Dan wrote: Sorry, I made my last post prior to reading this one.
> > The actual process of nucleosynthesis is though to have stopped 20 minutes > after the big bang. We know that the inflationary period had to end after > densities were below those sufficient to produce magnetic monopoles. > > So, if you are arguing that the big bang did not survive without > modifications, and that some tweaking may still be needed, then that's not > problematic. The common nomenclature for this is that the big bang needed > to be modified to handle these problems, not that it is false. False would > be, for example, finding the steady state universe to be correct. > > So, I think you had been arguing more towards something of the latter, but > if it is the former, than our differences are mainly semantic. > I didn't read about it before last night but this summary of the problem of induction from the Wikipedia article on the Cosmological Principal describes my feelings rather well: Empirical observations of patterns occurring within a limited scope can shed no light on the state of things outside that scope. So what I believe is that any theory that attempts to describe the origin of the universe from our extremely limited perspective is flawed. Put it this way; If I could shrink an observer to the size of a virus, and place that observer under a thousand feet of water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, how well do you think that that observer could describe the Earth? Doug _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
