Book contents
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- 11 Cold and Tepid Big Bangs
- 12 Models with unresolved sources
- 13 Thermalization by grains, the first wave
- 14 Primordial chaos
- 15 Early intergalactic medium, massive Population III objects, and the large-numbers hypothesis
- 16 Late thermalization of starlight
- 17 “An excess in moderation”
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
17 - “An excess in moderation”
High-baryon universe
from Part IV - Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2024
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- 11 Cold and Tepid Big Bangs
- 12 Models with unresolved sources
- 13 Thermalization by grains, the first wave
- 14 Primordial chaos
- 15 Early intergalactic medium, massive Population III objects, and the large-numbers hypothesis
- 16 Late thermalization of starlight
- 17 “An excess in moderation”
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
In the early 1990s, Gnedin and Ostriker developed a framework for explaining the CMB that was not tied to any particular model. It was predicated on questioning the Hot Big Bang assumptions, especially the ad hoc assumption of dark nonbaryonic matter, while it opted for more “natural” regular astrophysical explanations and observed properties. Gnedin and Ostriker devised a complicated scheme of early interactions of baryonic matter and plasma based on regular physics, with the CMB its expected product. Yet this move required hypothesizing hidden baryonic matter, in galaxies or otherwise, and this had its own epistemic challenges. The chapter notes that this approach was abandoned with the dark energy postulation of the late 1990s.
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- The Cosmic Microwave BackgroundHistorical and Philosophical Lessons, pp. 101 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024