"Science is not Bad, but there is Bad Science."

by Rod P 46 Replies latest watchtower bible

Rod P

Don't get me wrong here. I am not anti-scientist, nor anti-science. Nor will I deny that there are men and women of science who do not work for money or fame or glory, but rather for "Truth", and even for the good of the human race and this planet.
Scientists are supposed to be unbiased in their research using the universally accepted "Scientific Method", being completely objective, and working in the sterile environment of the laboratory, removed from outside contamination and social influence. They themselves are supposed to approach a subject or investigation with patience and open-mindedness, without prejudice or pre-conceived notions. Experimental measurements and results are supposed to be meticulously recorded and subjected to review by their peers, and the results must be replicable by other scientists.
In the real world, however, that's not what takes place. How is scientific research accomplished? First of all, scientific research projects require funding. Whoever puts up the money, more often than not, prescribes the conditions and the mandate for the institution they are funding, whether it be governments, multi-national corporations or private investors.
If you were a scientist working for a corporation whose reason for being in business is to make a profit, then the scope of research for the employer you work for will be narrowed down to areas of research with economic profit potential only. If, on the other hand, you worked for a governmental military operation, or the CIA, then certain social constraints would be imposed (eg. human embryo cloning, weapons of mass destruction, space travel).
When it comes to the academic process of scientific investigation and experimentation for developing new knowledge, there is a certain socialization that goes on. In the university environment, professors of various scientific disciplines build their own careers within the boundaries, methodologies and conventions of their chosen disciplines. Their peers and predecessors have an almost unwritten code that you stray from the narrow path at your own peril, even if your novel or maverick approach would lead you to new and valuable discoveries.
This is a powerful social or political tool to keep everyone in line with the prevailing "wisdom" of the day. Fail to conform and you will be criticized, ridiculed, branded, even expunged from their little academic club. After all, the Professors who have already established their prestigious careers and published their works cannot afford to have individual and collective establishment "wisdom" successfully challenged or overthrown, least of all by some young and budding scientific "upstarts". Too much has been invested thus far, and too much is at stake. The best way to do this, from a position of political power and security of tenure, is to brand the underling as a heretic or a quack. Cast him/her/them out from their midst, and let them then be forced to find the nesessary funding on their own, which is almost impossible if your reputation and credibility has been slandered or discredited.
Hence, today there are many legitimate scientists who are conducting their own private and independent research projects from outside the "establishment". By sheer weight of personality, communications skills, etc. they did manage to arrange certain funding for their favorite project(s).
Some of these, on the other hand, are new and innovative thinkers who deserve to be heard, but are hampered by the lack of funding.. Perhaps some of their new discoveries and insights are at the very frontiers of new scientific breakthroughs, which may well stand the conventional scientific community on its collective head.
From the annals of science we find several examples of scientific bias at work. Here are a few:
1) Science and Racism- where things like craniometry and phrenology and I.Q. tests were used to prove that non-white races were inferior.
http://www.sciencelives.com/racism.html
2) Science and the Tobacco Industry- The tobacco industry has used a lot of their own scientific research for years to discount the real compelling scientific eidence that there was a connection between smoking and cancer. However, even their own research showed there was a direct causal link, and this information was kept hidden away.
http://www.idrc.ca/research/ev-28826-201-1DO_TOPIC.html
3) "Drinking Milk Prevents Breast Cancer" (NOWAC breast cancer study)
I am not certain which side of the issue to regard as "the truth" here, but it seems clear that one side or the other is biased. Perhaps both?!!
Robert Cohen- Critic of the Study http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/notmilk/message/716
Syd Baumel- Critic of Robert Cohen http://www.mts.net/~Cohen_Bias.html
4) Global Warming and the Kyoto Accord
While there is a lot of good science being done here, and scientists cannot seem to reach a consensus at present, I am, at the same time, skeptical of the motives of big governmnets with wealthy economies as well as big business (especially the multi-national corporations), and who I think are in league with each other on this issue. I suspect that they are all maneuvering to find excuses to delay taking the necessary steps to reduce pollution and our over-dependence on fossil fuels, and the massive clear-cutting of the rain forests (the lungs of the earth). I think that governments and businesses are therefore funding a lot of scientists to find ways to justify those excuses, thereby protecting their vested interests:
http://www.ctv.ca.servlet/ArticleNews/print/CTVNews/1037236865105_50/?hub=SciTech&subhub=Pri
http://www.cei.org/utils/printer.cfm?AID=4404
http://global warming.org
http://www.physorg.com/news3842.html
So what am I getting at, after all of the above? I am suggesting that it is Bias, both from within and without the scientific community that impedes real scientific progress, and indeed, is the real enemy. And because of this, I think that more consideration should be given to those areas of scientific enquiry and research that are not under the thumbs of the Academic Establishment, Big Government and Big Business.
Furthermore, I would contend that there is some very interesting and non-conventional science that does give us some real pause to question the prevailing wisdom and scientific opinions that are extant today. And I would challenge each of you scientifically-bent readers on this JWD forum to consider them "without bias or prejudice". Instead of just pouncing on it because it is new or different or not the norm, I would invite you to suspend judgement long enough to consider it's possible merits, and then give reasons why you think it cannot be true or a scientific possibility, even probability. Then let's all discuss it fairly and rationally? How about it?
Now, the first topics I want to get into with you all is about the following:
1) The Big Bang Theory of the Universe
2) Einstein's General and Special Theory of Relativity. This will include the question of the finite limit of the speed of light, the question of the Ether (Aether) and the Michaelson-Morley experiment.
During the course of these two discussions, I would also like to get into a discussion as to the possible implications for these.
I will be posting these on new and separate threads shortly, owing to their length. I will deal with the Big Bang theory firstly.
Rod P.
tetrapod.sapien

