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Eric J. Lerner is an American popular science writer, independent plasma researcher, and serves as the executive director of the Focus Fusion Society and president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. He is an advocate of plasma cosmology, a nonstandard cosmology, and authored the 1991 book The Big Bang Never Happened, which advocates Hannes Alfvén's alternative to the dominant Big Bang theory.
Professional work
Lerner was born in 1947 in Brookline, Massachusetts, and received a BA in physics from Columbia University. He did graduate work in physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and then pursued a career in popular science writing.
In 1984, he began studying plasma phenomena and laboratory fusion devices, performing experimental work on the dense plasma focus. Lerner received funding from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1994 and 2001 to explore whether the dense plasma focus could be an effective ion thruster to propel spacecraft. He believes that it can also be used to produce useful aneutronic fusion energy.
Lerner is a critic of the Big Bang model and advocates an infinitely old Universe. In 2006 he accepted an invitation to be a Visiting Scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, offered at the initiative of fellow Big Bang critic and MOND enthusiast Riccardo Scarpa.
Lerner is also 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.
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 US Labor Party, an organization led by Lyndon LaRouche, to violate election law by channeling profits of an engineering firm to the organization.
Lerner has been involved in political activism. He has sought civil rights protection for immigrants as a member and spokesman for the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee.
The Big Bang Never Happened
The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe (1991) is Lerner's controversial book rejecting mainstream Big Bang cosmology and advancing instead a non-standard plasma cosmology originally proposed by Hannes Alfvén in the 1960s. 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 perfect blackbody spectrum with no 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 virialized structures that have formed 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 observed cosmological evolution relied on a proposed a model of thermodynamics attributed in part to the work of Ilya Prigogine under which the universe has no definite age but continually increases in order in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. Lerner also criticized modern cosmology as being equivalent to the epicycle after epicycle complexities of Ptolemaic astronomy.
Professional cosmologists and physicists who have commented on Lerner's Big Bang critique have universally repudiated it. For example, the size of superclusters is a feature that has been limited by subsequent observations to the end of greatness and explained in the astronomical journals as arising from a power spectrum of density fluctuations growing from the quantum fluctuations predicted in inflationary models. Additionally, the anisotropies were discovered in subsequent analysis of the both COBE and BOOMERanG experiments and were more fully characterized by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
While there was favorable reaction from non-experts to Lerner's book, cosmologists who have commented on the book have generally criticized it. In particular, Edward L. Wright, who teaches cosmology and astrophysics at UCLA, has criticized the specifics of Lerner's alternative cosmology asserting that his alternative model for Hubble's Law is dynamically unstable, that the number density of distant radio sources falsifies Lerner's explanation for the cosmic microwave background, and that Lerner's explanation that the helium abundance is due to stellar nucleosynthesis fails because of the small observed abundance heavier elements. Wright has also directly criticized Lerner for making errors of fact and interpretation. Lerner has directly disputed Wright's critique.
The book received and continues to receive unfavorable reviews from other professional cosmologists and physicists.
References
- John Wilford, "Novel Theory Challenges The Big Bang", New York Times, February 28, 1989
- See Personnel listed on the Web site for Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc.
- H. Ratcliffe, "The First Crisis in Cosmology Conference" (PDF), Progress in Physics (Oct 2005)
- Columbia Alumni Directory, 1988 edition, p.211
- Biography at the Space Show, 2006
- Kenneth Chang, "Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble?", New York Times, Feb. 27, 2007
- JPL Contract 959962, pg 8, and JPL Contract 960283
- Patrick Huyghe, "3 Ideas That Are Pushing the Edge of Science", Discover Magazine, June 2008
- Marcus Chown, "Did the Big Bang Really Happen?", New Scientist, 2 July 2005
- ESO Senior Visits in 2006, activities, and ESO Santiago Science Colloquia and Seminars 2006
- Lerner estimates he has had about 600 articles published, in article such as Discover, and Industrial Physicist.
- Kasra Manoocheri, "Selma Interview: Eric Lerner", Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement web site, Feb. 2007
- "A Memorandum from the Strike Education Committee", Columbia University archives, May 4, 1968. Lists Eric Lerner as one of the committee members.
- King, Dennis (1989). "32". Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. Doubleday. ISBN 0385238800.
{{cite book}}: External link in|chapterurl=|chapterurl=ignored (|chapter-url=suggested) (help) - Spencer S. Hsu, "Immigrants Mistreated, Report Says", Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2007; A08
- Eman Varoqua, "Not Everyone Is A Terrorist", The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Dec. 7, 2004
- Eric Lerner, "The Big Bang Never Happened", page 13
- Eric Lerner, "The Big Bang Never Happened", page 12
- Eric Lerner, "The Big Bang Never Happened", page 14
- Eric Lerner, "The Big Bang Never Happened", footnote on page 388
- Eric Lerner, "The Big Bang Never Happened", pages 286-316
- Eric Lerner, "The Big Bang Never Happened", page 54
- ^ "Did the Big Bang Happen?", New York Times, Sep 1, 1991
- ^ Stenger, Victor J. (Summer 1992). "Is the Big Bang a Bust?". Skeptical Inquirer. 16 (412).
- ^ Wright, Edward L. "Errors in "The Big Bang Never Happened"
- ^ "Big Bang Theory Makes Sense of Cosmic Facts; No Contradiction", New York Times, June 18, 1991
- "Editorial Reviews". Amazon.com.
- "Edward L. (Ned) Wright". UCLA Astronomy Dept.
- "The Big Bang Never Happened: Dr. Wright is Wrong". Retrieved 2008-07-13.
- A critique of the tactics of Eric Lerner mentioning him explicitly by name appears on Sean Carroll's blog, Preposterous Universe
External links and references
- Official websites: