CHAPTER ONE - COSMOLOGY HAS TAKEN THE WRONG ROAD.THE UNIVERSE IS ETERNAL, INFINITE, RATIONAL AND L

THIS IS THE MOMENT OF OUR CREATION

CHAPTER ONE COSMOLOGY HAS TAKEN THE WRONG ROAD. THE UNIVERSE IS ETERNAL, INFINITE, RATIONAL AND LIFE BEARING.THE BIG BANG THEORY IS COMPLETELY WRONG.

WHAT WE CAN SEE

When we look up into the clear night sky we see the Universe. Without the benefit of millennia of astronomical observations and the invention of instruments, and great feats of theorising and calculations we would not know whether the multitude of stars were just beyond the furthest planets, and the Moon was just beyond the highest clouds. It has taken centuries of sustained effort to make sense of what is in the sky, and set it in perspective and context. We all stand on the shoulders of giants as we look into the Universe today, and we are very privileged to see it in its immensity and grandeur as no previous generation has ever done. It is easy, when reading the textbooks to assume that what is up there is easy to see or that we can take it all in at a glance. It is not so. It is like a million piece jigsaw puzzle with a lot of pieces still out of the picture. It is like a vast calculation with no final resolution yet in sight. Nearly everything that is presented to us visually from the observatories is an artefact of photography, electronics, optical filters, prisms and computers.

If we could get out into interstellar space we would not see glowing gas clouds in lovely colours, and dense fields of stars or the hosts of distant galaxies with just our own eyes. We would still need the focussing of light by telescopes with mirrors yards wide, collecting light for hours at a time on photographic plates and electronic collectors., and we would still need a computer and special software to enable us to understand what we are looking at.

Our vision and understanding of the Universe is a collective one and to see it we need the eyes and minds of the human race. This book is not about the details of planets stars and galaxies but about the overall picture of what the Universe is. That is a subject that has been argued about for the past hundred years, with excursions along the wilder shores of thought; epoch making discoveries, brilliant thinking, vast calculations, and we are still a long way from an answer. What we do have is a vast hoard of accurate data, and what we don’t have is a wider context of thought to place it in; we don’t have, if I may use a disreputable word, we don’t have a metaphysics and that is not surprising for metaphysics has been discarded by science.

I will first present the Big Bang theory which dominates all contemporary cosmological thinking and is quite bereft of any coherent metaphysical context.

Distances in the cosmos of stars and galaxies are so vast that we have to abandon miles and kilometres and use light, which travelling at 300,000 km per second can reach the nearest star in four years at 18 trillion miles away. The Sun is eight light minutes away from us and light takes a day to reach Pluto three and a half billion miles away. It takes our space probes up to ten years to reach the outer planets and it would take 20,000 years to reach the nearest star. Our solar system is in the middle of a galaxy of stars at least 200 billion strong gathered into a vast disc rotating once every 240 million years. It is structured as a spiral with arms springing out from a central hub and winding in tightly. We are about 28,000 light years from the centre and the whole star system is about 100 thousand light years in diameter. This is our galaxy which we call the Milky Way. It has a dozen small satellite galaxies scattered around it, ranging in size from a few million to a few billion stars. Two million light years from us is the next big galaxy, even bigger than ours – the Andromeda spiral galaxy, and stretching out for several million light years more are a couple of dozen galaxies belonging to our Local Group. Beyond them more galaxies of every size and kind in groups and clusters spread across the cosmos for as far as we can observe with our most powerful telescopes, and when we focus them to collect the light for days on end and accumulate it on film or computer we find the galaxies just go on and on seemingly for ever. Judging from the redshift of their light, we can see out to about ten billion light years.

Stars are gathered into galaxies, and galaxies are gathered into clusters hundreds strong stretching for hundreds of millions of light years. Between then are great voids of intergalactic space. This incredible gigantic panorama goes on and on until it fades out of our sight.

Is the cosmos infinite in extent or does it have a finite size and an origin in time? This question goes back to the ancient Greek philosophers and is still debated today. At the beginning of the 20th century it was generally agreed that the Universe was eternal and without origin in time, and was infinite in extent and was unchanging on the large scale. This was the view of Einstein when he began his work. The consensus among scientists today is almost the exact opposite. It is now the Big Bang theory of the nature and origin of the Universe, but it is an answer beset with difficulties and paradoxes.

Cosmology is not astronomy; its field of study is the whole Universe and not just the cosmos of stars and galaxies; not the detail but the overall view. It can devise no experiments, and it has never had a lot of observational facts about the Universe as a whole to work with, but upon those few facts it has erected an enormous edifice of theory, speculation and calculations that are only as good as their initial assumptions. The principal fact it relies on is the observed redshift in the light from distant galaxies. This occurs when the source of light is moving away from us and causes the light to lose energy and its wavelength lengthen towards the red end of the visible spectrum. It affects all distant galaxies and their stars, and the further away they are the greater the weakening of their light. For nearby galaxies it is masked by their independent movements approaching and receding from us, but it is thought to be a factor in the light of all sources near and far. It is taken to mean that all groups and clusters of galaxies while able to hold together, are caught up in a cosmic wide outward expansion which increases the distances between clusters as if the whole cosmos was enlarging and its space was expanding. This, it is believed, stretches the light waves coming towards us and lengthens then.

This is the `Doppler shift` and affects soundwaves too so that a sound receding from you will have a lower frequency of pitch which your ears will easily pick up. In the case of light you need a good spectroscope analysing the light from objects travelling at several kilometres per second, so it wasn’t noticed until well into the 19th century.

It affects the whole range of radiation from x ray to radio as well as the visible. All wavelengths increase including all the bright emission lines and the dark absorption lines that they carry. These spectral lines are the signatures of the various chemical elements in the source of the light. Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon and many others each have very characteristic wavelength and frequency. Thanks to this we know what the stars are made of.

These bright and dark lines are the fingerprints of the atoms of every element, and the molecules of every compound, and they have a fixed and particular place in the spectrum of radiation. Because of this, the study of a star`s light can tell us what elements and compounds are emitting or absorbing light in its atmosphere. The way those lines are widened, split or shifted can tell us a lot about the star`s magnetic field, its temperature, ionisation, rotation and its motion towards or away from us.

Remaining stationary on Earth we can compare the spectrum of lines from distant sources that are moving, with a spectrum of glowing elements in the laboratory that are stationary. Redshift is not visible to the eye but only by very sophisticated instruments and techniques. As the whole spectrum of light is shifted redwards it means that the visible red gets shifted down into the infra-red where it is not visible to our eyes, and the ultra violet gets shifted down into the visible blue, so light is not lost, and if the distant source is brighter in the ultra violet, then after redshifting it may look blue.

The important finding for cosmology was that all distant galaxies in every direction are redshifted, and if we assume that this is because they are in fact all moving away from us, it must mean the cosmos is expanding.

Five centuries ago western science struggled to free itself from an Earth centred view of the Universe, and then a Sun centred view, and in the 20th century a Milky Way centred view. We know we have no privileged central place in the cosmos, and it is accepted by all that although all distant galaxies show recession in their light it does not mean that we are at the centre of an explosion and we have been left behind. There is no centre to the Universe for us to be at. This is the Copernican principle and that being so, then wherever we are we will see all distant galaxies moving away from us. Every place would seem to be the centre of the cosmos from which everything was moving away. That must mean that the whole cosmos of stars is expanding and it must be getting bigger as time passes, for there is no sign at all that the cosmos is slowing down.

WHAT WE ASSUME.

If the cosmos is getting bigger, what happens to it if we mentally run the expansion backwards in time? Everything in cosmology has to be done in the mind, for no experiments are possible. It would logically follow that taken far enough back into its past, the whole cosmos would converge until it ran out of space and could converge no more. It is a central principle of physics that matter and energy cannot go out of existence, so running the cosmos back against its expansion does not make it disappear. It must be all there but with no space to exist in. That is the Big Bang theory and that is the argument it rests on.

There is another central principle of physics. The speed of light is an absolute limit and only its photons which are massless can have that speed. Matter has mass and can never reach it. It takes enormous energy to get even a tiny electron accelerated close to light speed, and it can never actually attain it. Large objects like stars cannot reach even one thousandth of it. So it is out of the question for galaxies to reach large fractions of light speed. It is agreed that what is doing the moving is the space in between the galaxies and it is assumed that space can expand at any speed because it is massless.

The Big Bang, when we run it forward from its mystery point of origin is not an explosion of matter, it is an expansion of space into which the matter and energy can expand and cool down and eventually form atoms, molecules, gas and stars. But where all that matter ultimately came from and how space could just appear and keep on expanding has never been explained. It is an article of faith, like the first chapter of Genesis used to be. The creation of limitless volumes of space does not offend the conservation of energy or the speed limit of light. The galaxies are being swept apart by space, like flotsam on a fast flowing river. It is not so much a Big Bang as a Big Ballooning, but I think Fred Hoyle`s dismissive name for it is a good one. We must always remember that the Big Bang cannot be observed. Most estimates place it about 15 billion years ago, it won`t happen again and there is only one cosmos.

It is an extrapolation backwards into the past to explain what we are observing now. If we remain empirical then all we observe is the present state of the Universe and everything else is in the imagination. In its present state all the matter and energy is spread out and organised into a great coherent system under physical law.

When we contract the cosmos backwards, reversing the expansion of its vast spaces; then by the time it has reached the dimensions of a pinpoint we have not only run out of space, we have run out of physics, chemistry, maths and any sort of common sense. We cannot make sense of it at all. How can the cosmos be at one point in a physical sense? It has to be physical, it doesn`t happen in heaven. At that point the maths blows up into infinite quantities, there is no physics to explain its condition, and there is less and less time for events to occur in. The 15 billion years has contracted back to the first second, and then back to preposterous fractions of a second, and in those infinitesimal instants great transformations occur that shape the cosmos to be. All this in order to explain the redshift in the light of galaxies, yet it fails to explain it because when it reaches the point of origin it isn’t using science. This is not a problem with the universe or the cosmos, it is a man made one.

Physics, by definition, cannot leave the physical realm and attempt to explain the ultimate origin just beyond time and space. It still has to assume a physical realm or some sort. It has been proposed that the Universe started with an uncaused quantum fluctuation in the spaceless timeless point where all the energy of the Universe was concentrated. The energy would have to be in existence otherwise what would the quantum event be happening with? If it is assumed that the Universe came out of absolutely nothing, just a quantum event in the nothingness, is that physics? Is it theology? Is it rational? Or is it just desperation?

Another proposal is that our Universe is part of a larger super-universe and that our own began as a vacuum fluctuation within it, and there may be other universes as well. Apart from being a hike along the wilder shores of reason it does not give a final explanation, only a door opening into an infinite regress of universes, and anyway what caused the super-Universe.? However, very few have ventured into this terra incognita. Most have stopped at some point inside the first second and then worked forward using maths that works and physics that is tried and true.

Steven Weinberg`s book ‘The First Three Minutes’ ¬ 1977 is still one of the best accounts of the Big Bang as it roars forward and outward. All I will do is give a summary of what is supposed to have happened.

Running the Universe backward to an origin is a rather presumptuous but bold mental undertaking in which, in effect, we extract all the space and time from it until none is left and we confront a Singularity wherein is all the energy and matter of the cosmos that is to be. We then assume we have reached the beginning of time, space and events, and can then run it forward using all our knowledge of physics, and using a lot of maths, until we reach the familiar here and now again. But our understanding of the nature of that point of origin depends on what we know about our Universe of the here and now.

The simplest scenario which may lurk in many minds is that the Universe must be finite and closed by its gravity into a sphere with an horizon several billion light years from us, and beyond which we cannot see. This could be because the most distant and first created galaxies are being moved by expanding space at the speed of light away from us and passing out of sight. Perhaps out there we may eventually see, beyond those first galaxies, the featureless glow of the wave of light that swept out during the first 300,000 years after the Origin. It is easy to imagine that such a gravity closed Universe could collapse to a single point. But it wouldn`t be a unity.

From Earth we can, at present, see galaxies on both sides of our sky 12billion light years away. It is agreed that, given the speed of recession, the cosmos must be about 15 billion years old and we are not far from seeing the first galaxies to be formed. If we can see fully formed galaxies 12 billion light years in one direction in the sky, and we can also see other galaxies just as distant in the opposite side of the sky, that means they are 24 billion light years apart. As only 15 billion years has elapsed since they formed, light has not had time to reach from one side to the other and so they have always been out of contact. Any observer anywhere in the cosmos would see this for there is no cosmic centre When we presume to run the Universe backward to a point, the distant horizons of our sky close up to a point but there was no unity even then for everything was flying apart. It is, after all, an expanding Universe, and running it backwards doesn’t change it into something else. Light has never been able to unite it all into one, given its finite speed. Only if the speed of light increased as we went back would this be possible, but that is not acceptable in principle and would be an ad hoc invention anyway. So the Universe we see here and now is not a unity and when we run it all back to an origin it would still not be a unity because it was all flying apart and would be a multitude of points. When each of those points began to emit a sphere of radiation expanding outwards they could never all meet and interact. In an expanding cosmos with a finite speed of light, the cosmos is incompressible.

