More Open Universe(?)

EvMick (EvMick@aol.com)
Sat, 17 Jan 1998 23:51:52 EST


I've just completed reading a book by Charles Sheffield called "Tomorrow and
Tomorrow".(SF) It was readable. It was about the future. The rest of the
future. All of it. Until the BIG CRUNCH. (a closed universe scenario).

What was most interesting about the book in my opinion was the Appendix. <yes
I read the appendices...also the footnotes..and the copyright for that
matter.....you have no IDEA how boring it can be in a truckstop> in which Mr.
Sheffield more or less "summarized" the state of modern scientific opinion and
presented a little historical perspective to support his summary.

In it he mentioned James Hutton's "Theory of the Earth" and uniformitarianism
in geology. ".......in spite of it's ugly name, is a beautiful and simple
idea........THE PROCESS THAT BUILT THE WORLD IN THE PAST ARE EXACTLY THOSE AT
WORK TODAY...."

Sheffield further says...."The great advantage of ..........theory is that it
removes the need for assumptions"

Sheffield goes on to explain that this (no assumptions....) was fundamental
in moving away from the creationist view toward the modern view.

My thought is that it hasn't fundamentally changed at all. What the Relegious
Right call "God"...is now called "the big Bang"...

By that I mean...the Relegious assume a singular event...never to be
replicated...as does modern cosmology....only the names have been changed to
protect the innocent.

Skipping ahead a bit...Sheffield says...in regard to the Red Shift (the
genesis for the idea of the big bang) ..."the most plausible mechanism, to a
physicist, is the doppler effect'

Oh? That implies there are OTHER mechanisms? I wonder what they are?

All this leads me to wonder if perhaps Eric Lerners "The Big Bang Never
Happened" might perhaps be given more credibility. I've read it a couple of
times and it appears to make sense to me.

No assumptions...what is...IS. The same mechanisms working today as they did
in the past. "Universe forever...without end...amen"

EvMIck
ButtonWillow, California.