Thursday, February 19, 2015

We Are Recycled Star Dust

Big Bang Goes ‘Boom!’

Carl Sagan didn’t smoke weed for nothing.  As every stoned imbiber knows, thinking about ‘infinity’ just gets you higher.  Sagan pointed out that humans are made of ‘star dust’ – which is quite a poetic way of saying that all that matter isn’t going anywhere, it is just changing its form.  We might not be eternal, but the movement of matter is.  
 
To that point, a little-noticed story crossed the wires February 12, 2015.  Published on the left-liberal site “Salon.com,” it publicized the fact that there is a countervailing view among some scientists who realize the ‘big bang’ theory is full of holes.  And not black ones either.  Salon in other articles has considered the ‘big bang’ to be as truthful as evolution or climate change – making fun of those who do not hold to it.  But given the manifold scientific problems with the theory that are even obvious to laymen, the tide may be turning. 

As Salon puts it, “the universe has no origin point at all” based on a ‘new’ theory of cosmology.  They point to the truthfulness of simplicity in science and infer that the most simple theory is that “the universe has been around since, well, forever.”  The correlation to that is that it won’t be going anywhere – ever. It is.  Its not expanding into nothing.  It's not contracting into nothing.  It's just metamorphosizing.  And we are part of that.  Star dust.  

Salon continues: “Ahmed Farag Ali of Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology in Egypt, together with Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have presented their research in a paper called “Cosmology from quantum potential” published in Physics Letters B.”  Notice that both these people probably did not grow up being spoon-fed Christian origin stories. 

The three most obvious scientific problems with the ‘big bang’ is that something cannot come from nothing – the 1st law of thermodynamics.  The second is - what ‘caused’ the ‘big bang?’  Or what existed before it?  The theory cannot answer these questions, and it will not go there – confirmed by Stephen Hawking himself. The third is - can an ‘infinite dimensionless singularity’ exist?  That also defies the laws of physics. 

The Ali/Das model avoids these problems.  Nor does it involve shaky theories of ‘dark’ energy and giant black holes.  They claim it explains parts of quantum theory that do not jibe with the ‘big bang.’ (“BB”)  Ali thinks that it helps unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, something scientists have been trying to achieve for many years - but that is a very large claim.  These scientists interpret “Hubble’s law’ in a way different from prior analyses – a way which doesn’t rely on ‘space-time.’  On a side note, Hubble himself actually didn’t believe what he had observed – the ‘red’ shift - proved that the whole universe was expanding.  (It isn't.  And not from the Earth, the alleged ‘center’ of the universe.) 

As Salon puts it:  “…in a science where the current standard visions of the universe involve concepts like anti-matter, super-strings, 10 dimensions (or more), membrane universes and multi-verses, a theory like this one seems refreshingly like a return to the basics.”  Yeah.  It puts 'time travel' to bed too.

Some Marxists have been criticizing the ‘BB’ theory for years as more derivative of Abrahamic origin religions and idealist mathematics than consistent and observable science.  Which is why it figures that the Catholic Pope is so on-board with the BB.  There are actually about 5 different theories of the BB, which illustrates that there are so many problems with it they have to come up with a new one to patch up the old ones.  Sort of like a paper Maché boat floating on water.  Ali and Das are not the only scientists who have examined the weaknesses of the BB – a significant minority of cosmologists have been on the same track.  If this view is eventually born out among the larger scientific community, it will prove that observation and actual science can win out over idealism and propaganda.  It will also prove that a dialectical-materialist approach to nature is superior to lazy pragmatism or the various varieties of religico-idealism that sometime permeate the sciences.  Not to mention the most obvious distorter of science - corporate money. 

Prior examination of this issue are all below:  Mike Gimbel’s talk at Mayday Books (video), my commentary and his pamphlet on the issue, “Dialectics and the New Physics,” reviews of the books “Reason in Revolt,“ and the “Ten Assumptions of Science.”  Use blog search box, upper left.


Red Frog
February 19, 2015.  In Memory of Brien Link. 
The period of Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras, Lunar New Year and the day Malcolm X was assassinated.  

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