There is another problem given our current theory of what stars are.

If there is no space and time, what condition is the energy of this nascent Universe in? If we consider a large cloud of gas contracting under the force of gravity and the accepted gas laws until it is all compressed into a star, it then occupies only a trillionth of its former volume and it heats up enormously. That heat is the increased speed of its particles and atoms smashing into each other and unable to escape because gravity holds them together. They have lost the space they once roamed in, they exert pressure, they sped up and they interact at a furious rate and produce floods of radiation. The hotter the star the more effectively it can break up atomic nuclei and reconstruct them into other elements.

When we run the Universe backwards it is presumed to heat up too, because the space contracts and forces everything close together, like a universal star. However, a star being finite stabilises as internal energies balance gravity, but running the Universe backwards has no such limit as it approaches the spaceless point. As the theory describes it; the temperature goes on up and up to mind blowing figures that no star ever comes near reaching. Atomic nuclei are broken back to their constituent particles, the gravitation of all that energy is beyond anything natural, and then we run out of space and time. There is no space for the ultimate entities of energy, be they quarks or whatever, to move in, so how can they generate heat? There is no time, so how can events of any sort occur? Without the possibility of heat and interaction are we not suddenly at absolute zero temperature and complete absence of motion? The Big Bang theory was only ever proposed to explain the redshift of galaxies but it leads us out of physics.

Many of the cosmologists, physicists and astronomers who labour to develop our understanding of the genesis of the Universe tend to take this theory as a reality, as an historical fact. I think cosmology must start from the here and now, the cosmos functioning now, and what we need to do is find the real reason for the redshifting of light from distant galaxies.

Edwin Hubble in the 1920s using the Mount Wilson 100 inch telescope was the first to see the significance of a general tendency of galaxies to have higher redshifts when they were fainter and smaller and therefore judged to be more distant. Edwin Hubble was an observing astronomer, not a theoretician, and for him it was a feature of galaxies in the here and now. He never fully accepted the Big Bang and the expanding universe as anything but a hypothesis. He always held that there might be some other explanation for the widespread reddshifts. The reason why the theory grew until it took over all of cosmology and astronomy and is now an orthodoxy and a Dogma, was because of the General Relativity theory of Einstein in the first two decades of the 20th century. General relativity was a new way of looking at gravity which avoided action at a distance across the void that had baffled Newton. Einstein developed it into a cosmology which stabilized the Universe as a finite system.

Newton realised that the Universe was immense and filled with distant stars and what ruled them all was gravity, all pervasive and always attractive. The Universe was finite in time, for God had created it at a particular moment, but was it finite or infinite in extent? Newton reasoned that a Universe of great masses finite in extent would ultimately fall together to a common centre of mass drawn there by all powerful gravitation, but as we still see all the stars hanging separately in space, what is it that is preventing gravity doing its work? He argued that the Universe may be infinite in extent and in that case there would be no common centre for all the stars to fall towards, but some would fall in one direction and others in another, all into an infinite multitude of centres of attraction, and the universe would remain all separated out. However, this does not cancel the incessant all pervasive action of gravity and everywhere stars would be falling together into greater masses and as time goes by, these greater masses approach each other and fall together into even greater masses, and so on and so on in an endless acceleration, given that there was an infinity of time for it all to happen in. In the end Newton fell back on divine omnipotence, which so precisely placed all heavenly bodies that they remained perfectly balanced one against the other throughout the Universe.

Einstein developed his theory at least a decade before the redshifting of galaxies became well known. He assumed the universe to be static and in balance as did everyone else then. He simplified the problem by assuming, for easier calculation, that the Universe as a whole is homogeneous; that is to say, its matter is evenly spread out. This assumption led him to the conclusion that the universe must be finite. He had taken Newton`s gravitation and seen it in an entirely different way. Newton saw it as a force reaching out from one mass to another and pulling them together, but he had no idea at all how such a force could act across empty space throughout the heavens. He would not offer the most tentative of explanations and the mystery remained hanging in the air for over two centuries.

In the 19th century a universal medium pervading all space was proposed in order to give electromagnetic waves something to undulate in. (In Newton's day light was taken to be particles which shot across space like bullets and needed no medium.) This ‘aether’ was then enlisted to accommodate the needs of gravity. It was thought of as strains and stresses of distortion spreading across the aether which could move other masses. However, in the last years of the nineteenth century the aether was conclusively proved to be non-existent and light and gravity were left unsupported. Einstein used no invented medium but relied on the geometry of pure space. As he saw it, any mass curves the space around it, not because space is some sort of transparent plastic that can be bent, but because the laws of geometry are such that any mass near to a larger mass will follow a curved path around it. That is the only way it can move. In doing so it is following the shortest path it can follow. If it were on a flat plane it would move in a dead straight line, and if it were on the surface of a globe it would move in a great circle route, and if it were near a large mass it would move in a curve around it. It is just geometry, not an invented medium but the laws of nature. The larger the mass the more it curves space around it. If it is big enough it will curve space entirely around itself. The Universe is the largest of all masses and can curve all the space in the Universe, and if its mass is spread evenly it will curve all space entirely around it. If that is the case then the Universe must be finite.

That initial assumption, that the matter in the universe is evenly spread has never been confirmed by observation. The proposed evenness is, of course statistical on the large scale, but it has never been found. Stars are spread fairly evenly throughout galaxies, but there are vast gaps between galaxies and even vaster gaps between their clusters. They aggregate in superclusters hundreds of millions of light years across, but they too are separated by immense voids. A fruitless quest has been going on for years to find that level of the universe where matter can be said to be statistically evenly spread overall.

Using the redshift of quasars, considered to be the brightest objects there are, and the remotest objects we can see out to 12 billion light years, we are already near the edge of the finite universe, if such it is, and it is still assumed as an article of faith that the universe out there will turn out to be homogeneous. If it is not homogeneous now, after 12 billion years, it certainly had to be in the first billion years.

According to Big Bang thinking, all the energy storming out from the Origin materializes into an ocean of quarks which, as it cools, combines into an ocean of neutrons protons and electrons, and as that cools they combine into an ocean of protons and nuclei and electrons, and then, sometime around 300,000 years, protons and electrons, and helium nuclei fall together into atoms which form hydrogen and helium gas clouds filling all of space, and of course, very evenly spread out.

if we follow the big bang argument, we know they were very evenly spread out because when the atoms formed, the immense amount of radiation generated since the big bang was liberated, and could move freely through the Universe. It ceased to be opaque because the electrons were no longer moving in free space and intercepting and scattering the light but were collected into the tiny confines of atoms. That primordial light, that radiance of creation, has ever since been travelling across the Universe from everywhere to everywhere, in the big ballooning, that continues unabated to this day, (or so the theory will have us believe.) It has stretched the wavelengths of that ancient light and reduced its energy from short wave gamma and X-ray, to long wave microwave radiation at 2.7 Kelvin above absolute zero. That provides a pervasive universal background coming from every part of the sky and evenly spread to within one part in 100,000. This is taken to be the relic of the light of 15 billion years ago, as it left the evenly distributed gas of that era. It is said in some textbooks that if we can actually penetrate to 15 billion light years distance with the next generation of telescopes, we will see those early events by the Light that has taken 15 billion years to reach us.

However, let us return to the labours of Einstein, which, we must bear in mind, were before the expanding Universe was thought of. He had in mind a static finite and closed Universe; its homogeneous mass curving space all around it, as if it were a sphere. Then he faced the same problem that had confronted Newton. A static closed Universe cannot remain static because its own gravity will cause it to contract. Rotation will stabilise smaller groups like our Solar System and even galaxies against gravity, but what would the Universe be rotating relative to and where would its axis be? In any case the outer parts of something so vast and massive will be moving faster than light. However, the Universe has not collapsed, so some force must be acting outwards the way centrifugal force would act, but without the need for rotation. This force must increase with distance as centrifugal force increases with the radius of a rotating body. It would be unobservable in something as small as a galaxy, but would increase in strength over cosmic distances, and counteract the gravity of the Universe as a whole. So Einstein invented a Cosmic Force acting outwards from everywhere in the Universe, not from localised masses as gravity acts, but from every point in space, as if space had a tension outwards. He called it the Cosmological Constant, and fitted it into his field equations in such a way as to balance gravity exactly so that its repulsion everywhere prevents collapse of the Universe. Newton relied on divine decree, Einstein on the laws of Nature.

However, within a year or two, the mathematician Alexander Friedmann working over Einstein's equations to find other solutions, showed that the balance of Einstein's static finite universe was set on a needle point. A very slight expansion would cause the repulsive Force to increase, for it would increases cumulatively with increasing volume of Space, and this would cause the Universe to go on increasing at an escalating rate for ever, spreading the Universe increasingly thinly until everything was out of contact in the Big Dispersal. On the other hand, a very slight contraction below the delicate balance would enable gravity to pull everything inward with increasing power as the matter of the Universe came closer together. This would be self-intensifying and lead to a total collapse, nowadays known as the Big Crunch.

We should remember that all this is not about the nature of the Universe as it really is, but about the construction of an equation that tries to show what the Universe may be. Einstein`s mathematical model is only one of a whole assortment of different solutions to his field equations, some of which lead to a big crunch, others to an infinite dispersal, and still others could be a cyclical expansion and contraction. Einstein's equations and their many solutions are not observations of nature, they are only proposals and it is observation of what we can see out there that is conclusive.

When Hubble published his findings of a universal recession of the galaxies, in the late 1920s, it was evidence that showed the Universe was not static, and this observed expansion outwards could be construed as pointing back to an origination point. The Universe was not eternal and balanced but finite in time, and dynamic as well. Einstein then abandoned his cosmological constant because it obviously was not doing what it had been invented to do.

HOW THE BIG BANG THEORY BEGAN.

Theorising about an origin from a point expanding outwards began in the late 1920s and since then has been through several major reconstructions and had many additional concepts added to it. It has shown a remarkable ability to rise above every difficulty and contradiction by reinventing itself. Those who believe in it have an unshakable faith, as if it were a religion. The first version of the Origin of the Universe was that of the Abbe Lemaitre, a priest and mathematician who proposed in 1931 that in the beginning there was a Primeval Atom which expanded and divided like a fertilized egg, first into galaxy sized bodies, then into stars, and then into atoms. It was not a success but it was the first scientific version of Genesis. After the war, in 1946, George Gamow using the nuclear physics developed in the atom bomb project, argued that the Universe came from a point, appearing with all the elementary particles in a universal explosion, and within seconds before the temperature and density dropped below that of the centre of a star, there was the time and the conditions to build up all the elements from Hydrogen to Uranium, using neutrons in vast numbers to transmute lighter elements into heavier ones. It was this version that Fred Hoyle in 1948 called the Big Bang, for it had a lot of similarity to the atomic bomb. However it was soon proved that there was not enough time nor the right conditions for all the elements to form in the brief time before the fire-ball cooled down. Then Hoyle was able to show that the elements higher than hydrogen, helium and lithium, can all be produced in the heart of stars and in the supernovae and this process is occurring now all over the, Universe and can be studied. It is not an event that happened only once long ago. That brought the subject back from mythology to practical physics and astronomy again. For that Hoyle should have been honoured win a Nobel Prize, but he never got one. Hoyle could never accept the idea that the whole mighty Universe appeared out of nothing, could ever have been crammed into a point, and started in a violent fireball of total thermodynamic disorder. He always stuck to the belief that this Universe is eternal and infinite, that it has always been orderly and always will be, never collapsing and never flying apart. However like everyone else, Hoyle and his colleagues, Bondi and Gold, took the redshift of galaxies to mean actual expansion of space, but it did not have to mean the Universe had expanded from a point, or that it was finite in material, duration and extent.

They proposed that space was expanding because matter was continually being created out of the vacuum by natural forces, and this caused the space of the Universe to expand to accommodate it. This has been going on forever and the universe gets bigger for ever. By constantly creating new matter the Universe regenerates itself and will not level down to thermodynamic equilibrium. Like all cosmologies proposed by mere human beings, it has assumptions and values put in by hand. It has to assume creation out of the vacuum is possible, and does happen, and that the rate of it is evenly spread all over the Universe, but so tenuously that it is unobservable locally. The rate of creation proposed to fit the observed rate of universal expansion was one atom appearing in a year in a cube of space 100 metres on each side - that is 100 million cubic metres. Even out in interstellar space that volume holds billions of atoms and one more appearing in a year is quite impossible to detect. So like the big bang we are invited to believe. The really attractive feature of Hoyle`s steady state Universe was that it is eternal and endless and will always be much the same. Stars would form and evolve and fade away to be succeeded by new stars. Galaxies too would evolve, and it all made more sense than a Universe originating from chance events, and exists for a while before falling apart.

During the 1950s, the steady state theory rivalled the Big Bang theory, but then two important discoveries in the 1960s appeared to disprove the steady state scenario.

The Cosmic microwave background radiation was observed coming from all parts of the sky. It was very low frequency microwaves and just two and a half degrees above absolute zero, very evenly spread with a perfect black body spectrum implying its origin in perfect thermodynamic equilibrium. This low grade radiation appears to fill the universe, and in numbers of photons it outnumbers any other frequencies of radiation. It was thought that the only feasible explanation for something so cosmic and vast was that it must be the relic radiation of the Big Bang, greatly stretched out and reduced in energy by the expansion of space following the Big Bang.

