The message
from Martin Brown contains these words:

/eclipse/

Indeed. But the evidence for a Big Bang cosmology is pretty compelling.
There are very few die hard Steady Staters remaining these days.

Depending on what you mean by that. There are plenty who believe that
the universe is continuously expansing and then falling in on itself in
an unending cycle of big crunches ans big bangs.

Some of these ideas can be ruled out observationally. Unless you invoke
a perverse deity to tweak things around on an ad hoc basis. One nasty
world model invokes demons whose job it is to decide on surprising
answers to any new questions that experimentalists decide to ask.

Quite. I'm one of them.

The dark matter, BTW, is bound up with string.

It is just so much more appealing to have the laws of physics the same
for all observers in an inertial frame of reference.

You *DO* believe that Einstein was right, then?

Multiverse conjectures allow for spanning all possible universes but
with only the interesting ones really showing up. A bit like the way
wave propagation of light simplifies to geometrical optics when viewed
at the larger scale.

However, in that case, we demons can't exist.

There are also some who posit continuous creation/generation of matter
at the centre of the universe, and yet others who maintain that by means
of a contorted space/time continuum what goes out of the fringes appears
to be coming in through the centre...

Anyway, how come the universe doesn't rank a capital letter, and
Belgium does?

I would refer you to HHGG

That only explains why it is sometimes followed by an exclamation mark.

--
Rusty
Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk
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