Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
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For many decades, the standard cosmological model has stated that
the universe began many billions of years ago
with a primordial explosion called The Big Bang.
Beginning from an unimaginably hot dense point,
material rushed outward at nearly the speed of light
and to this day the physical expansion of the universe is thought to continue.
When scientists found evidence for the apparent acceleration of the expansion rate of the universe,
the hypothetical influence of dark energy was invented.
For a scientific hypothesis to be testable, it must make predictions
and the technological data available to test the Big Bang hypothesis has never been finer.
For over five years, in this series,
we have reported on numerous theory-shattering discoveries
that challenge the very underpinnings of the Big Bang.
From impossibly huge structures that exceed the size limits
for any object at this time in the Big Bang universe,
to so-called "ancient stars" whose chemical composition is completely wrong
if they formed from material in the early universe.
To grand-design galaxies that display a complexity of form that defy their theoretical age.
To evidence that the so-called expansion of the universe is accelerating at an impossibly fast rate,
even accounting for dark energy's influence.
Many scientists have acknowledged the major problems
these discoveries posed for Big Bang cosmology.
Nevertheless, consensus scientific opinion remains
that the Big Bang is the best current theory for the origins of our universe.
Indeed, a recent Scientific American article aroused a
response from some of the world's most revered cosmologists,
that demonstrates just how slow and difficult is real change in the culture of science.
The article in question entitled "Cosmic Inflation Theory Faces Challenges"
proposed that the universe began with a so-called Big Bounce instead of a Big Bang.
The authors question cosmologists' interpretations
of measurements of the so-called Cosmic Microwave Background.
Specifically, they disagree with the interpretation that data first published in 2013
proves that an extremely fast inflation occurred after a Big Bang
13.7 billion years ago.
They state, "If anything, the Planck data disfavored the simplest inflation models
and exacerbated long-standing foundational problems with the theory,
providing new reasons to consider competing ideas about the origin and evolution of the universe...
Yet even now the cosmology community has not taken
a cold, honest look at the big bang inflationary theory
or paid significant attention to critics who question whether inflation happened."
In a response letter to the controversial article, 33 scientists,
including physicist Stephen Hawking, began with a statement,
"There is no disputing the fact that inflation has become the dominant paradigm in cosmology."
They then accused the authors of, "dismissing the research of not only all the authors of this letter
but also that of a substantial contingent of the scientific community."
However, the problems for Big Bang cosmology reach far beyond
anything that Hawking and his colleagues seem ready to acknowledge.
On the question of the so-called Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB,
the conclusion that the radiation is a "background at all"
begins with the assumption of a Big Bang.
But, as previously discussed in this series,
ample evidence exists to consider that the "asymmetric radiation" is, in fact,
a locally produced foreground.
As physicist Wal Thornhill has explained,
proponents of the Electric Universe and Plasma Cosmology argue that
the radiation is due to microwave radiation
from the filamentary galactic electric currents flowing in the neighborhood of the sun.
In fact, some of the expected structures,
a galaxy-wide sample of dense filamentary structures correlated
with spiral arms and star formation, have been recently mapped.
The image on your screen is an example of a network of galactic filaments.
As Thornhill notes, we see a roughly orthogonal branching of tributaries,
which is characteristic of an electrical discharge.
This principle is seen in this comparison with experimental discharge filaments.
If the CMB is, in fact, what physicist Eric Lerner has described
as a "radio fog of dense plasma filaments"
its presence tells us nothing about the age of the universe.
The local origins of the radiation would also help explain
the seemingly baffling discovery of apparently vast and remote cosmic voids.
The appearance of a cold spot where the "temperature of an area of space
is interpreted as significantly lower than the surrounding region"
suggests the presence of a void where many galaxies should be observed.
The interpretation of the size of the so-called "void"
is based on the assumption that the redshift of the surrounding galaxies
provides an accurate measure of the object size and distance.
In recent years, some scientists have offered the incredible speculation
that such a void is actually the imprint of a parallel universe.