The steady state advocates eventually argued that it could be starlight from all over the Universe absorbed and then re-emitted at micro wave length, by a multitude of long carbon and iron molecules crystallised slowly from the atmospheres of stars, and then ejected. These linear chains of atoms up to a millimetre long would be widespread in interstellar and intergalactic space, and given that the Universe is eternal, there would have been plenty of time to produce them in sufficient amounts to produce a uniform microwave background. Such molecules have been produced in laboratory but there is no evidence they exist in vast quantities in space. It seems ad hoc and contrived and it has not caught on, but that does not mean the big bang explanation has to be correct, some other agency maybe at work.

The other important discovery was the quasars. They are usually bluish and point-like but with extraordinary red shifts putting them, so it seems, out at distances of billions of light years and far beyond any of the ordinary galaxies.

Redshifts are measured as ratios of the observed redshift out there, with the spectra of materials at rest with us on Earth. Redshift can be a few percent or up to 500% or more compared to earthly materials. They can also be considered to be speeds of recession relative to the speed of light and ranging from a few hundred kilometres per second up to 200,000 kilometres per second for the most distant. It was assumed from the start that these high redshifts meant actual distances; but an object smaller than a galaxy but bright enough to be visible several billion light years away, had to be fantastically bright; hundreds of times brighter then whole galaxies. Then it was noticed that their light could fluctuate over periods of weeks and even days, which made them even more extraordinary, for that meant they could only be a few times larger than our solar system, and yet pouring out the radiation of a hundred galaxies from radio waves to X-ray. The ordinary nuclear physics of stars could not produce such an output, and so black hole theory was developed to provide an explanation. Huge million solar mass black holes of collapsed matter are now assumed to inhabit the heart of every galaxy, even though they have never actually been observed. It is theorised that they can go through very active phases, when they blaze out but with quiescent phases in between. It is assumed that ordinary galaxies like our own harbour them at their centres.

These million solar mass concentrations pull in stars in their vicinity and break them up causing vast outpourings of radiation. This constant destruction of stars is the reason these small remote sources can be so brilliant and visible over billions of light years. These very bright active quasars are scattered among far-flung multitudes of normal galaxies that are too faint to be seen at such great distances. This was seen as a godsend, because such bright beacons could be used to chart the very distant Universe, perhaps out to the very beginnings of galaxies. Quasars were taken to be evidence of an evolution of the Universe for there were many quasars at great distances and very few in the nearby Universe. There were a lot of them at a red shift of about 1.95 times that of earthly matter, and this was taken to be the quasar era in the evolution of galaxies as they were forming within 2 billion years of the Origin. Since then quasar activity has gradually died away until now, in galaxies near to us and as old as ours, quasars are no longer active. This was a powerful argument against a steady state view of a basically unchanging Universe.

On top of that there was no evidence of any recent formation of ordinary galaxies. It seemed as if the Universe started 15 billion years ago and has evolved by stages since then, within a common time frame. There were other arguments too, for which the Big Bang theory seemed to have the better answer. Hoyle had shown that all the elements beyond lithium, which astronomers lump together under the common name of `metals`, were produced in stars in the here and now; but he also established that a big bang origin could produce the hydrogen and helium in the amount we find today. Of course hydrogen as protons and electrons could be produced out of the vacuum if his continual creation idea was actually true, but it was more difficult for him to account for the known amounts of deuterium, which is the heavy form of hydrogen with neutrons.

Hydrogen has to be primordial whatever theory you follow, you have to assume it is the starter material, for the stars cannot produce it, they can only use it. Deuterium and lithium are used up in stars to make helium, and helium is such a gigantic part of the cosmos; - one-tenth of its atoms and a quarter of its mass, - that stars simply could not produce it all.

If you take the Universe to be 15 billion years old, its stars in that time could only have converted 5% of the original hydrogen into helium by now. This is assuming that hydrogen is converted to helium in the centres of stars. If these light elements are produced in the big bang fireball in the first three minutes when chemistry and temperature were briefly adequate, then the amounts produced would depend very sensitively on the density of the Universe at that time. If the average density now is one atom to 8 cubic metres, and we then, in the godlike way of mathematicians rewind the expansion back to the first three minutes, we have a density just right for producing the light elements, more or less in the amounts we now observe.

The other ingredient in the pot is radiation. If that numbers 12 billion photons per proton then the amount of helium we find now could have been produced. The rate of helium production is believed to be very sensitive to the ratio of photons to protons. The Big Bang primordial fireball could account for the light elements, but the steady state theory, with no mighty fireball to cook them, had to fall back on the hope that perhaps the quasars could do it if only we knew what powered them.

BIG BANG PROBLEMS.

Since 1970 The Big Bang theory has been adopted by most astronomers and nearly all cosmologists, and the public assumes that it is the only possible explanation. But each time that theory surmounts a problem another looms up in front of it.

Given the density of matter in the Universe necessary to produce helium in the abundance we measure today, and given that the ratio of photons to protons and neutrons is 12 billion to 1, that density of matter will not exert sufficient gravity upon the expanding material of the universe to balance it, and prevent it from expanding forever and dispersing. If that ratio was, say, 100 billion photons to each Proton, the helium abundance would be as we observe it to be, but the microwave background radiation would then be 30 degrees kelvin above zero but it is not. It therefore seems that the Universe is not dense enough to keep itself together; it is not in balance. The ratio of the density of the Universe as we measure it, to that needed to keep it in balance, neither flying apart nor falling back inwards, is signified by the Greek letter Omega. If the universe is in balance then Omega is equal to One. If the ratio of densities is greater than One then Omega is positive and the Big Crunch is coming. If the ratio is less than One then Omega is negative and everything we see out there will eventually disappear into really deep space. For reasons that are not rigorously scientific but are understandably human, nearly all the cosmologists and astronomers have preferred to believe or hope that Omega despite the evidence does equal one, and the Universe is in balance and will endure. The evidence however, is that the Universe is not dense enough. Heroic labours by many astronomers have shown that the amount of light emitting matter in the universe is only 1% of that needed for Omega to equal One - the critical density. This has been a sort of cosmic census of what we can see in galaxies and gas clouds with estimates of their masses. Obviously such a census can`t be precise, but even if they were only seeing half of the visible material, it will only double the answer to 2% of critical density. Where is the other 98%? For 30 years the hunt has been on to find this unobserved dark matter.

There are plenty of candidates: small stars that have burned themselves out, and have become too dim to see; or even smaller stars that never properly ignited, and also there may be vast numbers of planets whether orbiting stars or flung out from them to wander cold and alone through interstellar space. Perhaps there are untold amounts of comets and debris left over from the formation of planetary systems.

Then there are more exotic candidates, such as black holes. These are theorised to be the highly condensed remains of large stars at least 8 times the Sun`s mass, that have exhausted their nuclear fuel and have detonated as supernovae because the central core has totally imploded into a super dense state. All this may sound a lot but it is agreed that all of this non visible matter can only bring ordinary material up to 3% of critical. If there is anything else out there to make up the difference, it must be such as to exert gravity, (that is why it is wanted), but not emit radiation, (which is why we can't see it), so it can't be subject to electromagnetic forces.

There is evidence for a lot of mass throughout the cosmos which does not reveal itself in radiation but does affect galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Spiral galaxies rotate and as one side of the galaxy is swinging towards us its light is blue shifted, while the other side is receding from us and its light is redshifted. It is a slow majestic business taking hundreds of millions of years to complete one galactic year. Our own Galaxy takes over 240 million years to rotate and that is the time it takes our solar system to go right round it at about 230 miles per second. Mercury takes 88 days to go around the Sun, Jupiter takes 11.9 years, and far-away Neptune takes 106 years. Because well over 99% of its total mass of the solar system is concentrated in the Sun at its centre, the planets follow Kepler's laws of planetary motion and move faster close to the sun where gravity is stronger but slower the further out they are. The Sun`s gravity falls in strength by the inverse square to distance.

In the case of galaxies this is not so. the mass of galaxies is more evenly distributed with a hub and a disk, all packed with stars and gas clouds so it would not show Kepler`s law as clearly as does the solar system. However, one would still expect the outer part, far from the dense central regions to move much more slowly, but this does not happen. The stars out there move almost as fast as the stars halfway in. Since the advent of radio astronomy, which can resolve clouds of hydrogen atoms much further out beyond the last straggling stars of the outer disc, we have found that clouds thousands of light years further out still revolve as fast as the disk. This would be impossible if the rotation is commanded by a central gravitational mass as with our Solar system.

It is explained by invoking a huge spherical halo of unseen gravitating dark matter within which the whole Galaxy is set and within that great mass the stars and gas clouds move at very similar speeds, whether they are far out on the edge or deep inside the Galaxy. This is taken to be astronomical evidence for dark matter and meets the cosmologists need for it to balance the Universe. All spiral galaxies show it, and there is indirect evidence of it in elliptical and irregular galaxies as well. In total it would add 10% to the mass density of the Universe. But there is more, for when we examine clusters of galaxies we can measure their motions in the clusters like a swarm of moving bees, and we can make estimates of the total mass those galaxies should contain. Their motions towards and away from us, we can measure by their Doppler shifts, (we can't measure the motions across our line of sight unless we can wait a thousand years), and then we can compare mass to speed of movement. They do not balance. The galaxies are moving so fast within their clusters that they would need up to 20 times more mass to contain the individuals as a system, otherwise they would have scattered apart millions of years ago. This is also considered to be dark matter, forming huge containing halos around the clusters. This brings the total of gravitating matter in the Universe up to about 30%.

What this dark matter is poses another mystery for cosmology. What is it? It exerts gravity, it is smoothly distributed around galaxies and clusters, it does not radiate and it does not appear to absorb light passing through it. It is needed to hold galaxies and clusters together. As a bonus it is also needed to explain how galaxies could form in the first place. Such immense masses of gravitating matter could provide the platforms for galaxies of ordinary matter to coalesce on. This enabled galaxies to form in spite of the high speed and temperature of matter in that early period. No one knows what dark matter is made of, but it is certainly not the particles that physics knows.

The only people who can contribute to this discussion are the particle physicists, and they have proposed many theoretical particles that have mass but no light. Apart from the neutrino, which emits no light and has long been assumed to be massless and so of little use, all other proposed particles are undetected as yet. The hunt is on for them, but for technical reasons even if they are found, as a sort of dark matter pervading every Galaxy and cluster, they can only account for about 30% of the critical mass. If it were more, the density of the Universe at the origin, necessary for all that matter to form, would be so great that most of the hydrogen would have been converted to helium, and we would have a sterile Universe. There is still a 70% shortfall that dark matter cannot fill, so why do we not all just accept that the Universe is not dense enough to hold itself together? It will be hundreds of millions or billions of years before it makes any real difference and why should we care?

This brings us to several other problems that confront the Big Bang theory, and which it can't solve. Bear in mind it is the theory that needs propping up, not the Universe.

First of all; even though Omega is not exactly equal to one It is extraordinarily close to one when viewed in a cosmic context. It is 30% of the critical density now,

Looking back into the past we extrapolate back to the Origin, so the Universe contracts while the amount of matter and energy remains the same, because, unlike space, it is conserved, and the density will increase towards Omega One. At 300,000 years after the Origin, as the radiation broke free, the density would have been 99.99% of critical, and at the first second it would have been less than one quadrillionth from unity, and at the moment of origin it would have been less than 1058 power of ten from unity. To be within 30% of critical density after 15 billion years or expansion means that the Universe had to be fantastically close to Unity at its origin. A discrepancy of only one part in 10-40 power would have caused it to either collapse or disperse in less than a second. If it is that close, why not say that Omega is exactly equal to one at the Origin, and has stayed that way ever since. This is one reason why many scientists think the Universe has the critical density right now, even if we can't identify the missing mass yet.

If the universe is just right, and the matter in it is exactly critical, then space is exactly flat as in Euclid`s geometry, - just the world we are at home in. It is now widely accepted that space is flat. Careful analysis of the tiny temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background confirms it, and that means the critical density was exactly one when the Universe started.

But why is the universe the same everywhere we look, and in every direction, when most of it has been out of touch with the rest of it during all that time? The big bang can't say why the initial conditions of the Origin were what they were. It can only describe how the Universe evolved after the first second and it can only do that by starting with the universe we know now, and running it backwards to its starting point in our minds and calculations.

We use the laws of nature to do this, but where did the laws of nature come from? Are they eternal, making a Universe possible, or did they just tumble into place by chance? None of these questions can be answered by the present theory. It is not in fact a true cosmogony’; it is really a very ambitious astrophysics trying to explain how the stars evolved from the precursor of the primeval gas.