sounds fun Rod,
i look forward to more.
however, i think you perpetrate some misconceptions about scientists that are common among non-scientists. this is a bit of a dis-service, as it treats science like a religion, when really, all scientists want are people who wield the power of science through the methodological naturalism, and do not go chasing ghosts because they were raised to believe in ghosts. i will address them in some of my replies.
and working in the sterile environment of the laboratory, removed from outside contamination and social influence.
not always true. as i am sure you know, much science is conducted in the field. even much data is processed while in the field, and hypothesis reworked to fit with the new data. and since we are social creatures, social influence does affect individual scientists as they collect data sometimes. but that is the purpose of peer review. to stop disinformation from becoming knowledge, like in ancient times. simple.
peer review is a mechanism of the self correcting nature of science. so even if one or two scientists were being dishonest or heavy handed, eventually it would be weeded out, as other scientist's careers are actually advanced by exposing the flaws in accepted theories, or well regarded hypotheses.
without prejudice or pre-conceived notions
without prejudice yes. however, when a scientist is developing a hypothesis, and crunching data, he is often doing it within the framework of an existing theory that is already well established. is this fair? yes it is, because this is how advancement is made, by standing on the shoulders of giants, of sorts. why are they already giants? because they (the theories) have been tested and re tested by time, and new data.
and i think this is where a lot of pseudo-scientists get their backs up. they think that existing scientists should reward their creativity for not taking into consideration existing theories, laws and evidence. they want to do it their way, not the community way. they want to be radical. they want immediate gratification. this works fine in the arts, but not in science. the two should not be compared. new data must be interpreted through existing knowledge before it can be assigned as a challenger to existing knowledge. it must explain nature better than the existing theories, and it must be falsifiable, etc. etc.
In the real world, however, that's not what takes place. How is scientific research accomplished? First of all, scientific research projects require funding. Whoever puts up the money, more often than not, prescribes the conditions and the mandate for the institution they are funding, whether it be governments, multi-national corporations or private investors.
you leave out the fact that scientists are like doctors. they have an obligation to the truth and to peer review, on a professional level, no matter how painful. if they submit something to peer review that reeks of heavy handed corporate PR, their careers could be in jeopardy, if their data is massaged. other scientists, not on the payroll, could tare them to shreds. this would be good for the other scientists. this is an understanding between phd researchers and any private investors they work for.
Their peers and predecessors have an almost unwritten code that you stray from the narrow path at your own peril, even if your novel or maverick approach would lead you to new and valuable discoveries.
this is sort of true. but you don't mention the perils to human knowledge, should this stuffiness change. you also don't mention that it is often easier for a well regarded scientist to get a bit radical in the search for answers, than some new guy who really can't be trusted. new guys without an ulterior motive, know this and understand this, and work with it, even if they are geniuses. it's the ones who think the rules of scientific method do not apply to them, that get in a huff about it.
This is a powerful social or political tool to keep everyone in line with the prevailing "wisdom" of the day.
based on the definition of wisdom, i would say that if some science is considered "wise", then it has already been applied in a common sense way to real world problems, and been successful. and therefore any competing theories have even more to overthrow, should they become accepted knowledge.
Fail to conform and you will be criticized, ridiculed, branded, even expunged from their little academic club. After all, the Professors who have already established their prestigious careers and published their works cannot afford to have individual and collective establishment "wisdom" successfully challenged or overthrown, least of all by some young and budding scientific "upstarts".
this is kind of a straw man. you really are doing a good job of making science sound like a religion, though i highly doubt this is your purpose with this essay.
it's not about conforming. it's about having really good reasons as to why proven theories need to be challenged in the first place. there seems to be some misunderstanding in the general public, that we know nothing, and all existing scientific knowledge is bound to be over thrown. newbies who do not work within this framework, often have an ulterior motive in not wanting to. scientists (professors and researchers etc) are the wielders of true empirical knowledge. they are guardians, of sorts. they are not just going to allow some new guy to come along and not play by the same rules that they all know establishes the highest degree of truth. it's a filter, and i am thankful for that. hell, if anyone with a high IQ could be considered a scientist, then current truth would also include UFO's , Bigfoot, Ghosts and Ghoulies .
if you want to challenge an existing theory, then great! that is what science is about. any scientist that could show that the big bang does not explain the universe as well as has been already proven , then should go ahead and do so. but they have to play by the rules, or the general public will not trust the findings, as the rules have worked well for so long.
and do not forget, that any scientist who could overthrow an existing theory, would have her career MADE. as in, famous scientifically. science relishes in this. there is nothing holy in science. but they are not going to allow this overthrowing, without the new theory explaining the phenomena and the evidence and the data better. the new theory has to be able to predict future discoveries better than the old theory.
i find it incredible when some so-called scientist gets upset by these rules of scientific engagement. they should get into liberal arts if they want to behave that way.
Cast him/her/them out from their midst, and let them then be forced to find the nesessary funding on their own, which is almost impossible if your reputation and credibility has been slandered or discredited.
you paint a dirty picture without describing who the quacks are. any citizen of the world who is truly concerned with natural truth, should join in with the scientists in calling pseudo-scientists what they really are: quacks. the pseudo-scientists are out to rip off humanity. humanity should thank the scientific community for not allowing false knowledge to leak into the public sphere. this is why science is self correcting. anyone who comes along and starts acting like a science prophet, should not be trusted.
one can be radical, and a genius, and still work within the scientific method. there are plenty of examples of this.
Hence, today there are many legitimate scientists who are conducting their own private and independent research projects from outside the "establishment". By sheer weight of personality, communications skills, etc. they did manage to arrange certain funding for their favorite project(s).
Some of these, on the other hand, are new and innovative thinkers who deserve to be heard, but are hampered by the lack of funding.. Perhaps some of their new discoveries and insights are at the very frontiers of new scientific breakthroughs, which may well stand the conventional scientific community on its collective head.
you leave out the fact that they can still submit their papers for peer review. this is more constructive than publishing a book, as many jilted pseudo-scientists do. and any of the scientists that peer review their paper, would have a career boon if they could combine their own findings to substantiate the findings of the pseudo-scientist. so they do look out for strange things. but they temper it with established knowledge, and thankfully so.
if this is a rare occurrence, it's because quacks usually always really have nothing of substance. at least they're still allowed to take part in the scientific method. no scientists are going to turn down a paper if they think it has merit. and at this point, they are in the best position to decide what does have merit, not the general public.
Bias, both from within and without the scientific community that impedes real scientific progress, and indeed, is the real enemy.
this is not about artistic progress. this is about scientific progress. in the past, the world was changed by "prophets" who spoke in the name of god, and no one could know better.
now we are at a place in time when we can know better, and some people are wailing a collective cry against it. THAT, is disturbing, frankly.
And I would challenge each of you scientifically-bent readers on this JWD forum to consider them "without bias or prejudice
i will consider it objectively. and, objectively, really is a better descriptor of what you should be expecting from the science folk here at the board.
I will deal with the Big Bang theory firstly.
i look forward to it.
TS
Rod P

