Read first Sandra Faber's report at
arXiv:astro-ph/0302495
for your full enlightenment.
Read first Sandra Faber's report at
`Won't you please come to Chicago
or else join the other side'
"Chicago/We Can Change the World" --- Graham Nash, 1971
A group of cosmologists created a new system of the world which is called by themselves ``The New Cosmology''. I christen this group ``The Gang of Chicago''. Therefrom I identify the Gang, comment on other appropriate identifications given to the group, discuss various cosmological issues, and finish with proving by simple arithmetics that such a new paradigm is 99.5% wrong.
1. Introduction
Once upon a time there was an age problem. The part is older than the whole! Well, not that serious as far as one compares local ages, i.e., nuclear burning time-scales, with global --- cosmological --- ages; or, nothing that a competent general-relativity theoretician could fix with the appropriate use of objects like, for example, closed timelike curves.
``Anything is possible if you DON'T know what you're talking about'', I read out of my fortune cookie. Yes, I agree. But the opposite seems also to be true, specially in theoretical physics, specially in cosmology: ``Anything is possible if you DO know what you're talking about''. Which is incidentally a major feature of the Gang of Chicago.
Now, what (the hell) is this Gang?
First of all, the Gang1 is responsible for what is known nowadays as The New Cosmology, a ``thing''2 based on Guth's inflationary universe, and known by the famous, some say funny, epithet of being a paradigm in search of a theory, which of course means plenty of room for all kinds of crazy theories. The Gang's strength is mainly due to the competent use of computer graphics tools in fitting experimental results obtained by high-tech satellite, balloon and ground-based telescopes.
Let us go now into a bit of the Gang's history.
In a number of pages of his memories, Alan Guth (1997) describes the genesis of the Gang, reveals some of its members, and participates in some of its adventures. I call the Reader's attention, for example, to Guth's page 101, where two heavy-weight members of the Gang are introduced, the late David Schramm and Michael Turner (which I shall refer from now on as the Godfather). Subsequently, on page 162, the Gang's High Command visits Cornell University, the site of the beginning of inflation; on page 211, the ``traveling circus'' of the Gang's cosmologists enjoys life; on page 215, the Godfather joins Guth in a cup of hot chocolate; on page 221, Stephen Hawking joins the Gang; on page 235, inflation reaches the Olympus, namely, the British Journal Nature. And so on.
So far so good. I give more on the Gang of Chicago in the next section.
2. Geese, WIMPs and MACHOs
The Gang is the thinking (!) head of a wider group whose members are called geese by the late Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge and Jayant Narlikar (2000). On page 188, at the end of Hoyle et al's chapter 14, a very instructive photograph shows what they call the conformist approach to the standard hot big bang cosmology: a large group of geese follow their leader(s), making a bucolic scene around a seemingly prosperous farmstead. Hoyle et al. ``have resisted the temptation to name some of the leading geese''. In my picture, the Gang of Chicago are themselves geese, namely, the leading ones, and the Godfather is sort of the Big Goose.
One of the geese, Sandra Faber, in a most interesting report of a recent Gang's meeting (Faber 2003), uses yet another nomenclature when referring to their peer group. They are classified as ``WIMPs'' and MACHOs'' according to their ``toughness'' with respect to the Gang's principles, that is to say, the prescriptions of the New Cosmology. A thorough sociological account is made in Faber's report. I reproduce here typical statements of both groups.
The most impressive statement in her paper is from Faber herself: ``I began to wonder myself whether WIMPs had actually been detected at this conference for the first time''. THIS IS REALLY GREAT! Now the work to be done is to count them and check it out whether there are enough to balance the cosmos.
I myself discover a property of WIMPs and MACHOs which I feel might be placed side by side with the WIMP discovery statement above. Searches for WIMPs and MACHOs will certainly benefit from the following general property, which I frame as
``WIMPs and MACHOs have no gender.''Such a conclusion was drawn from Faber's account of WIMPs and MACHOs present in the meeting. There are representatives of both genders3 in both classes. I make now a prediction: this is going to be revered as the greatest generalization in cosmology in the latest years. I bet a goose on that.
3. The wimpest of WIMPs
The most famous non-baryonic dark matter candidates are WIMPs, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. The New Cosmology needs them, desperately needs them.
The wimpest of WIMPs have already been detected decades ago, namely, the neutrino. It contributes though only a few tenths of percent to the dozens percent needed.
Whilst the wimpest of WIMPs have already been detected decades ago, the desired WIMPs, with rest masses around 100 GeV/c2, give no sign of existence at all!
Naively, one would conclude that they do not exist. Nevertheless, WIMPland is something to be, at least for the Gang's adventures.
4. The super-accelerating phase of the universe
Surprisingly enough, this phase has passed unnoticed by most cosmologists. In some sense the phenomenon is similar to what happened in the past with the Hubble parameter. In the late 1920s Ho was determined by Hubble as approximately 500 km/s Mpc-1. A sharp decelerating phase in the expansion of the universe then followed. Nowadays Ho is around 704. This is known by all, I presume.
Now, what is not known is that from February 1995 till June 1999 we had a super-accelerating phase in the universe, something that the most creative theoretician would never dare to think let alone publish!