To provide an answer to all these conundrums, a further extension had to be added to the Big Bang theory. This is Inflation Theory, invented in 1981 by Alan Guth of Princeton University. It offers an explanation as to why our Universe is flat, is exactly the right density to be in perfect balance, why it can look the same in every direction, and why everything we see now has been in contact with itself all the time. Inflation Theory is a speculative theory, with no direct evidence, no established and proven physics, and it is based on the speculations of Grand unified Theory, which might be the new frontier, or might be a trip down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

In brief, Inflation Theory explains the origin of the Universe in this way: at the earliest instant at which time is a coherent concept, 10-43 of the first second, until a preposterously brief instant has passed and we are at 10-36 of the first second, we consider the nascent Universe to have an unknown number of the ultimate fundamental particles existing in an expanding space. These particles are massive X particles (X meaning unknown nature and no longer with us) which are the progenitors of quarks and protons and electrons and neutrons. They are point particles having no size in a Universe which itself had scarcely any size then. They had mass and charge and enormous kinetic energy and interacted at near the speed of light. This meant that they could not be separating faster than the speed of light otherwise none of them would have been able to interact and there would have been no unity in that nascent universe, and every X particle would have been separating outwards on its own. So the space of the Big Bang could not have been expanding faster than the speed of light. In the time between 10-43 and 10-30 light can only travel one centimetre from any one particle. But as they were all separating, it was impossible for all of them to be in contact through light. This infant Universe was a vast multitude of centimetre sized light horizons, not one of which was in contact with all the rest.

That was the Universe at the very first instant of the Big Bang and it was not a unity then. The time between 10-43 and 10-35 of the first second I shall call the instant of origin. The assumption that inflation Theory makes is that in this instant of origin the Universe in its particles and space had a far higher level of energy than exists now. In that vacuum between the particles, the forces of nature were united as one and needed enormous energy to stay that way. I shall call this The Creation vacuum. Inflation Theory proposes that at 10-35 of the first second the creation vacuum began to expand exponentially, doubling and doubling over and over in the thousand instants between 1035 and 10-32 of that first second. I shall call it the Instant of inflation. The Universe doubled 1000 times in succession, it is thought, before it stopped. The creation vacuum then had a phase transition to the normal vacuum that has prevailed ever since between the particles of our Universe. In changing down from the creation vacuum to the normal vacuum, it dumped all its excess energy into the normal vacuum and this filled the vastly expanded Universe with all the matter and radiation we have today. It was in effect a second big bang and a second creation. When the exponential expansion ended the much slower linear expansion that we know today took over. This means that if it doubles in a million years it will only double again in another million years. Keep in mind this is all theory not observation, and it would never have been invented unless there were problems the Big Bang could not resolve. The arguments work back from present existing conditions to explain the Origin.

The Universe we observe now is very much the same in all directions and in every part we can see. It all behaves in accordance with the same laws of nature, no matter how distant. Yet when we wind it back to its Origin, it cannot all be in one unity. Opposite sides of our sky could never have been in contact, and if it is expanding now it was expanding then even faster before gravity could exert its braking influence. Inflation proposes to provide the unity of all that we see, for it tells us that just after the instant of creation when light had only travelled one centimetre, within that cubic centimetre the point particles then existing in it constituted a cosmos. The Universe then was a great multitude of cubic centimetre sized cosmoses overlapping but all then out of touch with most of the rest. The mighty exponential expansion that followed took each tiny cosmos and inflated it to a size many times greater than the observable universe we have today. What was a centimetre sized unity then, is still a unity now for us.

Why didn`t the Universe start with the creation vacuum inflating from the very beginning? - Because it would not have produced the unified coherent cosmos that we see around us now. To explain what we see now there has to be a tiny coherent cosmos which then inflates far beyond the limits of our observation. There is no law of physics that requires this, it is the way to solve a cosmological problem - it is just stuck on. But there is still a problem with this amendment. The tiny original cosmos is ballooned out to zillions of times its original size. This would make it empty, so the huge energy of the creation vacuum is loaded In to it and produces enough particles and energy, all of a sudden, to; fill it to the critical density that is so desired.

Inflation theory has to lead to this critical density otherwise there is no use for it. How does that really make our cosmos a unity? At an instant a cosmos of great size is filled with particles which begin to radiate and interact, but as it takes time for light moving as a finite speed to link it together, matter on opposite sides of our sky now, 15 billion years later, will still not be in touch and never will be.

Then there is the knotty problem of how the big bang could have ever started. Imagine the entire Universe, however massive it might be, concentrated at one point. No space separates any of it, yet it is all exerting gravity at minimum distance which means maximum force. It is the perfect recipe for the mightiest of all black holes, from which nothing, not even a glimmer of light could ever escape. Some have suggested that gravity did not exist at the Origin but intensified in stages exactly as needed, so that it did not prevent the opening of the Universe. This is blatantly ad hoc and there is nothing in physics to justify it. Nor is it compatible with general relativity which maintains that gravity is not a force pulling inward but a curvature of space around masses.

The Big Bang theory always tries to avoid implying that it is in any way an explosion, for if it were, there would have to be a location for it, and a centre of origin for all the matter of the universe. Instead it is space that expands and there is no centre for that. Everywhere space expands outwards from everywhere. Space, it is believed, can expand far in excess of light speed for it is immaterial and relativistic effects of mass increase cannot apply to it. However material particles cannot even approach the speed of light without increasing inertial mass which would slow them down. Even if there was no gravitation gripping it together at the beginning, why should the particles ever move outwards? What was the expansive force which could move it all, (a whole universe remember), at very high speed outwards into a space which was expanding many times faster than light. However, if we visualise it that way, we are back with an explosion from a centre. So we start again with everything together. Why did it not just stay there without motion at absolute zero until you choose to insert initial conditions of heat and violent activity? To explain the Universe we see now these initial conditions have to be assumed. When we wind it all back it is bound to get very hot. But starting from zero it did not have to be hot. It was an expansion of space so the particles did not have to go along with it and be hot. Why should matter have to go along with the expansion of space? Space is not sticky; it does not drag matter along with it as it expands. It is empty; it is not even the aether, so why should the Universe of particles expand with the space as if they were all stuck to it? It does not happen now. Cosmologists agree that the present expansion does not pull galaxies apart or disrupt clusters. Only in the huge voids between clusters is space said to be expanding, but there is nothing to see there. If the expansion of the space of the Universe does not affect large structures now, how could it have moved apart the universal black hole concentration then? Are we to say the space was very sticky then and is not now? What we are asked to believe is that innumerable particles of the primeval point stayed where they were and space appeared all among them and expanded and expanded and caused the particles to be further and further apart. There was no centre because all the particles separated as the space everywhere expanded; that is the unspoken unexamined assumption. Why didn't the space just slip past them and leave them still static and cold and all together? What can space really do to matter? What the big bang really says is that the Universe as a whole expanded from a point into the Universe we see now. It is inexplicable but it must have happened, because we see it all spread out, with its distant light sources showing signs of recession. If we wind that recession back it all ends up at a point 15 billion years ago.

An important justification for inflation theory, and it's modification of the big bang origin, is based on the nature of the vacuum between particles, as modern quantum physics now understands it.

HOW DID THE UNIVERSE START?

In physics the vacuum is not nothing. It contains energy; for besides the particles permanently existing in it, there are an uncountable number of briefly emerging particles and antiparticles that submerge back into the vacuum almost as soon as they appear. They only last for trillionths of a second or even less, but they are occurring everywhere and all the time. Every permanent particle in our space is surrounded by a flickering cloud of them. The vacuum is pregnant and fertile with particles that don't quite make it into existence in our space. Everything moves in an ocean of fleeting existences and enormous untapped and untappable energy that they exist in. These fleeting existences are called virtual particles and the cause of them is said to be quantum fluctuations in the energy of the vacuum. This is the vacuum as it exists today- the normal vacuum, but according to Inflation Theory, the vacuum existing as the universe first opened out, had the power to create the universe. Where did this creation vacuum come from and what caused it to be, and to act as it did?

It has been suggested that the Universe originated as a quantum fluctuation of the primordial vacuum, a fluctuation that made possible the Big Bang.

Now in our present Universe, a spontaneous fluctuation from the vacuum may momentarily produce a particle–antiparticle pair but only very briefly before the vacuum draws it back. How could the entire Universe emerge from the vacuum if even a pair of the most elementary particles cannot do it in the fully operational Universe that we have now? We have a chicken and egg problem here.

Most attempts to explain the Origin assume the pre-existence of the vacuum-- some kind of space pregnant with possibility. That is not nothing it is something, and it is something that exists as the substrate to a fully functioning cosmos now and that cosmos can apply great energy to the virtual particles and bring them into actual existence. But that is because the cosmos already exists. Attempts to propose that the Universe arose out of nothing at all make no sense at all. What does the originating quantum fluctuation fluctuate in and what is it a quantum of?

Let me quote from Heinz Pagel`s book “Perfect Symmetry“ page 47.

“The nothingness before creation of the Universe is the most complete void that we can imagine. No space time or matter existed, it is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number, it is what the mathematicians call the `empty set`. Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum existence, a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into the void? What tells the void that it is pregnant with a possible Universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to law, a logic that exists prior to space and time“

This remarkable quotation from a well-known physicist is reminiscent of the first sentence of Genesis; ‘ In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void, with darkness over the face of the Abyss.’

Here is a cosmologist looking for a miracle. In another part of his book he admits; “even if grand unified theory does not survive ,the central idea of inflation may survive in view of the current failure to find any alternative solutions to the outstanding cosmological puzzles posed by the observed universe”

If you think of the Universe as a universal computer - a trendy idea these days - then its particles, atoms and dust and stars are the hardware, and the laws of nature are the software. We see the program from the software being carried out in the great motions of the heavenly bodies, in the interaction of atoms, in the frolic going on among the quantum particles, and even in the vacuum where we glimpse something going on in the flickering in and out of virtual particles. If the Universe begins as nothing at all, not even space and time, then there can be no hardware. How are the laws of nature to operate in the empty set? How can such a void execute the program that brings about this Universe that exists? Can software execute his own instructions without the computer? Mathematical models of the origin out of nothing at all still require that something is present in the void otherwise what would the calculations use and what would it be about? It requires as a basic minimum, a probability for the Universe that is to be, as described by the wave function of the Universe. If we accept the idea that the quantum Universe as it was then is described by a wave function, then the wave function specifies the probability of creating a Universe out of nothing. So even absolute nothing at all is pregnant with the possibility of everything, so can't have been nothing anyway.

You can't get something from nothing. In this uncertain life and unpredictable world, that is one certainty on which I am willing to wager my wig and wooden leg.

But some have argued that you can, because you can sum up the energy of the Universe and that sum can cancel out to zero. You take all the rest mass of the matter, you add in its kinetic energy and that is a positive sum. Them you take all the gravitational potential energy, what would be expended if everything fell together into union, and there was no gravitational potential left, you call that negative energy and the positive and negative energies of all things cancel out. Therefore the Universe is really a zero energy entity when it starts, and zero is nothing. Of course the argument is dressed up in dazzling mathematics but it is still sophistry. In the commercial world it is known as creative accountancy, it can`t create money it just plays conjuring tricks with it. How something can come from nothing confronts every theory raised in cosmogony.

However you cut and deal it, the laws of nature have to be assumed to be there before anything can start. Consider the fundamental constants defining gravity, charge, speed of light and so on; are they inevitable like two plus two equals four, or are they chance results of phase transitions and symmetry breaking that could have occurred in different ways? If they are inevitable then we must be up against the laws of creation. If they are random in origin is there some deeper logic behind this apparent randomness, for they work coherently now. Can you possibly create anything out of pure randomness anymore then you can create anything out of pure nothingness?

Contemporary cosmology fails to describe or explain the Origin. General relativity theory ends up with a singularity of infinite quantities and breaks down. The standard model of particle physics can only apply to events after the first few seconds. Winding the universe back to a point instant takes us out of science all together; and I would remind the reader once again that this was done originally to explain the red shifting in the light from distant galaxies.

The big bang origin was meant to explain the red shift; inflation was to redeem the unity of our cosmos, and the dark matter was to fill the gap that ordinary matter could not fill but which inflation requires. But each time cosmology solves a problem it is confronted with a worse one.

IS THE EXPANSION ACCELERATING ?

It seems from recent studies of very distant galaxies that the Universe is accelerating in its expansion. This is quite unexpected and contradicts inflation theory which requires as a ‘sine qua non’ that that cosmic space be flat, in balance and very slowly slowing down under its gravity.

Exactly how is the rate of Universal expansion supposed to change with time? All cosmologists have had to use very simplified models of universal behaviour and ignore what local and particular things like galaxies are doing. The models they use have smooth distribution of matter so they can tackle the tension between expansion outwards and gravity inwards for universes of different densities. They are absolutely homogeneous and isotropic, and local differences don't exist and all the physics is global. Gravity acts universally and incessantly and high density models collapse under it and end up in the Big Crunch. Low density models cannot be dominated by gravity and expand outwards relentlessly into the Big Emptiness. Both of these scenarios result in a rather pointless Universe - a complete failure of long term planning - you could say. In between is one Einstein model where the density is such that expansion and gravity exactly balance and expansion slows down asymptotically - which means it gradually approaches zero but never quite gets there during any period of time you care to specify. This is the sort of Universe everyone wants to live in including Einstein. Only at the critical density is the geometry flat for the universe as a whole. To find out which model we live in we need to know how fast the Universe is expanding, how fast it is decelerating due to gravity, and whether the mass and density is less than Omega One. All these values have been extremely difficult to pin down and have frustrated cosmologists and astronomers for years. To define the rate of expansion we need more than the redshift of galaxies, which only tells us the fact of expansion, and that fainter galaxies are showing higher redshifts than brighter and presumably nearer ones.