Tetra,
Thank you for your comments. I take many of your points, and don't really have a problem with them. I was trying hard NOT to compare or liken Science and Scientists with Religion and Religionists. Perhaps I was not totally successful in that regard, in which case your critical or editorial comments have served a useful purpose.
Part of where I am coming from is my association with two individuals over the years who I sincerely feel have not been treated fairly or kindly by the scientific community. I have a number of books written by one in particular, and he has spent his whole life sincerely dedicated to his cause and research. He has presented his material to a number of scientists for peer review, and I have seen some of their interesting replies. Many find his theories and thesis quite fascinating and of merit, but stop short of any kind of public endorsement or support precisely because of their own positions and reputations. One states this in his reply letter as a candid admission to that effect. My friend the scientist just does not fit into their mould. Funding has been somewhat successful, but in spite of, not because of their support. Still, he is not bitter nor anti-establishment. We call him "Mild-Mannered Mel".
"Working in the sterile environment of the laboratory" is, of course, a bit rhetorical, as we all know that scientists do do work "in the field" and not just in the laboratory. I was trying to emphasize the notion of scientific objectivity, operating without prejudice or outside influence that might compromise the research and the outcomes.
At the same time, I am sure you are aware that there are instances where science and scientists have been placed on pedestals, and treated almost like they were invincible and beyond question. Bias and motive ARE factors, and we must all be aware and wary of that. After all, scientists are human too. The examples I mentioned serve to illustrate that.
Anyway, onward and upward.
Rod P.
tetrapod.sapien

