Eric Lerner

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Lerner at a Google TechTalks presentation in 2007

Eric J. Lerner is an American popular science writer, independent plasma researcher, and serves as the executive director of the Focus Fusion Society and president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. He is an advocate of plasma cosmology, a nonstandard cosmology, and authored the 1991 book The Big Bang Never Happened, which advocates Hannes Alfvén's alternative to the dominant Big Bang theory.

Professional work

Lerner was born in 1947 in Brookline, Massachusetts, and received a BA in physics from Columbia University. He did graduate work in physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and then pursued a career in popular science writing.

In 1984, he began studying plasma phenomena and laboratory fusion devices, performing experimental work on the dense plasma focus. Lerner received funding from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1994 and 2001 to explore whether the dense plasma focus could be an effective ion thruster to propel spacecraft. He believes that it can also be used to produce useful aneutronic fusion energy.

Lerner is a critic of the Big Bang model and advocates an infinitely old Universe. In 2006 he accepted an invitation to be a Visiting Scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, offered at the initiative of fellow Big Bang critic and MOND enthusiast Riccardo Scarpa.

Lerner is also an active general science writer, estimating that he has had about 600 articles published. He has received journalism awards between 1984 and 1993 from the Aviation Space Writers Association.

Activism

While at Columbia, Lerner participated in the 1965 Selma March and helped organize the 1968 Columbia Student Strike.

In the 1970s, Lerner became involved in the National Caucus of Labor Committees, an offshoot of the Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society. Lerner left the National Caucus in 1978, later stating in a lawsuit that he had resisted pressure from the US Labor Party, an organization led by Lyndon LaRouche, to violate election law by channeling profits of an engineering firm to the organization.

Lerner has been involved in political activism. He has sought civil rights protection for immigrants as a member and spokesman for the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee.

The Big Bang Never Happened

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Lerner's 1991 book, The Big Bang Never Happened

The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe (1991) is Lerner's controversial book rejecting mainstream Big Bang cosmology and advancing instead a non-standard plasma cosmology originally proposed by Hannes Alfvén, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physics, in the 1960s.

In this book, Lerner claimed that the Big Bang theory is inconsistent with empirical data. For example, he recounted a well known cosmological feature that superclusters are larger than the largest virialized structures that have formed in the age of the universe, a feature limited by subsequent observations to the end of greatness and explained in the astronomical journals as arising from a power spectrum of density fluctuations growing from the quantum fluctuations predicted in inflationary models. Lerner also proposed that dark matter does not exist and tried to provide alternate explanations for the observational evidence. As an alternative, Lerner asserted that plasma cosmology is more consistent with known physics than the Big Bang is:

The phenomena that the Big Bang seeks to explain with a mysterious ancient catacylsm, plasma theories attribute to electrical and magnetic processes occurring in the universe today.

He compared his opinion of the recent history of modern cosmology to his interpretation of ancient astronomy:

Just as the medieval astronomers added epicycle after epicycle to Ptolemy's spheres in order to match his geocentric theories with observed planetary movement, so today cosmologists add dark matter to cosmic strings to inflation, papering over the yawning crevices in their theory.

To explain the observed evolution of the universe, he proposed a model of thermodynamics attributed in part to the work of Ilya Prigogine under which the universe has no definite age but continually increases in order in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics.

Edward Wright's reaction

Edward L. Wright, who teaches cosmology and astrophysics at UCLA, has a webpage devoted to describing errors in Lerner's book. He points out that Lerner's three major criticisms of the Big Bang are incorrect and were known to be incorrect when Lerner wrote the book. He also points out that Lerner's alternative model for Hubble's Law is dynamically unstable, that the number density of distant radio sources falsifies Lerner's explanation for the cosmic microwave background, and that Lerner's explanation that the helium abundance is due to stellar nucleosynthesis fails because of the small observed abundance heavier elements. Wright also points out a few miscellaneous errors of data presentation, interpretation, and arithmetic.

As a rebuttal, on his web page "Dr. Wright is Wrong.," Lerner counters that:

Observation since the last edition of the book was published in 1992 have only served to make the arguments in it stronger and to further contradict Wright's assertions.