We need to know the distances in light years or parsecs (3.26 light years). We have made a lot of progress in finding distances but it would take too large a digression to describe the methods used. It still leaves us with a margin of error of one in two, so that the Hubble Constant of universal expansion is somewhere between 45 kilometres per second per million parsecs, and 80 kilometres per second per million parsecs. The lower value of 45 gives us an older Universe that better accommodates the oldest known stars.

It is assumed that the universe started out expanding fast and has since been slowed down by gravity. If it is now expanding at 45, it must have been slowed down considerably by gravity and it took a long time to do that.

On the other had if it is now expanding at 78 then it must have been slowed less by gravity, and that means gravity has had less time to do it. So a low Hubble constant means a slower Universe and an older Universe.

Since 1998 we have found that distant sources of light are fainter than their redshifts would require. It seems that the distance is increasing as we observe closer to the horizon. In recent years we have had the enormous advantage of a powerful telescope outside the Earth's atmosphere collecting images of thousands of galaxies, and then photographing then again three weeks later, and comparing them. Astronomers were looking for type 1A supernovae which are so bright that even at several billion light years they can be seen in galaxies barely visible at all. The brightness of type 1A supernovae peaks and then gradually fades in a very characteristic way , and can be used as a standard candle far beyond the range of other more local standards candles. They have been observed in nearby galaxies where we already have a reliable measure of real distance because we can see other standard candles like Cepheid variable stars. This enables us to calibrate these supernovae for distance, and that gives us the absolute brightness, and when we measure their apparent brightness we can put a distance in light years to them. It is then argued that though they are fainter than their redshift based distances require them to be, the cosmos has expanded since they flared up and the light has been spread out and reduced as it spreads into a greater area of reception. Besides this discovery, it is now clear that normal spiral galaxies show increasing redshift with increasing signs of distance as they become dimmer and smaller. If we disregard the quasars and active galaxies, and just use the normal Spirals, they show the evidence that the cosmos is expanding at a rate that increases with distance.

Halton Arp. `Quasars Redshifts and Controversies.`

This is a grave setback for inflation theory for it cannot accommodate a Hubble Constant that is accelerating in its expansion. It ought and must be slowly decelerating, because it must have a critical density with gravity just balancing expansion.

There was a brief moment of consternation in the cosmological community, and then that champion hurdler -the Big Bang theory invented an answer and continued with scarcely a break in its stride. The cosmological constant that Einstein had invented 80 years before to keep his equations from imploding was brought out from retirement and resumed useful work propping up the cosmos again.

INFLATION THEORY AND DARK ENERGY.

The answer proposed this time was that there was another mighty force in the Universe which we can't directly observe and measure, but that must be at work. It is said to be a negative pressure in the vacuum counteracting gravity and accelerating the galaxies away from one another. Because it is the action of the vacuum it has no local centres of action and no direction for the force to act along. It is a general universal non localised tension of space. It is cumulative with distance, increasing all the time as the distance increases. It can't be detected in the solar system or even in our galaxy. Only several billion light years out can this effect be unambiguously observed, and this applies to any observer anywhere.

At first sight it might seem to be the expansion of the Big Bang intensified; but it is in fact something else that overcomes the work of gravity and intensifies this expansion. This anti-gravity can't be experimented on, can't be isolated for observation. It is once again a by-product of the red shift of distant galaxies and the way we seek to explain them.

The scenario now envisaged is as follows: at first the Universe expands rapidly after inflation ends, and then gravity, over billions of years, acts to slow it down. As the cosmic material thins out, its gravitational pull weakens, while the cosmic repulsion against gravity lurking in the vacuum emerges to exceed the power of gravity and then expansion begins to speed up and get the upper hand.

The Universe is now in the grip of an escalating non-stop expansion forever. This new revised version of the cosmological constant is called Dark Energy and makes a third new major addition to the Big Bang theory. Like an old country mansion it keeps getting wings built on.

Inflation has to predict a flat critical density, even though ordinary matter plus the hypothetical dark matter only accounts for 30%. What does this extra dark energy with its anti-gravity do for this problem? Does it make up the shortfall and then expand a flat universe? That is the case, say the theorists. 70% of the energy density of the universe is this negative energy of the vacuum, and that makes up the critical energy density, 30% of it generates the gravity pulling in and 70% of it generates anti-gravity pulling outwards. It just so happens that in this present era that we are living in, the anti-gravity has begun to dominate and accelerate the Universe.

Einstein's cosmological constant was meant to stabilise forever, but this new version will become increasingly dispersive and will scatter the Universe irrevocably. It is hardly a constructive addition to the old house and it would not have pleased Einstein.

According to this theory, for 15 billion years the vacuum energy density has remained the same, while the normal and dark matter has diluted buy 27 orders of 10 as the universe has gone on expanding. For most of that time the matter density was greater than the tension in the vacuum, but fairly recently the two values equalled and now have crossed over and the vacuum energy is in the ascendant. This gives us a special place in the history of the Universe, and this offends many who value the Copernican principle, which insists that we as observers do not have a special status time or place in the universe. It does seem a coincidence that we should be around just as the two values of matter and vacuum energy meet and crossover, but there is a far worse problem than that..

When it comes to the vacuum it is better to let sleeping dogs lie; it is better to assume it plays no energetic part in the balancing of the Universe because its energies, as far as we can tell, are Infinite. It is seething everywhere with effervescent particles emerging and submerging, but it provides no heat and light for us, has no gradients of energy which we could use as flowing energy, and as far as we are concerned it is all just empty space. However, it does affect individual elementary particles in subtle and barely measurable ways. How much energy does all this endless universal seething amount to? We have to sum up an infinite number of contributions from virtual particles and photons of all energies. The sun is always right off the scale and can't be stated. A modified approach cuts out the higher range of energies from the calculation but it still comes out as 123 powers of 10 greater than the mass density of the matter of the cosmos. All we want is 70% of 1 not 123 powers of 10 more than one, but this is the vacuum, the very substrate of the Universe, and you can't help yourself to just one tea spoonful of it. Because of these problems it is best to set it at zero.

The precise properties of our observable cosmos are determined by the values of the fundamental constants, such as the strengths of the four basic forces, the masses of the fundamental particles and principles of quantum mechanics such as the exclusion principle. These determine the sizes of the atoms that are stable, and the way stars shine, galaxies hold together, and the way the Universe is believed to evolve. The question is; are the values of all these constants determined by an underlying necessity or are they accidental and contingent? They obviously have to be what they are in this Universe that we live in, or we would not be here. In other universes, if there are any, the values of the constants may be different from ours, making them hostile to life. We only know of this one, and its particular and peculiar set of constants. Should we just accept it because it is the one tailored to our needs? Whether there is only one universe or whether there could be many has been debated since inflation theory raised the possibility.

Inflation was proposed to occur in two stages. First it flattens any and every wrinkle from the Universe of the instant of origin, but then during the phase transition tiny quantum fluctuations in it occur, which are likened to bubbles in boiling water. These being quantum events are down at the scale of particles and would have been totally irrelevant to cosmology, had not inflation enlarged them to cosmic size. So one set of irregularities is ironed away and another set is magnified across the cosmos. This is said to have happened in order to account for a very smooth early Universe that's now full of galaxies. It means that all we see today is the result of completely random quantum events that happened to be occurring at the instant inflation ended. An explanation could scarcely be more reductionist.

I also think the idea could scarcely be more unlikely. Consider: the quantum fluctuations occur as inflation ends at 10-32 of the first second. There then follows millions of years of the most high temperature intense particle interactions involving the whole Universe. Quarks combine into nucleons and nucleons combine into nuclei. Particles and antiparticles of all kinds annihilate, radiation is produced in deluges and rages around the particles. The whole lot is in thermal equilibrium and remains that way slowly cooling and full of high energy radiance, until, 300,000 years later, the electrons fall towards the nuclei and form atoms, and the light can break free. This is believed to be the way in which the Universe was created in the first age and it relies entirely on the assumptions of the Big Bang theory. If those assumptions are wrong then the whole argument so far has been wrong. How could quantum fluctuations way back in the Instant of inflation have any effect thousands of years later? Even the decoupling era is early days because it was several hundred million years after that before the galaxies formed and they are presumed to have needed help from the dark matter concentrations that were immune to the buffeting of the radiation and electric Fields. Are we to make another assumption and say that the quantum fluctuations survived only in the dark matter?

Paul Davis in his book ‘Super Force’ page 192 writes “The Universe would continue to expand from the initial impetus imported by the inflationary episode, but at a steadily falling rate.”

I ask, why would it and what would the speed be after the exponential antics that immediately preceded it, and what possesses the impetus? Can the normal vacuum have an impetus? If it is the matter that has the impetus then it is a physical explosion not a spatial expansion.

Inflation theory is not coherent; practically every book on the subject gives a different view of it.

We have to bear in mind that the inflation era was a creation vacuum with negative pressure. When a vacuum with negative pressure is expanded its energy goes up not down. As long as inflation of space continued the energy in it went up and up. This is the opposite of a material gas with positive pressure, in which, as the volume of it increases, the gas dilutes, its pressure goes down, it cools and it's energy per unit volume falls. The opposite is the case with the creation vacuum, its energy increases with volume. This `reversed physics` is all in the calculations and the mind. It has never been observed in any experimental situation and cannot be, as it is a one-off event.

Paul Davies in “Super Force “ Page 194, says of it:

“The creation of the primeval energy has an air of magic in it. The vacuum with its weird negative pressure seems to have a truly incredible capability. On the one hand, it produces powerful repulsive force bringing about its own accelerating expansion; on the other hand that very expansion goes on boosting the energy of the vacuum more and more. The vacuum essentially pays itself vast quantities of energy. It has an inbuilt instability to continue expanding and generating unlimited quantities of energy for free. Only the quantum decay of the creation vacuum puts a stop to this bonanza. The vacuum is nature's miraculous jar of energy. There is in principle no limit to how much energy can be self -generated by inflation expansion”.

Here we have a physicist marvelling at the wonders of a theory as if it was the wonders of Nature.

You cannot have something out of nothing, still less everything out of nothing.

ORDER AND ENTROPY.

The Big Bang theory deals in some detail with the evolution of matter from its origin. After the first second of time has passed the physics is well known and well tried and consistent. It can explain how nucleons appeared and then nuclei, and finally the atoms of the lightest elements out of which the primeval gas appeared, and from which the stars and galaxies formed. This covers the first three hundred thousand years. Prior to that, during the first second, there was a realm of energy far beyond what we can experimentally study, and kinds of matter we can only speculate about. Throughout all this, everyone agrees that total thermal equilibrium reigned. This point is important as it worsens the problem of how galaxies could ever have formed so early.

There is a problem with thermodynamics. If we try to think about the instant of origin in itself: - there was a vast multitude of particles appearing with no space between them. Then the space begins to expand rapidly in all directions and the particles move apart. How do they move? Suppose they all move in separate directions along separate paths all outwards, they would not collide and interact, for they would be moving adiabatically, so they could remain stone cold moving outwards forever. Obviously this will not do as we would have a zillion separate cosmoses each containing one particle and no chance of matter evolving into atoms. Would this scenario represent low entropy or high entropy?

We must conclude that at the Instant of Origin the particles, as soon as space appeared and they could move, moved randomly in every direction across the paths of the others, interacting, colliding and producing heat and radiation. This has to be considered as an initial condition, granted and just so. Immediately there is heat and thermal equilibrium and intense interaction of all particles as space expands.

Is this scenario high entropy or low entropy? I have read some accounts which propose that the Universe began in a perfect state of order with equality of all forces, and since then the symmetries have rapidly broken one by one, and the entropy of the Universe has gradually gone on increasing and will continue to do so forever, as the universe expands and cools and winds down to a thermal equilibrium, and near absolute zero, hundreds of billions of years from now - a condition of total entropy.

Other accounts consider the Universe began in high entropy and thermal equilibrium but useful work was made possible by the continuing expansion of space which separates and cools matter, while gravity works to aggregate it into small masses which develop into our familiar cosmos of stars and galaxies.

If you are working back from the present to the origin, removing space as you go, then it is all bound to get hotter faster and denser - a raging furnace, not the source of all order.

MATTER CREATION.

I will now give a summary of what the Big Bang Theory proposes for the origin of matter, galaxies and stars.