At the same time, I am sure you are aware that there are instances where science and scientists have been placed on pedestals, and treated almost like they were invincible and beyond question. Bias and motive ARE factors, and we must all be aware and wary of that. After all, scientists are human too. The examples I mentioned serve to illustrate that.

yes, certainly Rod. no doubt.
Anyway, onward and upward.
yes, indeed. i look fwd to future installments!
Respectfully,
TS
VM44

I think there is some recent discovery reported in New Scientist that has shaken up the Big Bang theory. --VM44
VM44

cover: End of the Beginning, picture shows a wreaking ball approaching the words"Big Bang"

Did the big bang really happen?

* 02 July 2005

* From New Scientist Print Edition.

* Marcus Chown

* Marcus Chown is the author of The Universe Next Door published by Headline (2003)

Cracks in the big bang

WHAT if the big bang never happened? Ask cosmologists this and they'll usually tell you it is a stupid question. The evidence, after all, is written in the heavens. Take the way galaxies are scattered across the sky, or witness the fading afterglow of the big bang fireball. Even the way the atoms in your body have come into being over the eons. They are all smoking guns that point to the existence 13.7 billion years ago of an ultra-hot, ultra-dense state known as the big bang.

Or are they? A small band of researchers is starting to ask the question no one is supposed to ask. Last week the dissidents met to review the evidence at the first ever Crisis in Cosmology conference in MonÃ§Ã£o, Portugal. There they argued that cosmologists' most cherished theory of the universe fails to explain certain crucial observations. If they are right, the universe could be a lot weirder than anyone imagined. But before venturing that idea, say the dissidents, it is time for some serious investigation into the big bang's validity and its alternatives.

"Look at the facts," says Riccardo Scarpa of the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile. "The basic big bang model fails to predict what we observe in the universe in three major ways." The temperature of today's universe, the expansion of the cosmos, and even the presence of galaxies, have all had cosmologists scrambling for fixes. "Every time the basic big bang model has failed to predict what we see, the solution has been to bolt on something new - inflation, dark matter and dark energy," Scarpa says.

