John Dobson (amateur Astronomer) - Dobson's Cosmology

Dobson's Cosmology

Dobson often uses his speaking opportunities during sidewalk and other observing sessions, at astronomical societies, and in the media, to promote his own non-standard cosmology theories, claiming the Big Bang model does not hold up to scrutiny. Dobson labels the Big Bang model as "fudge without walnuts". In “The Equations of Maya”, Dobson writes: “The Big Bang cosmologists want to get the Universe out of nothing. It’s like asking us to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing. But that’s not what shows in our physics.” He suggests that this model has become quite “tortured”, likening it to the Ptolemaic system. He cites the inconsistency of dark matter that cannot be explained without resorting to what he considers increasingly complicated, unlikely, and unsupported theories. In essence, Dobson claims that physicists have been inventing new physics to match the Big Bang model, recently with a "mystery" called dark energy. He is also a critic of an educational system which, he asserts, indoctrinates young scientists in the Big Bang model “without presenting any of the problems” with it. He challenges people to broaden their thinking and to think more critically.

Dobson advocates a “Recycling” Steady State model of the universe. His model draws on Einstein's assertion in special relativity that energy is interchangeable with matter, and on Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Pauli exclusion principle (aka "Pauli's Verbot"). He says that cosmologists have, in general, overlooked what is going on at the edge of the universe. Dobson claims that at the edge, we know a great deal about a particle’s momentum, so “by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, if our uncertainty in the momentum approaches zero, our uncertainty in where the particles are must approach infinity. The hydrogen simply ‘tunnels’ back in.” Dobson contends that although matter in the universe is forever expanding outward, matter “recycles” over time in a way comparable with quantum tunneling. Entropy therefore remains constant, because atoms rebuild their order as they recycle.

In “Origins” Dobson addresses the creation of life: “For a Big Bang cosmology, in which the early Universe was extremely hot, a discussion of the origin of life is of course appropriate, since life could not have been with us from the beginning. But for a Steady State model, in which the Universe is without beginning, perhaps life itself could be without beginning.” Dobson also points out the Pasteur-Darwin paradox: “Pasteur thought that he had shown that life does not arise from non-living matter but only from previous life. Darwin seems to have taken the other view, namely, that it might have arisen from ‘some warm pool’.”