was one of the initial group of 34 signers and is listed first because they listed the initial signers alphabetically.