Don,

This is getting tiresome. You refuse to address my questions about huge problems with your finite, static universe model. But I'll try once--and only once--more to address yours.

My response to the apparent accelerating expansion of the universe is not to throw out Newton's third law and relativity. I see several more reasonable explanations, including these two.

1. It is possible that the acceleration is only apparent, since it is based on "standard candle" supernovas, and occasional deviations in the behavior of those supernovas have been observed. If further observations ultimately show that we are making incorrect assumptions about those "standard candles," then the acceleration may prove to be an illusion.

2. It is possible that the acceleration is real and correctly measured. In that case, it may well be an acceleration of spacetime itself, consistent with a particular Cosmological Constant in General Relativity.

Either of these is much more believable than your model, for reasons stated many times earlier in this thread.

Your other issue is with the cosmic inflation. In my book, I put that idea in perspective, leaving open the door for further discovery that may unite the grainy ideas of quantum mechanics and the spacetime continuum of general relativity. I write:

How could that be? In 1981, Alan Guth (1947- ), a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed an explanation for that odd result. [See note below] His idea, which he called inflation, blended a grand unified theory (GUT) with the physics of phase transitions, such as the freezing or melting. As he explained it, during an unimaginably short time after the Big Bang, the entire universe underwent a phase change, during which space itself expanded at a rate much greater than the speed of light. Before that phase transition, all matter/energy was unified. That led to thermal equilibrium between all regions of the universe, including those regions that were too far apart to communicate after that transition. At about the same time as Guth proposed cosmic inflation, John Schwarz and Michael Green (1946- ) modified string theory by adding another dimension and calling it superstring theory. As the decade proceeded, other physicists added even more dimensions, the precise number depending on the particular version of superstring theory that the physicists preferred. The number of physicists involved in string theory research increased rapidly in the 1984-86 period, as they realized the mathematics could describe all the subatomic particles and their interactions.

GUTs, superstrings, and cosmic inflation provide useful mathematical descriptions that tie together cosmology—the study of the behavior of the universe as an entity—and the physics of subatomic particles. Those approaches were developed to provide a foundation for a wide variety of observed physical phenomena, but none of them has yet led to a prediction of a testable but unobserved phenomenon. Until that happens, some physicists are reluctant to consider any of those approaches as a full-blown "theory," since scientists usually reserve that term for ideas that are not only supported by a large body of evidence but have also demonstrated their predictive power. This book follows the common terminology, using "string theory" and "grand unified theory" for example, even though calling them theories probably overstates the case.

Though Guth's idea has not yet reached the level of acceptance of the Big Bang (which made some remarkably accurate predictions about the ratios of the various isotopes in the universe), and string theory continues to be dubious, they are both consistent with the evidence and with both of the still un-unified quantum mechanics and general relativity.

In other words, they have survived the questioning of the entire physics community and are regarded as viable ideas.

Neither makes predictions as outrageous as yours, yet you continue asserting without responding to my questions.

If anyone is selling a bridge in Brooklyn, at this point it appears to be you. Show me the deed to your bridge and I might give your claim a bit more respect.

In other words, answer my questions already, Don. I won't respond further to yours until you do.

Note: The "odd result" refers to the apparent thermal equilibrium, as seen in measurements of the cosmic microwave background, of regions of space that are so far apart that they could never have interacted in the Universe's 13.7 billion year lifetime.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)