Table of Contents

Preface

1. Scientific Theories and Laws

2. The First Decade (1936-1946)

3. Relativity

4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)

5. Quantum Mechanics

6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)

7. The Big Bang

8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)

9. The Non-Bang

10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)

11. The Never-Bang

12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)

13. Evolution

14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)

15. The Theory of More than Everything

16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)

17. Now What?

18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)

Appendix A Paintings

Appendix B TTOMTE and a Steady State Universe

Appendix C Musical Compositions

Bibliography

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We've gone through two other theories of our past. In Chapter Seven, the Big Bang described the whole universe as exploding out of a single point about fifteen billion years ago. In the beginning, the universe was perfect, but as time went by, it became disorderly and will eventually either fade away or collapse again (kind of discouraging).

Chapter Nine, about continuous origins, described a much more gentle process still going on. No major end is in sight, only local endings (much more comforting).

Now we'll let the story of plasma unfold or rather stream out, a description mostly from Lerner's book.

Plasma cosmology describes an eternal universe, and here are a few assumptions necessary for the theory:

1) The universe is unstable at times.

2) It becomes more orderly, order out of chaos rather than the other way around.

3) Therefore the universe tends to become stable, but a new form of energy arrives making the universe unstable again.

Plasma cosmology produces no estimate for when the universe began because it didn't. We can only go by what we see now. For some time, in the way, way past, free protons and electrons floated around. Because they were moving (unstable), small filaments of plasma started to form. These filaments started to join other filaments twisting together and kept getting bigger and bigger without limit as if there were no tomorrow. Of course, there were trillions of tomorrows to come. The filaments grew to a few billion light-years thick, but the rate of energy flow in these plasma filaments has a limit, as laboratory tests show. So at some point, the filaments quit growing and started to become stable. Will they all decay then with the end of the universe in sight only a few septillion years away?

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Sections

HOW DO WE GET AT PLASMA

CAN WE GO OUTSIDE YET

WHAT WAS THE FIRST CLUE

WHAT'S PLASMA GOOD FOR

WHAT ELSE CAN BE EXPLAINED

WHERE COSMIC RAYS COME FROM

WHY IS OUR GALAXY A PINWHEEL

WHAT'S A RADIO GALAXY

WHAT'S A QUASAR

HOW BIG/OLD IS THE UNIVERSE

CAN THE BIG BANG BE SAVED

WHAT'S BIG BANG'S HISTORY

WHAT NOW

FINAL THOUGHTS

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