--- Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Mario replies: >Wow! This sounds suspiciously like the scientific >equivalent of religious "faith", or the >sophisticated, scientific way to say, "Who knows?" >
Suspicion of this nature is justified only if one speaks from a position of understanding and knowledge. In the present case, it has to be at least an elementary understanding of the mathematics and physics of general relativity and quantum mechanics, as well as of observational astronomical data such as the 2.9 degrees Kelvin cosmic microwave background, COBE satellite data, Hubble space telescope data, etc. The specific scientific papers which first derived the physical nature of the Big Bang as something that represented the origin of space-time and matter/energy, which I mentioned in my earlier post, were written by Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose and George Ellis in 1968 and 1970. These references are as follows: 1. Steven W. Hawking, George F.R. Ellis, "The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in our Universe," Astrophysical Journal, 152, (1968) pp. 25-36. 2. Steven W. Hawking, Roger Penrose, "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, 314 (1970) pp. 529-548. These papers are not a collection of arbitrary pronouncements based on blind faith or revelation. They involve detailed mathematical reasoning built on evidence-based physical theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics, and on established mathematical principles. The derivations contained in these papers have been checked and rechecked by countless physicists and mathematicians over the past 35 years, and have been deemed to constitute a plausible description of the physical nature of the Big Bang. However, until this description is supported by objective physical evidence, it would remain a working hypothesis. The latter is never the case with faith - a fact that should be quite obvious to anybody who has some commitment to possessing a scientific outlook today. Cheers, Santosh ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * G * O * A * N * E * T *** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S * ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Make your mother in Goa happy on Mothers' Day. http://www.goa-world.com/goa/expressions/mothersday/ Limited "Mother's Happiness" packages. First come, first serve. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
