From Garth Barber
Thank you for publishing the article questioning big bang theory. The standard “concordance” model is so entrenched that many editors would have refused to publish such a paper that dared to question the cosmological paradigm, even though its criticisms are well founded.
The trick is to have a credible alternative against which the paradigm may be compared and tested. Now is a particularly exciting time because observations are about to be made that will do just this. Gravity Probe B is entering its science phase following its launch on 20 April, after about 40 years of planning and delays. Many cosmologists, such as Kenneth Nordtvedt, have said that the experiment was worth doing when it was first planned in the 1960s, but that today the result is a foregone conclusion.
However, not all agree with this dogma. The satellite is in a polar orbit and will measure the two precessions of four gyroscopes caused by the curvature of space-time and the spinning of the Earth. My published theory, Self Creation Cosmology, predicts that the first of these should be 5.5120 arc seconds per year, or 5/6 of the value predicted by general relativity, while the second should be equal to the corresponding GR value. We shall know shortly. The theory may be found at www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0405094.
Tadworth, Surrey, UK
