I’m up to my tonsils in teaching this week, so no time for a proper post. However, over at Cosmic Variance there is a very interesting discussion of a recent paper by Geoffrey Burbridge on the Arkiv ;
A Realistic Cosmological Model Based on Observations and Some Theory Developed Over the Last 90 Years
Essentially, the author is defending the steady-state model of the universe (yes, he’s a member of the original Hoyle group). I wasn’t aware that anyone was still pushing this alternative to the Big Bang, I thought everyone had accepted the evidence was overwhelming. Sean Carroll has a very nice discussion of this point, i.e. the difficulty of ever settling a scientific dabate to everyone’s satisfaction. Every reader of this blog should read it carefully.
P.S. The basic idea of the steady-state model is that matter is continuously created – most physicists consider it effectively ruled out by the simple fact that our universe is clearly different now from what it was in the past. Not to mention the small matter of the cosmic microwave background, a clear fossil of the Big Bang
Antimatter 