The theory proposes that in one 10,000th of the first second, protons and antiprotons neutrons and antineutrons annihilated. One out of every billion protons and neutrons is left standing. This produces a deluge of high energy gamma radiation, and immense numbers of neutrinos are liberated and scarcely interact with matter again. At the end of the first second the temperature is 10 billion degrees. Then the electrons and positrons annihilate when the energy around them is no longer able to sustain interchanging between them. The slight imbalance of electrons over positrons leaves one in a billion electrons standing and the rest is gamma radiation. As the ambient energy continues to fall, it alters the ratio of neutrons to protons, for neutrons being slightly more massive need more energy to form and reform than do the protons. The interchanging of protons and neutrons falls and the neutrons that remain are unstable with a half-life of only about 15 minutes. The numbers fall to one neutron to seven protons. As this occurs, neutrons and protons begin to combine into deuterium, which is one Proton and one neutron. Then tritium forms which has one Proton with two neutrons, and then helium 3 which has two protons and one neutron. Finally helium 4 forms with two protons and two neutrons. In doing so a lot of radiation is released. Deuterium is the crucial link in these unions.

At the end of the first three minutes, protons and neutrons have formed enough helium nuclei to account for a quarter of the mass of the Universe. The other three quarters is hydrogen nuclei, with tiny traces of deuterium and helium 3. The temperature is down to one billion. We have now reached familiar territory with universal space full of hydrogen and helium plasma at a temperature falling rapidly below a billion, and all in thermal equilibrium. This is all completely ionised - a hot soup of nuclei and electrons and radiation. This remains slowly cooling as space expands for the next 300,000 years, giving more than enough time for any initial irregularities in the plasma to disappear. If we could see this hot Universe it would be a perfect black body radiator perfectly even in every place and every direction. It could not be otherwise if the second law of thermodynamics is operating. Eventually when the temperature drops to about 60000 which is that of the Sun's radiating surface, the electrons were moving slowly enough in space to fall down towards the nuclei and become permanently associated with them to form hydrogen and helium atoms. The Universe then fills with gas, still evenly spread and in thermal equilibrium, which brings us to perhaps the most pressing problem facing the Big Bang theory.

HOW DID THE GALAXIES FORM?

How did the host of galaxies full of stars arise from a featureless realm of gas? When the electrons combined with nuclei everywhere, a flood of radiation was released and was free to travel unimpeded. Before that, electrons and light photons were continually interacting and the photons constantly being scattered. Today we observe this primeval radiation, which after 15 billion years of space expansion, is weakened to millimetre wavelengths and an energy of only 2.7 kelvin. It has been red shifted more than 1000 times, and shows an evenness of energy distribution better than 1 in 100,000. This is more than adequate evidence for complete thermal equilibrium, and it lacks the unevenness in the gas that galaxies would need to form from.

The various explanations for how galaxies could have formed from this featureless and perfectly even Inferno are not convincing, and need to be helped along with faith.

It has been proposed that the seeds of unevenness upon which galaxies could have formed were the quantum fluctuations occurring at the instant of inflation. We are then expected to believe that these were inflated to cosmic size and could have endured the Inferno that followed.

Another solution which is becoming increasingly popular is to use dark matter as a matrix upon which galaxies grew. It exerts gravity but does not interact at all with radiation and does not emit any light. Assuming it is as primeval as normal matter, it would have been there all through the 300,000 years of interaction of nuclei, electrons and radiation, but was not scattered by it and could collect into areas of density, - although no one knows how it did this because no one knows what it is. When the decoupling of matter and radiation occurred, dark matter concentrations provided gravity wells into which 6000 degree gas could fall and collect and start the galaxies. All of them are believed to be surrounded to this day by dark matter halos massive but invisible.

Of all the explanations this is the most convincing providing you believe in dark matter. This dark matter should be a lot cooler than normal matter, and slow moving. It could form a foundation for galaxies first and then gradually develop clusters of galaxies as they moved together. This is cold dark matter and it brings about the ‘bottom up’ formation of the cosmos of galaxies, which means small units form first, and larger units such as clusters form later. But how does the normal matter to form galaxies ever collect in the first place?

The big bang origin is the perfect recipe for thermal equilibrium, and a Universe full of evenly dispersed gas which is expanding. This gas then has to collect together into great masses to form galaxies and do it in spite of the expansion of space. Stars have a much easier time of it. They can form from the interstellar gas and dust within a galaxy without having to contend with expansion, for the whole galaxy acts as a gravitational container holding everything in, and expansion only happens outside.

In the later stages of star formation various chemical interactions depending on dust and molecules acting as catalysts cause the gas to cool and cool again, until it is near zero temperature, and then it can collapse rapidly. Stars are then thought to form in just a few hundred thousand years.

Forming galaxies is much less straightforward. Differences in the density of the universal gas have to appear from some cause, and continue to intensify in spite of spatial expansion. The rate at which density concentrations can grow as the Universe expands is called the ‘density contrast’. How this can develop depends on how fast the Universe is expanding, and how close it is to critical density. The process only has a chance if the Universe is expanding slowly, which means a low Hubble constant. The Universe cannot be very dense if it is to be at the critical density or else it would collapse back under its gravity, but it has to continue expanding or else again it will collapse. This means the density contrast can only be a matter of slight and slowly increasing concentrations of gas.

The universe has to be very narrowly balanced in the big bang scenarios, and it provides no opportunity for great masses of gas to collect as precursors of galaxies. Density contrast has to be Substantial if concentrations are to grow cumulatively, but in fact they can only grow linearly and slowly, constantly having their work undone by the constant expansion of space. This is an insurmountable problem like marching one step forward and two steps back. The density contrast that we have to start with is very insubstantial indeed, and making galaxies out of it is like weaving canvas out of spider webs.

Many writers of the textbooks adopt an optimistic attitude that somehow a way will be discovered that will show how galaxies form.

If the cosmic microwave background temperature is 2.7 degrees now, and was about 6000 degrees at the decoupling of radiation from matter, then it has stretched its wavelength over 1500 times. This means it should show density contrast of about 1 in 1500, but in fact density contrast in the cosmic microwave background is 1 in 100,000, and that is why you can't make galaxies out of it.

Malcolm Longair in ‘Our evolving universe’ 1996, says of it: “this is a devastating blow for this simplest of pictures of how galaxies might have formed in the expanding universe. Theorists have turned to dark matter to solve the problem”. This is trying to solve the problem with another problem.

Recently, astronomers have begun to refer to a ‘cosmic dark age’ which began after the atoms first formed and gas clouds of hydrogen and helium filled the cosmos. This gas then cooled down and ceased to radiate in the visible range. Darkness descended across the whole Universe for several hundred million years. There was still the background radiation from the previous eras of recombination and nuclear formation, but that was reducing in energy as space expanded. The gas clouds were dark with electrons at their lowest or ground state where they could not radiate unless they first received a photon which could lift them to a higher level in the atom, from where, when they fall back, they could radiate. This happens constantly now, but did not happen then. Atoms also radiate if their electrons are driven out into space by ultraviolet radiation and then full back into an atom and emit the excess energy. This happens constantly now, but did not happen then. The question for cosmology is what re-ionised and re-energised the dark cosmos of gas, when all the previous stock of radiation was falling in energy all the time as space expanded. The answer involves a shortcut which seems rather forced. The Cosmic Dark Ages, it is argued, ended once the Universe was completely re-ionised by the emergence of the first stars and galaxies. This begs the question of how galaxies or stars could form in a cold dark Universe of evenly distributed gas, which is just pristine hydrogen and helium, and no dust and no atoms of the heavier elements to act as catalysts.

To quote from Waller and Hodge ‘Galaxies and the Cosmic Frontier’ 2003, “Although one can imagine several mechanisms for forming galaxies of this hydrogen and helium gas, finding even one model that will actually work under the probable conditions in the early universe is difficult. For an isotropic expanding smoothly distributing Universe of uniform temperature there is very little reason for a galaxy to form. Such an idealized universe will never have a Galaxy in it”. “There had to be irregularities of some sort in the gas clouds, if structures were to form, but in fact they were very very slight as the smoothness of the microwave background shows. How such miniscule density fluctuations amplified into the galaxies that we see today continues to challenge astronomers and cosmologists.”

How gas clouds in space can condense into stars depends on the gas laws and the size of that density inequality, and they depend on the pressure and density of the gas. The higher the speed of the gas atoms the larger the size the cloud has to be. The denser the gas cloud the smaller the size needs to be. If it can cool down it can get denser and smaller.

If the gas does collapse under its own gravity, once the internal opposition of pressure, rotation and turbulence have been overcome, that collapse can then develop exponentially- that is to say, a collaps that helps itself along, intensifying as it collapses.

The cloud will halve its radius in equal successive time periods, and its density will increase. Denser gas can cool more rapidly than the less dense surroundings because its atoms collide more, receive energy and then radiate it away beyond the cloud. Ideally, dense gas can cool itself and that enables it to collapse further. It is theorized that these mechanisms could have produced the denser clouds from which the galaxies could form. It is possible, so the speculation goes, that large concentrations of dark matter could have formed prior to this, and being unaffected by the radiation and electro-magnetic fields, could have provided the gravitational focuses for the nascent galaxies.

For a galaxy to form, the mass of a cloud might be 100 billion solar masses, and extend half a million light years in radius, involving a tremendous amount of gas. Many factors can then arise to prevent further contraction. The gas will be rotating as the inevitable consequence of inertia, and as it contracts the rotation speeds up for angular momentum must be conserved. The gas will be turbulent as it collapses and swirls about. The collisions and heating up will produce a tiny percentage of ionised atoms which will generate a magnetic field, which may be tiny by earthly standards, but will be galaxy wide and affect every free charged particle and ionised atom.

According to Wallace and Hodge, for contraction to occur, rotation must be below 40 kilometres per second, turbulence below 30 kilometres per second temperature below 2000 degrees and the magnetic field strength below 150 micro gauss. Whether all this naturally comes to pass in nature we don't know, because we have never found a galaxy in the process of forming from gas clouds anywhere in the heavens.

This absence of evidence is remarkable and must be telling his something important.”

If everything goes according to theory, the density increases until it becomes opaque to its own light which then cannot escape and take the excess energy away with it. This is the thermal radius, and the bottled up heat stops any further contraction. This is when the need for coolants for the gas becomes essential. The optimistic view has it that at the end of the dark age, stars began to condense out of the contacting gas cloud, and it transformed from a cloud to a galaxy of stars. This assumes that stars can form from pristine hydrogen and helium gas right at the beginning. This is what needs to be proved.

Why is re-ionisation so important? It is needed to get the gas chemistry started, because free electrons and protons act as catalysts in producing hydrogen molecules, which, act as a coolant to bring down gas temperatures and enable stars to form. The stars radiation ionizes the gas that produces the molecules that cool the gas so that stars can form. We have a chicken and egg problem again.

There is also the problem of what these stars had to be. They are known as ‘population three; stars, so old and primeval that none now exist. They would have been exceedingly metal poor because they had to form from hydrogen, helium, some deuterium and nothing else. It is theorized that they had to be very massive stars so that their gravity could overcome the hot gas and the higher temperature of the cosmic microwave background as it was then. According to computer simulations, (and in the absence of any observed stars that is all we have), these first stars had to be from 30 to 300 solar masses with surface temperatures of 100,000 degrees, which could deluge the gas clouds with ultraviolet and X radiation. However, stars so massive and luminous are not physically possible beyond about 50 solar masses because of the Eddington luminosity limit. such powerful stars produce so much radiation that it lifts off the star`s surface and drives the outer layers away into space. This acts as a limit to how big stars can grow. Today stars larger than 20 solar masses are very very rare, short lived and end up exploding. Population three stars are another invention which disregards conventional physics. In any case, such powerful sources of ultraviolet light and X radiation would heat up, ionize and disperse the gas clouds for tens of light years around them, and prevent any other stars from forming for millions of years. This is what happens today in the vicinity of large stars in our Galaxy. The ingredients that are essential for all star formation are a profound problem for any explanation as to how the very first stars could have formed, when there was nothing but hydrogen, helium and some deuterium.

HOW DID THE STARS FORM?

The ingredient absolutely indispensable for molecules of hydrogen H2, and for carbon monoxide CO to form is dust. This has to be composed of the heavier elements carbon, silicon and some metals. The Big Bang Theory requires that these have to be absent from the early universe. Here we have a situation where one thing needs another in a way that implies that it was always so, and did not have to have a beginning, it is a circle of interdependent parts with no way in.

Orthodox astronomy believes that stars form in clouds of molecular gas. However, that molecular gas needs dust in order for the atoms to combine and produce molecular Hydrogen and the dust can only be produced in stars.

We have discovered in the past 50 years that our Galaxy holds enormous clouds of molecular hydrogen at temperatures only a few degrees from absolute zero and within their dense hearts stars are forming now. Dust is always present and is very effective in shielding the molecules from the radiation of stars in the neighbourhood that would otherwise disrupt them back into atoms. This dust is finer than cigarette smoke and amounts to about 1% by mass of the galaxy. It has a profound effect, which is often the case in nature, where a little goes a long way, and can do a great deal. This dust, made up of heavy elements, is produced by the nuclear reactions of stars. It is eventually puffed and blown out into interstellar space, as part of an endless cycling of material out of stars and back into stars again. This process requires a fully functioning Galaxy in order for stars to form from cold molecular clouds, for it is assumed the gas has to lose the energy it acquired as it collapsed and heated up and increased in pressure. Here dust is indispensable in getting rid of the heat. Gas cannot begin to do what the dust does so effectively.

