Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Science likes to pass itself off as being very flexible and will constantly amend its theories whenever new discoveries are made. In some cases this is true, but in other cases, science is as stiff necked about certain theories as a church is about dogma.

A prime example is the nature of the dinosaur debate. This debate is still evolving but the paleontologists held very rigid in their theories for many years. I had books growing up in the 80’s that were indistinguishable from books in the 50’s. Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, slow-witted creatures. Tyrannosaurus Rex stood completely upright on his hind legs. The primary sauropod was the brontosaurus. Brachiosaurus had to stand in water to support its weight. Etcetera, etcetera.

It wasn’t until the late 80’s when Robert Bakker published his book, The Dinosaur Heresies, challenging these theories. Many of these theories were picked up by Michael Creighton and incorporated into Jurassic Park. With the success of that series, the public started paying enough attention that people began to change their minds and science was actually forced to consider new theories and has made them into the new gospel.

I mention this example because I’ve been reading some articles that argue that the Big Bang theory is wrong, but science is resisting change. Apparently some of the key tenants of Big Bang have been disproved relatively recently. Doppler Shift is incorrect around certain key galaxies. The overall age of bodies such as the moon and Mars have been vastly overestimated. According to the Big Bang model, the galaxy is supposed to be electrically neutral and it has recently found to be not.

In its place is a theory of electric plasma strings that disperse matter throughout the universe. I don’t know the full nature of the theory except that it takes certain key elements first proposed by Immanuel Velikovsky in the 1950’s. I don’t quite buy all of his theories (he believes the planet Venus was ejected from Jupiter and caused the disasters of biblical era by closely passing Earth before settling into a stable orbit) but it does make for interesting reading. It also teaches one to challenge the orthodoxy of science. Question and agitate

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