For Scarpa and his fellow dissidents, the tinkering has reached an unacceptable level. All for the sake of saving the notion that the universe flickered into being as a hot, dense state. "This isn't science," says Eric Lerner who is president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in West Orange, New Jersey, and one of the conference organisers. "Big bang predictions are consistently wrong and are being fixed after the event." So much so, that today's "standard model" of cosmology has become an ugly mishmash comprising the basic big bang theory, inflation and a generous helping of dark matter and dark energy.

The fact that the conference went ahead at all is an important step forward, say its organisers. Last year they wrote an open letter warning that failure to fund research into big bang alternatives was suppressing free debate in the field of cosmology (New Scientist, 22 May 2004, p 20).

The trouble, says Lerner, who headed the list of more than 30 signatories, is that cosmology is bankrolled by just a few sources, and the committees that control those purse strings are dominated by supporters of the big bang. Critics of the standard model of cosmology are not just uncomfortable about the way they feel it has been cobbled together. They also point to specific observations that they believe cast doubt on cosmology's standard model.

Dark matter is turning up in places where it shouldn't exist
Take the most distant galaxies ever spotted, for example. According to the accepted view, when we observe ultra-distant galaxies we should see them in their youth, full of stars not long spawned from gas clouds. This is because light from these faraway galaxies has taken billions of years to reach us, and so the galaxies must appear as they were shortly after the big bang. But there is a problem. "We don't see young galaxies," says Lerner. "We see old ones."

He cites recent observations of high-red-shift galaxies from NASA's Spitzer space telescope. A galaxy's red shift is a measure of how much the universe has expanded since it emitted its light. As the light travels through an expanding universe, its wavelength gets stretched, as if the light wave were drawn on a piece of elastic. The increase in wavelength corresponds to a shift towards the red end of the spectrum.

The Spitzer galaxies have red shifts that correspond to a time when the universe was between about 600 million and 1 billion years old. Galaxies this young should be full of newborn stars that emit blue light because they are so hot. The galaxies should not contain many older stars that are cool and red. "But they do," says Lerner.

Spitzer is the first telescope able to detect red stars in faraway galaxies because it is sensitive to infrared light. This means it can detect red light from stars in high-red-shift galaxies that has been pushed deep into the infrared during its journey to Earth. "It turns out these galaxies aren't young at all," says Lerner. "They have pretty much the same range of stars as present-day galaxies."

And that is bad news for the big bang. Among the stars in today's galaxies are red giants that have taken billions of years to burn all their hydrogen and reach this bloated phase. So the Spitzer observations suggest that some of the stars in ultra-distant galaxies are older than the galaxies themselves, which plunges the standard model of cosmology into crisis.

Fog-filled universe

Not surprisingly, cosmologists have panned Lerner's theories. They put the discrepancy down to large uncertainties in estimating the ages of galaxies. But Lerner has a reply. He points to other distant objects that appear much older than they ought to be. "At high red shift, we also observe clusters and huge superclusters of galaxies," he says, arguing that it would have taken far longer than a billion years for galaxies to clump together to form such giant structures.

His solution to the puzzle is extreme. Rather than being caused by the expanding universe, he believes that the red shift is down to some other mechanism. But at this stage it is only a guess. "I admit I don't know what that mechanism might be," Lerner says, "though I believe it is intrinsic to light."

To test his idea, he would like to see sensitive experiments on Earth capable of detecting minute changes in light. One possibility would be to modify the LIGO detector in Hanford, Washington state. LIGO is designed to detect gravitational waves, the warps in space-time created by events such as neutron star collisions. To do this it bounces perpendicular beams of laser light hundreds of times between mirrors 4 kilometres apart, looking for subtle shifts in the beams' lengths. With a few tweaks, Lerner believes that LIGO could be modified to measure any intrinsic red-shifting that light might undergo.

If the experiment ever gets the go-ahead and Lerner is proved right, the implications would be immense, not least because the tapestry of cosmology as we know it would unravel. Without an expanding universe, there would be no need to invoke dark energy to account for the apparent acceleration of that expansion. Nor would there be any reason to suppose the big bang was the ultimate beginning. "I can prove that the universe wasn't born 13.7 billion years ago," says Lerner. "The big bang never happened."