As the gas heats up it radiates in the visible and ultraviolet and that energy is absorbed by the dust grains, and then re-radiated in longer infrared wavelengths which can escape from the dense and opaque gas and this keeps the temperature of the cloud falling.

Molecular hydrogen is the necessary environment for star formation, and dust is essential to form and maintain it.

To quote Wyn Williams ‘The Fullness of Space’ 1992

“The combination of two hydrogen atoms to form a hydrogen molecule cannot be explained without dust grains. When they, (the hydrogen atoms) combine they have an energy surplus of up to 4.5 electron volts and they cannot simply radiate it away as a photon because of quantum mechanical restrictions. Nor can it use the spare energy to rush off at high speed, since in a gas it has nothing to push against, and is not throwing anything off.

“Catalysis on dust grains appears to be the only way to account for the vast amount of molecular hydrogen in our galaxy. Catalysis on dust grains means that atoms of hydrogen can land on the surface of a dust grain which will contain thousands or even millions of atoms of various kinds, and will be held on that surface by wedging in it or being attracted by electric charge. Other atoms landing on it encounter hydrogen atoms already there and combine to form a molecule on its surface. Other molecules like carbon monoxide and nitrogen, ammonia, water and methane can accumulate on them also. In the interstellar medium, which is in effect our galaxy`s atmosphere, dust is ubiquitous, accumulating from billions of years of dispersion from stars. It is estimated that the ratio of dust to gas is 0.7% by mass and that means 140 times more gas than dust, yet at least half of all the elements heavier than helium are contained in the dust.”

Wyn Williams points out an extra ordinary fact:

”The interstellar medium is one of the dirtiest samples of gas that one could find outside of a smoke stack. If we imagine the interstellar gas concentrated to the density Of the Earth's atmosphere, it would be worse than the worst urban smog. If the Earth's atmosphere contained 0.7% by mass of interstellar dust grains it would be so opaque that one would not be able to see as far as the tip of one's nose.”

Dust plays a vital role in the ecology of all galaxies, so which comes first - the stars that generate the dust, or the Hydrogen molecules that enable stars to form, or the dust that enables hydrogen molecules to form? Such a host of chickens, such a laying of eggs!

A vast chemical activity is occurring throughout space even though atoms and molecules and dust grains are thinly scattered and everything happens in glacially slow time. But there is no shortage of time, or space or energy, and it is all quite different from the deep sea conditions we live in, at the bottom of a big planetary atmosphere. There are no liquids out there, reactions occur in tenuous gases on the surfaces of isolated grains. Reactions that require three or more gas atoms to come together are almost impossible except on the surface of a grain. On the other hand many molecules that can exist in earthly conditions for only a tiny fraction of a second, before being incorporated in something else, are able to exist out there for years. All kinds of chemical radicals and partly ionized atoms and molecules make exotic and rare chemical processes possible.

This is the case with the formation of the hydrogen molecule where there is no dust. It can be formed in a series of reactions involving ionised helium, ionised hydrogen and, the hydrogen atom that has an additional electron loosely connected to it. This would have to occur among the primeval dark clouds where no dust had yet appeared. The ions needed here would require powerful ionising radiation to break up the atoms. Helium needs 24.6 electron volts of energy to be parted from one of its two attendant electrons, and only stars with 50,000 degree surfaces can supply ultraviolet light of that energy. Hydrogen needs 13.6 election volts to loosen its one electron and that also needs very hot stars emitting ultraviolet light. Only stars could provide that level of ionising energy then, for the ambient radiation was that of the Cosmic background and only 3000 degrees and falling. At that temperature hydrogen and helium would be uniting with electrons, not losing them, so only big bright ultraviolet stars could have ionised, but how could they have formed at that time? -- another chicken and egg.

In ”Molecular hydrogen in space” 2000, Combes writes “ Because of its chemistry, molecular hydrogen is central to the evolution of the Universe and the formation of, galaxies, and in the interstellar medium the chemistry, beginning with the formation of molecular hydrogen controls the ionisation and thermal balance and other mechanisms of star formation.” “Hydrogen is the most abundant molecule of all, but how it could have formed in cosmic quantities sufficient to enable galaxies of stars to form is not explained by current cosmogony and the Big Bang Theory fails. Once it exists among sources of ultraviolet light and cosmic rays, molecular hydrogen can be ionised, losing one of its electrons, and in that state it can act as a catalyst for many other gas phase reactions involving other elements. It has always been as source of puzzles for astrophysists.

To overcome this insurmountable difficulty, it was proposed about 50 years ago by Gould and Saltpeter that interstellar dust grains play the role of catalysts.”

Everyone agrees that they do, and a great deal of space chemistry research is being undertaken because of it, but dust in those cosmic quantities belongs to fully functioning galaxies, not the beginning of the Universe. The origin of molecular hydrogen, of stars and above all of dust, still hangs without explanation.

The way molecular hydrogen is produced on dust grains is interesting and extraordinary. A hydrogen atom wandering across space encounters a dust grain, which is like a lone astronaut landing on the surface of an asteroid. The atom finds an absorption site and the grain as a whole absorbs most of the atoms impact as it lands. It does not stay still but hops about the surface in a random way, until it encounters another hydrogen atom and combines with it. Because both are almost stationery, being on the same surface, what they cannot do while hurtling about in space, they can do on the still surface of the grain.

On that little world there are likely to be several hydrogen atoms hopping about and probably other kinds of gas atoms such as nitrogen and oxygen and carbon. Once the two atoms combine they lose the energy which they both had as individuals, and the emission of that energy impels the molecule away into space. That is how clouds of molecular gas accumulate over millions of years.

It is estimated from the spectral analysis of light shining through interstellar gas clouds that nearly every hydrogen atom arriving at a grain must leave it as a hydrogen molecule. Formation on grain surfaces is now the accepted mechanism.

The dust grains don't just act as midwife for molecular hydrogen, they are sites for the production of water, methane carbon monoxide and ammonia, and they can become coated with water and other ices, and in that mixture more complex organic molecules can incubate. Several hundred organic molecules have been detected in the light from interstellar space that has interacted with grains.

Dust is widespread throughout all the galaxies, totalling nearly 1% by mass, and collectively across the Universe it provides an immense surface on which a rich variety of chemical reactions occur and can provide the initial chemistry for life. This surface is far greater than all the surfaces of all the life bearing planets in the cosmos. (I am assuming that most stars have planets.) This means that the initial ingredients for life are in the atmospheres of galaxies and enter into the formation of stars and planets from the start. If the conditions on a planet`s surface are hospitable then organic chemistry has a head start and doesn’t need a miracle or a trillion to one chance for life to emerge.

A plausible mechanism means a powerful one that every hydrogen atom would be bound to follow everywhere in most circumstances. Rare reactions involving three body collisions and various combinations of unusual ions may occur here and there, now and then, but that won't transform the whole cosmos.

I have laboured this point and quoted learned authorities of recent date because it points to another serious fault in The Big Bang theory. It cannot get the galaxies started, it cannot get the primeval gas clouds to condense, and it cannot get them to form stars. The theory follows a logic that keeps landing it in a ditch.

It requires the formation of all hydrogen atoms all at once everywhere, then a deluge of radiation floods everywhere, and as the expansion of space relentlessly continues, that radiation cools and falls in energy. The gas clouds cool and go dark, and remain inactive. To activate them so that they can convert to molecular hydrogen and form stars, a new source of ionising radiation is needed in a Universe where expansion is always reducing available energy. Molecular hydrogen cannot form in useful quantities spontaneously, it needs ionised atoms and it needs dust. The only source of these is stars producing ultraviolet light and dust and molecules. The Big Bang Theory cannot provide them except as an invention of hope and faith.

Population three stars, huge bright and explosive have to form straight out of the pristine gas, but no one knows how, and not one has ever been observed.

There is another and quite different way of looking at this situation.

If the universe is eternal, then there have always been chickens and eggs, there has always been molecular hydrogen, always dust, and there have always been galaxies full of stars. There was no Beginning, no big bang, and no desolate ending either.

Many authors who tackle the problem of how galaxies could ever have formed rely on dark matter as the gravitational foundation for them. Consider a gas cloud massive enough to form a galaxy like ours and collapsing into this well of dark matter. It would have to be at least 400,000 light years radius and the freefall time from its outer edge to its final size would be 2 billion years - this is relying on gas laws. However, we can now observe fully formed galaxies already functioning well within 1 billion years of the Origin. It was generally believed that the early universe, starting about 2 billion years after origin, was filled with young proto galaxies busily forming stars. Examination of the Southern Hubble Deep Field, which shows galaxies 12 billion light years away from Earth, judging from their redshift, has found old red galaxies no longer making stars, having run out of gas, This implies that galaxies must have formed earlier than ever previously imagined, and had been through their life cycle of star formation and declined before 3 billion years was up. Out there in that remote region are many different kinds of galaxy; there are young ones with lots of dust and old ones with lots of dust - there is a lot of dust out there in the very early Universe.

In 2004 the Gemini deep Space survey, examined the redshifts of galaxies at a distance of 3 to 6 billion years after Origin and found plenty of massive old galaxies. They have a plentiful stock of the heavy metal atoms, - the kind that would have to be cooked up in repeated cycles star births and supernovae. In June 2004 Australian national observatory reported that it had observed an enormous string of galaxies 300 million light years long in the remote universe challenging existing theories about how the Universe evolved. That remote area formed very early, at a time when the Universe was a fifth of its present age. The presence of this galaxy chain defies existing models, which cannot explain how a stream this long could have formed so early. The report goes on to say that this string probably contains thousands of galaxies that we can't see at this distance. “We are looking back four fifths of the way to the beginning of the Universe and the existence of this galaxy string will send the astrophysicists around the world back to the drawing board to re-examine theories of the formation of the Universe.”

Going back to the drawing board is becoming a common refrain in the journal and Internet news releases. I could quotes lots more - the Internet has plenty. As more powerful surveys of the high redshift distant Universe are made, the big bang is not being confirmed, it is constantly being contradicted and undermined. The galaxies are forming far too early, old ones are already there at the birth of the Universe, there is too much dust and heavy elements and not enough time.

This, in outline, is The Big Bang theory with its various amendments. I have omitted some of the more exotic notions, such as inflationary bubbles, magnetic monopoles, cosmic strings and superstrings, and wormholes through which one night end up in another universe and another time. None of it is proven physics, and it cannot be observed, it only complicates further an already convoluted subject and I feel I have gone on quite long enough.

Once we pass the problem of how galaxies ever got started, the subject becomes straightforward astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics and space chemistry. Its problems, mysteries and disputes, (of which there are legion), can be settled by observation and rational debate.

Let me now confess that, concerning the Big Bang and its attendant theories - I don't believe any of it, and in the rest of this book I will present a different view of it all. This view is not of my own personal invention, I draw upon the work and insights of Halton Arp and his colleagues. There is also plasma cosmology, developed in the last fifty years by Alfven, Perratt, Thornhill and Lerner, and my inspiration was always the scepticism of Fred Hoyle even though I don't think his steady state theory is the right one.

Not for even 5 minutes in my life have I believed in the Big Bang as an explanation for this amazing and mysterious universe.

However I still have another volley of criticism to fire off concerning the current theories of how stars power themselves and shine.

HOW DO THE STARS SHINE?.

The physical sciences are extremely successful in their technology and engineering, and in the data they are collecting which is giving us an unprecedented window onto the cosmos. We advance enormously in knowledge of facts but it is scattered in a hundred specialities, and many of them operate in separate worlds. There is a widespread culture of materialism, of seeing the Universe as a physical mechanism operating in our own space and time, whose many parts can be fitted together once we understand the ultimate underlying mathematical formulae.

Materialist, mechanist and mathematical thinking will not unite all the knowledge we have into a coherent view of the Universe.

In the first quarter of the 20th century a series of wrong conclusions were drawn from the facts known at that time. Ever since then it has been assumed without question that stars are isolated bodies of gas that generate their energy and radiation from their own resources, using thermo-nuclear power at their dense hot centres. Astrophysics is the science of how stars produce energy and evolve. It is an extensive and complex interweaving of particle and nuclear physics, chemistry and astronomical observations. Its conclusions are accepted and believed just as fervently as the Big Bang; yet it faces the same set of problems: how did the stars ever get started from pure hydrogen and helium, and then initiate nuclear reactions and production of the elements?

What goes on in the centre of a star can only be known theoretically. That theory depends on the mass of the star, its gravity, the way gas behaves and what we know about nuclear reactions in extreme conditions. However, it does not include the power of electricity and magnetism.

The reasoning prevalent in astrophysics is as follows:

The mass of the star controls the nuclear process. It has to be sufficient to generate the gravity to compress the gas at the centre to ignite nuclear burning. This has to be one tenth of the Sun`s mass in order to raise the core temperature to a million degrees which will just power a small dim reddish star. Our Sun, ten times more massive with a core temperature of over ten million degrees shines as a hot bright yellowish middle range star. Those ten times more massive still are hundreds of times brighter and shine white or bluish white.

