The Well Balanced Universe

Crisis in cosmology

By Edmund Wood

Read any book about astronomy these days and it will tell you that everything started with a big explosion out of a speck of nothingness about 14 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since to produce our present-day universe.

However, despite what it seems from the literature, not everybody believes this current description of the universe and its history. A growing number of astronomers have become disenchanted with the big bang theory because of the series of speculative 'add-ons' that have been necessary over the last 25 years in order to make the model agree with the new data from the telescopes.

The strange concepts known as “dark matter”, “inflation” and “dark energy” have been invented and incorporated into the theory in order to keep it alive. Rather like invasive parasites or tumours, these concepts have taken over the model to such an extent that, not only are they now essential to it, they totally dominate this currently-accepted picture of the universe.

More and more astronomers and other scientists are finding this state of affairs unacceptable, and they believe that there must be something fundamentally wrong with the physics on which the theory is based. Unfortunately, a great deal of money is pumped into research that aims to support the present understanding, and it is extremely difficult to get backing to investigate alternative possibilities.

In 2004, a group of about three dozen scientists founded The Alternative Cosmology Group as a first step towards redressing the balance. They wrote an open letter, published in New Scientist magazine (22 May 2004, p20), highlighting the imbalance of research funding and the suppression of free debate in cosmology.

In June 2005, the Group organised the first ever Crisis in Cosmology Conference, in the village of Monção in Portugal, with presentations of research results that are in conflict with the big bang theory, together with presentations of alternative theories and discussions. A lengthy write-up of some of the topics appeared in the 2 July 2005 issue of New Scientist, entitled End of The Beginning, written by Marcus Chown. For back issues of New Scientist go to http://archive.newscientist.com.

Information about the conference and the presentations can be found at www.cosmology.info The site also has details of how scientists can join The Alternative Cosmology Group, and how anyone can arrange to be sent the Group's monthly newsletter.

Crisis in cosmology

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