However, Lerner's claims leave plenty of awkward questions. Among them is the matter of the cosmic microwave background. First detected in 1965, the vast majority of cosmologists believe that this faint, all-pervading soup of microwaves is the dying glow of the big bang, and proof of the ultimate beginning. According to big bang theory, the hot radiation that filled space after the birth of the universe has been trapped inside ever since because it has nowhere else to go. As the universe expanded over the past 13.7 billion years, the radiation has cooled to today's temperature of less than 3 kelvin above absolute zero.

So if there was no big bang, where did the cosmic microwave background come from? Lerner believes that cosmologists have got the origin of the microwave glow all wrong. "If you wake up in a tent and everything around you is white, you don't conclude you've seen the start of the universe," he says. "You conclude you're in fog."

Rather than coming from the big bang, Lerner believes that the cosmic background radiation is really starlight that has been absorbed and re-radiated. It is an old idea that was widely promoted by the late cosmologist and well-known big bang sceptic Fred Hoyle. He believed that starlight was absorbed by needle-like grains of iron ejected by supernovae and then radiated as microwaves. But Hoyle never found any evidence to back up his ideas and many cosmologists dismissed them.

Some of the stars in distant galaxies appear older than the universe itself

Lerner's idea is similar, though he thinks that threads of electrically charged gas called plasma are responsible, rather than iron whiskers. Jets of plasma are squirted into intergalactic space by highly energetic galaxies known as quasars, and Lerner believes that such plasma filaments continually fragmented until they filled the universe like fog. This fog then scattered the infrared light radiated by dust that had in turn absorbed starlight. By doing so, Lerner believes, the infrared radiation became uniform in all directions, just as the cosmic microwave background appears to be.

All this is possible, he argues, because standard cosmology theory has overlooked processes involving plasmas. "All astronomers know that 99.99 per cent of matter in the universe is in the form of plasma, which is controlled by electromagnetic forces," he says. "Yet all astronomers insist on believing that gravity is the only important force in the universe. It is like oceanographers ignoring hydrodynamics." To make progress, Lerner is calling for theories that include plasma phenomena as well as gravity, and for more rigorous testing of theory against observations.

Of course, Lerner's ideas are extremely controversial and few people are convinced, but that doesn't stop other researchers questioning the standard theory too. They have their own ideas about what is wrong with it. In Scarpa's case, the mysterious dark matter is at fault.

Dark matter has become an essential ingredient in cosmology's standard model. That's because the big bang on its own fails to describe how galaxies could have congealed from the matter forged shortly after the birth of the universe. The problem is that gas and dust made from normal matter were spread too evenly for galaxies to clump together in just 13.7 billion years. Cosmologists fix this problem by adding to their brew a vast amount of invisible dark matter which provides the extra tug needed to speed up galaxy formation.

The same gravitational top-up helps to explain the rapid motion of outlying stars in galaxies. Astronomers have measured stars orbiting their galactic centres so fast that they ought to fly off into intergalactic space. But dark matter's extra gravity would explain how the galaxies hold onto their speeding stars. Similarly, dark matter is needed to explain how clusters of galaxies can hold on to galaxies that are orbiting the cluster's centre so fast they ought to be flung away.

But dark matter may not be the cure-all it seems, warns Scarpa. What worries him are inconsistencies with the theory. "If you believe in dark matter, you discover there is too much of it," he says. In particular, his observations point to dark matter in places cosmologists say it shouldn't exist. One place no one expects to see it is in globular clusters, tight knots of stars that orbit the Milky Way and many other galaxies. Unlike normal matter, the dark stuff is completely incapable of emitting light or any other form of electromagnetic radiation. This means a cloud of the stuff cannot radiate away its internal heat, a process vital for gravitational contraction, so dark matter cannot easily clump together at scales as small as those of globular clusters.

Scarpa's observations tell a different story, however. He and his colleagues have found evidence that the stars in globular clusters are moving faster than the gravity of visible matter can explain, just as they do in larger galaxies. They have studied three globular clusters, including the Milky Way's biggest, Omega Centauri, which contains about a million stars. In all three, they find the same wayward behaviour. So if isn't dark matter, what is going on?

Scarpa's team believes the answer might be a breakdown of Newton's law of gravity, which says an object's gravitational tug is inversely proportional to the square of your distance from it. Their observations of globular clusters suggest that Newton's inverse square law holds true only above some critical acceleration. Below this threshold strength, gravity appears to dissipate more slowly than Newton predicts.