In February 1995, Saul Perlmutter and a bunch of great cosmologists (Perlmutter et al. 1995) published a Letter in ApJ entitled ``A supernova at z=0.458 and implications for measuring the cosmological deceleration'' where they derive a deceleration parameter qo=0.1. They even explicitly quote on page L44 that it is a lower-limit determination since host galaxy extinction would increase qo.
Many of the Gang read the paper. What they talk amongst themselves is left to someone guesses but on one thing they agreed: ``---That's pure dynamite!''
On the next afternoon, the Godfather drove to Perlmutter's place. They drunk hot chocolate and had a long talk.
Four years later, Perlmutter and, again, a bunch of great cosmologists (Perlmutter et al. 1999) published a paper in ApJ entitled ``Measurements of omega and lambda from 42 high-redshfit supernovae''. The result was that qo < 0! The universe is accelerating now! In a little more than four years!
Comprehensibly, one month later, Perlmutter, the Godfather and a friend from the Gang (Perlmutter, Turner and White 1999) published a Letter in PRL entitled ``Constraining dark energy with SN-Ia and large-scale structure''. The amazing thing is that they DID NOT NOTICE THAT THE UNIVERSE HAD SUPER-ACCELERATED!
Just a few other data: in September 2002, the 1995 supernova paper had 44 citations and the 1999 paper had 431! In March 2003, the 1995 paper had 46 and the 1999 jumped to 632 citations! These figures once more show HOW AMAZING IT IS that people did not make the logical link we point out here, i.e., the connection between the transition from a decelerated to an accelerated phase in just 52 months!
I know that the first determination of qo was based in a single supernova and the second one in 42, which makes rather questionable the whole point of a super-accelerating phase5.
5. The Avocatropic Principle
The Author does not agree with the Anthropic Principle (1988's Barrow and Tipler, digressing around an idea by Brandon Carter, from Hollywood, I guess, sorry). For those who do not know me, my main claim is that the Principle requires that human beings be made of iron and hydrogen bubbles, which of course is not observed. Listen, at the right amount, I mean.
In turn I put forward (Soares 2003) an alternative cosmological principle, namely, the Avocatropic Principle.
In its purple (also known as strong) form it states that out of all possible values for the fundamental constants of nature and the initial conditions of the universe, only a small fraction could allow mature avocados to form at all, at anytime. The green (weak) form precludes mature avocados. There is also a controversial form called Transgenic Avocatropic Principle which will not be discussed here because it is beyond the scope of the present paper but is examined at length elsewhere (see Soares 2003).
Although it is by no means capable of useful contribution towards the dark energy equation of state, the Avocatropic Principle --- amongst other achievements --- can successfully place stringent limits say, for example, on the age of Charlie Chaplin, the actor, at the time he starred ``The Great Dictator''. One finds t* = 10(-µ± 2)/2 years old, where µ is the power of the ``original'' mass function for stars. A superb fitting is obtained with the Salpeter (1955) power of -2.35.
Those who claim --- on my side --- that in about 1 to 2 billion years drastic changes in the Sun will severely affect life on Earth and consequently there will be no humans to tell stories about the anthropic principle must be warned: it will not happen with avocados because (pause) avocados are forever! That's what I believe (now slowly) from the bottom of my heart.
6. Theory versus observations
Let me put it frankly: the New Cosmology is able to fit every and each piece of experimental data since it has many (a dozen of?) free parameters. It is the best representative of what is known as a non-falsifiable theory, paradigm, whatever it may be.
It fits everything but the mass-energy content of the universe! It predicts that 70% of the universe is in the form of a thing, a dark thing.
Perhaps it is now the moment to talk a little bit about things. Such a cosmological concept has been introduced by Faber, in the above-mentioned report. The search for the ``dark thing'', in her words (boldfaces are mine),
``promises to enlarge our basic concept of `thing' by providing an entirely new thing to consider in addition to radiation and matter, and in the process it may cause us to examine what other new `things' can in principle exist''.That is really enlightening!
I understood that it is intrinsic to the concept of thing the fact that it is not known. Some things become eventually non-existent. Not all things, it must be pointed out.
Back to the mass-energy content of the universe. One has 70% of dark thing (no quotes anymore) and 30% of matter. Only 0.5% is observed. Slightly touching tautology, which I shall avoid to go into, this 0.5% is the only thing --- the thing again --- that exists. Therefore the New Cosmology fits 0.5% of the universe, an amount that cannot be neglected, everyone agree. Which is great, indeed!
7. Conclusion
The main conclusion follows from simple arithmetics and from logics. The New Cosmology predicts correctly 0.5% of the mass-energy content of the universe. Therefore it is 0.5% right. On the other hand it is 100 - 0.5 = 99.5% wrong.
References
1 The name is inspired in the fact that the majority of its members are from the University of Chicago and laboratories based in the Chicago area. Back.
2 See below a brief discussion of things, a concept introduced in cosmology by Sandra Faber (2003). Back.
3 Sandra Faber classifies herself as a MACHO. Back.
4 Incidentally, from the last meeting of the Gang of Chicago, one might conclude that a continuing decreasing phase in the Hubble parameter will proceed. The Gang requires 65 or even less (see Faber 2003). Back.
5 Please Mr. Referee; Mr. Referee, please! Don't reject my paper! I'm down on my knees. An' I ain't got a dime (cf. Dylan 1975). Back.