Author's Note: This article is intended for redistribution, so long as no changes are made to the contents herein, including the author and cited URLs. Why is cosmology in a state of crisis? Some might doubt the tenability of this loaded question, but to many critics of standard cosmology, the question must be asked. Astronomers and astrophysicists are continually shocked and disturbed by new observations. But rather than see the underlying pattern in these "surprises" and "mysteries," which would alert them that something is terribly wrong with their view of the Universe, they resort to exotic interpretations with little or no evidentiary -- or even logical -- support. From black holes, to dark matter, to dark energy, to "warps in the spacetime fabric," the esoterica in astronomical literature has grown so weird and fantastical as to rival the most implausible plot twists on Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Carl Sagan warned of this problem more than 25 years ago in his iconic book, Cosmos. At that time, the Big Bang had not yet become a "fact"; questions were still permitted.

On the question of whether the Doppler interpretation of galactic redshift is a reliable indicator of an "expanding universe," Sagan wrote: "There is nevertheless a nagging suspicion among some astronomers, that all may not be right with the deduction, from the redshift of galaxies via the Doppler effect, that the universe is expanding.

The astronomer Halton Arp has found enigmatic and disturbing cases where a galaxy and a quasar, or a pair of galaxies, that are in apparent physical association have very different redshifts...." Sagan continues, "If Arp is right, the exotic mechanisms proposed to explain the energy source of distant quasars -- supernova chain reactions, supermassive black holes and the like -- would prove unnecessary.

Quasars need not then be very distant. But some other exotic mechanism will be required to explain the redshift. In either case, something very strange is going on in the depths of space." Sagan's acknowledgment here revealed both a candor and humility no longer found in popular scientific media (and the electrical theorists can't help but note the irony of this).

It's also remarkable that 25 years ago, the astronomer Halton Arp had already posed the challenge to the expanding universe, and the Big Bang. And yet today, one would think the issues have all been settled. (For background on the discoveries that have challenged the Doppler interpretation of redshift, including the extraordinary research of Halton Arp, see http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00...x.htm#Redshift) To see just how far BB theory has taken cosmologists into a fantasy land, consider the recent Internet item, "Evidence for a parallel universe?," http://www.paternitytestinglabs.com/...llel-universe/

. The story discusses recent data acquired by NASA's WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite that supposedly reveals a "huge void" in the universe: "Since our universe is relatively heterogeneous, empty spaces are not rare, but in this case the enormous magnitude of the hole is way outside the expected range.

The hole found in the constellation of Eridanus is about a billion light years across, which is roughly 10,000 times as large as our galaxy or 400 times the distance to Andromeda, the closest 'large' galaxy." The story continues, "The dimension of the hole is so big that at first glance, it results [sic] impossible to explain under the current cosmological theories...." So how are some scientists reacting to this data that may be "impossible to explain under the current cosmological theories"? The same way they react to other "impossible" observations and discoveries -- by inventing esoterica that have no analogs in experiment or nature. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physics Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton says that this "void" is "...the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own". The article goes on to refer to the observation of the "void" as possible "experimental evidence" for a parallel universe. But what are scientists actually seeing that would lead anyone to speculate about "parallel universes"? Answer: "NOTHING."
And the testable prediction offered by this interpretation is that MORE "nothing" will be found -- "Her model predicts the existence of two voids rather than one, one in each hemisphere of our universe." Of course, no one predicted the appearance of a "void," and then went looking for it. WMAP was mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) when the "void" came looking for them.

Ergo, this was not an "experiment," but rather an astonishing, even "impossible" discovery that has thrown astronomers onto their back feet. The observation of clumps and "voids" has always been a problem for Big Bang cosmology, but the discovery of this "impossibly" huge "void" only highlights BB theory's inherent implausibility.

From its first formulation onward, the Big Bang hypothesis was hampered by the problem of "inhomegeneity." Critics argued that raw subatomic -- or preatomic -- material exploding outward at nearly the speed of light would produce an evenly distributed cloud with no force present to generate cosmic structure.

But in fact, we observe cosmic structure everywhere we look, and the distribution of matter is profoundly uneven. Both the concentrations of matter, and the "voids" between these concentrations, falsify the inherent, logical "predictions" of the original theory. The force of gravity is weak and takes time to move things around. The elapsed time since the conjectured Big Bang sets a limit on how big any structure can be. Structures exceeding that limit are, by the cosmologists' own admission, impossible. And just as the "huge void" constitutes a problem, BB theorists must wrestle at the other end of the spectrum, with massive galactic structure which, by their own measuring stick (redshift = distance interpretation), must have formed in the first phases of cosmic evolution.

