The Big Bang Never Happened

■THE SPEARS OF ODINdominant ideas, he found it nearly impossible to get it published.In the end it was published in a relatively obscure Swedish journal.Worse still, Chapman refused to debate his ideas in any way.Despite Alfven's polemical presentations at conferences Chapmanwould rise, say briefly that he and his colleagues disagreed,and add, "We are presently preparing a paper that will clarifythese issues." Alfven would protest, but Chapman would sitdown and the matter would be closed.For thirty years, until Chapman's death in 1970, Alfven vainlytried to engage him in debate. Their personal relations remainedfriendly despite sharp scientific differences. On one occasion,Alfven and his wife, Kersten, were Chapman's guests at Cambridge.Chapman took Alfven, twenty years his junior, on a walkingtour of the ancient campus. It proved a frustrating experiencefor the younger man. Alfven recalls, "Every time I tried to raiseour differences, when I started to say, 'Doesn't it seem reasonablethat, in the substorms . . .' Chapman would politely interruptand point to some quaint old tower. He would then go on for ahalf hour about its history. Then I'd try again to get the conversationback to science and the same thing would happen."Another year, Chapman was Alfven's guest in Sweden. Insteadof a tour of Stockholm, Alfven had carefully prepared a modernreplica of Birkeland's magnetic sphere experiment. PerhapsChapman, seeing the currents "in the flesh" would at least discusswhy he thought they couldn't exist in space. "But he flatlyrefused to go down into the basement and see it," Alfven remembers."It was beneath his dignity as a mathematician to look at apiece of laboratory apparatus!"Given Chapman's dominant position in the field, it was inevitablethat Alfven would have an uphill battle. As Charles Kennel,professor of physics at UCLA, notes, his scientific style added tothe problem: "Alfven's method of work attracted controversy. Heimagines radically new ideas without always working out thedetailed physics. Since he then announces his conclusions tothe scientific community in a forceful manner, many individualswho find their pet conceptions challenged are antagonized, andinitially, there may be good scientific reasons to challengeAlfven. However, in the end, Alfven has proven right on bigissues enough times that I, for one, believe that one ignores whatAlfven thinks at one's own peril."185