Balking Someone

Up on The Procrustean we see a piece on Roger Penrose's new aeons of time cosmology, which I alluded to in Georg Cantor's Infinities Part Two. Basically here's what aeons of time is:



"after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever."



Using data from sophisticated equipment, Penrose has claimed to have found irregularities in the CMB (cosmic microwave background) that could only be produced if his aeons of time cosmology were correct. However, the supporters of the various inflationary models also claim the data corresponds to precisely what would be expected if inflation occurred. Since the aeons of time and cosmic inflation are incompatable one or both of them has to be wrong (about the data found in the CMB and in general).



After reporting this, Rob at The Procrustean then makes a conclusion about Penrose, inflation, and intelligent design. He says (this whole issue is a bit of a head scratcher for me so I'll just point you in the right direction and let you figure this out for yourself):



"Neither Sir Roger nor the conventional inflationary models have made solid predictions. At best, they can be tweaked to some, but not all aspects of the data. They possess far too many adjustable parameters drawn from some sort of metaphysical repository of models that is itself questionable. Sir Roger attempts to address the metaphysical problem with Creation, and inflationary models address the metaphysical problem of contingency. Neither is particularly convincing. (And a closer look at CCC theory raise more questions about the infinite pressure of dark energy, the rescaling time, the supposed decay of protons and electrons, etc.)



"Which may mean that it is time to assess the situation. Some of the best minds of two generations have addressed cosmology since the discovery of the 3-degree blackbody CMB radiation and not found solutions to the twin problems of a necessary Creator and a necessary Design. Given their failure, and I do mean abject failure to find anything beyond a metaphysical black box with lots of dials, I would suggest that we claim support for the contrary. All of them have put the cart before the horse, trying to create a no-beginning-no-design theory by massaging the data, post-dicting their data to support their theory, and still have not succeeded, thereby proving the very thing they did not want to prove."



I'm not so sure I would jump from Penrose and inflation being wrong to the alternative being correct, but it does give one something to think about.



-Dee