WHAT IF THE BIG BANG NEVER BANGED? Those beautiful images of deepest space being sent to Earth by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are causing a quiet uproar in the scientific community. The reason is the images seem to suggest the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe simply isn’t correct.
As the Cable Guy might say, I don’t care what you believe, that is big news. Eric Lerner of LPPFusion, a privately supported research group working to develop safe, reliable, affordable fusion energy, explains on the web site of the Institute for Art and Ideas (IAI) why more than a dozen characteristics predicted to be confirmed by JWST capabilities have instead now been shown to be of doubtful accuracy.
Much of Lerner’s explanation is beyond my grasp, but enough of it makes sense that it strikes me as imminently worthy of thoughtful and sustained consideration. But there’s also an additional angle here that points to the Evolution vs Intelligent Design (ID) debate.
Lerner notes the reality that dissent from the Big Bang theory is absolutely verboten in most precincts of the scientific community, especially regarding publication in recognized research journals and in consideration of official funding applications:
“Readers may well be wondering at this point why they have not read of this collapse of the Big Bang hypothesis in major media outlets by now and why the authors of so many recent papers have not pointed to this collapse themselves.
“The answer lies in what I term the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes Effect’— if anyone questions the Big Bang, they are labeled stupid and unfit for their jobs. Unfortunately, funding for cosmology comes from a very few government sources controlled by a handful of committees that are dominated by Big Bang theorists. These theorists have spent their lives building the Big Bang theory. Those who openly question the theory simply don’t get funded.
“Until the past few years, if researchers could self-fund cosmology research as a sideline, as is the case with me, they still could publish ‘heretical’ papers, although those papers were often ignored by the cosmological establishment. As recently as 2018, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), a leading journal, published one of my papers showing how the sizes of galaxies contradicted the expanding universe idea.
“But as the crisis in cosmology became obvious in 2019, the cosmological establishment has circled the wagons to protect this failed theory with censorship, because it now has no other defense. It has now become almost impossible to publish papers critical of the Big Bang in any astronomical journals …
“Such censorship is now, as always, inimical to the progress of science. Two dozen researchers in astrophysics, astronomy and space science have signed a letter of protest to the arXiv leadership. I have personally called on leading Big Bang theorists to openly debate the new evidence. For cosmology – as for any research area – to advance, this debate must happen openly in both scientific journals and the public media.”
Advocates of ID such as the Discovery Institute know all too well the process Lerner is describing.