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

The advantage this has over the traditional Big Bang is this does not
require an ancient Universe. It also seems to preclude oscillating
Universes.

As for the steady state question since this assumed an open "system" I
don't think it would apply.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 7, 2007, at 10:53 AM, SteamDoc@aol.com wrote:

> 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
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
> "Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
> attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cat"
>
>
>
> See what's free at AOL.com.

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Received on Sat Jul 7 18:48:08 2007