Re: [asa] Historical question about steady-state cosmology

I have no expertise in the area, so all I can do is report my
impressions. Respecting the Big Bang, I run across various references to
the notion of a multiverse, with the notion that the series extends
indefinitely if not infinitely. The second notion is that the energy of
the vacuum can provide what is needed for "creation." I don't know if the
vacuum can provide enough for a singularity of such potential or if this
is pure hand waving.
Dave (ASA)

On Sat, 7 Jul 2007 12:53:43 EDT SteamDoc@aol.com writes:
I'll get to the history in a minute -- first the motivation.

Apparently some apologists are using the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
not in the traditional (and bogus) anti-evolution argument, but as a
cosmological argument. They say that the 2nd Law proves that the
universe cannot have existed forever. It seems to me that this is a
totally unnecessary argument, since the Big Bang is already
extraordinarily strong evidence for a finite age of our universe (and if
these apologists don't accept the Big Bang, they really have no business
making use of any science-based cosmological arguments).

Unnecessary though this argument might be, it is at least not obviously
wrong to me. While I am a thermodynamicist, my field is chemical
thermodynamics, and I know that thermo gets trickier when one gets into
cosmology. So a suppose a secondary question to any cosmologists out
there (George?) would be whether this argument makes sense.

But my main question is this. In the early 1900s, almost everybody
believed the "steady-state" theory of the universe. Yet, the science of
thermodynamics was already well-established by then. Did anybody at that
time see the Second Law as a serious problem for the steady-state
universe? If that criticism was made, it did not seem to carry the day,
so how was it dealt with?

Allan
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Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
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Received on Sat Jul 7 15:37:36 2007