From AHMET GORGUN
Jayant Narlikar writes that Hubble’s observations provided ‘a dramatic
confirmation’ of general relativistic prediction that the Universe is expanding
(‘What if the big bang didn’t happen?’, 2 March). I don’t think this is
entirely correct. Hubble’s observation that galaxies are moving away from
each other suggests only that they were once closer together. It in no way
confirms that the Universe is expanding.
To infer from observations of motions of local galaxies that it is expanding
is anthropomorphism in disguise. We could implicitly be assuming that the
corner of the Universe that man can observe constitutes the entirety of
everything that exists.
The conclusion that the spreading galaxies necessarily means that sometime
in the past all matter and space was concentrated in the form of a primordial
atom with infinite density, temperature and pressure and with a diameter
equal to zero may be called Twainian Extrapolation. Mark Twain wrote in
Life in the Mississippi River that since the river ‘has shortened itself
two hundred and forty-two miles’ in 176 years, therefore, ‘in the Old Oolitic
Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi
River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck
out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any
person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower
Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New
Orleans will have joined their streets together.’
I guess that Twain lacked the imagination of big bang theorists to conceive
a time when the Mississippi River was an infinitesimal drop of water of
infinite density and zero diameter.
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Ahmet Gorgun Pearl River New York, US
