Marcus Chown on FORA.tv

[tayga]

Here's a very interesting interview with Marcus Chown.

Marcus is the cosmology consultant for the New Scientist, a publication I've never associated with a particularly daring editorial style. He has written a number of popular science books based on explaining the Big Bang and I would have said that he falls pretty squarely into the non-EU camp.

However, in his interview he honestly raises some of the major problems of reconciling the observed universe with the Big Bang model and even points out that inflation, dark matter and dark energy are ad hoc add-ons to the BB paradigm. Furthermore, he compares this to Ptolemaic epicylces in a way often used by EU writers.

The interview was originally recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I wonder, did Marcus have a chat with some of our eminent antipodeans and is he foreshadowing a more controversial article or book of his own?

http://fora.tv/2009/05/23/Marcus_Chown_ ... ullprogram

[earls]

"a publication I've never associated with a particularly daring editorial style"

Odd, considering New Scientist is generally frowned upon by the hardcore scientific community and elitists for its forays into what they label "pseudoscience" and publication of other non-peer reviewed articles.

Consider the example of the "EM Drive" that garnered a lot of criticism.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09 ... e-buildin/

[mharratsc]

I gotta go with the magazine's mainstreamism... New Scientist won't put an Astronomy or Astrophysics article in their magazine if it isn't the very bleeding edge of mainstreamist conjectural nonsense

Just this morning I sent an email to them cancelling my subscription because of their predilection for putting the most hare-brained, outlandish conjectural stories, and completely ignoring all the science that the IEEE has done in the fields. I told em I would be happy to come back IF they would start covering some of the discoveries made by the IEEE guys as well as the other theoretical mathematics hallucinations they've covered for the past 3 years of my subscription.

Mike H.

[earls]

"theoretical mathematics hallucinations"

Seriously.

[mharratsc]

Wow, I finally sat all the way through that interview with him.

Did you notice how- before they actually started discussing things- they did the obligatory "Praise Einstein!" (Crowd murmurs "Praise Einstein...")? I almost fell outta my chair...

However, what he said had an effect, and makes the man an ally along the lines of "the enemy of my enemy.." He did in fact cut loose full blast in the face of the audience (mostly astronomers I would think because no mathematicians threw a brick at his head) with his proclamation that the Big Bang, Dark Matter/Energy and whatnot are all mathematically non-functional when comparing recent observation to those theories.
He espoused continued research and not sitting on laurels, and that is yet another seed of doubt planted in younger minds that may realize fruition as full-blown scorn of the anti-scientific method we see prevalent today.

Time will tell. Of that I have great faith!

Mike H.

[earls]

I was rather surprised by their confidence of verifying "black holes."