Wright updated his page subsequent to this remarking that it appeared that Lerner had abandoned part of the plasma cosmology approach (specifically, Alfvén's explanation for the epxanding universe) in favor of tired light, which Wright describes as "a total failure" while pointing out the errors in tired light on a related webpage.

Reviews

The book received unfavorable reviews from professional cosmologists. Paul Davies, reviewed the book for the New York Times and found it to be unsatisfactory. The newspaper published a rebuttal by Lerner, who referred to Davies as "a leading proponent and popularizer of the big bang theory" and focused on his attribution of the theory to Lerner instead of to Alfvén:

Mr. Davies's motive in this is clear. Like other supporters of the big bang, he wants to portray a 'scientific establishment' unified behind an unquestioned theory that is challenged only by a few individuals without real credentials. Mr. Davies finds it impossible to admit that a Nobel laureate believes that the universe had no beginning, that, in Mr. Alfvén's words, 'the big bang is a myth'.

Lerner's rebuttal was itself criticized by Arno A. Penzias, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for his codiscovery of cosmic microwave background, which is the characteristic radiation spectrum associated with the Big Bang:

The sizes of the vast ribbons of galaxies that Eric J. Lerner refers to come straight out of the Big Bang model itself.... Contrary to Mr. Lerner's claim, therefore, the 'simple mathematics' he cites rests upon, rather than contradicts the Big Bang model.

Subsequent to this, Davies himself responded to Lerner's criticism of his review:

It seems to me that the theory proposed by Mr. Lerner has serious problems in relation to thermodynamics. This is merely my professional opinion, for what it is worth. Others can judge for themselves.... I accept that Mr. Lerner's book reports work that is largely due to Hannes Alfven, but this does not render it immune from criticism.

Victor J. Stenger, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, criticized Lerner's book in a 1992 edition of the popular magazine, Skeptical Inquirer:

Lerner uses the kinds of arguments one often hears in public discourse on science, but rarely among professional scientists themselves. For example, he argues that plasma cosmology is in closer agreement with everyday observation than big-bang cosmology, and hence is the more sensible. A look through a telescope reveals spirals and other structures similar to those observed in the plasma laboratory (and, as cosmologist Rocky Kolb has remarked, in your bathroom toilet as well). Following Lerner's line of reasoning, we would conclude, as people once did, that the earth is flat, that the sun goes around the earth, and that species are immutable.

Björn Feuerbacher physicist at the University of Heidelberg and Ryan Scranton, physicist at the University of Pittsburgh wrote of Eric Lerner's analysis:

Lerner's arguments against the BBT fall well short of convincing.... At the same time, Lerner's claims about the ability of the plasma cosmology model to describe the observations correctly are simply wrong.... Lerner also has a bad habit of citing scientific articles in support of his case when, in fact, they actually run contrary to his claims.

British physicist and writer Alec MacAndrew wrote that:

The Lerner book, at least, is quirky and badly flawed. Anyone who is really interested in understanding the science needs to read much more widely than that.

Sean M. Carroll has also written a critique of Lerner's advocacy:

But if your professional activity consists of combating a cosmological model that is based on GR, you shouldn't open your mouth without understanding at least the basics. So if I get to decide whether to allocate money or jobs to one of the bright graduate students working on some of the many fruitful issues raised by the Big Bang cosmology, or divert it to a crackpot who claims that the Big Bang has no empirical successes, it's an easy choice. Not censorship, just sensible allocation of resources in a finite world.

The book received favorable reviews from several reviewers who were not professional cosmologists; for example, the Chicago Tribune says:

Lerner does a fine job poking holes in Big Bang thinking and provides a historical perspective as well, linking scientific theories to trends in philosophy, politics, religion and even economics...a most readable book.

and Gregg Sapp of Montana State University Libraries says:

His contention that the Big Bang is merely a repackaged creation myth is presumptuous, but well argued. To present a current scientific controversy to a general audience risks, on one hand, misleading the public and, on the other, circumventing the peer review process. This book, however, makes valid points in a convincing manner and does neither. Recommended for general science collections.

References

External links and references

• Official websites:
  • Eric J. Lerner Home Page
  • Focus Fusion Society
  • Big Bang Never Happened Home Page and Summary
  • Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc.