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Eric J. Lerner (born May 31, 1947) is an American popular science writer and independent plasma researcher. He wrote the 1991 book The Big Bang Never Happened, which advocates Hannes Alfvén's plasma cosmology instead of the Big Bang theory. He is founder, president, and chief scientist of LPP Fusion.

Professional work

Lerner received a BA in physics from Columbia University and started as a graduate student in physics at the University of Maryland, but left after a year due to his dissatisfaction with the mathematical rather than experimental approach there. He then pursued a career in popular science writing.

Lerner is an active general science writer, estimating that he has had about 600 articles published. He has received journalism awards between 1984 and 1993 from the Aviation Space Writers Association. In 2006 he was a visiting scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

LPP Fusion

In 1984, he began studying plasma phenomena and laboratory fusion devices, performing experimental work on a machine called a dense plasma focus (DPF). NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has funded mainstream as well as alternative approaches to fusion, and between 1994 and 2001 NASA provided a grant to Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, the company of which Lerner was the only employee, to explore whether Lerner's alternative approach to fusion might be useful to propel spacecraft; a 2007 New York Times article noted that Lerner had not received funding from the US Department of Energy. He believes that a dense plasma focus can also be used to produce useful aneutronic fusion energy. Lerner explained his "Focus Fusion" approach in a 2007 Google Tech Talk.

On November 14, 2008, Lerner received funding for continued research, to test the scientific feasibility of Focus Fusion. On January 28, 2011, LPP published preliminary results. In March 2012, the company published a paper saying that it had achieved temperatures of 1.8 billion degrees, beating the old record of 1.1 billion that had survived since 1978. In 2012 the company announced a collaboration with a lab at the Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch in Iran. In 2017, Lerner et al. published evidence of confined ion energies in excess of 200 keV, with the best “shot” having a mean ion energy of 240 keV ± 20 keV which was reported as a record for confined fusion plasmas.

In October 2021, the company announced improved results with the latest version of its device, with reduced erosion and higher temperatures, but the prior month, an independent expert stated that they were not close to a commercial fusion reactor with this device.

In March, 2023 Lerner et al published a paper in a special issue of the Journal of Fusion Energy showing that LPPFusion led all fusion companies in achieving” the highest ratio of fusion energy generation to device energy input (wall-plug efficiency).

The Big Bang Never Happened

In his book, The Big Bang Never Happened, Lerner rejects mainstream Big Bang cosmology, and instead advances a non-standard plasma cosmology originally proposed in the 1960s by Hannes Alfvén, the 1970 Nobel Prize recipient in Physics. The book appeared at a time when results from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite were of some concern to astrophysicists who expected to see cosmic microwave background anisotropies but instead measured a blackbody spectrum with little variation across the sky. Lerner referred to this as evidence that the Big Bang was a failed paradigm. He also denigrated the observational evidence for dark matter and recounted a well known cosmological feature that superclusters are larger than the largest structures that could have formed through gravitational collapse in the age of the universe.

As an alternative to the Big Bang, Lerner adopted Alfvén's model of plasma cosmology that relied on plasma physics to explain most, if not all, cosmological observations by appealing to electromagnetic forces. Adopting an eternal universe, Lerner's explanation of cosmological evolution relied on a model of thermodynamics based on the work of the Nobel Chemistry prize winner Ilya Prigogine under which order emerges from chaos. This is in apparent defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. As a way of partially acknowledging this, Lerner asserts that away from equilibrium order can spontaneously form by taking advantage of energy flows, as argued more recently by American astrophysicist Eric Chaisson.

Criticism

Lerner's ideas have been rejected by mainstream physicists and cosmologists. In these critiques, critics have explained that, contrary to Lerner's assertions, the size of superclusters is a feature limited by subsequent observations to the end of greatness and is consistent with having arisen from a power spectrum of density fluctuations growing from the quantum fluctuations predicted in inflationary models. Anisotropies were discovered in subsequent analysis of both the COBE and BOOMERanG experiments and were more fully characterized by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and Planck.

Physical cosmologists who have commented on the book have generally dismissed it. In particular, American astrophysicist and cosmologist Edward L. Wright criticized Lerner for making errors of fact and interpretation, arguing that:

• Lerner's alternative model for Hubble's Law is dynamically unstable
• the number density of distant radio sources falsifies Lerner's explanation for the cosmic microwave background
• Lerner's explanation that the helium abundance is due to stellar nucleosynthesis fails because of the small observed abundance of heavier elements

Lerner has disputed Wright's critique.

Activism

While at Columbia, Lerner participated in the 1965 Selma March and helped organize the 1968 Columbia Student Strike.

In the 1970s, Lerner became involved in the National Caucus of Labor Committees, an offshoot of the Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society. Lerner left the National Caucus in 1978, later stating in a lawsuit that he had resisted pressure from the U.S. Labor Party, an organization led by Lyndon LaRouche, to violate election law by channeling profits of an engineering firm to the organization.

More recently, Lerner sought civil rights protection for immigrants as a member and spokesman for the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee. He participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.