In fact, the concept of parallel universes or the multiverse
is a theory championed by the aforementioned Stephen Hawking
as well as Brian Greene, Michio Kaku
and the current host of the television show Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Ironically, at the time that cosmologist Carl Sagan wrote his iconic book, Cosmos,
challenges to the very foundations of the Big Bang were still permitted.
On the question of whether the Doppler interpretation of galactic redshift
is a reliable indicator of an expanding universe,
Sagan wrote, "There is nevertheless a nagging suspicion among some astronomers,
that all may not be right with the deduction,
from the redshift of galaxies via the Doppler effect, that the universe is expanding.
The astronomer Halton Arp has found enigmatic and disturbing cases
where a galaxy and a quasar, or a pair of galaxies,
that are in apparent physical association have very different redshifts..."
Sagan continues, "If Arp is right,
the exotic mechanisms proposed to explain the energy source of distant quasars
-- supernova chain reactions, supermassive black holes and the like --
would prove unnecessary.
Quasars need not then be very distant.
But some other exotic mechanism will be required to explain the redshift.
In either case, something very strange is going on in the depths of space."
At the other end of the spectrum from so-called "vast cosmic voids"
are the objects that appear impossibly huge.
One such object, the quasar cluster huge LQG,
is supposedly so enormous it would comprise about 5% of the visible universe.
As one astronomer said of the discovery, it "...upsets the foundation of everything we do."
The force of gravity is weak and takes time to move things around.
The elapsed time, since the conjectured Big Bang,
sets a limit on how big any structure can be.
Structures exceeding that limit are, by the cosmologists' own admission, impossible.
One possible solution to this enigma is that the objects, simply,
are not as distant and huge as they appear based on their measured redshift.
Halton Arp proposed that the redshift of quasars depends not only on a velocity value
but also its "intrinsic redshift."
This would be a property of matter that is subject to change over time.
Arp found that the intrinsic redshift, of a quasar or galaxy, took discrete values
which decreased with the distance from a central active galaxy.
In Arp's hypothesis, many mature galaxies of a specific type
eject newborn objects called QSO-s or quasars
and these objects grow up to be companion galaxies of their parents.
As they move away from the parent, their mass and brilliance changes,
their velocity slows and they tend to begin to fall back toward the parent galaxy.
Proponents of the Electric Universe, including physicist and chief science advisor to
The Thunderbolts Project, Wal Thornhill,
agree with Arp's thesis of quasar ejection.
However, Thornhill disagrees with Arp's description
of the mass of quasars increasing with time.
Arp proposed that the existence of a new quasar becomes recognized
by matter in the rest of the universe at the speed of light.
But in Thornhill's view, an initially positively charged quasar
is followed by a beam of electrons from its parent galaxy,
which would explain both the quantized redshift and increase in mass.
These electrons may come in bursts, like the quasar ejections themselves,
which, if true, would predict and explain seemingly impossibly sudden changes in quasars.
As we reported last year in this series,
many recently discovered objects in space lend great credence to this thesis.
A team of astronomers, using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,
observed quasars behaving in a manner that completely up-ends conventional theory.
Using images from the Pan-STARRS survey,
the scientists identified 1,000 objects
that appear to vary in brightness over a period of just 10 years.
Among these objects were a total of 5 galaxies that the team witnessed
shape-shifting into quasars in a seemingly impossibly short period of time.
The team also recorded a total of a dozen quasars
"shutting down in a period of hundreds of days"
rather than the hundreds of thousands of years required by standard theory.
As reported by Newscientist.com,
"Astronomers expect quasars to use up their fuel and settle down into quiet galaxies
-- a process that should take hundreds of thousands of years.
So last year, when a dozen quasars were spotted shutting down
in just hundreds of days, it was a shock."
In subsequent decades, as demonstrated by the recent protests of Hawking and company,
little has changed in the culture of science.
The seemingly endless cosmic surprises have yet to force any real reassessment
of the cherished 13.5 billion year "history of the universe."
Institutional science remains unready to confront the possibility
that based on our current limited knowledge,
we must accept the universe of unknown age and extent.
So the surprises for cosmologists will only continue
since nature seems to have no regard for human beliefs.
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