Exactly the same effect has been spotted in spiral galaxies and galaxy-rich clusters. It was identified more than 20 years ago by Mordehai Milgrom at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, who proposed a theory known as modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) to explain it. Scarpa points out that the critical acceleration of 10-10 metres per second per second that was identified for galaxies appears to hold for globular clusters too. And his work has led him to the same conclusion as Milgrom: "There is no need for dark matter in the universe," says Scarpa.

It is a bold claim to make. And not surprisingly, MOND has had plenty of critics over the years. One of cosmologists' biggest gripes is that MOND is not compatible with Einstein's theory of relativity, so it is not valid for objects travelling close to the speed of light or in very strong gravitational fields. In practice, this means MOND has been powerless to make predictions about pulsars, black holes and, most importantly, the big bang. But this has now been fixed by Jacob Bekenstein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

Bekenstein's relativistic version of the theory already appears to be bearing fruit. In May a team led by Constantinos Skordis of the University of Oxford showed that relativistic MOND can make cosmological predictions. The researchers have reproduced both the observed properties of the cosmic microwave background and the distribution of galaxies throughout the universe (www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505519).

Gravity in crisis
Scarpa believes that MOND is a crucial body blow for the big bang. "It means that the law of gravity from which we derive the big bang is wrong," he says. He insists that cosmologists are interpreting astronomical observations using the wrong framework. And he urges them to go back to the drawing board and derive a cosmological model based on MOND.

For now, his plea seems to be falling mostly on deaf ears. Yet there is more evidence that there could be something wrong with the standard model of cosmology. And it is evidence that many cosmologists are finding harder to dismiss because it comes from the jewel in the crown of cosmology instruments, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. "It could be telling us something fundamental about our universe, maybe even that the simplest big bang model is wrong," says JoÃ£o Magueijo of Imperial College London.

Since its launch in 2001, WMAP has been quietly taking the temperature of the universe from its vantage point 1.5 million kilometres out in space. The probe measures the way the temperature of the cosmic microwave background varies across the sky. Cosmologists believe that the tiny variations from one place to another are an imprint of the state of the universe about 300,000 years after the big bang, when matter began to clump together under gravity. Hotter patches correspond to denser regions, and cooler patches reflect less dense areas. These density variations began life as quantum fluctuations in the vacuum in the first split second of the universe's existence, and were subsequently amplified by a brief period of phenomenally fast expansion called inflation.

Because the quantum fluctuations popped up at random, the hot and cold spots we see in one part of the sky should look much like those in any other part. And because the cosmic background radiation is a feature of the universe as a whole rather than any single object in it, none of the hot or cold regions should be aligned with structures in our corner of the cosmos. Yet this is exactly what some researchers are claiming from the WMAP results.

Earlier this year, Magueijo and his Imperial College colleague Kate Land reported that they had found a bizarre alignment in the cosmic microwave background. At first glance, the pattern of hot and cold spots appeared random, as expected. But when they looked more closely, they found something unexpected. It is as if you were listening to an anarchic orchestra playing some random cacophony, and yet when you picked out the violins, trombones and clarinets separately, you discovered that they are playing the same tune.

Like an orchestral movement, the WMAP results can be analysed as a blend of patterns of different spatial frequencies. When Magueijo and Land looked at the hot and cold spots this way, they noticed a striking similarity between the individual patterns. Rather than being spattered randomly across the sky, the spots in each pattern seemed to line up along the same direction. With a good eye for a newspaper headline, Magueijo dubbed this alignment the axis of evil. "If it is true, this is an astonishing discovery," he says.

Without an expanding universe, the big bang was not the ultimate beginning
That's because the result flies in the face of big bang theory, which rules out any such special or preferred direction. So could the weird effect be down to something more mundane, such as a problem with the WMAP satellite? Charles Bennett, who leads the WMAP mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, discounts that possibility. "I have no reason to think that any anomaly is an artefact of the instrument," he says.

