A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality

The astronomical community is wrongly interpreting cosmological data by using the standard Big Bang Model. In this highly controversial volume, three distinguished cosmologists argue this premise with persuasion and conviction. Starting with the beginnings of modern cosmology, they conduct a deep and wide review of the observations made from 1945 to the present, explaining what they regard as the defects and inconsistencies that exist within the interpretation of cosmological data. This is followed by an extensive presentation of the authors' own alternative view of the status of observations and how they should be explained. Along the way, the book touches on the most fundamental questions, including the origin, age, structure, and properties of the Universe. Writing from the heart, with passion and punch, Hoyle, Burbidge, and Narlikar, make a powerful case for viewing the universe in a different light, which will be of great interest to graduate students, researchers, and professionals in astronomy, cosmology, and physics.

For modern readers, raised on 1984 and Kurt Cobain, anything that smacks of the mainstream arouses suspicion. So after every cosmology article in Scientific American, editors brace for an onslaught of letters demanding that alternatives to conventional theories be given their due. This book describes the best-developed such alternative: the quasi-steady-state theory, the latest incarnation of the steady-state theory that Fred Hoyle first devised in 1948. It argues that the famous cosmic microwave background radiation is diffuse starlight rather than the afterglow of a hot big bang; that stars synthesized the chemical elements usually attributed to the bang; and that matter is continuously created and ejected from the cores of galaxies. The heterodoxy is seductive. But in a commentary in the April 1999 issue of Physics Today, cosmologist Andreas Albrecht outlined the failings of the theory and the tests it would need to pass before being taken seriously by most cosmologists. If nothing else, a critical reading of this book shows that "mainstream" isn't such a dirty word after all. Science is tricky. Seemingly plausible ideas can have subtle flaws, and it takes a collective effort of problem solving to find them out.