Universe-The Cosmology Quest, Part. II

Previews of both parts of this DVD can be seen at www.universe-film.com. It can be thought of as the "inelegant universe" response to the recently shown "Elegant Universe" film that glorifies the standard model. It is a well constructed two part film that benefitted from a collaboration with Walter Murch a Hollywood film editor who works with F. Coppola among others and who has more than a dozen academy awards to his credit. It will presumably be shown in Spanish. It has been shown on television in Scandinavia and will likely eventually appear in the rest of Europe. I doubt that it will ever be shown publicly in the US although some negotiations are in progress with the Discovery channel.

Part 1 is a historical and sociological overview of the "redshift controversy" that was championed by Halton Arp. Geoff and Margaret Burbidge are both interviewed. The film also contains a last interview with Fred Hoyle some months before his death. Some comments by John Dobson an ex-monk, "sidewalk astronomer" in San Francisco and inventor of the Dobsonian telescope are entertaining. It attempts to show the rigidity of the establishment to new ideas and challenges to the standard model upon which its power is based. One young Spanish astronomer, Martín López Corredoira is also interviewed in connection with his work on NGC 7603. Ironically the film focusses on two famous quasar-galaxy connections while never mentioning the stronger statistical arguments. Of course statistical arguments are more difficult to popularize.

Part 2 involves discussion of plasma cosmology as an alternative to the gravitationally dominated Big Bang. A brief history of plasma physics is given (not surprisingly-partly in Norwegian). It includes an interview with Eric Lerner who is author of a book titled "The Big Bang Never Happened". The rest of this part involves systematic attacks on the main assumptions underlying the Big Bang model. Jayant Narlikar the well known Indian cosmologist joins Lerner for this well presented critique. Some of the material in this section may surprise you and I have yet to hear a claim that any of it is incorrect.