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Billy Brown <bbrown@conemsco.com> On December 31, 1998 Wrote:
>The big bang/inflation model survives, not because there is no contrary
>evidence, but because no one has a better idea. When contrary evidence
>turns up, the typical response is "OK, how can we tinker with the model to
>make it produce that outcome?". The problem, of course, is that you can
>make any theory fit any set of observations if you get to do that. [...]
>"Your theory has been disproven more times than mine" is not
>exactly a glowing testament of reliability.
You make a good point. Some people predicted that the universe will slow down it's expansion but not enough to collapse, others said it would collapse, but nobody predicted it was accelerating, the very idea is ridiculous but apparently that's exactly what is happening. In its year end issue the Journal Science says the discovery of an accelerating universe is the most important science story of 1998. If the leading cosmological theory can't find a feature that important it makes me wonder if we really have any idea what the hell is going on. I quote from Science "Cosmologists have become less confident about declaring the fate of the universe hundreds of billions of years hence."
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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