Now they can only respond to undeniable observations by making things up -- in this case, a PARALLEL UNIVERSE, no less. Decades ago, the father of "plasma cosmology," Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfven, had already admonished cosmologists that the problem of inhomogeneity would lead them to a dead end, so long as they refused to deal with electricity in space.

More recently, physicist Eric J. Lerner, author of The Big Bang Never Happened, wrote that the scale of observed voids in galaxy distribution, "combined with observed low streaming of galaxies, imply an age for these structure that is at least triple and more likely six times the hypothesized time since the Big Bang...."

According to Lerner, while this unevenness refutes the BB hypothesis, "...the predictions of plasma cosmology have been strengthened by new observations, including evidence for the stellar origin of the light elements, the plasma origin of large-scale structures, and the origin of the cosmic microwave background in a 'radio fog' of dense plasma filaments." (These observations of Lerner were offered years before the recent observation of the "impossible" void -- IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 31, No. 6, December 2003.) It needs to be pointed out that scientists are handicapped both in trying to assess the actual "size" of the "void," and why they are seeing it. WMAP observed an area of space where the "temperature" of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is interpreted as 20 to 45 percent lower than that of the surrounding region (they interpret "hot" spots and "cold" spots by the peak intensity frequency -- interpreted as "black body" (thermal) radiation (the Planck curve) -- that varies slightly from one direction to another).
This suggested to astronomers the appearance of a "void." They then looked at the SDSS galaxy-redshift survey, and saw that the "void" (the space where no galaxies could be observed) was 900 million light-years across. This lack of galaxies (actually galaxy clusters) was confirmed by a survey of radio-galaxies by the Very Large Array (VLA). But in a plasma universe, the appearance of a vast and remote "void" may be entirely illusory. It is now evident that astronomers imagine they are seeing things at the far edges of the visible Universe that are actually occurring in our own cosmic neighborhood, the Milky Way galaxy.

The research of radio astronomer Gerrit Verschuur has demonstrated that the "cosmic microwave background" shown by WMAP is local microwave fog, as Lerner proposed in the article noted above. So the "vision" of observers using WMAP is clouded by the local activity of electric current filaments. (See Big Bang or Big Goof? http://www.wired.com/science/space/n...07/11/big_bang) Underlying this issue, of course, is the controversial method of measuring an object's distance from the observer by its redshift. We are told that the larger the redshift of an object, the farther away it must be, and the faster it is moving away from us. But since the late 1960's, Halton Arp has been accumulating discordant redshift evidence, as noted by Sagan above.
Indeed, some have said that the Big Bang has already been falsified due to the refutation of the underlying redshift = distance assumption. One of the most dramatic refutations can be found in the galaxy NGC 7319. This galaxy is a Seyfert 2, which means it is a galaxy shrouded with such heavy dust clouds that they obscure most of the bright, active nucleus that defines a normal Seyfert galaxy.
This galaxy has a redshift of 0.0225. In front of its opaque gas clouds, or embedded in the topmost layers of the dust, is a quasar with a redshift of 2.114.

What does this tell us? By the Big Bang principles, the quasar must be BILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS farther from us than the galaxy, because its redshift is so much larger. And yet the galaxy is opaque, so the quasar must be near the surface of the dust clouds or even IN FRONT of them. (See Quasar in Front of Galaxy, http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/20...sar-galaxy.htm) It is clear that no legitimate reason exists for anyone to be concocting science fiction fantasies about "parallel universes," based on phenomena that are perfectly explicable by plasma science. Imagine a meteorologist going on television and explaining an unusual weather front as an effect of "mini black holes," or "invisible dark matter," or a "parallel universe." When asked to verify his fantasies, he could pull out his chalkboard and begin sketching some very elegant mathematical equations.

Whom would he succeed in convincing? We must remember that the laws of physics that we observe on the earth are not suspended in the vast reaches of space!

The irony is that the most outspoken critics of the Electric Universe have repeatedly asserted that it "violates" or "rewrites" the known laws of physics. This is wrong, and in fact, the electric hypothesis observes the laws of nature much more faithfully than the unmitigated esoterica that dominates astronomy and theoretical physics. And this is precisely why mainstream cosmology is now in a state of crisis bordering on meltdown. ______ For your best gateway to the Electric Universe, see Thunderbolts.info. And for a highly-acclaimed 60 minute video introduction to the Electric Universe, see Thunderbolts of the Gods on Google Video: http://video.google.com/videosearch?...of+the+gods%22