Is not... ?*
Domingos Soares
Departamento de Física, ICEx, UFMG
-- C.P. 702
30161-970, Belo Horizonte -- Brazil
E-mail: dsoares@fisica.ufmg.br
April 07, 2005
`Do not... ?'
Opticks, Book III --- I. Newton, 1730
`We need a new Tycho Brahe in the area, and start it over.'
Let it Bang, Chronicles of Modern Cosmology --- D.S.L. Soares, unpublished
Foreword
On page xxxiii of the Preface to the 1979 Dover edition of
Newton's Opticks -- based in the 1730 Newton's edition --, Prof. I. Bernard
Cohen comments on the fact that Opticks was, contrary to the Principia,
highly speculative. He adds: ``To be sure, the
speculations of the Opticks were not hypotheses, at least to the extent that
they were framed in questions. Yet if we use Newton's own definition, that
`whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis'
they are hypotheses indeed. The question form may have been adopted in order
to allay criticism, but it does not hide the extent of Newton's belief. For
every one of the Queries is phrased in the negative! Thus Newton does not ask
in truly interrogatory way (Qu. 1) : `Do Bodies act upon Light at a
distance... ?' -- as if he did not know the answer. Rather, he puts it: `Do
not Bodies act upon Light at a distance... ?' -- as if he knew the answer
well -- `Why, of course they do!' ''
In the same spirit, I am pleased to list below some
cosmological queries. In Newton's Opticks, the Queries appear at the end of
the work. Likewise, these here will close my planned book entitled Let
it Bang, Chronicles of Modern Cosmology.
1. Is not the power spectrum of Microwave Background Radiation
fluctuations showing the residuals of sky subtraction on different angular
scales rather than fundamental physics of the ``primeval fireball''?
2. Is not Hubble's redshift-distance relation one of the most
outstanding facts of modern extragalactic astrophysics still awaiting for an
explanation?
3. Is not the Microwave Background Radiation one of the most
outstanding facts of modern astrophysics still awaiting for an explanation?
4. Is not the discovery of the redshift-distance relation as
important as the discovery of the Microwave Background Radiation so as
to earn Hubble a second extraordinary Nobel prize in physics if he
did not prematurely pass away in 1953 (cf.
Soares 2001)?
5. Is not the neutrino -- the wimpest of WIMPs
(cf. Soares
2003) -- telling us, from the height of its proved existence, that its
much more massive peers were not detected simply because they do not exist?
6. Is not the ``discovery'' of the transition from a decelerated to
an accelerated expanding universe an amazing result from modern Big Bang
cosmology especially because it is found to have occurred at the
astonishingly precise redshift of z=0.46 ± 0.13 (see
Soares 2004) and
despite the many concerns as to what extent supernovae Ia are indeed bona fide
standard candles?
7. Is not the expanding universe an optical illusion?
8. Is not any gravity-based cosmology dead since Newton's failure?
9. Is not anything constructed upon any result of
modern Big Bang cosmology bound to failure?
10. Is not the overwhelming evidence from observational
astrophysics rejecting modern Big Bang cosmology?
11. Is not the violation of basic precepts of the scientific method
rejecting modern Big Bang cosmology?
12. Is not the Anthropic principle a fake principle
(Soares 2004)?
14. Is not Fred Hoyle's expression ``Big Bang'' wrongly translated
to other languages (but see
Soares 2002)
thereby losing its original meaning?
15. Is not Einstein's cosmological constant in fact a double
blunder
(Soares 2005)?
16. Is not the inflationary theory nothing but a scientific joke?
17. Is not the Gang of Chicago
(cf. Soares
2003) breaking apart?
18. Is not the Microwave Background Radiation variable in time?
19. Is not the darkness of the sky just a human illusion since
Penzias and Wilson's
discovery?
20. Is not the age of the universe problem the Achilles heel of
modern Big Bang cosmology?
21. Is not Halton Chip Arp right?
22. Is not the conformist approach to Big Bang cosmology
(see Soares
2004) in the roots of the so-called concordance model?
23. Is not the dark pie
(Soares 2004)
totally inappropriate to feed geese let alone human beings?
24. Is not the modern Big Bang cosmological concordance model
only a 0.5% correct (see
Soares 2004)?
25. Is not modern Big Bang cosmology the most clear-cut
example of cultural colonialism, typified by the subservience of
North-American cosmology to European thought?
26. Is not the cosmological constant problem a superlative
shame to modern Big Bang cosmology?
27. Is not measuring the Microwave Background Radiation from
Mars the next step (see
Soares 2006)?
28. Is not he Anthropic principle the mad monster born from the
marriage of Big Bang cosmology to pseudo-scientific reasoning (cf.
Soares 2004)?
29. Is not the Big Rip a big blunder?
30. Is not modern Big Bang cosmology built upon unproved ideas?
31. Is not modern Big Bang cosmology fake science?
* For more short comments on
modern cosmology check at
www.fisica.ufmg.br/~dsoares/notices-e.htm).
Back.
Domingos Sávio de Lima Soares
July 02, 2013