mined, dedicated, and undaunted the realm of the hidden, the myste- detective, Joe Nickell is, without a rious, the secret, the supernatural, and doubt, surpassed only by Sherlock the unknown will never end. Holmes, Sam Spade, Spenser, and the indefatigable Columbo. Let us hope Robert A. Baker is professor emeritus of his peeking, probing, and prying into psychology at the University of Kentucky.
Is the Big Bang a Bust? The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe. By Eric Lerner, New York: Random House, 1991. 466 pp. Cloth, $21.95.
VICTOR J. STENGER
ormally the refutation of a scientific criticism: The big-bang dominant scientific theory conjecture is said to be invalidated by N takes place on the pages of a the data. Cosmologists have a theory, scientific journal. But strange things the big bang, that makes specific are happening in science these days, quantitative and qualitative predic- as a Nobel laureate admits to publish- tions that are tested against observa- ing falsified data, great research tions. They claim success for a sig- universities are accused of misspend- nificant majority of these tests, far ing, and wacky claims like cold fusion exceeding all alternatives. The recent are announced by press conference. highly publicized results from the News magazines proclaim that science Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) is in trouble, so it must be so. The satellite provide further evidence for scientific establishment has been the validity of the big-bang model. smug and complacent for too long. It's While admitting that a detailed, satis- high time it was pulled down from its factory explanation of several phe- pedestal and told who's boss in a nomena, notably large-scale structure democratic society. formation, is yet to be provided, big- The big-bang theory is the stand- bang cosmologists do not see this as ard framework within which most fatal. Lerner, however, argues that cosmologists operate, having assumed these deficiencies are so severe as to the same position held by evolution invalidate the whole notion of a for biologists and quantum mechanics universe finite in time and space. for physicists. Eric Lerner wishes to The big bang may be wrong, but pull down not only that framework Lerner can't seriously expect to prove but also what he perceives as the it in a popular book. The issue is hardly outdated mentality that built it. likely to be settled without the tech- Lerner's case against the big bang nical detail, careful reasoning, and is composed of several different lines expert critical review of the conven- of argument. The first is conventional tional scientific paper or monograph.
412 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 16 which this is not. Lerner attempts to a state of increasing order. The second go over the heads of cosmologists to law is simply wrong, or wrongfully the general public. Despite current interpreted. criticism of science, I see no sign that The curved space and black holes the public is demanding suffrage in the predicted by general relativity are determination of scientific truth. likewise not common experience, but The author does not limit himself the result of abstruse mathematics. to a scientific critique of big-bang Lerner says we should believe what cosmology, but has a larger agenda. our eyes tell us, not some fashionable His goal is to refute not just the big mathematical equation. bang but the very thought processes Finally, Lerner finds within this of conventional science as well. He cosmotheological conspiracy the argues that the hypothesis-testing source of most of the evils of society. procedure is a throwback to Plato- The slavery of the past and the nism, a product of theological rather continued authoritarianism of the than scientific thinking and antithetic present somehow arise from the idea to the essence of the scientific that the universe came into being at revolution. an explosive instant and is headed According to the author, the equa- toward ultimate decay. He says the big tions used in big-bang calculations are bang is a convenient paradigm treated by the science elite as the employed by an unholy alliance ultimate reality of the universe—like between church and state to subjugate Plato's forms. Even after these equa- humanity. In their view, the material tions are shown to disagree with world came from nothing and is next observational facts, as Lerner claims to nothing, transient and meaningless they have been, they are retained by in the face of the eternal, limitless big-bangers because of an irrational power of God. prejudice that the theory must be Lerner's alternative universe is correct regardless of the facts. Rather based on the matter-antimatter sym- than discard the big-bang theory, metric plasma cosmology promoted cosmologists invent new unobserved for years by Nobel laureate Hannes phenomena, such as cosmic strings Alfven. Most conventional cosmolo- and invisible dark matter, to "save the gists insist that plasma cosmology is phenomena." inconsistent with observational data. The big bang is promoted, in In particular, Alfven's universe is half Lerner's view, because science has matter and half antimatter; yet no sacrificed its soul to theology. The more than one part in a billion of theory confirms the theological notion antimatter is observed anywhere in of creation ex nihilo: The universe is the universe. finite, having a definite beginning, What arguments does Lerner use created with a fixed design, and to promote the plasma universe? gradually winding down under the Again they fall into the same classes inexorable effect of the second law of as his arguments against the big bang. thermodynamics. And they possess the same flaws he Lerner argues that this picture purports to find in conventional disintegrates on exposure to observed cosmological argument. facts, not just those gathered with While castigating big-bang cosmol- telescopes but common experience as ogists for using hypothesis-testing, well. From everyday observations, the Lerner is not beyond claiming success- universe is growing and evolving to ful tests of the hypotheses of plasma
