Every time the big bang hypothesis runs into trouble, instead of abandoning it, its supporters just move the goal posts, introducing new and ever more arbitrary assumptions in order to shore it up. For example, the theory requires a certain amount of matter in the universe. If the universe was created 15 billion years ago, as the model predicts, there has simply not been enough time for the matter we observe to have congealed into galaxies like the Milky Way, without the help of invisible “dark matter”. According to the big bang cosmologists, in order for galaxies to have been formed from the big bang, there must have been sufficient matter in the universe to bring about an eventual halt to its expansion through the law of gravitation. This would mean a density of approximately ten atoms per cubic metre of space. In reality, the amount of matter present in the observable universe is about one atom per ten cubic metres – a hundred times less than the amount predicted by the theory.

The cosmologists decided to represent the density of the universe as a ratio of the density needed to bring the expansion to a halt. They call this ratio omega. Thus, if omega equals 1, it would just be sufficient to halt the expansion. Unfortunately, the actual ratio was observed to be around .01 or .02. Approximately 99 per cent of the required matter had somehow “gone missing”. How to solve the conundrum? Very simply. Since the theory demanded that the matter be there, they arbitrarily fixed the value of omega at close to 1, and then began a frantic search for the missing matter! The first problem facing the big bang was the origin of the galaxies. How did the extremely smooth background radiation produce such a “lumpy” irregular universe? The so-called ripples (anisotropies) in the radiation were supposed to have been a reflection of the formation of the clumps of matter around which the early galaxies coalesced. But the irregularities observed were too small to have been responsible for the formation of galaxies, unless there was a lot more matter, and therefore gravity, present than seems to be the case. To be exact, there needed to be 99 per cent more matter, which just wasn’t there.

This is where the notion of “cold dark matter” comes in. It is important to realise that no one has ever seen this stuff. Its existence was put forward in the early 1980s, in order to fill up an embarrassing hole in the theory. Since only 1 or 2 per cent of the universe can actually be seen, the remaining 99 per cent or so was alleged to consist of invisible matter, which is dark and cold, emitting no radiation at all. Such strange particles, after a decade of searching for them, remain unobserved. But they nevertheless occupy a central place in the theory, simply because it demands that they should exist.

Fortunately, it is possible to work out quite accurately the amount of matter in the observable universe. As we have already pointed out, it is about one atom for every ten cubic metres of space, a mere one per cent of what is required by the big bang theory. But, as the journalists like to say, don’t let the facts spoil a good story! If there is not enough matter in the universe to square with the theory, then there must be an awful lot of matter there which we can’t see. As Brent Tully put it, “It’s disturbing to see that there is a new theory every time there’s a new observation.”

At this stage, the defenders of the big bang decided to call on the aid of the Seventh Cavalry, in the person of particle physicists. The mission they were called upon to carry out puts all the exploits of John Wayne completely in the shade. The most he ever had to do was to find some unfortunate women and children carried off by the Indians. But when the cosmologists called in their colleagues who were busy investigating the mysteries of “inner space”, their request was a trifle more ambitious. They wanted them to find the 99 per cent or so of the universe which had inconsiderately “gone missing”. Unless they could find this missing matter, their equations would just not add up, and the standard theory of the origin of the universe would be in trouble!

In his book, The Big Bang Never Happened, Eric Lerner details a whole series of observations, the results of which have been published in scientific journals, which completely refute the idea of dark matter. Yet, in the teeth of all the evidence, the advocates of the big bang continue to behave like the learned professor who refused to look through the telescope to test the correctness of Galileo’s theories. Lerner claims dark matter must exist – because our theory demands it!

The test of scientific theory, is the correspondence of predictions and observation, and the big bang has flunked. It predicts that there should be no objects in the universe older than twenty billion years and larger than 150 million light-years across. There are. It predicts that the universe, on such a large scale, should be smooth and homogeneous. The universe isn’t. The theory predicts that, to produce the galaxies we see around us from the tiny fluctuations evident in the microwave background, there must be a hundred times as much dark matter as visible matter. There’s no evidence that there’s any dark matter at all. And if there is no dark matter, the theory predicts, no galaxies will form. Yet there they are, scattered across the sky. We live in one.[57]

Alan Guth succeeded in removing some of the objections to the big bang, but only by advancing the most fantastic and arbitrary version of the theory yet seen. It did not say what the “dark matter” was, but merely provided the cosmologists with a theoretical justification for it. The real significance was that it established the link between cosmology and particle physics that has lasted ever since. The problem is that the general tendency of theoretical physics, as in cosmology, has been to resort increasingly to a priori mathematical assumptions to justify their theories, making very few predictions that can be tested in practice. The resulting theories have an ever more arbitrary and fantastic character, and frequently seem to have more in common with science fiction than anything else.

In point of fact, the particle physicists who rushed to the aid of cosmology had plenty of problems of their own. Alan Guth and others were trying to discover a Grand Universal Theory (GUT), which would unify the three basic forces that operate on the small scale in nature – electromagnetism, the weak force (which causes radioactive decay), and the strong force (which holds the nucleus together, and is responsible for the release of nuclear energy). They hoped to repeat the success of Maxwell, a hundred years earlier, who had proved that electricity and magnetism were one and the same force. The particle physicists were only too willing to enter an alliance with the cosmologists, in the hope of finding the answer in the heavens for the difficulties they had found themselves in. In reality, their whole approach was similar. With scarcely any reference to observation, they based themselves on a series of mathematical models, and completely arbitrary assumptions, which were often little more than mere speculation. Theories have emerged thick and fast, each more incredible than the last. “Inflation” theory is mixed up with all this.

  1. Lerner, E., op. cit., pp. 39-40.