The Big Bang Never Happened

■ THE PLASMA UNIVERSE ■Fig. 6.18. After the February 1989 International Workshop on PlasmaCosmology, Hannes Alfven (second from left) relaxes with Tony Peratt(center) and the author (right) at his home in San Diego.All the remaining observers' hands went up. Evidently, the workshophad raised some doubts.But it had done more than that. For the first time the data thatconflicted with the Big Bang and the alternative plasma explanationswere brought together in a single conference. And the presscoverage was excellent: the Times ran a prominent article describing"The first serious challenge to the Big Bang in twentyfiveyears," and the Globe ran a detailed and accurate article.From now on, there would be no question that scientists andmuch of the general public would be aware that the Big Bang isnot the only cosmological possibility.One question raised at the conference worried me, however.After my presentation Tully had asked whether my theory thatradio waves are absorbed as they travel between galaxies contradictsobservations of nearby spirals. Because there is a correlationbetween a galaxy's infrared and radio brightness, but the infraredradiation is presumably not absorbed, the correlation shouldchange with distance—if the radio waves are absorbed. In otherwords, infrared emissions should not drop with distance, butradio-frequency emissions should, just as a headlight is dimmed275