Current cosmological theory rests on a
disturbingly small number of independent observations.
It appears that everybody is interested in
cosmology. In one anthropological study, every
one of the more than 60 separate cultures
examined was found to have several common
characteristics, including faith healing, luck
superstitions, propitiation of supernatural
beings,
and a cosmology. Apparently, to be
human is to care how the physical world came to
be, whether it has boundaries and what is to
become of it. Modern cosmology is a highly
sophisticated subject funded by governments with
hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is
unquestionably interesting, but is it, even in its modern guise, convincing?
The current Big Bang paradigm has it that the
cosmos is expanding out of an initially dense
state and that by looking outward into space, one
can, thanks to the finite speed of light, look
back to much earlier epochs. This understanding
owes much to two accidents: astronomers'
discovery of redshifts in the spectra of distant
nebulae and the fortuitous detection of an
omnipresent background of microwave noise, which
is believed to be the remnant of radiation from a
hot and distant past. Set in the theoretical
framework of Einstein's general theory of
relativity, such observations lead to a model
that makes predictions and can thus be tested.
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/55839?print=yesLink
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Posted By johannes to
http://www.monochrom.at/english/2007/08/modern-cosmology-science-or-folktale.htmmonochrom
at 8/19/2007 05:15:00 PM