Another suggestion is that heat given off by the Milky Way's dusty disk has not been properly subtracted from the WMAP signals and mimics the axis of evil. "Certainly there are some sloppy papers where insufficient attention has been paid to the signals from the Milky Way," warns Bennett. Others point out that the conclusions are based on only one year's worth of WMAP signals. And researchers are eagerly awaiting the next batch, rumoured to be released in September.

Yet Magueijo and Land are convinced that the alignment in the patterns does exist. "The big question is: what could have caused it," asks Magueijo. One possibility, he says, is that the universe is shaped like a slab, with space extending to infinity in two dimensions but spanning only about 20 billion light years in the third dimension. Or the universe might be shaped like a bagel. Another way to create a preferred direction would be to have a rotating universe, because this singles out the axis of rotation as different from all other directions.

Bennett admits he is excited by the possibility that WMAP has stumbled on something so important and fundamental about the universe. His hunch, though, is that the alignment is a fluke. "However, it's always possible the universe is trying to tell us something," he says.

Clearly, such a universe would flout a fundamental assumption of all big bang models: that the universe is the same in all places and in all directions. "People made these assumptions because, without them, it was impossible to simplify Einstein's equations enough to solve them for the universe," says Magueijo. And if those assumptions are wrong, it could be curtains for the standard model of cosmology.

That may not be a bad thing, according to Magueijo. "The standard model is ugly and embarrassing," he says. "I hope it will soon come to breaking point." But whatever replaced it would of course have to predict all the things the standard model predicts. "This would be very hard indeed," concedes Magueijo.

Meanwhile the axis of evil is peculiar enough that Bennett and his colleague Gary Hinshaw have obtained money from NASA to carry out a five-year exhaustive examination of the WMAP signals. That should exclude the possibilities of the instrumental error and contamination once and for all. "The alignment is probably just a fluke but I really feel compelled to investigate it," he says. "Who knows what we will find."

Lerner and his fellow sceptics are in little doubt: "What we may find is a universe that is very different than the increasingly bizarre one of the big bang theory."

From issue 2506 of New Scientist magazine, 02 July 2005, page 30
Rod P

VM44,
Thank you for that interesting article.
However, I was intending to start a whole new thread dedicated to the Big Bang Theory, which you are going to see here on JWD Forum very shortly. Please watch for it. Would you then mind posting this article again, but on that thread? Appreciate it.
Rod P.
Sad emo

This reminds me of a programme on tv a few years back that showed how the Russians had found a cure for hospital superbugs such as MRSA. Basically, they went on the theory that because it never strikes everyone in hospital down, some patients must have antibodies - some of these antibodies would pass through the digestive system. The scientists took waste water from the hospital sluices and treated affected patients with highly diluted amounts (I think they cleaned it up a little first). Disgusting as this treatment sounds, it actually worked!
Because Russia didn't have the financial clout to do proper research into the treatment, they appealed to wealthier countries such as the US and UK - trying drug companies and universities. Nobody would take it on, possibly because it was seen as a crazy idea - even though it has already been tried and proved successful in the field. Could it be suggested that it's probably because there's no money in sewage?
Meanwhile, people worldwide suffer and even die from these diseases while the scientific community looks for a more hi-tech cure.
Rod P

Sad Emo,
Interesting, but where did you get your information?
Rod P.
kid-A

Rod,
I am a research scientist and professor and have published in the top journals. I can tell you from experience, getting your work published is an incredibly rigorous process. This is what sets the scientific field apart, the peer review process. Before anything is accepted in a top ranked journal like Nature or Science for example, it is carefully reviewed by independent scientists who will most certainly hold the authors up to the most severe scrutiny, demand more experiments, more controls, more evidence. In short, from the time a scientific manuscript is submitted to an editor to the time it is actually published in a journal and made available to the public, the researchers responsible for the data have been exhaustively reviewed, the work revised, revisions made, etc etc. Of course, the system can break down, we cant stop bad scientists from fabricating data, but from my personal experience reviewing the work of other scientists for a number of journals, that is a relatively rare occurence. Even when it does happen, the "bad apples" will get caught, because another laboratory will try to replicate the experiments and not be able to. Its a self-regulating enterprise, and its a system that has worked remarkably well for as long as science journals have existed.
Cheers,

"Science is not Bad, but there is Bad Science."

Share this