From the Liar: Big Bang Theory Explodes

From the annals of the National Liar

Volume 0, #0, April 1, 1993

Big Bang Theory Explodes

The “Big Bang” is dead. Astronomers from around the world convened to announce that the “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe is “absurd, incorrect, impotent and obsolete”.

Stephen Hawking said, “Basically, we were barking up the wrong tree. We thought the Big Bang explained everything, but now it has outlived its usefulness.”

The “Big Bang” theory claimed that the entire universe was originally concentrated in a single point, which exploded. This, according to the theory, explains the expansion of the universe; which explains the Hubble redshift; which in turn explains the darkness of the night sky. The Big Bang has also been made to answer for the abundance of deuterium; the flatness of space; the absence of anti-matter; and the 2.7 degree Kelvin background radiation.

However, difficulties plagued the theory from its inception. It was not clear how galaxies could form in a Big Bang universe; nor how to normalize the theory’s gravitational singularities. There were observational anomalies such as quantized redshifts, uneven background radiation, and “dark matter”. Some galaxies proved to be older than the supposed age of the Universe.

Hawking said, “It was a mess. The more data we got, the weirder this Big Bang looked. Finally we decided to stop fooling ourselves. Now we’re back to Square One, face to face with Olber’s old question; why is the night sky dark?”

(See the “Ask Dr. Psience” article in this issue to see other explanations for the darkness of the night sky.)

Roger Penrose said, “When you look at it closely, the Big Bang turns out to be nothing but a cultural neurosis projection. Remember, this theory was created by the same generation of physicists that built the atomic bomb. With explosion in their minds, they saw explosion in the sky.”

He added, “Now that nuclear weapons are politically incorrect, so is the Big Bang. I predict that in the future we will have a more ‘Green’ theory of the origin of the universe. Perhaps a steady-state model. We’ll think of something.”