Summer 1992 413 cosmology. While maligning big- the earth was round since he set foot bangers for inventing new ad-hoc in the Americas rather than the East entities, such as the dark matter, to Indies, where he had expected to land. "save the phenomena," he introduces Lerner also argues that the uni- unobserved, invisible "filaments" verse must be much older than the throughout the universe to scatter the 15 to 20 billion years required by microwave background and make it standard big-bang theory. He claims isotropic as the data require. (The big that the large structures being bang requires nothing ad hoc here, observed by astronomers ". . . were and, in fact, predicted the microwave just too big to have formed in the background.) While he derides the twenty billion years since the Big mathematical equations of general Bang" (p. 23). While current cosmol- relativity for being inferred from ogy has yet to accommodate these arguments of symmetry and elegance, structures, Lerner has not demon- rather than directly from experiment, strated that it never will within the Lerner extols the marvels of Max- big-bang framework. His calculation well's equations of electromagnet- is based on the lengths of the struc- ism—also inferred as much from tures, the longest being somewhat less arguments of symmetry and elegance than a billion light-years. In fact, only as from observation. And while he their widths, tens or hundreds times criticizes the theological nature of smaller, need to be explained. In a 15- creation ex nihilo, he calls on the to 20-billion-year-old universe, ample equally mystical ideas of Teilhard de time exists to generate a structure a Chardin. billion light-years long and a hundred million light-years wide. We just do Has Eric Lerner punctured the big- not yet know the exact mechanism. bang balloon so that its collapse is at hand? I doubt it. The big-bang theory The fact is: No observation rules is in no more trouble than the theory out the big-bang theory at this time. of evolution. Creationists tried and And the big-bang theory is successful failed to invalidate evolution by in quantitatively explaining many trumpeting a few of the problems observations. For example, calcula- biologists still argue over. Similarly, tions on the synthesis of light chemical Lerner tries and fails to invalidate the elements in the big bang give remark- big bang by drawing attention to its able agreement with measured abun- current unsolved problems, declaring dances. them fatal while ignoring the theory's Lerner uses the kinds of arguments many successes, unmatched by any one often hears in a public discourse alternative theory. on science, but rarely among profes- The first successful test of the big sional scientists themselves. For bang occurred with the discovery of example, he argues that plasma cos- the microwave background in 1964. mology is in closer agreement with Lerner dismisses this prediction, label- everyday observation than big-bang ing it a failure because the measured cosmology, and hence is the more temperature of the radiation was sensible. A look through a telescope lower than predicted. But the impor- reveals spirals and other structures tant result was that the radiation was similar to those observed in the plasma there at all. No other theory, including laboratory (and, as cosmologist Rocky plasma cosmology, foresaw this. Kolb has remarked, in your bathroom Lerner's argument is like someone toilet as well). Following Lerner's line saying that Columbus failed to prove of reasoning, we would conclude, as
414 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 16 people once did, that the earth is flat, that was a spontaneous quantum fluc- that the sun goes around the earth, tuation, with structure and physical and that species are immutable. The laws developing by the purely material scientific revolution taught us to processes of self-organization. The question commonsense expectations. uncreated universe does not, as some Finally, I want to comment on people think, require a violation of the Lerner's connection of the big bang first or second law of thermodynam- to the Judeo-Christian concept of ics, nor any other principle of physics. Creation. I agree with the author in Perhaps the big bang did not condemning the way the big bang has happen exactly as currently envisaged, been exploited by preachers, popes, but Lerner does not make much of a and some scientist-authors of popular case against it. In fact, a great deal books as providing an imagined link of what he discusses in his book, like between science and religion, and even cosmic plasma phenomena, is per- a verification of the existence of a fectly consistent with the big bang. He Creator. We have seen this pheno- could have used the same material had menon repeated as the recent COBE he decided to write "The Big Bang results are trumpeted by the media as Happened!" evidence for God's presence "shining through" in the design of the universe. (See also Martin Gardner's column in this These commentators do not under- issue—EDJ stand that quite the opposite is the case. No support for creation by Victor ]. Stenger is professor of physics design can be found in the theory of and astronomy at the University of the big bang. Hawaii and the author of Not By Design: Complete quantum chaos must The Origin of the Universe (Prome- have existed at an early moment of theus Books, 1988) and Physics and the big bang (the Planck Time, 10-43 Psychics: The Search for a World second). All we know about the uni- Beyond the Senses (Prometheus Books, verse is consistent with a beginning 1990).
Holography, Hyperbole, and Hooey
The Holographic Universe. By Michael Talbot. HarperCollins, New York 1991. 338 pp. Cloth, $19.95; paper, $10.00.
ROBERT A. BAKER
According to the cover of Michael latest frontiers of physics, and the ^^X Talbot's latest excursion into unsolved riddles of brain and body." pseudoscience, his Holographic Unfortunately it does none of these Universe provides "a remarkable new things, since a mere analogy is neither theory of reality that explains: the a sufficient nor a satisfactory explan- paranormal abilities of the mind; the ation, particularly for matters as
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