Customer Reviews

The cult of the big bang: Was there a bang?

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I am woefully unqualified to review this book, but I feel that I did get enough out of it to discuss it somewhat intelligently. I have taken the time over the last few years to read science books that challenge the various high priesthoods of science, from the men who say they know that Darwinian evolution explains the development all life, to the men who claim they can tell us within less than a second when and how the universe came about. These hallowed guardians of the gates of truth tell us w/o the slightest doubt that in addition to what they know about what happened in the past, that therefore they can assure us that it was all a big accident and has no meaning for us individually or collectively.

But maybe they (and their scientism) don't know as much as they claim, as Mr. Mitchell's interesting and *very* challenging book documents in astonishing detail!

When you study the Big Bang theory (BBT), you see that what cosmologists have done is use theories, yes only theories, of particle physics to prove the BBT, which is saying that what goes on at the sub-atomic level also explains "the whole shebang." If the theories don't match the data, the cosmologists invent some new theory, like inflation, which then somehow exactly fits the data that caused the inconsistency, and thus "proves" once again that the theory is correct. This cycle has repeated itself many times with the BBT.

Because of the connection between BBT and particle physics, Mr. Mitchell includes a rather amazing discussion of this topic as one of the first chapters, along with relativity and quantum physics. I had no idea that there were so many types and varieties of particles determined by physicists!

Next, he presents a very good discussion of the history of the BBT, and immediately starts his relentless critique of many, many serious problems with BBT. For example, the whole idea that there was a singularity that exploded into the universe itself violates many laws of physics. Then he discusses the smoothness issue, which is that the universe is full of irregularities that violate the BBT.

In the next chapter Mitchell tells us that there is not one version of BBT, but there are actually three: the flat, open, and closed BBT universes. Throughout the remainder of the book the author shows the problems and contradictions with each version of BBT, in a discussion that often left me confused, but at least I understood his logic! Not surprising, after all, we are dealing with the whole universe!

I will mention only four more of a plethora of issues that are discussed in the remainder of the book.

1) BB cosmologists have determined that 90-99% of the physical universe must be dark matter for the BBT to be correct, but, believe it or not, they have not as far as I know definitely identified any! On a similar note, I might also mention that I am still seeing articles in "Science News" where cosmologists are saying that they think they've found an "event horizon," which would prove the existence of black holes. And I thought they had found proof of black holes many years ago!

2) Microwave background radiation (MBR) is usually brought out as the most definitive "proof" of BBT. Mr. Mitchell thoroughly shows the contradictions with MBR and all three BBT universes, and also notes that MBR might be consistent with other cosmological theories.

3) Matter vs. anti-matter - The BBT does not explain why there is so much more matter than anti-matter, when according to current theories of physics they should be equal.

4) "The Great Wall" of supercluster galaxies, which could be up to 100 billion years old, thoroughly discredits all of the dates given by BBT theorists, that the universe is 8 to 15 billion years old.

Mr. Mitchell includes a very humorous chapter on the priests of cosmology, where the messiah is Einstein, the head priest is Stephen Hawking, and he provides lists of university "churches" where the interlocking careers of BBT "bishops" assure that all is well and the BBT is the correct "Genesis" of creation. Any scientist who dares to challenge BBT dogma will be excommunicated.

Finally, because an alternative cosmology is needed to replace the one he discredits, Mr. Mitchell presents what he calls the "near" Steady State Theory, or NSST, which is a resurrection of the discredited SST along with additions to make it more suitable to what has been observed so far.

I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in BBT, even if he/she can only understand this book cursorily, like me!

After read Eric J. Lerner's excellent book "The Big Bang Never Happened" I was inspired to buy this book. After reading it I wanted to give a higher rating for this book because the detailed information supplied by William C. Mitchell, exposing the myth of the big bang, is truly excellent. Mr. Mitchell has written a very usefull and helpful book but because he fails to completely separate himself from the usual "cosmology" nonsense the book ends on a very sour note with his own theories which don't look all that different from the Big Bang nonsense. The last couple of chapters of this book would better have been left out completely. In addition, Mr. Mitchell is a less than able writer. This book badly needed an editor.

I recommend this book as a usefull reference for those seeking to understand current cosmology discussion and as an expose of a lot of the nonsense about the Big Bang.

I just got this book yesterday, 1 May 2001, and have only read the chapter where Mitchell offers his NSST (near steady state theory). The last printing was 1995 which was before the latest Ia supernova observations, in 1998, which pretty well refute his NSST ideas. If it weren't for this I would have rated the book five stars without even reading it because I am so familiar with the "priesthood". I thought it was great that Amazon has an in depth personal biography of Mitchell which was absent from the book. He sounds like a hell of a guy and I would love to meet him. I am going to try to contact him. If anyone knows his email address I hope they will send it to me or give him mine which is: dwhig265@aol.com I think it would be a good idea for all authors to show their email address like comic strip authors do. You never know when someone might send you a good idea. I thought the only previous reviewer to myself did a good job. Sincerely, Dwain W. Higginbotham