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Little Whimpers

His theory questions the Big Bang. But Jayant Narlikar believes that the western scientific establishment is out to silence him.

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Little Whimpers
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According to the Big Bang theory, the basic building blocks and first underlying structures of the universe were created in the first three minutes. Jayant Narlikar's tea, in a canteen outside the Homi Bhabha auditorium in Mumbai, is taking longer. Perhaps that's one reason why the celebrated scientist and director of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics has always disliked the Big Bang. "Too much patchwork is going on with that theory." He believes the universe was made by several mini-bangs instead of one mother bang. A paper submitted by cosmologists Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge and Narlikar, which takes the Big Bang apart, has been published in the November issue of the prestigious Astrophysical Journal. And a formidable army of scientists are horrified at this new theory called Quasi Steady State Cosmology (QSSC). As for the opposition, Narlikar sees a connection between the huge amounts of money from American funding agencies flowing into research based on the Big Bang and the hostility that is routed to him chiefly through one rather simple question - 'Why do you need a new theory?'.

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"Millions of dollars are spent on various projects which have the Big Bang as the premise," he points out. Positing that the Big Bang theory is harmonious with a deep-rooted western belief that the universe was created, Narlikar suggests that there was no beginning. "Christian ideology, however minimal in most western scientists, is more comfortable with something being created from nothing. In fact, in the '50s, the Pope had blessed the Big Bang theory. Today, if a man believes in the theory, the Lord sends American funding agencies to his doorstep. If a man doesn't, he has to face a debate. Then try and send a paper to a journal - it will be scrutinised by a man who is called 'referee'." In actual fact, of course, any such new

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theory would generate a debate, and the practice of a 'referee' evaluating any article sent to a technical journal is almost universal. But in Narlikar's case, the evidence was compelling enough for his paper to be published. "The French journal Comptes Rendus had invited me for a debate. But some people just kept asking me why I was propounding a new theory when the Big Bang has been working well for so long," he says.

But Narlikar believes that fundamentally, the Big Bang was never working well. As he says, "It was kept alive." First the theory said that the universe was 10 billion years old which meant that the Big Bang occurred 10 billion years ago. When there was an impending threat of finding bodies that were older than that, "they stretched some parameters and said that the universe was 15 to 20 billion years old." Narlikar laughs when he says, "If they find a body that is more than 20 billion years old, they'll put the age of the universe as 25 billion years old. That's why I say there is too much patchwork going on with the Big Bang." Narlikar also has a grudge against the intense lobbying and rush to corner funds. "The lobbying is very aggressive. It's very difficult for new theories to find funds. As a result, it's very difficult to carry out research with a premise that's different from the established theories," says Narlikar, insisting that the 'debate' around his theory is part of an attempt by the western scientific establishment to silence his voice.

The QSSC questions the idea that the universe has always been expanding using the inertia of the initial mother bang. According to the Big Bang, the universe was concentrated in a very dense state from which it exploded and expanded. In the first three minutes of creation, the universe cooled down and elementary particles called quarks condensed into protons and neutrons which are the building blocks of the atomic nuclei. The moral of the story is that since the source of the creation is an explosion, the universe will always expand, each galaxy leaving the other forever. But Narlikar believes the universe also contracts. "It's like vegetable prices," he says. "In an average year the prices go up and come down but over a long period, they go up. Similarly, the universe expands and contracts but over billions of years, it expands." He explains that new matter is created from energy fields which are also called creation fields. These fields are found around a mini-explosion that causes a localised expansion of the universe. Several of these mini-bangs or mini-creation events occur all over the universe causing a large-scale expansion. So, the source of the expansion is not the theoretical mother bang. The rapid expansion caused by the mini-bangs weakens the creation fields, thereby slowly reducing the number of 'creation events'. The mini-bangs stop, the expansion comes to a halt. Now the gravity of heavenly bodies pulls them together and the universe contracts. This intensifies the creation field, the mini-bangs start again and the explosions push the bodies away thereby resuming the expansion. That, apparently, is what the universe does for a living.

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And that's the basis of QSSC's belief that the universe constantly expands and contracts. Interestingly, there's already an outdated theory called the Steady-State Theory - which was replaced later by the Big Bang theory. The Steady-State theory believes that there was no festive beginning. In fact, there was no beginning at all. And one of the reasons why QSSC has invited glares could be that it has something in common, if nominally, with a theory that has been long abandoned. But Narlikar firmly believes the QSSC explains - or at least, strives to explain - things that the Big Bang couldn't.

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Meanwhile, outside the Homi Bhabha auditorium, Narlikar's tea is finally ready. A little later, he bumps into an old friend who asks him a simple question. "Can you comprehend all this about the universe?" Answers Narlikar: "No, but the human ego thinks it can." And it seems the universe shall continue to tickle similar egos across the world.

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