Mass, brightness and colour go together and stars can be arranged in a sequence on a graph with small dim red stars at the bottom of the line and bright bluish stars at the top and our Sun is in the middle. This arrangement is known as the Main Sequence.

If we take the Sun as a typical example, and the most closely studied; at its core all hydrogen and helium atoms will be completely ionised into separate protons, helium nuclei (alpha particles) and free electrons, all moving at thousands of kil0metres per second and colliding with each other millions of times a second. Yet this is far from being a hydrogen bomb.

The proton-proton reaction produces enough energy pouring outwards to prevent the gravity crushing inwards from collapsing the star.

In brief: as the theory explains; in a density of a hundred times water, and a temperature of ten million, a proton smashes into another proton and one of them is converted into a neutral neutron, expelling a positron carrying the positive charge and a neutrino carrying away excess energy. The absolutely extraordinary feature of this process, mentioned in all the text books, is that it only happens to any one proton once every one thousand million years, on average, even though it has been smashing into other protons millions of times a second for all that time. No wonder the Sun doesn’t blow up.

What keeps it burning bright and steady are the trillion trillion trillion protons of the core which from sheer numbers and dumb randomness can provide the odds for steady reliable output. Physics puts its trust in chance and vast numbers.

The resulting proton-neutron combination is a deuterium nucleus (heavy hydrogen). It joins in the melee and over a vast period of time and zillions of collisions hits another proton just so, and combines with it to form a two proton one neutron combination which is helium 3 with the emission of powerful gamma radiation which can keep gravity at bay.

After another age two helium 3 nuclei may collide and manage to combine into two protons and two neutrons, which is helium 4 which then discards two unwanted protons, which can continue the process all over again.

This is the theory as to how stars burn, using mass, gravity, density, heat, and very very rare nuclear inter-reactions occurring in a stupendous number of particles. This is the present situation in the Sun`s core as hydrogen combines to helium. According to theory it should continue for another five billion years.

The standard theory continues to rely on incredibly rare events and vast numbers of interactors to keep the star shining.

In stars larger than the Sun, the proton-proton reaction becomes hotter and faster and uses up the hydrogen in the core leaving behind helium which has not so far contributed any energy.

As the star runs out of energy producing hydrogen at its centre, it has to contract as the radiation output holding off gravity weakens. Gravity continues to compress the core until a temperature of a hundred million degrees is reached. Then triple alpha burning begins. Two helium 4 nuclei (alpha particles) interact to form beryllium 8, but unfortunately this is an extremely unstable radioactive isotope and almost instantly breaks back to two helium 4 nuclei again. Theory relies on a far rarer event. Three helium 4 atoms must collide absolutely simultaneously and form carbon12, which is completely stable and provides the gateway to the formation of all the higher elements.

As the core grows denser and hotter, (for the fuel supply is finite and gravity never ceases) helium4 nuclei can combine with carbon12 to form oxygen16 and then react with oxygen16 to form neon20 and so on, adding two protons and two neutrons to each element. The radiation all this produces holds up the star against its gravity, until its fuel depletes and the core temperature rises above one hundred million.

Because of the immense density, heat and reactivity of the central region, it is believed that light photons take thousands of years to reach the surface. They start off as high energy short wave gamma photons being absorbed and re-emitted millions of times a second with the surrounding atoms. As they do so they transfer their energy to the material of the star as they struggle outwards. This heating and pressure holds off gravity. By the time the radiation reaches the surface it is reduced to mostly visible and infrared. It is light that keeps a star balanced. Neutrinos, also produced in these reactions scarcely interact with the stellar material at all and can reach outer space in seconds.

After the triple alpha reaction the carbon nitrogen oxygen cycle can begin.

A proton colliding with a carbon12 can form nitrogen13, but this combination of 7 protons and 6 neutrons is unstable and breaks back to carbon13. This can then join with another proton to form nitrogen14 and then oxygen15. This, being unstable breaks to nitrogen15 another unstable isotope. Here the cycle comes to a conclusion as nitrogen15 encountering a proton disintegrates into carbon12 and helium4. The helium 4 can then continue to combine with the elements already formed and build up further elements.

This complex series of interactions can continue, producing a diminishing output of radiation until iron56 is reached when energy production runs out. Elements beyond iron need energy to be put into them if they are to form higher elements. At this stage in its evolution the star has reached one thousand million degrees at its centre, gravity is dominant and the star is near the end of its time.

As the theory describes it, the star is in an interesting condition. To quote A J Meadows, `Stellar Evolution`

“A star in its late stages may have up to nine shells of nuclear burning.” And to summarise his account:

There is a central core of iron, hot dense but unreactive. Surrounding it is a shell of silicon still burning and around that a shell of silicon and magnesium, then a shell of silicon magnesium and sulphur. Outside that burns a shell of oxygen and magnesium and then oxygen neon and magnesium.

The seventh shell is carbon and oxygen and the eighth is just the remaining helium 4. Finally, the outer layers still contain unburned hydrogen.

All these layers outside the iron core have some energy to contribute, and most of the interactions occur in the interfaces between the layers. The star continues to heat up and approaches catastrophe.

Converting hydrogen to helium gives ten times more energy than burning an equivalent amount of helium to carbon, and nuclear reactions go on getting less and less productive until with iron, there is no energy at all.

A J Meadows gives a dramatic account of how a star collapses as a supernova.

“Above a thousand million degrees, neutrinos begin removing a lot of energy at the speed of light. Core therefore contracts rapidly and its temperature rises to several billion degrees. Eventually the iron nuclei disintegrate back to neutrons and helium nuclei. If building up helium to iron releases a certain amount of energy, then breaking iron down to helium must absorb that same amount. This means that the energy produced by the star over millions of years is required back almost instantly. The star has only one asset left, its ability to contract and convert its gravitational potential into heat. Now it must use this asset to replace a huge energy deficit almost instantaneously. The star collapses. The collapse of the central layers certainly repays the energy deficit but its outer layers then collapse inward. These are at a lower temperature and still contain nuclear fuel for burning.

At the billions of degrees in the collapsed core, all this unburned material is ignited all at once and blown outward again into interstellar space, leaving a neutron star or black hole.”

In supernovae, stars expel most of their processed material into space to enrich the `atmosphere` of the galaxy. From this scattered gas and dust mixed with the pure hydrogen and helium already out there, new stars can form.

This is a very brief resume of the standard theory of stellar evolution and I give it in order to contrast it with the electrical theory of how stars are formed and produce their energy. The standard theory is wrong in every respect, just as the Big Bang origin of the cosmos is wrong in every respect. The new view of the Universe which I will give in the following chapters is a Universe that acts as if intelligent purposive, organic and electro-magnetic. It is eternal and infinite and far more mysterious and wonderful than the materialist, reductionist and randomly run and purposeless Universe that modern science offers.

I spent years studying this explanation of how stars shine and evolve. It is a comprehensive consistent body of thought that seems to provide answers to all the stages of a star`s life. I found It convincing and satisfying until I read accounts of a new and totally different way of understanding how stars shine by using electrical power not nuclear reactions.

I have to admit that my first reaction was intense annoyance and rejection of this newfangled alternative thinking. I can sympathise with those who reject new ways of thinking, especially if years of specialist training have been committed and a career and the good opinion of one`s colleagues is at stake.

Most scientists prefer to graze with the herd for outside you are lonely and poor and unpublished.

Abandoning a seemingly complete and satisfying system of ideas that explains how the world works, is a bit like leaving a religion. It is like stepping off the boat into the deep water. Few will do that unless there is another boat they can scramble into after a period of confusion anxiety and hard thinking. I have been through it myself. But the pressures of this world prevent most people from doing it. During the past century science has clung to old theories (or paradigms) while new experiments and observations have shown them to be wrong.

Cosmology and astrophysics are advancing along the wrong road and will never gain a true understanding of how the cosmos works. A whole new set of ideas of how galaxies and stars operate is ready and waiting, and in the later chapters of this book I will give an outline of them as well as a metaphysics to provide a wider context for them.

Twenty four centuries ago Plato that prince of philosophers wrote:

“He is a weakling who does not test in every way what is said and persevere until he is worn out by studying on every side. For he must do one of two things – either he must learn or discover the truth, or if that is impossible he must take whatever doctrine is best and hardest to disprove, and embarking upon it as upon a raft sail through life in the midst of dangers, unless he can sail upon some stronger vessel – some divine revelation – and make his voyage more safely and securely.”

INTRODUCING THE NEXT FIVE CHAPTERS

In them I outline the alternative cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics developed in the last forty years by electrical and plasma scientists who argue that the cosmos is ruled and formed by electro-magnetic forces vastly more powerful than gravity, and far more controlled and precise than nuclear burning under extreme conditions.

Energy and fundamental particles are drawn from the Vacuum by the galaxies and stars acting as `loads` upon it everywhere. This produces a vast network of currents of charged particles within all galaxies fuelling all their stars. This is operating in a cosmos that is eternal and infinite, has no beginning, no initial conditions and no ending.

Continuing along this alternative road I set out the arguments of those who believe that Einstein`s Special Relativity theory is incomplete and faulty, and his General Relativity theory is completely wrong.

The many puzzling and paradoxical features of light have led me to argue at some length that it isn`t light that moves at c but that space is extensioning at c. The emitter and receiver are at that instant contiguous while space is extensioning, which means the transaction is instantaneous but we within space must see it as light crossing space.

Following the metaphysical thinking of Plotinus and Boethius I maintain that the Universe is not in passing time as we are who have a finite standpoint within it. We have to distinguish between Eternity which is complete and unchanging, and time which is always changing and incomplete.

There are many on the alternative road in science who believe that particle physics, with its huge expensive facilities is heading into a dead end.

I argue from the evidence, that electrons of negative charge , and positrons of positive charge are the fundamental constituents and pro-genitors of matter and that in suitable conditions can combine collectively to form protons and neutrons, (and briefly the unstable particles as well). They are not always each other`s nemesis but partners in creation and the ultimate source of charge, which unites and separates all things as does gravity and inertia.

I argue, from the observed nature and behaviour of quasars, that at the centres of galaxies are plasmoidal structures of electromagnetic currents and fields that bring together the electrons and positrons, drawn in inexhaustible numbers from the cosmic Vacuum. There in tranquil and creative conditions they can form protons and neutrons which with electrons form atoms.

The galaxies draw upon the Vacuum to weave matter which collects into quasars which, grow into new galaxies and slowly move away from their generating galaxies. This cosmic wide birthing of new galaxies increases the matter in the cosmos causing it to expand, which we see as the redshifting of light from distant galaxies. It is the cosmos adjusting to its continual growth.

From a wide reading of text books and articles in journals and on the internet, I have brought back into light many alternative, sceptical and `heretical` opinions about the present direction that the physical sciences are taking.

Many observations and experiments concerning the nature of the Vacuum and the behaviour of stars, galaxies and quasars have been ignored, derided or suppressed during the last hundred years.

Science is not self-correcting and empirical as it should be. It is too materialistic, too reliant on maths, too ready to cling to old beliefs and revere high authority.

The alternative road opens to an eternal and infinite Universe creating an ordered, coherent, rational cosmos that is generating life which takes part in the rational and purposive creation of the cosmos.

Not mythology, not theology but a Universe itself eternal, infinite, rational, creative and life giving.

This alternative has been developed by physicists and engineers in the electrical sciences and is known as Electric Universe and Plasma Cosmology. It differs considerably from the prevailing orthodoxy.

They have developed a completely opposite view of how galaxies and stars form develop and operate. They reject the big bang origin in favour of an infinite and eternal Universe endlessly creating now.

They are all highly qualified astronomers and physicists, with their websites and published books but they have been ignored, derided and sidelined by the orthodox majority and denied access to major observatories, conferences and the technical journals. They can find few publishers who will risk publishing their findings. They are considered heretics and disturbers of the settled beliefs of science. They risk loss of respect, funding and a public voice. The internet is the only forum left, which is why I am using it.

The public know little about this alternative road that a growing number of scientists are following. Their views need to be heard, for if they are right then orthodox science is on the wrong road. They will have to realise that the cosmos is ruled by electro-magnetic forces and not just by gravity and nuclear fusion.

I have spent forty years reading widely in cosmology, astronomy and physics, as well as philosophy (in which I am trained). I give a fair account of the orthodox position before explaining the electric universe alternative.

I write for the general public as clearly as I can, without mathematics and technical language. It is a subject that needs to be aired for it is being suppressed, and I give many instances of this which are a scandal in the way honest researchers have been treated.

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE

THE BIG BANG IS NOT THE ORIGIN

WHAT WE CAN SEE 2

WHAT WE ASSUME 5

HOW THE BIG BANG THEORY BEGAN 14

BIG BANG PROBLEMS 18

HOW DID THE UNIVERSE START? 26

IS THE EXPANSION ACCELERATING? (DIAGRAM) 29

INFLATION THEORY AND DARK ENERGY 31

ORDER AND ENTROPY 36

MATTER CREATION 37

HOW DID THE GALAXIES FORM? 38

HOW DID THE STARS FORM? 44

HOW DO THE STARS SHINE? (GRAPH) 56

INTRODUCING THE NEXT FIVE CHAPTERS 57