References

1. Lerner, Eric (1992). "Force-Free Magnetic Filaments and the Cosmic Background Radiation" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. 20 (6): 935. Bibcode:1992ITPS...20..935L. doi:10.1109/27.199554. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 5, 2006. Retrieved September 21, 2017.
2. John Wilford, "Novel Theory Challenges The Big Bang", The New York Times, February 28, 1989
3. ^ Eric Lerner's biography page at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc.
4. "Eric Lerner | the Space Show".
5. Columbia Alumni Directory, 1988 edition, p.211
6. ^ E. J. Lerner (1991). The Big Bang Never Happened. New York and Toronto: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-1853-3. pages 12 - 14, footnote on page 388, 286 - 316, 242
7. Biography at the Space Show Archived November 24, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, 2006
8. ESO Senior Visits in 2006, activities Archived May 24, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, and ESO Santiago Science Colloquia and Seminars 2006
9. Kenneth Chang, "Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble?", The New York Times, February 27, 2007
10. JPL Contract 959962 Archived July 19, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, pg 8, and JPL Contract 960283
11. Patrick Huyghe, "3 Ideas That Are Pushing the Edge of Science", Discover Magazine, June 2008
12. A Novel Form of Fusion Power, The Economist, October 22, 2009
13. Lerner, Eric (October 3, 2007). "Focus Fusion: The Fastest Route to Cheap, Clean Energy" (video). Google TechTalks. Retrieved January 8, 2009.
14. "LPP Receives Major Investments, Initiates Experimental Project". Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. November 22, 2008. Retrieved January 8, 2009.
15. Lerner, Eric J.; Krupakar Murali, S.; Haboub, A. (January 28, 2011). "Theory and Experimental Program for p-B11 Fusion with the Dense Plasma Focus". Journal of Fusion Energy. 30 (5): 367–376. Bibcode:2011JFuE...30..367L. doi:10.1007/s10894-011-9385-4. S2CID 122230379.
16. Lerner, Eric J.; S. Krupakar Murali; Derek Shannon; Aaron M. Blake; Fred Van Roessel (March 23, 2012). "Fusion reactions from >150 keV ions in a dense plasma focus plasmoid". Physics of Plasmas. 19 (3): 032704. Bibcode:2012PhPl...19c2704L. doi:10.1063/1.3694746. S2CID 120207711.
17. Halper, Mark (March 28, 2012). "Fusion breakthrough". Smart PLanet. Retrieved April 1, 2012.
18. Knapp, Alex (June 4, 2012). "U.S. Company Teams With Iranian University To Develop Fusion Power". Forbes.
19. Lerner, Eric J.; Hassan, Syed M.; Karamitsos, Ivana; Von Roessel, Fred (October 1, 2017). "Confined ion energy >200 keV and increased fusion yield in a DPF with monolithic tungsten electrodes and pre-ionization". Physics of Plasmas. 24 (10). Bibcode:2017PhPl...24j2708L. doi:10.1063/1.4989859. ISSN 1070-664X.
20. Wang, Brian. "LPP Fusion Increases Current and Reaches First Fusion Results". NextBigFuture.com. Retrieved December 9, 2021.
21. "Why Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Results are Not Even Wrong; a Detailed Analysis". impedans.com. Retrieved September 3, 2021.
22. "Focus Fusion: Overview of Progress Towards p-B11 Fusion with the Dense Plasma Focus" (PDF). lppfusion.com. Retrieved March 9, 2023.
23. Chown, Marcus (July 2, 2005). "Did the big bang really happen?". New Scientist.
24. Prigogine, Ilya; Stengers, Isabelle (1984). Order out of Chaos: Man's new dialogue with nature. Flamingo. ISBN 978-0-00-654115-8.
25. Michael Chorost (January 21, 2012). "The Ascent of Life". New Scientist. 213 (2848): 35–37. Bibcode:2012NewSc.213...35C. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(12)60181-X.
26. ^ Stenger, Victor J. (Summer 1992). "Is the Big Bang a Bust?". Skeptical Inquirer. 16 (412). Archived from the original on September 25, 2006.
27. ^ Wright, Edward L. "Errors in "The Big Bang Never Happened"
28. ^ "Big Bang Theory Makes Sense of Cosmic Facts; No Contradiction", The New York Times, June 18, 1991
29. "Did the Big Bang Happen?", The New York Times, September 1, 1991
30. Feuerbacher & Scranton. "Evidence for the Big Bang".
31. Macandrew, Alec. "The Big Bang is not a Myth".
32. A critique of the tactics of Eric Lerner mentioning him explicitly by name appears on Sean Carroll's blog, Preposterous Universe
33. "The Big Bang Never Happened: Dr Wright is Wrong". Archived from the original on January 8, 2016. Retrieved July 13, 2008.
34. Manoocheri, Kasra (February 2007). "Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement — Eric Lerner". crmvet.org.
35. "A Memorandum from the Strike Education Committee" Archived September 7, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Columbia University archives, May 4, 1968. Lists Eric Lerner as one of the committee members.
36. Eric Lerner | Columbia University 1968
37. King, Dennis (1989). "Chapter 32". Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-23880-9.
38. Dennis King; Patricia Lynch (May 27, 1986). "The Empire of Lyndon LaRouche". The Wall Street Journal (Eastern ed.). p. 1.
39. Hsu, Spencer S. (January 17, 2007). "Immigrants Mistreated, Report Says". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
40. Eman Varoqua, "Not Everyone Is A Terrorist", The Record (Bergen County, NJ), December 7, 2004
41. Harkinson, Josh. "Occupy Protesters' One Demand: A New New Deal—Well, Maybe", Mother Jones, October 18, 2011.

External links

• LPPFusion
• Focus Fusion Society
• The Big Bang Never Happened (archived)

• Scientists from Brookline, Massachusetts
• Writers from Brookline, Massachusetts
• 21st-century American inventors
• 21st-century American physicists
• Columbia College (New York) alumni
• Living people
• American science writers
• American socialists
• American cosmologists
• 1947 births
• Plasma physicists