No! This Guy Hasn't "Proven" the Steady State Theory

The steady state theory has been moribund for over 46 years, thanks to the discovery by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of the 2.7 K microwave background radiation (in 1965) for which they won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978. The Steady State theory of Fred Hoyle was simply unable to account for that isotropic radiation, and hence, astronomical and cosmological heft went to the Big Bang theory, originally conceived by George Gamow in modern form.

Now flash forward to January, 2011 and the Intertel journal Integra which features an article by a Larry Bodkin, Sr. purporting to contain an argument for the steady state theory we all believed was dead. Half of the space he consumes is taken up simply by explaining the well-known Doppler Effect, via the example of terrestrial sound sources. Thus, when a siren say is rapidly approaching you, its waves are compressed in your direction and you detect higher pitch (frequency). When the ambulance siren is going the other direction, the waves are stretched apart and you detect a lower pitch or longer frequency.

Now, this Doppler effect also applies to light sources and is the basis for the related explanation for the cosmic expansion of the universe. Or, more technically, the reason that all distant galaxy clusters (not individual galaxies in our own cluster, which may be moving toward or away from us) are flying apart. Thus, as their spectral lines shift to the red or long wavelength end of the spectrum, it discloses movement away- much like a siren displaying lower pitch, while if the spectral lines are shifted to the blue end, the opposite effect manifest. The diagram below, a simple sketch, shows this for the observed spectra of a distant object:



_____________________¦L1______¦L2_______
__________¦________¦_______________
RED REGION ... .... .. ..BLUE REGION


In the view above, two pairs of spectral lines are observed to be red-shifted from their normal positions (top). The greater the displacement from the normal position, the greater the velocity at which the source is receding. This observation for many distant cosmic sources is the basis for the expansion of the universe. The diagram - called a Hubble diagram- shows this relationship in generic form: that is, the more distant the object, the faster it is receding according to application of the Doppler effect.

This relation between distance (D) and recessional velocity (v), has since come to be known as Hubble's law and can be expressed:

v = cz = HD

where H is known as the Hubble constant, after Edwin Hubble who first discovered it, D is the distance, c is the speed of light and z is the red shift. In general, the red shift:


z = v /c

for the non-relativistic case. Thus, if the shift z = 0.5 then the recessional velocity is: v = 0.5c, in other words the object is moving away at half the speed of light. If the object is approaching the speed of light a different expression is needed:

v/c = (z^2 + 2z)/ (z^2 + 2z + 2)

Bodkin, for his part, barely explores any of this, and his "argument" primarily relies upon the earlier one of Fred Hoyle that approach and recession of sources are present in fairly equal amounts. However, they emnphatically are not and we have the instruments to finely discriminate where and how approach and recession are displayed.

For example, there ARE equally distributed approaches and recessions of galaxies within the same galaxy clusters, such as the Milky Way galaxy's Local Group. However, when one reverts to cosmological distances (e.g. at the level of distant quasars or galaxy clusters) this disappears and we see all the distant sources receding, and hence a clear unidirectional expansion, which provided more support for the Big Bang.

The main problem of Bodkin is that while discussing these effects in a kind of descriptive way, he never really ties them to showing how a creation field (of the type Hoyle proposed) would work to engender matter. I did attempt to do this using tensor equations in a 1964 science fair project ('The Structure of the Universe') but was never quite successful. This indicated to me that writing or talking about such a field was much easier than justifying it quantitatively!

And even Hoyle himself conceded (Frontiers of Astronomy, p. 306, that "it is an unsatisfactory character of the theory that it's obliged to place its crucial processes beyond the range of tests of both observational verification and theoretical consistency". Alas, a standard which Bodkin himself hasn't transcended!