Non-standard models and the sociology of cosmology

Abstract

I review some theoretical ideas in cosmology different from the standard "Big Bang": the quasi-steady state model, the plasma cosmology model, noncosmological redshifts, alternatives to non-baryonic dark matter and/or dark energy, and others. Cosmologists do not usually work within the framework of alternative cosmologies because they feel that these are not at present as competitive as the standard model. Certainly, they are not so developed, and they are not so developed because cosmologists do not work on them. It is a vicious circle. The fact that most cosmologists do not pay them any attention and only dedicate their research time to the standard model is to a great extent due to a sociological phenomenon (the "snowball effect" or "groupthink"). We might well wonder whether cosmology, our knowledge of the Universe as a whole, is a science like other fields of physics or a predominant ideology.

Deficient Reasoning for Dark Matter in Galaxies

“…where V (r) is measured in units of a characteristic rotational velocity V 0 . As shown in our previous publications (Gallo and Feng, 2009, Feng and Gallo, 2011, 2014, equating (3) and (4) with slight algebraic arrangements yields a force-balance equation,…”

“…The integral (3) is equivalent to the left side of (2) but for a distributed mass in the galactic disk, while (4) has the same physical meaning as the right side of (2). With a readily measured rotation curve 4 -the orbital velocity as a function of galactocentric radius, V (r)-the mass distribution in a galaxy can be determined by solving for ρ(r) and A in (5) and (7), 4 The measured rotation curve has been considered to provide the most reliable information for deriving the mass distribution in disk galaxies (Toomre, 1963, Sofue andRubin, 2001) as elaborated in our previous publications (Gallo and Feng, 2009, Feng and Gallo, 2011, 2014. The mass determined with this method is fundamentally the same as that described by (2) for determining the solar mass, although computing ρ(r) in (5) is much more involved than calculating M from (2).…”

“…Inasmuch as its acceptance as the current standard model, the Big Bang Theory has not been fully verified by the existing observational evidence and remains as a hypothetical theory. Alternative models have been proposed for our understanding of the Universe as a whole (Lopez-Corredoira, 2014). In fact, baryonic matter exists everywhere.…”

O projeto de lei “Escola sem Partido” e o Ensino de Ciências

“…Esta teoria se consolidou como a mais aceita na comunidade científica após a década de 1960, quando a principal teoria rival, a teoria do Estado Estacionário, foi abandonada por quase todos os que investigavam nessa área (KRAGH, 1996;BAGDONAS, 2011). Por outro lado, há também teorias alternativas que continuam sendo desenvolvidas, porém por uma minoria da comunidade científica 3 (HOYLE et al, 2001;LÓPEZ-CORREDOIRA, 2014).…”

Alternative explanations of the cosmic microwave background: A historical and an epistemological perspective

“…Yet López-Corredoira (2014) has quite recently examined some alternative cosmological models from a sociological point of view. This is important, as the emergence Instead, we should generally regard them as a resource that can potentially be revised and revived (despite occasional fairly straightforward falsifications of its certain aspects) The evidence of orthodoxy does not necessarily justify our outright discarding of the alternatives in cosmology.…”